DTEJD1997

Some fields, like the legal field, have had a COLLAPSE in wages. Sure, the top 10% of attorneys are making some good wages, but the for the bottom half, the bottom has fallen out. Here is a good example! Who is the lowest paid employee in the Boston Courts? The janitor? heck no! They are union members and get PAID! It is the attorneys in the public defenders of course! Please see: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/21/indefensible/23OMcEGsJe1151YT0Q43PJ/story.html

While I would like that to be true, I don't think it is. There's a large group of angry people out there, disappointed with politics, immigration, growing income disparity and angry about Wall Street and job losses due to technology changes and competition from China. These people are not going to think in four years: "well, we tried Trump, that didn't work out, let's get back to Jeb Bush.". They hate Jeb Bush almost as much as Hillary Clinton because they both represent 'the elite'. Both parties, but especially the Republicans, have grown completely out of synch with their voter base. Their leaders are living on a completely different planet than, for example, a fired coal miner in Virginia. The Bern and Trump are symptons of this problem, not a one-off event. Chris Arnade has written a couple of nice articles about this. This is not only true for the USA. A similar thing is happening in most developed countries (UK: Brexit & UKIP, France: Le Pen, Germany: Pegina, the Netherlands: Wilders, Italy: Beppe Grillo, Austria: Freedom Party). I'm certainly no expert on politics but I think that globalisation, immigration and growing inequality are serious issues that is not going away in a few years and there will be more demagogues who will try to take advantage of this. There is also a contingent of people who are MAD and think (rightly or wrongly) that they have been BETRAYED. For example, I am an attorney and work with other attorneys. I work with people aged 29-70+. The young attorneys are USUALLY in bad, bad spots. Their lives are not good. There are two problems. A). The amount of debt they have is simply staggering. Most of them have $100k+ in student loans. A decent percentage have student loans of $200k+. If the younger attorney is not married, the odds are they still live at home with their parents OR live with roommates. They simply can't afford to live on their own. B). While employed as attorney I make a VERY modest hourly rate. This is especially so when considering the amount of education and training that I have. I work on massive cases, preparing for trial. Never go to trial, just help in the preparation. It is 95%+ of the time incredibly boring and tedious work. That is putting it mildly. In fact, a lot of people simply can't hack it, it is so tedious... I am doing this work simply to rebuild my bankroll and hope to soon leave law forever behind. I have something to fall back on. Most of my associates have completely useless undergraduate degrees (History, English, Journalism, Political Science, Philosophy). These things ain't worth the paper they are printed on. They ain't getting any job in their undergraduate field. I work with people who graduated all the way from Cooley (low ranked) to University of Michigan and Duke (high ranked). Jobs are scarce in the legal field. A good percentage of jobs that DO exist, simply don't pay well. I have heard stories of attorneys that worked insurance defense, bankruptcy, low level criminal work, family law, that gave it all up to work the "big money" prepping for lawsuits. They left jobs that paid $9-$10 an hour when you consider the hours they had to work (salary of $30k, 3k+ hours a year). I am simply amazed at the stories I hear. So you've got these moderately intelligent, highly educated, hard working people that have no way out. They most likely will not advance in their profession, they can't make enough to pay back their student loans. They were lied to by the educators. Many of them feel tricked and are hopeless and depressed. I know several that are on anti-depressant medication. Several are going to vote for Hillary, as they think she will do something to alleviate student loan debt. Others I know are going to vote for Trump. They simply can't stand Hillary. She is "disgusting waste of human flesh" as one attorney put it...But more importantly, they think they have a "chance" with Trump. As one Trump supporter put it to me, I have almost ZERO percent chance of things getting better with Hillary. I am far, far, behind the "eight ball". My life is in tatters. I have a CHANCE with Trump. It might be 20% or 30%...but I'm going to take it. If things "blow up" so what? I'm already in a dire situation, if the elite take a fall, so much the better. Maybe things get better... So there you go! This is coming from attorneys. I am going to suggest that the amount of people who are in bad situations and hoping for change is simply staggering in this country.

