Spekulatius

I don’t think that anything has changed with respect to QUCT‘s Land holdings. I have been tracking this stock since at least Y2010 and I don’t think there were some larger land purchases. They continue to shuffle around their commercial real estate holdings den possibly some plots near Long Beach. Buying another 25,000 acres would have been in the news, that’s a size of 40 sq miles and that’s a lot of land!. What I did find is that the ranch is held via Messer Land &Development, which is registered in 12707 Huasna Road in Arroyo Grande. When you look this up in the San Luis Obispo county website, you can look at some plots there, but they are only part of part if the land apparently. https://assessor.slocounty.ca.gov/assessor/pisa/Search.aspx Pro Tip, search for the street number 12707 and a couple of parcels will pop up. The parcels are named Huasna Rancho, which is actually from a Mexican land grand from hr 19 century ( for 22k acres back then), but I don’t think that the areas for Messer Land ranch and the land grant are a exactly the same, but I think they overlap. Anyone is welcome to do do more sleuthing, I have spent already enough time in this rabbit hole :o

GOOG - what caused the inexplicable weakness yesterday and this AM and the even less explicable sudden jump this morning?

MPC is quite interesting from a value POV. Their cash flows that can be used for buybacks or dividends exceed their earnings due to the cash stream from the MLPs. Twas the toast of the town, best of breed, sector champion maybe a year ago...now its poo poo. I don't see much that has changed to warrant such sentiment shift. Me neither. Bought a starter today and will see how it goes. I have owned it way back in the past at the spinoff before the shale oil boom became a buzzword and sold it too early then. Thanks for posting. I also bought some MSM. Arguably not super cheap, but I like the company and the management and I think it’s a good business.

Interesting background on Uber IPO: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/uber-blame-game-focuses-morgan-014218851.html I also thought UBER might be a decent flip. However, I think there is a warning here they with these mega IPO where they wait such a long time until they IPO that most semi professional investor have gotten in it already or IPO and there isn’t much demand left. I find it ironic that even so I subscribed for a few shares with Gidelity, I did get zero allocation, yet when the stock was started to trade, it dropped like a stone because nobody wanted to own it. I guess most of these semi professional pre IPO investors simply bought this for flipping. Thanks for playing!

MPC is quite interesting from a value POV. Their cash flows that can be used for buybacks or dividends exceed their earnings due to the cash stream from the MLPs.

DWDP and GOOG. I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.

A conglomerate discount of 20% is not unusual and I have in fact seen much larger discounts in Holding co’s. Exor for example trades at a close to 40% discount to NAV.

I believe they WEB is more concerned with increasing BRK’s intrinsic value than with closing the gap to NAV. Generally, NAV will follow Intrinsic value anyways and if there is a large gap between the two (I mean 40% or more, not the current 15-20% by my estimate) I think WEB will absolutely buy back or tender stock in size they my surprise some.

Couldn’t help but post this buffet quote: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-04-07-tm-354-story.html

I think this is a key point. Retail investors are more likely to get the leftovers. Get a small slice of the good over subscripted ones and get a large slice of the bad apples. Overall, I think an IPO is just a special situation, just like a spin-off, mutual thrift conversion or an emerging bankruptcy play. IPO’s can’t be correctly priced or they would not show that large changes when trading begins, so there should be a way to make a buck here. It may not be Graham style investing, but I think it can be value investing in a probabilistic kind of way.

I don't understand these drivers complaining about money. I mean, I have never seen Uber advertised as a full-time job. Commercials always show it as additional income when you have a few hours to spare. I drove for them while in college and some nights when my wife worked 3rd shift as a nurse. I was quite happy to have some "beer" money in college. If anything these people should be thankful Uber exists. It facilitates everything for them and gives them a platform to make some extra income. Nobody is forcing them to drive for Uber and they could go out and start their own private taxi service if they really wanted (my neighbor used to do with for a local Judge...made out pretty good). Society needs to stop trying to push these supplemental income jobs as careers. Bagging groceries, flipping burgers and driving for Uber isn't a career. We need to hold firm to this conviction, because out of necessity comes change. People will learn this and adapt if needed. Fun fact: also paid for the entirety of my honeymoon by donating plasma in college. But that's a story for another time. I agree, it makes no sense to take an on demand job with a contractor and then demand benefits. It’s also off base, because Uber right now loses money, so one could make the argument they it subsidizes the riders , but also the drivers. If some has a reason to complain, it would be taxi drivers since they get more unregulated competition.

Added to DWDP. I believe the company trades at a substantial discount to the value of the sum of parts.

Is this Value Investing? Who cares if it is "Value Investing". Value investing is just a means to an end. I'd draw nice colored graphs and candlesticks all day long if that would make more money. The correct question is: is it profitable? And I wouldn't be surprised if subscribing to the Uber IPO and selling at the open is +EV. FWIW has anybody ever tried this at IB? They do have an "IPO Subscriptions" page in account management but I've never actually seen an IPO there. Looks like the Uber IPO was available at TDAmeritrade. But I don't even know if it is possible for non-residents of the US to subscribe to IPO's at all actually. Something to look into maybe. IB does not get access to most IPO’s. The only stock I recall that one could get there was IBKR. ;D FWIW, buying UBER at IPO wouldn’t be value investing, but it is likely to make some money given what we know. I didn’t get an allocation from Fidelity, so I think there is decent demand. If they could just open UBER for trading. Maybe they wait until the market recovers. LOL.

Anybody try to get some shares? It’s priced at the low end at $45 to make sure, the shares fly of the shelves. Should be good for an IPO pop, imo.

“We” at work means that nobody is responsible, if things go wrong. I like it a lot.

BRK -3% today -looks like the annual post shareholder meeting stock price slump has started for BRK. Maybe another opportunity to buy shares in the $195 range.

The info was provided for perspective, not criticism. I think in particular WFC and KHC have hurt the equity portfolio.

Operating earnings are pretty good, but their equity investments are clearly underperforming. They made ~$19.5B this quartet, but lost $27.6B last quarter. This is worse than the general market.

I enjoy watching this, but I hate people fronting their kids for questions.

Looks like the US is doing nicely and China as re-accelerating. Europe is still slow and I don’t know about Canada. Mr. Market simply seems to have overreacted back in December.

That feeling of relief and joy, when pigs in the portfolio fly, is priceless!

would you elaborate on MEGACPO? going through CHTR and Liberty complex has me interested in cable cos esperially in emerging markets. The thesis is simple - this is like US cable 20 years ago. It’s cheap (~7x trailing EBITDA ) and has a long growth trajectory. Also interesting is that it has virtually no net leverage (cash is almost equal to debt). The stock was a bit depressed after the release of the Q1 report (increased churn diente bad economy in Mexico), somI took a plunge and bought some this AM at the open. http://inversionistas.megacable.com.mx/en/reportes.php There Isa los a VIC writeup on this stock a while back (2017.). Biggest risk is macro and currency, imo.

Megacable MEGACPO.MX ( Mexican cable co.) and DWDP

One more leg and you are back to where you started your journey ;D

Holland, Michigan?