DTEJD1997

Years ago, I bought every single one...even the "special bank editions"....I started buying them from the actual company...but I think they were $125 a book. I then wised up and got on the interweb and bought off Ebay. The ones off of Ebay I paid almost $10 a book for! Guess that might have been a good investment?

Hey all: Here is something I've been spending a lot of my "processing power" on for this year... I think that NYC & CA is vulnerable to locations in the Midwest and other "fly over" parts of the USA. Why? You can BUY property in the Metro Detroit area CHEAPER, sometimes MUCH cheaper than what you can RENT property in CA & NYC. For example....I've bought/seen property just outside of Detroit for $11/square foot. Of course, this property is in relatively good condition. When I first started buying property, I was buying for MUCH cheaper than that...but the properties were in MUCH, much worse condition. Actually, they were rehabs. So the end result is that it is probably better to pay MORE and get stuff in better condition than to try and get it absolutely CRAZY dirt cheap... Also, you can get educated, experienced, MOTIVATED workers for a FRACTION of the price that you can get workers in NYC & CA. Once again, the Detroit metro area has a large stock of these type of workers. I am going to guess that Detroit is not the only place where you can get these workers. You also don't have to use "dial up" interweb access in Detroit. There is high speed access here. We've also got water, sewage, ELECTRICITY, access to Canada, access to INTERNATIONAL shipping through water & airport, rail access, and roads. Of course, housing is also somewhat cheaper here too. You used to be able to get decent houses in the suburbs for WELL under $100k. If you were willing to splurge, for $200k, you could get into the higher end suburbs OR you could into "B" grade locations and get 3k sq. ft. houses. We have museums, libraries, pro sports teams, movie theatres, restaurants, bars, and CASINOS. So there is some stuff to do on off time. So put it all together, and you can produce, process, build & do stuff here for a true FRACTION of what you can in the coastal cities. The law firm that I did contract work was engaged in this exact strategy. They have very small offices in NYC & San Francisco. The "big wigs" are located there...but the VAST majority of work is farmed out to the Detroit office. I'm going to guess that the coastal offices are mainly for "face" and as "sales" offices to get the work. Once the work is secured, it gets sent out... There are many other legal firms doing this. HOWEVER, it does not have to be limited to legal work. You could do all sorts of stuff here. So I would posit that if you can get work on the coasts & then farm it to the hinterlands, you can do quality work for much cheaper. Why send it to India when you can send it to Detroit instead?

Drzola: You obviously don't understand! This time it is different! ;D

Hey all: When I first got started and was in undergraduate studies...one of the habits that I got into was going to the school library 4 or 5 nights a week to do my coursework. The first thing I would do is gather the Wall Street Journal, Barrons, Value Line, Fortune, Forbes, and one or two other magazines that might catch my interest. Then I would find a good spot, read one thing. Then start studying for about 30 minutes or so...then read one other publication...then study another 30 minutes...and so on. If I found anything particularly interesting, I would check out the company financials in Value Line. Sometimes I would spend less than 5 minutes on a magazine if there was nothing interesting in it, sometimes 20-30 minutes. Of course, this was at the dawn of the internet. I think I learned a lot doing that...maybe I need to find a library and go back to that routine!

It appears that the revolution isn't AI at all. The big thing here is increasingly powerful alternatives to CPUs. CPU's have hit a dead-end and so the whole industry will evolve sideways. The GPU is only the beginning. We are going to see more and more very cheap alternatives to the CPU that outperform CPU's by orders of magnitude on specific tasks. The alternatives to CPU's have been going on for decades. I believe these chips are called ASIC's. Xilinx is one of the companies that make these. Altera is another one. One very good example of this is that in mining for Bitcoin, there were (are?) specialized computers that use ASICs and only do one thing...mine for bitcoins. They are incredibly efficient at this and are WAY faster than GPU's...Bitmain's "antminers" are a good example of this.