Do you sell a product or service? We are just getting ready to launch home automation systems on Amazon. Its a completely different beast. It took us about a year to get this product in the market. I sometimes think it would have been better to just private label something. I sell products. I sell computers, computer parts, server/s, and server parts. I also sell silver/gold coins and bullion. The computer things that I sell are USUALLY fairly high end and niche products. That is the way to get margin and a good return. I've currently got well over 8,000 feedback with 100% satisfaction from buyers. MOST of the time Ebay & PayPal do a good job, the vast majority of bidders are good & honest, but when things get fouled up, they get fouled up badly...

Hey all: I've been selling on Ebay for quite a while now. Somedays, I make more on Ebay than I do as an attorney. Other days I make $10 or sometimes even zero... Years ago, I ran a full time business with employees selling primarily on Ebay. I hope to eventually get back to this as being an attorney is quite tedious and does not pay very much... Another way to get income is selling covered calls. I've made some GREAT income doing this...

He is certainly not a criminal sociopath or terrible crazy person...but he has gone off the deep end with his miserly habits. I've tried to counsel him that you get ahead by doing PROACTIVE things...like investing in the market, buying real estate, businesses, etc. You don't get rich by saving. At least he can't. He makes about $45k a year in a very low cost area of living, so he can certainly spend a bit. I've also counseled him that doing your grocery shopping at the dollar store is not a good idea. Certainly not healthy to eat all the heavily processed foods. However, it is not my place to tell him how to live his live. I offer my opinion from time to time, but that is it.

This is it. I/we take trips when we want. Daily spending isn't monitored. Some things drive me nuts like phone/inet/mobile data costs. I made myself more accepting of this by buying enough BCE so the dividends pay the entire costs in this arena. And I will get to keep the capital gains. I always pick my entry points to add. Also hold Enbridge - get much more in dividends than the bills will ever be. I/we are frugal but not cheap. That said I have no need to spend on certain things such as expensive dinners out (> 100 per family for dinner). I actually dont enjoy pretentious fancy dinners out. With anything there is a law of diminishing returns. The tripling of cost from a dinner at a roadhouse to a fancy French restaurant dimishes my enjoyment. I dont really like being served hand and foot. The associate who now won't pay for food in a restaurant is NOT doing that in a high end French restaurant situation. He has done this in a low end Chinese restaurant where most meals are under $10, a greek diner with most meals under $10, and similar places. He has INVITED people to dinner at these places and won't order anything...very odd behavior. Another example is that he was invited to a very high end casino buffet. It was FREE, all he had to do was show up. No obligation to gamble or anything else, he was invited and somebody else was paying. He said he couldn't go because gas was too much. He would have had to drive 20 miles each way and that would have been $6 in gas. Foolish decision as the buffet was $40 and excellent. So yeah, he certainly saved money. BUT he ate dollar store food at home, didn't interact with friends and family, and missed eating all he wanted of excellent food. A terrible cost/benefit analysis, missed food & further alienated others in his life.

Hey all: I know some extremely tight/miserly people. They are NOT good investors. They don't really seem to be in control of their lives, in so far as they don't do a whole lot...and they are very good at self deprivation. Of course, it is good to pinch a dollar...but at some point, what is the point? What is the point of going through your life and not spending much of your money? Constantly depriving yourself of stuff & experiences. For example...I have an associate who has ALWAYS been frugal/nervous about money. He was a cheapskate. FINE... now he has graduated to being a miser. For example, he won't drink soda/beer/alcohol unless he can get it for free or from work. Sometimes he buys some powder mix kool-aid from the dollar store. He does a LOT of his grocery shopping from the dollar store. He has never bought furniture. He gets all of it for free (gifts/trash picking), now a lot of his stuff is literally falling apart. He is in his early 30's and his apartment looks like a college student/beggar. Women are extremely put off when they come to visit... Now he has started inviting friends/family to go out to eat with him. He will just sit there drinking water. He won't order/pay for food at a restaurant. Many people are off put by this behavior (myself included). People don't like this anti-social behavior and are now avoiding him. Most of his clothes are out of date, ill fitting and literally getting holes. He makes decent money...He simply will not spend money on anything unless it is absolutely necessary. I think that when people go from being frugal to being miserly, it is a mental defect and a form of mental illness.

Oh my goodness, Trump said something off color about women! Bring me my fainting couch & smelling salts. Perhaps his inspiration was Bill Clinton. I doubt very much this is going to change anybody's mind...

