Spekulatius

The 6-7x capitalization is due to the lease duration. 6-7x lease capitalization equates to an duration or roughly 10 years discounted.

I bought some BWEL because someone had a yard sale.

"The graveyards of Wall Street are littered with the skulls of those who were too early". A great book on that exact phenomenon is Nick Gogarty's "The Nature Of Value" which I may have once posted in the books forum, I can't remember. It's all about the stages a new technology paradigm goes through before it is reasonably investable. It really does not take that much foresight to predict that something new comes along to challenge the likes of Google or Amazon or FB within the next twenty years. It is not clear to me that the challenger has anything to do with Blockchain. The knock on Blockchain is that it is inherently inefficient to facilitate transactions, so maybe something new comes around to either fix that problem. Blockchain alone wouldn’t make transactions secure - we know what happens when the key is lost. Do clearly additional layers are needed to make this viable. There is also no reason why cloud companies cannot incorporate it in their offering. To me Blockchain looks more like an evolutionary step that will be part of existing and emerging techs than a technology that facilitate changes by itself.

I would think that doing nothing would be the best option. If the business remains as profitable as it is, Mrs. Gf would just get nice income from her passive stake- nothing wrong that. She just has to make sure there is nothing fraudulent going on. An offer is just an offer, it doesn’t mean she has to take it. You dot need a lawyer to do nothing either.

The reverse wine snob looks pretty good, I have tried several wines he recommended and for example the Kenwood / Jack London Cabernet is outstanding. I like most of the Jack London wines from Kenwood vineyards and I can recommend to put yourself on their mailing list - thrynsent out good offers 2-3 times a year with low or no cost shipping and decent discounts. I could get the bottle of Cabernet that was listed for $20 as the lowest price in the US for less shipped to my house recently. When I lived in CA, the vineyard was just a few miles from my house, so I am partial to them.

Spekulatius, A bit off topic here, but anyway : I was actually a bit surprised when you posted about this buy of yours in the "What are you buying today?" topic - I have from your posts in general for a long time considered you a wholeheartedly investment bank skeptic / hater. [ : - ) ] [To me, naturally OK that you post something like this here, thereby elaborating your line of thinking about risks related to the UK banks and related investment alternatives.] There is a price for everything. I don’t like investment banking, but at least when I buy GS, I own the best investment banking operation there is, rather than chimps like JEF. Also, the banks like BAC and JPM have still significant investment banking operations, yet trade at rich multiples to tangible book, while GS trades close to tangible book. GS has build up wealth management and commercial banking and I think they are slowly moving into consumer banking too. Even if GS investment banking ops are only worth tangible book (even if they are best in class), the remainder is worth a far higher multiple, which means that GS as a whole is undervalued, except in the most dire economic conditions.

So it seems that the marketing has moved from TV/print celebrity endorsements to social media. This seems like a very nice talewind for FB. I have also noticed that the opinion now in social media and message boards really counts more and more. In some cases, there are products which seems to have a strong following that is much strong than one can expect just based on market shares. It’s often it’s higher end products (where user engagement tends to be higher) but not always.

The stress test from the ECB was already concluded a few weeks ago and want too flatering for the British banks as a whole: http://tools.eba.europa.eu/interactive-tools/2018/powerbi/ST18_visualisation_page.html I like the British bank from a profitability point of view, but I don’t like the economic setup (Brexit) and possible political changes (bank unfriendly Labour government replacing the current coalition). Then there is also the money laundry issue with the EU following the US to set serious pot. Multi billion € fines instead of a slap on the wrist like it used to be in the past. I bought some GS close to tangible book and feel much safer.

:D This thread can be closed now. Not before publishing this link for further study: http://bumwine.com

Find a good wine store. Each area has some discount stores that sell wine for fair prices and the good ones have recommended bargain wines displayed or you can ask staff. I found the advice to be quite sound. I buy mostly based on area of origin and the grape rather than brand. I lived in CA in a wine growing area so I am partial to appellations I know. Alexander Valley and Russian River are my favorites. I am also member of a wine club (for free) and have wines shipped to me from a CA vineyard when they have low cost shipping and sales. I try wine when I travel. We traveled last year though upstate NY and found the German grape varieties from the Finger lake area quite pleasing. They make a very good Rieslings, but those are not that well distributed outside the area of Origin. I typically typically have price target (~$15) and then best stuff in that range from above that I can buy. Luckily, the NH liquor stores close to where I live are wells stocked and fairly inexpensive and tax free.

The Chinese are not missing out on much. I have never heard of Dolce and Gabbana before, but the stuff on their website looks terrible. It looks like cheap chic to me.

I assume that you already have strong answers to the questions you ask and that you look for better ones which makes it a hard undertaking. Few thoughts: -a stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit. -a challenge is how to protect the helpless from the bandit. -a bigger challenge though is how to deal with the super-stupids: "people who by their improbable actions not only cause damages to other people but in addition hurt themselves." If you allow yourself to think only under two dimensions, you may find the following interesting: http://advanced.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/The-Basic-Laws-of-Human-Stupidity.pdf Most of the people that fall for a fraud or bad investments are not stupid. They are gullible, sometimes greedy and/or financially illiterate.