Hey all: It was brought up previously that students with a 3.0 GPA and a 140 LSAT might not be the best candidate for the legal profession...Perhaps that is true? Not at Cooley School of Law! In the year 2015, the lowest 25% of admitted students (full time) had an approximate GPA of 2.51 and an LSAT of 138. As for part time students, the lowest 25% of students had a GPA of 2.50 and an LSAT of 137. This was discussed at length at the blog "The Faculty Lounge", please see: http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2016/01/disgraceful-developments-at-cooley-law-school.html

Hey all: My apologies for not backing up some of my opinions with facts...here is one: ABA standard 501(b) “a school shall not admit an applicant who does not appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar.” https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/misc/legal_education/Standards/2014_2015_aba_standards_chapter5.authcheckdam.pdf If a skool has a bar passage rate of the vicinity of 50%, or even lower...I would argue this is a violation of ABA standard 501. Remember, a group of 100 students who START law school, will not finish...some will drop out and some will be ejected... Mistakes happen, I get that. A one time catastrophe of failing students is one thing...several years of that is quite another... If the ABA is not going to enforce their standards, what is the point of even having them?

There have been rumors/reports of skools that target applicants to specifically deny them. WHY? They are gaming the system...as skools that have a large rejection rate appear to be more selective. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/colleges-ratchet-recruiting-applicants-just-turn/ This is just one of many underhanded things that non-profits are doing...

Yes, you bring up excellent points...HOWEVER, let me add some counter points. A). I very strongly suspect that a 3.0 and a 140 LSAT is not "bottom of the barrel" for a lot of skools. There are rumors that many skools are just about open admission. Obviously, a skool is probably not going to let somebody in with 1.65 GPA and a 130 LSAT...but I know for a fact that skools are WIDELY letting in applicants with undergrad GPA's of under 3.0. And these are people in the liberal arts...not science, business, etc. B). People should absolutely be responsible for doing due diligence....no doubt. HOWEVER, many skools are outright lying about outcomes for their graduates. Even more are publishing highly suspect figures and heavily gamed that would be VERY difficult to suss out. The mainstream media is complicit in this. Best example is USNWR annual ranking. If a car dealership, or financial advisor were to do what the law skools are doing, they would be in YUGE legal trouble. So how exactly is student going to do due diligence properly? Trusted institutions are lying/gaming the system. The interweb is starting to have some effect...word of mouth is starting to work...but this has been going on for DECADES. The truth is only starting to come to light. Of course, there is a bigger problem than just the law skools...

So wait a minute....accredited "skools" are letting in people that they almost know are NOT going to be able to pass the bar/practice? That is in violation of what the ABA says... Sure, a person's life is ruined...no big deal there... The skool got paid up front. The taxpayer (you, me and every other employed person) is left holding the bag. I, as a taxpayer, don't want my money going to enrich these deans & professors. It is same thing with the "for profit" skools. Southwestern Law Skool has 964 students enrolled! I am going to presume that the VAST majority of their students are borrowing to fund their edukation. That is close to $50MM a year in tuition. Southwestern is not the only skool with this problem. You've got 10 skools in California with a HUGE bar passage problem. Could that be $500MM a year? That figure is probably a bit high...but even so... Then, the problem is certainly NOT limited to California. Here in Michigan we've got the "Cooley Skool of Law" and all their campuses...We've also got a problem with University of Detroit/Mercy and their passage rates. I also know there are problems in North Carolina and Florida. I am going to guess that there are other states with this problem.... So $500MM here, $100MM there, $120MM over yonder and so on and so forth...and now you've got a real problem. The AMA seems to kind of be doing their job...the ABA is asleep at the switch.