Hey all: Has anybody been paying attention to what is happening in Syria? There was an incredibly illuminating and alarming segment on the John Batchelor show the other night. Obama appears to be flailing around in the deep end of the pool, and we are close to risking war with Russia. Hillary appears to be on board with perpetuating what is currently going on. What is so crazy, is that the USA appears to be on the wrong end of this one. What interest do we have in Syria? What interest do we have in helping ISIS & other terrorists? Why risk war with Russia?

This company was coming off a catastrophic collapse in sales when a couple of their major customers went bankrupt a few years ago...They now have two years of earnings behind them...this year was a good year. The valuation is just silly low. I know of no other stock that is valued as low as this one is on a P/E and cash flow basis. If the economy does not fall apart, they can make a LOT of money. They have invest in plant & equipment & training, they have started to significantly pay down their bank debt... They are trading for 85% off their pre-crisis highs. They have the capability to be trading a 1x P/E instead of a 2x P/E. They were paying a dividend that would be equivalent to a current 30% yield... So the potential is certainly there and I need to get it right. Book value is LOW right now, as they have been coming off the worst years since the great depression. Another 2 years of decent earnings, and the book value problem probably goes away. So it is most definitely worth the trouble...

Hey all: You know the very funny thing about the USA Today "Not Trump" endorsement? They point out several disconcerting items about Mr. Trump. Several of which are probably true. Then they go on to say that Hillary is not ideal either and has "trust issues". Their criticism of her is something like two sentences. If you want to criticize Mr. Trump, fine & good...but what about the alternative? Criticism of Bill & Hillary can fill two books. Mr. Trump certainly SAYS some very "bad" comments....no doubt. What about what Bill and Hillary have DONE? In my book, actions speak louder than words. The way I see it, the country has a CHANCE with Donald Trump. You can argue what the chance of success is maybe 10%, 20%, 50%? Under a Hillary regime, the odds are near zero. Therefore, I would rather roll the dice and see what happens.

I am reasonably confident that the pension has a MINIMUM level of distributions that have to be made...IE you will get $2,500 per month in income no matter what...If the fund does exceedingly well, you MIGHT get more. This actually happened to my father in the early 90's. His pension was doing very, VERY well for a few years and he got a small bonus for a few years. I assume that these rates were promised at some point in the distant past. For example, you work 30+ years and you will receive X amount every month based on your years worked, and ending pay rate. I think retirees also get health care? Any way you care to slice it: A). The pension simply does not have enough assets to be self funded. The company kicks in additional money every year. This does not appear to be a huge amount, but it is significant, say 15-20 of net earnings. B). The actuarial assumptions are simply not realistic. My concern is that the company management and BOD has been sold a bill of goods by some financial planner. Unless there is something that I am missing, why would they have 20% of the pensions assets in cash? I am 99% sure that pensioners CANNOT withdraw capital from the plan. If you took cash from 20% to 5% and put that into REIT's and other reasonably conservative investments, you might be able to boost the returns on the corpus of the trust by 1-2% a year. This is NOT an insignificant amount given the size of the assets and the size of the company involved. This company is indeed publicly traded. They have been in business for about 100 years and have a long, long history. They are doing well now, earning an incredible amount of money (relative to size of equity). They have some new contracts and have improved the scope of products & services they offer. They have borrowed $$$$ from the bank, but have paid off about 25% of that in the past 12 months. They are in a "yucky" industry. HOWEVER, if you look at their annual reports from the 1990's and early 2000's...you might think they were a "fast money, go-go" tech company. They regularly earned ROE of mid to high teens! They did this with little to no debt! They own 3/4 of their manufacturing plants lock, stock & barrel. In the past, they have paid up to $2/share in dividends. While this is a company in a cyclical industry, they didn't have the huge gyrations typical of the industry. When the cycle turned, they certainly earned LESS money, but still had reasonable returns. This all changed in 2008-2009. Sales dropped by 35%-45% and they LOST money. Heck, I think they even had NEGATIVE gross margins for a year! I am unsure if they can attain the levels that they saw in the past...BUT they don't have to! I bought in at a P/E of less than 2... They have no bonds, simply the bank debt. So if the following happens: A). The economy doesn't fall off a cliff in November B). The stock market doesn't collapse C). They can work/deal with the pension problem D). Keep everything going at a reasonable level shareholders should get paid off handsomely. The stock might not go back to it's highs, and the dividend won't be $2/share. No reason why it can't be 1/2 of it's high, and 1/2 of it's dividend in a couple of years. Any chance they expand business and it is simply upside. We will see, it is now my single largest position by far...

