Jump to content

value-is-what-you-get

Member
  • Posts

    317
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by value-is-what-you-get

  1. I wouldn't touch these at $90.  I saw the value of bitcoin drop 80% in a few days last year. 

     

    How does anyone feel about the very limited supply of bitcoins?

     

    See chart below:

     

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_bitcoins_over_time.png

     

    Seems that chart is a perfect reflection of the US money supply graph in the line y=x .  It follows that bitcoin value in US dollars must increase.  Logically that is.  As far as faith in currency, that s another matter.

  2. Congratulations Sanjeev and thanks to all the contributors from whom I've learned a lot - at no cost at all. 

     

    As our esteemed host is both humble and gracious, and I am not, I would like to challenge anyone who has ever made any money from this forum to contribute $11 as a token thanks for 11 years of outstanding ideas and discourse. 

     

    Just click on the Donations button, spray a little WD40 on those rusty wallet hinges and fork over $11 bucks. 

     

    It will all go to a good cause!

  3. Does anyone have experience with this site as a means to emulate some of the more lauded investors in a relatively tight time window....?

     

    I have used it for coat-tailing.  If I like a company at a certain price and the price is below what a Guru (or two or three!) has purchased on average, then it serves to validate the idea (I know I know - cheery consensus!) and more particularly that I'm buying at a discount to the Guru's calculated Margin of Safety.  Either it's a good idea at a great price or we are all wrong.  As far as tight time windows go . . . well there's no telling how long it takes to reach fair value.

  4. Maaannn I've been looking at this for the last 2 days and I can't help but feel it's too good to be true (then again I said the same thing before I bought RIM, Indigo, WFC and the BAC class A warrants)..... I'm considering investing in PBN but I have some questions:

     

    - why has the stock price fallen so low ? 0.04x book value ?? I can't wrap my mind around that LOL

     

    - was there a recent reorganization and if so why did it occur and are there any surprises we should be looking out for (in regards to shares, dilution, hell anything) ?

     

    - How did the CEO get $200 million dollars worth of shares in PBG ?

     

    - Can you point me in the direction to any thread on PBG ?

     

     

    Keep in mind I'm just being a skeptic - I don't know about PBN nor have I read the annual report yet. But if you can peak my interest I'll take an intricate look at it & eventually add it...

     

    Have been following this story since swizzled first brought it to our attention, and made some money from it just after spinoff of Petrominerales.  I haven't dug enough to know but I suspect that the properties (Asset number) held by PBG as oil producers may be conditional on THAI being used - no THAI, no oil.  So if they have a bunch of property in Alberta that will produce oil using THAI and Alberta is making it impossible for them to use THAI then those properties are worth NIL.  That might explain the crazy price/book.  Sheer speculation on my part.

  5. If Lampert compares SHLD vs SPG,...  it has become relative cheaper currently,... or better said the spread has widened !!!

     

    If two companies have almost the same amount of real estate equally spread across the country, and if every other balance sheet item shouldn't be a concern, should their market values be similar ?

     

    -------

    Simon Property Group Inc. (SPG)

    $49.32 billion market cap    = 245 million square feet of real estate

     

    Sears Holdings Corporation (SHLD)

    $4.75 billion market cap = 256+ million square feet of real estate

    -------

     

    So my provocative question as a novice,...

     

    if Sears would be valued purely on their hidden real restate values, the same way as Simon Property Group,... shouldn't it trade at least above $50 billion or at $450 per share ?!?!?!

     

     

     

    Any reasonable objections are welcome ?

     

     

     

    --------

     

    P.S.:

     

    Somebody might want to study the slide show "Berkowitz: Case Study III" before submitting an answer to this poll.

    http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/shld-sears/msg99539/#msg99539

     

    The problem is that Sears can't be valued purely on it's hidden real estate values because it is a machine that lost about $800 million last year.  If the real estate assets were held in a separate publicly traded company that just collected rent from their tenants then yes it maybe should be valued the same as a company that does that only.

     

    Should two identical apartment buildings across the street from each other be valued the same for investment purposes if one is rented out to tenants for the last 10 years with modestly increasing rents, low turnover and able and effective superintendant and the other one loses money every year due to insufficient rent or problem tenant or damages or turnover or poorly run by the superintendant?  As an investor buying income, the former commands a premium.