Hey all: The results of the latest California bar exam are out...The results are getting even worse! Hard to believe but it is true! What has happened all across the land is that more & more people are hearing what a rip-off law schools have become and the sorry state of the legal profession. SO law schools are getting fewer qualified applicants...like a LOT fewer applicants. I think it is down about 40% So what is a law professor and law skool Dean to do? Their salaries don't pay themselves! Why not just let in more students that would have been rejected in the past due to poor LSAT scores and low grades? Got to keep the seats full! Just think, you can get 3-4 years of money from that student. A perfect scheme, EXCEPT eventually those students have to take the bar exam. Results have been falling for YEARS now, as the schools need to stay full (or as close to it as they can) to make the money. Well, there is now a big problem in California (and other states), as MANY skools now have less than 50% passage rate. Heck, some skools have LESS THAN A 25% passage rate. Here are the latest results: Santa Clara: 69 percent Loyola (LA): 67 percent Western State: 67 percent UCLA: 64 percent Pepperdine: 59 percent U. San Diego: 53 percent McGeorge: 50 percent STATEWIDE AVERAGE: 45 PERCENT California Western: 45 percent Golden Gate: 33 percent U. San Francisco: 31 percent UC Hastings: 27 percent Southwestern: 24 percent Thomas Jefferson: 24 percent I know a graduate (who passed the bar) of "Southwestern"...they did not have a very outcome in their life...Tuition at Southwestern is now $51k a year. Not even 25% of their graduates are passing the bar. When is the ABA going to step in and say "enough is enough"? What the heck is the department of Education doing? What level of loans from these students are going to get repaid? If you can't pass the bar, how the heck do become an attorney? If you can't become an attorney, what is the point of your education? To enrich the professors, deans and school? Enough is enough, these "skools" need to be shutdown.

Hey all: Here is something is kinda of sorta related to this thread, but kinda of not...but I think it is interesting none the less.... When I lived in Texas, there were a lot of immigrants, legal and illegal. Certain industries had a HUGE illegal worker presence. Mainly restaurant work, landscaping, and residential construction of houses, certain warehouse work...There may have been others, but this is what I know for a FACT. Shift in time and location to several years later and the region in/around Detroit Michigan.... There are certainly illegal immigrants/workers here, but NOWHERE near what it was in Texas...What is interesting is that the landscaper crews up here have a MUCH lower presence of illegals...shockingly so. I see a lot of black folk working landscape, but also a good chunk of white guys...HECK, I've even seen white women (sometime college age) working industrial landscape! That is tough/difficult/lower paying work. In all my years in Texas, I don't think I EVER saw a woman, (black, latina OR white) working landscape. There are some illegals working in restaurants in MI...but NOWHERE near what it was like in Texas. Of course, Michigan is very far from the Southern border...but I also think the labor market is much different in this part of the country. Michigan has lost such a tremendous amount of jobs that there are plenty of "normal" Americans, Black, white, even young women, who are willing and able to do relatively low paid/low skilled work. So labor conditions are VERY different in different parts of the country. In Michigan, pretty much EVERYBODY is willing to work at ANY type of job. Why use an expensive/delicate robot, when you've got TONS of people willing to cut grass/landscape?