Hey all: Recently, I've been buying into a manufacturing company. I believe this company is SEVERELY mis-priced. So much so, that it one of the few times that I've seen something like this in 25+ years of investing... I've put quite a large percentage of my portfolio into it and am doing well. HOWEVER, there are a few things that give me pause/worry. ONE OF THEM IS IT'S PENSIONS. Some time ago, the company did away with pensions for any new hires. However, they have an obligation for retirees and some people that are still working. The pension obligation is carried on the balance sheet as an obligation and liability. Let us say that the retiree liabilities is an amount of $120MM. The pensions have assets and are funded to the tune of $100MM. So there is a $20MM shortfall. OK, all well & good. Here is where the real problem starts.... The company assumes that they will get 7.5% return on those assets. This manufacturing company is of a more conservative nature...They have invested the pension assets in something like 20% cash & equivalents and 30% bonds. The remaining 50% is invested in equities. So there is NO WAY that they will earn that 7.5% assumption UNLESS the stock market does exceedingly well. Cash basically earns ZERO. Bonds are only slightly behind that. I would not be surprised if they are getting 2% on the 30% invested in bonds. So half of the dang portfolio is earning about 1%! If that is the case, then stocks have to come in about 14% per year, EVERY YEAR just to maintain a 7.5% return! So going forward, a more realistic assumption is that they earn 5% on the pension assets, maybe even 4%. Under these more realistic rates of return, their pension liability would NOT be $20MM. It might be $30MM, perhaps even higher? This liability, if more like $30MM instead of $20MM could come close to wiping out the book value of the company! This is a very, very small company, so for every couple million $, that equates to real amounts for the equity owners. I imagine that those receiving pensions are fairly old...not sure if there is spouse/survivor benefits under the pension? At some point, I imagine as the beneficiaries pass away, the pension liability will decrease. Secondly, while it is good that the company is pretty conservative financially, they might be shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to asset allocation in the pension. Why hold so much cash? Drop that from 20% to 5%? Why hold so much in bonds if the return is 2%? Move 1/2 of the bond allocation to equities or maybe real estate? I've looked at larger manufacturing companies like Ford Motor and just simply can't wrap my head around the pension/healthcare obligations! There is a real chance that Ford is simply owned by the retirees! These ZERO interest rate environments are really hurting pensions. I am worried that the real owner of this little gem of a company I own are the retirees and not me.... Anybody have any thoughts or experience with this?

What about some triggering event with student loan debt? It is at least 1.3 Trillion. I would be VERY surprised if it is not significantly more than that. ITT Education was shut down. The whole company. Thousands of "teachers" out of work. What if somebody leaks that millions of people have defaulted or are seriously behind on their loans? Maybe the real figures are worse than what is generally accepted? I work with a bunch of younger attorneys. The stories they tell are simply stomach turning. They simply have no realistic way to pay off their student loan debts. There is not a ghost of chance, barring winning the lottery. They simply can't pay it with their wages. Maybe the feds start to turn their attention to "non-profit" skools? I think this is a long shot, but not impossible...

Hey all: What is just so crazy about all of this is that Hillary & her campaign handlers just can't help themselves. They HAVE to lie & dissemble. They couldn't tell the truth if they wanted to. If they came out & said that Hillary has some MINOR health issues. She is going to cut back or opt out for a week to insure a full recovery...OK, fine, who cares? But no, they've got to deny almost everything to the point of looking comical. They double down, triple down, and then she collapses and now all sorts of theories are running wild. That she has clones & doubles, that she is "shovel ready" and in a terminal state...and on and on... Well, once again, they Clintons have taken a relatively minor thing, and now it is a MAJOR issue. I wouldn't be surprised if this costs her the election...

sigh Who are you going to believe? Your lying eyes or the press? Hahahahahaha

Die hard Hillary supporters are going to vote for her almost no matter what...Will her health issues move some of her borderline supporters to Trump? Yes, maybe, probably not very many... The worse problem is that some percentage of her supporters will move to 3rd party candidates OR will simply not vote. This is by far the worse problem I think. I've seen the 2nd video that just came out on the interwebs. It shows her from a different angle. There is absolutely no question that she collapsed. The question now, is did she have a seizure? I think it is probably that she did. I was previously not inclined to believe that her "coughing" fits were signs of ill health. After seeing this video a few times, there is NOT A DOUBT at all that this woman has very serious health issues...