  6. Technical analysis is price-based and is an attempt to predict future prices based on the pattern of past prices.

     

    It is a guess. 

     

    If you have an idea of what the company is worth, and you see the market pricing it at a discount with margin of safety, there is no need to make guesses or predictions because you are confronted with a fact.

     

    That said, there are enough TA proponents/software packages etc that the group as a whole does affect price movements on a short term basis but value shines through over time!

     

    I like what TA based price action does to option premiums from time to time too!

  7. This thread is awesome, and it really going to the point about Japanese equities.  Of the hour long presentation maybe 1m at the most was Monish talking about some pick he concentrated in.  The rest of the talk was about Japanese net-nets and how abandoned and ignored they are.

     

    So what happens on the thread discussing the video?  Everyone ignores the cheap Japanese companies and focuses on the 1m segment about some 60-90% portfolio allocation.  That is a cool soundbite, but it seems everyone here just totally missed the forest for one single tree.

     

    Maybe Japanese equities will never revert to the mean, they will always sell below book value, and will remain ignored forever.  I have a suspicion though that in a few years, maybe one or two, or maybe five people on this board will be talking about how they missed out on the epic run in some of these stocks.

     

    You got that right oddballstocks!

    This is a perfect example of confirmation bias and social proof bias at work.

    We all want the mystery stock heavily owned by the Guru who wishes to up his concentration to be the same one we own!

    We're just so darned predictable  ;D

  8.   I would also go with BYD because of the long term energy situation. The first tailwind is the physical certainty of cheap peak oil. Oil prices can fluctuate but eventually they will go to 200$, 300$ and we will stop burning gas for transportation and move to all-electric cars. The second tailwind is that a such a shift is a good, popular excuse for governments to spend lots of money in Keynesian stimulus programs. Good for the left  (clean energy) and good for the right (cash to big companies)

     

    This will produce a huge demand for batteries, not only for cars, but also for alternative energy sources. The number of produced cars will also increase (people will have to get rid of their old cars faster). If you assume that the car production will double with respect to the current levels and that each battery pack in a new car costs ~10000$, this will be a market of 120Mx10k= 1.2T $. From what I've read, BYD seems like one of the best positioned companies in the world to capture a large fraction of that windfall, plus whichever share it gets of the growth in the world and China car markets. A factor 10 increase in market cap would put it at ~150B$, a factor 40 at ~600B$, >3 times larger than the current size of GE, which may be too much. But >20% returns 10 years from now do not seem outlandish.

     

    Just to clarify here - BYD is 15B HKD not USD.  That takes a 600B HKD market cap down to 77.5B USD at a 40x based on 793.1Million shares O/S.

     

    However there are 2.35 Billion shares o/s which would put the 40X number at 232.5B USD.  Not so crazy.

     

    Also, they are really a battery company, not a car company.

     

    Every time I do more research on them they are selling batteries of ever increasing sizes for all sorts of applications from cell phones to shipping container sized 500kwh sized monsters yet the media keeps calling them an electric car company.

     

    It's hard to get good info on BYD . . . hence misunderstood.

     

  9. What I get from that picture is another politician telling us what will happen in 20 years if you vote for them today.  Well that curve ends 12 - 16 years after they are gone anyway - so it's a big crock of sh*t.  If he says I don't know what will happen 20 years from now, but I do know this is the direction we need to go in and here's how I'll spend the next 4 years turning the ship, then it's at least in the realm of reality.

  10. Yeah, gas at $4.0+ takes away from whatever savings you got from your lower mortgage rate.  Most people in the 5.0%+ have already refinanced...going from 4% to 3.5% doesn't do much.

     

    The 2007 mindset has had a nice jolt from leverage every nickel you can out of your home equity and spend it on a Hummer.  I would expect the percentage of households refinancing their homes at lower rates and keeping the payments the same (faster deleveraging), as opposed to refinancing and taking out lump sums, is up - significantly.  The effect of high gas prices on household budgets are easily offset as the aging fleet of cars is replaced and the consumer decides between fuel efficiency and ostentatious displays of excess.  Heck, "econo-boxes" even look pretty good styling-wise these days.

×
×
  • Create New...