Spekulatius

Becoming a millionaire is such a great experience that some like to have it several times.

I believe these “BRK buys X” rumors are planted by day traders trying to make a quick buck. Buyers beware!

Sold off half my LBRDA. It seems to have outperformed CHTR ( which I own as well).

Bought a bit of PFIE the last few days. I am hoping that higher crude prices lighten up the flame for this stock . They produce burner controls for E&P’s primarily.

Yes, there is definitely the issue with value traps, but there are also a lot of indications of irrationality stocks, like blockchain stocks, weed stocks, perhaps money losing IPO‘s and in particular the stupendous selling in December that let’s me believe that many market participants are chasing quick bucks and aren’t really “rational” ( at least not the way I define rational ). It’s a bit of a “muppet show” out there.

The biggest problem with bank loans is that the conditions/ covenants are in most cases not disclosed. With publicity traded debt they are in the prospectus.

Fidelity and Interaktive Brokers pay you money market rates (~2% currently) for your liquid funds (above a certain threshold), which is one of the reasons I like those two brokerages.

Oddball - good perspective. We are talking about late stage funding here vs early stage funding. Both are different areas, The complaint here is not about viability of the business, but rather the valuations being assigned to these late stage ventures. I believe the evidence points to valuations being high, but I also believe that the quality of the companies IPO’ing now is better than the cohort in 1999/2000.

It is interesting that at a late stage of a bubble, you can see IPO’s still popping, while older issues are weakening. That’s when you know that liquidity is spilling from one vessel to another, but not much additional liquidity is coming in. It almost looks like that is what is happing right now.

It seems that you tax investment earnings twice - one time by putting a tax on investment earnings (1/3) and the second time, but assuming a company tax rate of 27%.

Bought some WRK ( paper packaging co). Selloff in this sector due to concerns over pricing pressure . We will see, some of these stocks have become cheap and the industry has consolidated a lot. Packaging is one of these sectors where rollups are actually fairly low risk and the rollup model seems to work. Cardboard might like this stock :-)

This is a personal view, but the 15% is now being expressed as 95% CR and 7% return on investments. I see no issue in targeting those metrics over the long term. What they've achieved in the past doesn't have to be a guide to what they aspire to in the future, especially when they've sworn not to repeat the biggest mistake of all (the huge naked hedge). That said, I couldn't care less that they target 15% and I find it surprising that people on here focus so hard on it. That's not a criticism, it's just that I have never had the sense that they manage towards the 15% goal in a bad way. Their mistakes are plenty, but they are so long term in approach that personally I don't think the mistakes stem from stretching to get to 15% - and that's the main negative of having a public goal. So I just ignore it, and focus on whether I think 95% and 7% are achievable (probably and probably not, respectively) and whether I'd be happy owning Fairfax at the current price if the ROE was say 10% over the long haul (yes with bells on). I regard the 15% ROE as an aspirational goal at this point. What irks me more than FFH not even close to reaching this goal is the increasing share count (by 2.4M shares last year) that shalab pointed out. It’s even more irritating with all the talk about Singleton and quite frankly, it looks like he is talking one thing and doing just the opposite. Did someone ask a question regarding the share dilution and how it squares with the talk about buybacks? There might be a good explanation for this, but it’s odd that it’s not addressed in the annual report or in the shareholders meeting.

Pretty good commentary from the shareholder meeting https://www.woodlockhousefamilycapital.com/blog/notes-from-toronto

I bumped up my WFC position on Friday. I used proceeds from sale of my FITB and cash. Worse case, I collect ever rising dividend checks. It’s now my largest bank position. I also bought a little CARS.

The SAAS model does not apply here, because for a customer, there is virtually no switching cost. One can use Uber and I can use a competitor 30 min later without issues. These business are great for the customer, but it remains to be seen what the ultimate profitability will look like.

Lyft looks really terrible now compared to Uber. Uber doesn’t look pretty either but shows economies of scale, while Lyft basically doesn’t. I can see why Lyft is selling off, it’s not just supply and demand of shares in that sector but inferior economics relative to Uber.

It’s the long term Performance of a lot of his investments that I am worried about. That’s why I hold less FFH “bags” now than I used to.

Largest privately subsidized public transportation company files for IPO: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000119312519103850/d647752ds1.htm

WFC and RHDGF

Image what she could have accomplished , if she had joined a hedge fund! Jokes asides , it is quite a feat to get spatial resolution on an object so far away, even if this object is the size of our solar system. Will listen to the Ted talk later. I wonder if they will have a go at the black hole in the Center of our galaxy next.

Looks like a donut to me 8)

Annual report is out. Cliffs notes: Trust fund assets and under management and revenues up +15% YoY after stagnating for a while Earnings ~$70/share ( some extraordinary gains from 1031 swap of RE included) Book value ~$1050/ share ~$600/ share in bonds and cash Some investments in RE and startup ventures initiated ($20/ share) $53 revenue/ share in real estate rents 0.52 acre/ share CA farmland I am very pleased with the pickup of the trust business.

Can you name some examples of well run family business conglomerates?

Just a possibly stupid question - how can the US enforce a fine for Danske? Danske has no operations in the US - could they just tell the US to take a hike? This is different than Deutsche Bank or even BNP since the latter do investment banking in the US. The risk reward ratio for going long Danske looks quite good here.

Couple of risks 1) The banks may have to pull out of the Baltic states (Estonia, Lithuania etc), which have been very profitable 2) Heavy fines by US and demotic regulators 3) Management is consumed to deal with the scandal and can’t take care or the ongoing business (see WFC and this problem is far worse, imo)