That interweb poll isn't worth the paper it is printed on...How do you know one crackpot didn't vote 500 times? Heck, I can run a poll on the interweb and given enough time & $ can come up with almost any result. Perhaps they should have also polled Hillary supporters on the same question. What would the results be? There are semi-famous YouTube videos of late night TV shows going to college campuses, amusement parks, malls, Times Square, etc. and asking people odd/simple questions. The results they get are funny/alarming. People are funny/weird/stupid, especially when asked ?'s by pollsters. This is the same type of thing... I don't know of single Trump supporter who is advocating bringing back slavery. I also don't know a single Hillary supporter who advocates that either.

One thing that would very much advance space exploration/development would be a "bean stalk" or space elevator. If the current cost of attaining LEO is $800/pound. Re-usable rockets bring that down to $150-$200 pound. A space elevator would bring that down to $10/pound. Safety & reliability would also skyrocket! Can you imagine what could be done if we could get into LEO for $10/pound? Mars & outer planets could be explored colonized. Massive solar arrays. You could also build MASSIVE space ships by bringing them up in pieces...1 bit by bit, till you have 25,000 of them assembled... Heck, exploration of nearby stars would not even be out of the question...

These quarries might be vulnerable to disruption by Amazon! I remember reading on the AMZN thread that somebody was buying SAND to put in his child's sandbox and AMZN was shipping 50 lbs. bags of sand to his house for FREE, as he was a "prime" member. If AMZN will ship sand, why not pebbles & rocks & such?

In the circles that I travel in, lots of people have no or little problems with inequality. They have a problem with the way the "system" is set up. They feel that the older & more established folks are pulling the ladder up with them, and they have no/little chance to advance. They also believe that they have been "tricked" by the educational system. They went into massive debt to get degrees/licenses that are worth little/nothing. They have mortgage sized debt and no reasonable way to pay it off. This is why there are so lawsuits against the law schools. Well over half the law schools in America need to be shut down. Many of the law schools were operating in ways that are similar to "for profit" schools that have been shut down already. Another problem with inequality is that the government now mandates that you buy "health insurance". Nobody I work with has bought it. They will take their chances and pay the penalty. When you have to pay $300 or $400 a month with a massive deductible, and then get limited coverage, what is the point? It is simply a transfer of wealth from the young & relatively healthy to others. Finally, a lot of my peeps are upset with the tax system. S.E Michigan is relatively high in taxes. Why are we paying taxes? Where is all the money going? The roads are nightmare. A good chunk of the primary skool system is useless or even harmful. Police are ineffectual! Witness what happened to my father....The public sector employees make quite a bit MORE than private sector employees and get tremendous benefits to boot. So a lot of people are upset not so much about inequality, but that they are not getting a fair shake and that they believe the system is rigged.

Doesn't deserve food? Whut Whut? Thieves deserve what they can get away with! :-[ Look at the discussion when my father's house was broken into and his sport car stolen! This is even with the response of the police who couldn't be bothered to do anything... I am afraid that if certain people come to power in this country, it is going to devolve into the 1970's again. Crime is going to explode off the charts...Lots of people who are now "grown up" don't remember, or weren't alive back then. Maybe they don't care or understand? We'll see. I hope I am wrong.

Trump is not qualified to have his finger on the nuclear button because of his temper? What about Hillary's temper? What about all the stories about her throwing bibles, ashtrays, etc. at Billy when he was president? That the secret service was afraid that they would have to intervene. Spousal abuse IS NEVER COOL! THAT IS A BIG "no no". What about the stories of the temper of Hillary towards those working underneath her? That she snaps at them? That she has a TERRIBLE temper. That she is vindictive? That she does not get along well with others. That the secret service considers protecting her as a punishment? That she visibly gets riled up and upset at public events? Seems like she has a temper problem too!

Wow, that was painful to watch! John Oliver is supposed to be a comedian? More like a simpleton.... I guess I simply don't see his brand of humor or social commentary...

Because you MUST understand she would be the FIRST female president! Why are you opposed to that? So what if there is warmongering, corruption, and incontinence & incompetence? THE FIRST WOMAN! That "trumps" all!