Hey all: I can offer some insight that probably not too many others on this board would be able to... The legal profession is having HUGE disruptions due to technology and the "interwebs"... A few examples: 1). In the days of yore, young, struggling attorneys setting up their own practice were able to do wills, incorporations, and other such low end work to get started and get some cash flowing in. Now days, a lot of this has been disrupted by Legal Zoom and other online services. Of course, not all of this work has vanished...but a good percentage of it has. 2). Move over to the corporate world. In days of old...fresh associates at medium & large firms would have to "make their bones" doing a lot of document review (in preparation of large cases) for a period of time...6,12,18 months. This is frequently mind numbing, very boring work. The 2nd season of "Better call Saul" shows some of this type work. A lot of this work was done in NYC & Washington DC, Chicago and LA. Fast forward to a few years ago...A lot of this work is no longer done in the firms...They have 1 or 2 attorneys in house guiding the work that has been outsourced to a specialized firm that does NOTHING but document review/prep work. These specialized firms are frequently in Detroit, Pittsburgh, West Virginia and other places where real estate is cheap and you can get a fast internet connection. Sometimes there could be 50-100 attorneys working on a SINGLE project in a single large room at weeks or months at a time on a single project. These attorneys make $18, $20, $24 an hour.... Of course, some of that work is now going away to "predictive coding" where computers scan through millions of documents looking for words, key phrases, etc. 10 million documents might be culled down to 15k documents which human attorneys now review. I've seen this even a few years there was more demand for attorneys. Now it is becoming more automated. Wages have also started to go up a little also. In the interior of the country (Detroit) it is simply SHOCKING how many unemployed/fired/never hired attorneys there are. I've worked with graduates from Duke, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, NYU and other "prestigious" law schools on these projects. I've also worked with ex-partners, ex-prosecutors, really sharp people that have lost everything and are willing to work for $22/hour doing document review. Sometimes people do this temporarily on a project to project basis (like me) simply to get some extra money...other people desperately need the money and have nothing else to do and no where else to go. Any way you wish to slice it, technology is going to eat into this document review a little bit more as every year goes by. Humans will always be needed...but in 10 years, 10 attorneys might be able to do the work that 100 used to do.

A buddy and personal car mechanic of mine opened his own shop a couple of years ago. It was interesting to hear from him that his goal is to take as little salary as possible to support himself, and to reinvest all the money he makes on growing his shop. He wasn't trying to make profit at this point. Now he never had any business education nor heard about how companies like Amazon operate, but he just understood that for his business to grow and achieve his goal, that's what he had to do. So when I hear a story like this, I completely understand giving up profit to grow the business value. In fact, it could be the default startegy for many entrepreneurs. Not sure why one cannot see this from what Bezos is doing, especially when he continuously preach that that's what he is doing. Whut, whoa, wait a minute....I am confused! Your buddy, who opened a car repair shop...was not trying to make a profit. He was trying to grow it and take market share. So he took as little salary as possible and invested as many of the PROFITS as he could so he could grow the business. I don't get it...if he was not trying to make a profit....how would he have anything significant to reinvest in the business? Shouldn't he have been working for free/almost for free to build it up?

Hey all: One of the problems with these screens lately has been the inclusion of Chinese reverse merger scams and "for profit" edukation scams. Most of these blew up bigly in the end...but they were on many of these low book/low P/E screens.

I would agree with you on both FB & GOOG. Probably MSFT also. HOWEVER, I think that AAPL is the lowest priced/lowest valuation of any of these companies. AAPL has a better brand name than FB, they make substantial profit, have TONS of cash...have a lock on a lot of hardware niches, and so on. The one stock I don't think should be in this group is AMZN. AMZN is an interesting company, but they make so little profit. They are vulnerable to the good graces of the capital market. Why is AMZN the one of the few companies to get a pass and be able to operate without a meaningful profit? Why shouldn't EVERY business be run like AMZN? If AMZN is a decent bargain at $1,000/share, where does it NOT become a decent deal? $1,500?, $2,000, $3,000? more? In my personal business, I could EXPLODE sales if I wanted to make a small or zero profit. I bet I could probably expand sales 5X or even more...but at the end of the day, I've got bills to pay and wealth to accumulate through retained profits...

Hey all: I hate to be contrarian...but could the recent spike in the value of Bitcoin be related to two things? A). people in China looking to get some of their capital out the country/renminbi? B). a spike in demand for Bitcoin due to demand from ransonware? I have an elderly friend of the family who was looking to get bitcoin as their computer had been locked up. I have no doubt that Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies could be very valuable. It sure would be nice to easily move $$$ across political boundaries...to have no counter party risk, etc. I just think that the recent spike might be the result of abnormal factors that are likely to prove temporary.

