Spekulatius

Actually, i think market performance and GNP growth arnt necessarily correlated. We are starting to see increases in labor costs and going forward most likely inflationary pressures from the trade war, which in addition to interest rates aren’t necessarily good for the stock market. I believe we could see falling stock prices even if we don’t have a recession, simply due to multiple compression ( higher interest rates) and a reduction in profitability (due to inflationary pressures).

On the topic of this Thread, I bought some FDX and TOL today. I also added a bit of NXPI. TOL trades for 1.05x tangible book, If I see this correctly. I think that actually lower than during the financial crisis when they were making losses. I am also tempted buying some FCAU or EXOR Holding stock.

I think the HFT are the true customers of the exchanges. That may be all one needs to know.

This is an area of significant current research. Here, for example, are recent thoughts from someone researching this question: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-singh-food-deserts-nutritional-disparities-20180207-story.html Lazy and stupid don't appear to be the reasons. Instead, the reasons appear to be deeper and, in my view, profoundly sad. At the end of the day, I think the poor are essentially the same as everyone else -- same hopes, same dreams, same love for their children, same fallibilities -- they just have a lot less money. If I was working two minimum wage jobs while taking care of a few kids, and the only respite I could find was a bit of nicotine, maybe I'd smoke too. A lot of the poorer people have very little time to prepare meals, because they work several jobs. I got aware of this because my wife worked and heard what the techs were doing at her facility. Most of them were working two jobs, some of them 3 jobs. There are other reasons and they were undoubtedly wasting money too, but they was one factor that was evident.

Recent buys are NXPI ( add ), EUK3.F (European ports) and TFSL (S&L).

Don’t worry about what Powell says at all, he is a cheerleader for the Fed / his employer. It’s his job. Watch what he does.

I agree that performance has nothing to do wether a pitch is selected or not. I suggest plentiful dropping of hedge fund key words like misunderstood, transformation, masked, free cash flow,, hidden, catalyst, investor base, capital allocation etc. to make it last the reviews, based on what I am reading. FWIW, I don’t think the quality of most pitches is very high in VIC, but I still like it as a resource to obtain ideas.

I am actually surprised that OP can get a hedge fund off the ground in the US even though he does not live in the US. It seems to me that his investors must already place a decent amount of trust into him, since he could well defraud them and perhaps never get caught ( depending on where he lived). In that case, I would just put the personal account into an index fund in his home country. A cynical person would say thet by doing so, he will likely outperform his clients ::).

I agree. I hold some OTC stocks and also get funny marks with Fidelity, IB and with Scottrade ( when I had them). It doesn’t concern me at all, but I can see this being a nuisance when you manage other people’s money and the funny mark gap owns to be at the end of the quarter. Of course, if you have a KT view, it shouldn’t matter. I've got to disagree...If TDA can't tally OTC correctly...what else are they F'king up? I'm not talking about small amounts or percentages either...this is major goofs. Even if you look at the spreads, and the likely trade price on the otc's, it still doesn't come close to the errors that TDA is making. Scottrade had NO problem at all doing this. I think at least with IB and possibly with Fidelity, they don’t get the bid ask correct. I have seen them sometimes value OTC stocks based on the last trade, or based in thr last bid. the problem is that at least IB often does not show the bid ask correctly, so I can see how they mark the stock incorrectly (I have seen some obscure stocks I own being valued at close to zero, even though the last trade (which may have been days ago) was for $1000 +/ share. Personally, I This does not bother me at all. The bigger problem is that I can’t rely on IB’s bid/ask spreads for trading, I need to log in Fidelity (which is usually correct, but ironically does not allow to buy this stock) to obtain the bid ask spread, before I put an order in IB.

Dairy farmers seem to have political influence, same in Europe, where there are a lot of subsidies for farmers and milk too. I think the problem is that there are lot of small farms which aren’t very productive and larger ones, which tend to be more productive. So if subsidies were canceled, you would see complained and stories in thr news about small farmers going bankrupt/closing shop.