"$500,000 from two separate accounts he had at Coinbase and Gemini" Yeah. I think I've said about a thousand times: don't hold your bitcoin in an exchange, it simply isn't safe. Everyone should know this by now. Part of what is great about Bitcoin is that trusted 3rd parties are no longer necessary, why are people still trusting 3rd parties? For convenience and because they don’t trust themselves to keep the key safe.

The Apple Watch Gen 3 is available at Target for $200 or $230 (Nike model). A decent deal, if you are looking for a smart watch. While not strictly a a BF deal, if you are a MA utility customer, you can get a Nest smart thermostat for $80 (or even $40 for the Nest E) via MASS Saves. I bought 2, because one Thermostat does not operate correctly any more and I don’t like the other one that was in the house I purchased a couple of month ago.

A long time ago, Rolls Royce tried to sell a car model named “Silver Mist” in Germany. It flopped big time and it took the British a bit to find out why - the name “Mist” in German means “Shit” or more precisely “dung”.

Actually, the stock I hold have value , even if nobody wanted them, at least those that pay dividends.

GS, PRSP and BASFY

There is a deal with the EU and May‘s Team, but it appears that May has no mandate and can’t get anything ratified. Time is also running out and November was mentioned as the last possible time at which negotiations have to be concluded, which means it’s either the current draft or nothing. Looks like nothing to me. Next steps are hard Brexit, possibly Labour government and a recession. Lloyd trades at 55.4 p as we speak, just a hair above the 52p (?) tangible book value. The GBP actually has been surprisingly strong until today , so I think it may come down some more too.

I hVe no clue about British politics, but it seems like a hard Brexit is now reality and May has really no mandate to negotiate anything. This means that she veryblikely will have to step down. given the timelines and fact that there is no authority to negotiate on the British side, it seem like a hard Brexit is inevitable. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46216415 I am looking at this with an eye towards investment opportunities in British stocks, not political discourse per say. I think LYG presents a nice business, but not so much when Britain slides into a recession, which IMO is quite likely. the British banks didn’t do too well in the latest EU stress test due to sensitivity to mortgages and consumer loans, but their business model is more like that for US banks (similar NIM’s too) and more profitable than US peers. a company like BP for example, which does business worldwide, wouldn’t care much about Brexit, so that’s another angle.

He lived in relative obscurity before the superhero genre got revived wit X-men and Spider-Man.

I am watching this stock too, but isn’t the relatively small premium to the current market cap ( rumored purchase price is $11B, current market cap is $9.8B) a concern. That’s just a 12% premium to the current price. This seems to be a difficult business to run and really not worth as much than thought.

The NHS in Britain is state-run. The German example is instructive. If reform is considered in the US, the German hybrid system perhaps has something to offer. Interesting though if one looks through the prism of historical path dependency, I understand that the present healthcare "compromise" in Germany essentially rests on a set of political decisions taken after the Franco-Prussian war! Interesting also because the man behind the scheme, Otto von Bismarck was conservative, authoritarian and anti-socialist. The idea was to quiet the agitation of the populace in order to make it as a country. In 1883, he passed a law requiring laborers to insure themselves through sickness funds complemented by an employer contribution. The system has evolved but its foundations have remained intact to this day. The scheme is not perfect and some want more "reforms" but I sense that most Germans are happy with it. Do I get this right? The way the German healthcare system functions may be a more palatable inspiration for the US because it means that the core societal values (personal freedom and responsibility etc) are maintained. Bismarck was able to introduce the concept of solidarity without naming it. But he was awfully shrewd. Yes, I believe most Germans are happy with the system, especially if you would put up the US system as an alternative. I believe that Bismarck was shrewd to introduce health insurance because he saw a the huge potential for unrest and let’s not forget they Germany is the intellectual birthplace of communism (Marx, Engels). Without it, history may have been different and I think it is conceivable that Germany would have become communist without it. The health insurance was the first corner stone of what would later to become “soziale Marktwirtschaft “ , which is capitalistic system with Social boundaries. This also means for example that many German companies don’t just see themselves as profit optimizer, but consider it their mission to make all stakeholders happy (employees, community, banks, shareholders). Some companies became more like US companies in terms of profit Maxime (Siemens was once a “caretaking” company and has become much more profit oriented, but some remain this way - BASF , BMW for example). This goes both ways, because if a company gets into trouble, the employees/unions are expected to stick it out and help with cost cutting and restructuring. Deutsche Bank is one that is also now much more Anglo/American and it hasn’t really worked for them at all.

Single payer does not necessarily mean that the government will run it. It does mean tha the government needs to provide the framework for it. The single payer insurance in Germany for example is not run by the government, but in Britain it is (I believe).

I think this runs as share based compensation through the income statement. It’s is noted in page 37/75 as $65.4M in share based payments to directors and employees for the first 9 month and seems to be rapidly rising.

I have owned Pargesa in the past but found that this holding co is quite dull. I think they overpaid a bit for taking control of Imersys at this time. I also felt that the Belgian subholding GBL.BR is a better deal, because it is one level deeper in the holding structure and trades at a similar discount. I am not sure that this is still the case, but worth looking into.