I would say undervalued. :-) One of these is not like the others....

Hey all: Using taxis is cheaper for the vast majority of people? whut WHUT??? The vast majority of people that live in Manhattan? Here in the midwest "wastelands" we sometimes have to drive different places. For example, I am going to downtown Detroit in a few minutes to work on a project. I need to get there quickly. A cab would probably cost $30+ Uber would be 2/3 of that? When will I be done? Don't know, might be lunch time, might be 3 PM, might be 6-7. How hard is it to get cab/uber before 8 AM? After that, I'm going to a distant suburb to look/evaluate real estate. I need to be able to drive around a parcel(s). Also might pick up some food. Whoops, I almost forgot! I might have to go to a supplier to pick up some computer parts...that supplier is 20 miles off course. If I had to take a taxi, it would take forever, and I would be bankrupted. The vast majority of people that I know would have the same result.

Hey all: In the general market downturn today, a lot of clothiers got hit extra hard. Many of them hit 52 week lows. One of them was GES. Buckle (BKE) came very close to hitting a 52 week low. These two would be my two picks in the clothing sector. Anybody else taking action in this sector?

An interesting idea indeed! Thank you for alerting us to it and sharing your research!

Lawyers are safe? whut WHUT????? Most people who (try) to become a lawyer will end up on a pathway to poverty... I can vouch for this as I, and a lot of family, are attorneys/judges. There are two MAIN things wrong with the legal profession: A). The cost of a legal education is just silly. Most law skewls cost $50k+ a year now. Sometimes law students even have undergraduate debt! I work with attorneys who have well over $100k in student loan debt, some have $200k+ a few even have $300k+ B). A lot of attorneys make $40k a year or LESS. Sure, the top 10% or 15% of the profession make big money...then you've got another 10% or so that make pretty decent money...then another 10% or 15% that make a living...then 60% to 70% that are really scraping by. This is called the "bi-modal" salary distribution. A lot of skewls don't want to admit...but their grads simply don't get jobs. If they do get jobs, they pay very little. Law firms simply aren't interested in graduates from the bottom 100+ law skewls. That is why you have had so many lawsuits against the skewls and the swindlers that run/work in them. Finally, a lot of legal "grunt" work is RAPIDLY becoming automated...I know this as I work on these projects from time to time. The high end work & oddball work is probably safe...but low level work? It is becoming heavily automated.... There is no safety for 85% of attorneys... https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/legal-toolkit/2016/06/smart-contracts-bitcoin-blockchain-technology/ The view is that self-executing contracts using code will reduce billable hours, but not obviate the need for legal services; and those lower costs will improve small business access to justice by reducing costs. Those attorneys at 40K/year are going to be taking a significant pay cut. A 40K/yr lawyer working 37.5 hrs/week, 48 weeks/year (2 weeks vacation + 10 days stat holidays) will put in roughly 1800 hours/yr - about $22.22/hour. If the technology cuts that wage by even just 25% (10K) - that lawyers pay is going to be 16.67/hr at best. Not a lot of difference between the waiter/waitress serving you, & the lawyer doing your one-off legal work. SD SD: A few differences between low & mid-end attorneys and waiters... A). The waiter probably isn't $100k to $200k in the hole due to student loan debt. B). The waiter learned their trade in a week. Every year, to keep up on industry trends, the waiter probably studies/learns for an afternoon. They need to learn about new dishes & drinks. There is no mandatory licensing. There is no $500 a year "waiter fees". There is no mandatory $1,500 a year "Continuing Waiter Education". C). Finally, the waiter probably didn't spend 7,8,9 years of their life in school & libraries learning how to wait. THUS, when you even things out, the waiter is far, far ahead of most attorneys...

