CorpRaider

I do generally try very hard to avoid companies with organized labor + defined benefit plans. What kind of longevity/benefit assumptions are we talking about here? Couldn't covid-19 materially revise those downward for the boomers and older (i.e., pretty much everyone who will ever draw a pension). By "raising equity" does one mean, "modestly reducing buybacks?"

Staples, including Costco.

Since no one is getting tested it is hard to decide whether to wait until there is a positive in your state/region before pulling your kid from daycare. For all I know we already had it. We have had like 4 mystery viruses that sound like they could be the mild version of this one over the course of the fall and winter.

Looking forward to my 0% interest only 30 year mortgage.

Wells and Fargo.

Peter Lynch used to trade around his positions like that, I think.

Makes sense to do less with all the insane PE and VC money sloshing around. Time to be fearful.

I have no opinion on that security but I think people could make quite a few arguments in favor of the money center banks versus smaller banks over the medium term and longer: Scale and ability to even make table stakes for the necessary tech investments (only like top 8 banks have a piece of Zelle for example), and lower costs per economic unit (account, customer, loan, whatever) for those investments favors; other scale advantages leading to sub 50 bps cost of deposits before massive costs coming out of the business (they can pretty much take any loan from these small banks if they want it), regulatory capture and potential eventual Canadian-style bank oligopoly. The MTB CEO recent annual letter does a pretty good job of setting up the arguments in favor of the mega banks and then attempting to counter them arguing that (super) regional banks will remain viable.

That was my conclusion. WRT Wells it seems unlikely they let it tick across the line because of the banking relationship.

ICE and Expedia, a couple of days ago. Seems like CME is a better business than ICE b/c of the futures (right now), but Sprecher seems like a beast to me. Obviously Barry Diller is strong like bull. Dara is still on BOD. I don't get why they decided to emphasize VRBO over HomeAway. Just "library card" positions, as Tom Gayner might say.

40% chance he's quoting total return for CAGR. Remember the Beardstowne ladies? haha

Will Danoff from Fido Contra Fund was on the Long View podcast (from Morningstar). Also, Peter Attia interviewed Sam Zell on the Tim Ferris podcast (did you get all that). It was good. Worth a listen even if you've heard him do his thing many times before.

Yeah good points. Thank you for your response. I've just been looking at some banks relative to WFC over the past week and had that question. Related stream of consciousness: I was looking at the MTB and the USB proxies too (not really as comps to FCNCA, just kind of fell down the rabbit hole). I definitely would prefer some ROA ROTCE factors in there (like they have). I like the USB formulae the best (I think the MTB one was kind of vague, e.g., we are good guys and will do good things). I noted that MTB reintroduced options (I might guess what Wilmers would think about that). Rene' Jones comp has really jumped up from ~$4MM to ~$7MM. ...I like WFC, but I should probably grab a few shares of these others and start getting print annual reports. I did like the Jones MTB letters. The latest one discusses the ability for regionals to compete against the scale of the money center banks, particularly with respect to tech spending.

Any of you guys still involved with this one? If so, can you give me a quick proxy check. Am I reading this right that they get their equity compensation based solely on TBV growth (i.e., they explode the bank size and compensation by rolling up a ton of acquisitions...like a lot of CPG managements that were/are compensated purely on growth with no ROE/ROIC provisions)? I understand management holds a ton of stock so that may counter any bad incentives, somewhat, but....

Wow, does he always write so much about macro, market and political commentary stuff?

For a point of reference QVAL was up 23.52% in 2019 (NAV); IVAL 20.59% (NAV).

WFC

One reason I decided to sell my GM warrants and never look back was that it appears there are huge, unstated, (mostly) contingent claims of stakeholders (i.e., dealers, unions, and politicians (jobs jobs jobs). Arguably Tesla (and other new entrants) don't operate with the same huge debt-like claims on future earnings/road blocks to rational operations from the dealer, unions, suppliers, and/or governments etc...as a "national champion"/massive quasi-captive entities, at least at this point. I guess it is maybe not so different than any other industry where the incumbent can't or won't cannibalize its existing business/relationships.

Value stocks + glamour cars?

The black market arms dealers, etc...on Amazon Prime's Jack Ryan series rave about the high quality and durability of Toyota trucks. For some reason, I found this highly persuasive.

Wow. I didn't know that. Sad to hear it.

I did 77.92% in my main discretionary account (retail punter here) for 2019 calendar year, but it was almost all bounce back from quoted value decimation end of 2018 (in like AVP, BRX, COTY, and CAG (lol avon was up like 270%)). It has been a crazy little ride for a purportedly efficient market.

I've heard/read Jack Bogle make this argument a number of times ("no cash on the sidelines"), and I get the semantics but to me he was just being cute. I think its kind of like a currency exchange rate...business equity (or other assets) for dolla dolla bills and the rate changes with the flows (all else being equal).

Hopefully the new CEO won’t do write downs, like many new CEOs like to do. Yeah, he seems likely to clear the deck and there is probably plenty to mention, but after considering it, trying to dance around that seems like being too cute to me. I bought a little bit more today. Got scared it was going to run away from me/FOMO. The god of skinny compounder-bro punks has like 40% of the portfolio that he runs without size constraints in WFC. I've had some success with LEAPS + corporate transactions/special sits. Not sure if I was lucky or good...was back when Black-Scholes was (I think) more taken as gospel.

Wanted to mention a few good, cheap, legit value etfs for OP to look at: ZIG, QVAL, IVAL, DVP, RPV. You could also just do the RAFI etfs from Schwab or like DTD. You get a nice, dynamic, value tilt but still get broad exposure and low tracking error (if that matters to you).