Surely the infrastructure bottleneck is only an opportunity for ENB in as much as they are able deploy a relatively small (relative to the base) amount of additional capital? That’s hardly transformative to profitability. Whereas if additional pipe causes the gas price to (say) double, that is definitely transformative for an E&P. Would you mind sharing how you value ENB? I value ENB on both EV/EBITDA and more importantly on DCF/share (similar to owners earnings). ENB trades at a 10% DCF yield currently, which is way too cheap, given their ability to growth the dividend in the high single digits (goal is 10% for a couple of years). Their assets have a high moat for the most part and the future cash flows can be estimated with a very high predictability. I think even 8% DCF yield may be cheap given RNB asset quality and their current growth profile, which gives you a 50% return potential within 2-3 years. Note that ENB is more like a liquid play in Canada and most Ng transmission assets are in the US (from the SE/SEP merger), but the same logic applies.

Seems to me that Infrastructure is the bottleneck and one should go long Pipeline companies? I own a boatload if ENB, which is exceptionally cheap (imo) and pays you to wait. No need to overthink this and ness with E&P’s. That’s how I look at this. There might’ve good deals to be had in E&P stocks, but it’s hard to pick the winners, imo,

I agree. I hold some OTC stocks and also get funny marks with Fidelity, IB and with Scottrade ( when I had them). It doesn’t concern me at all, but I can see this being a nuisance when you manage other people’s money and the funny mark gap owns to be at the end of the quarter. Of course, if you have a KT view, it shouldn’t matter.

2 packs of Laughing cow cheese wedges at Amazon for $16.95 are the real ripoff: The Laughing Cow, Creamy White Cheddar Flavor, 6 Oz, 8 .75 Oz Wedges (2 Pack) (White Cheddar) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Y4K45CQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_CdcTBbJ1DH9H8

Thanks all for checking. GCCO is fairly obscure, so that’s why I like it for a litmus test.

Looks like some very modest changes to the NAFTA, with the biggest being the change in name.

GCCO is one that I am interested in. I can’t trade it on IB platform.

Yes, a lot of high tech fakes from China are inside jobs. But who is to blame here, the Chinese government or the companies that have totally given up the control of their supply chain? The culture in China is well known and nothing new. For the most part, these companies have to blame themselves, imo. This wouldn’t happen, if the companies outsourcing would control their suppliers and supply chain and lock them down. I think the Europeans understand this better. There is the issue with reverse engineered products (cars, luxury good ubiquitous fake watches etc.) that the Chinese government could restrict, but these inside jobs are the western companies fault, imo.

TFSL- the thrift. They did raise the dividend as valuedontile thought they would. it’s yielding 6.4% now dividend

FWIW and not totally unrelated, puts on the SPY are very very cheap right now. Nothing wrong with buying a bit insurance. I did so today. If I had to pick a country to Ben efit from the trade war it would probably be Mexico.

The problem is that nobody knows what to do, because Trump starts a trade war with the rest of the world basically. So reconfiguring the supply chain to a different country ( which might take years) is a very high risk proposition, as you could end up with the same tariffs anyways. I think insourcing to the US will occur, but in a very limited way. For one thing, the labor force to do this just isn’t available, because there is no slack any more. The best I can come up with a robotics companies, but most of those are foreign too ( Fanuc, Kuka). Those may get hit by tariffs as well.

I own all four of these... do we know each other? ;) BLX in particular very interesting here. BLX intrigues me. I don't see a thread on the company. What's your 30-second elevator pitch? :) Or can you point me to a decent writeup somewhere? I don’t do elevator pitches :-). There is a good write up in VIC from 2014. The stock is significantly cheaper now in termsmof P/B. The ROA improvements that the author eluded to never worked out. I have owned this several times in the the past and bought it below tangible book sndmit always worked out. https://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/BANCO_LATINOAMERICANO_DE_COM/117860

The people who bought houses at the peak with very little equity usually did Ok, when they just let it go. At least in CA, it was easy to live rent free for one year (if not longer) while waiting for the foreclosure to proceed. Since they put very little up to begin with, with the more than one year of rent saved, they actually broke even or almost even. I know this, because I had some acquaintances that just did that and I encouraged them to do so, after looking at their numbers.

The question is if the shareholders will do any better with the hedge fund activist investors in control. companies like Sears, JCP, VRX suggest otherwise. At least Elliot has a track record so far but many people there have not.

I would have to look into this a bit more and while I share some of Johns concern regarding the debt in the AG sector, in the EU (and elsewhere), the Farmers tendnto get bailed out or at least a collapse (from drought or other external) factors alleviate. I seriously doubt that Danish banks will suffer substantially, but I admit they I haven’t done enough research on it. I think Danske is well worth looking into, as well as Lloyd (LYG) once it is clear how the Brits will exit out of the EU.