Lawyers are safe? whut WHUT????? Most people who (try) to become a lawyer will end up on a pathway to poverty... I can vouch for this as I, and a lot of family, are attorneys/judges. There are two MAIN things wrong with the legal profession: A). The cost of a legal education is just silly. Most law skewls cost $50k+ a year now. Sometimes law students even have undergraduate debt! I work with attorneys who have well over $100k in student loan debt, some have $200k+ a few even have $300k+ B). A lot of attorneys make $40k a year or LESS. Sure, the top 10% or 15% of the profession make big money...then you've got another 10% or so that make pretty decent money...then another 10% or 15% that make a living...then 60% to 70% that are really scraping by. This is called the "bi-modal" salary distribution. A lot of skewls don't want to admit...but their grads simply don't get jobs. If they do get jobs, they pay very little. Law firms simply aren't interested in graduates from the bottom 100+ law skewls. That is why you have had so many lawsuits against the skewls and the swindlers that run/work in them. Finally, a lot of legal "grunt" work is RAPIDLY becoming automated...I know this as I work on these projects from time to time. The high end work & oddball work is probably safe...but low level work? It is becoming heavily automated.... There is no safety for 85% of attorneys...

I still have a standing bet that humanity will achieve immortality (yeah, yeah, "living for thousands of years if nobody disintegrates you with laser canon or you don't accidentally drop into Jupiter but even that might be fixable eventually") within 50 years from now. So if you are young, you might still live forever. If you have kids, they are very likely to live forever. It's also possible that we will blow up within the same timeframe. In that case the bet is null and void. Force majeure. 8) There is a flip side to that coin... For a lot of subgroups in the USA, life expectancy & standard of living is going DOWN. A lot of the attorneys I work with will NEVER have anything close to the standard of living that their parents have/had. They are living with their parents into their 30's/40's. A lot of them don't get married. One of my associates on my current project is a married female. She is married and has two children. Her husband owns his own business and makes decent money. They have a pretty nice house...but they are mortgaged up to their EYEBALLS, she has only been practicing for 10 years, so she still has TONS of student loan debt. They have NO retirement savings. The vast majority of their wealth is tied up in their house. I was trying to explain the market and the importance of compound interest. She went yeah, yeah, yeah....but I don't have any extra money....I'll start saving/investing for retirement once my children are grown. Another time I was expressing my disbelief that young people are paying for snacks at the snack bar in the lobby with credit card/debit cards. Of course, they get hit with a $.50 surcharge if the amount is below $5. They happily pay it. My comrade confessed to me that she frequently does this as she simply has NO cash at all. Q: Why don't you just get $100 when you cash your paycheck and keep it in your purse. That should EASILY last you until the next paycheck for your "impulse" purchases & such. A: $100???? WTF???? do you think I'm made of money? Who has that kind of capital? And this is an "educated", licensed attorney... There are so many financially illiterate people in America. There are so many people in America who are 1 or 2 paychecks away from financial ruin. I know/work with a bunch of them. Another example is that America currently can not launch a man into space. A lot of knowledge from the moonshot has been lost. I would wager that 95% of the workers on that program are dead/retired by now. Elon Musk & some others are working to turn that around... Another example is nuclear engineering. When was the last time a nuke plant was built in America? There is going to be shortage of nuclear engineers in the USA... I am sure there are other examples of losing knowledge. I hope you are right, but it is by no means certain that the future will be better than the past...

Hey all: Living in the Detroit area, Canadians are sometimes to the SOUTH of us.... I know/associate/do business with MANY Canadian folk...Most of them are pretty polite, decent folk. HOWEVER, amongst the younger ones I deal with, a lot are plotting/scheming how to get into Detroit to work/live. They also LOVE to come shopping here. They will make a weekend out of it and jam the car full of food, electronics, clothes... I always am shocked that somebody would be trying to get INTO the Detroit area to work live. They explain it to me that if you are established/older, Canada is a great place to be. If you are young and trying to get established, it is very, VERY difficult. So young talent will look elsewhere. Of course, most of the Canadians that I hear this from are from Windsor and London.