rpadebet

$40 oil=> disinflation=> unemployment rate rises due to energy/manufacturing give back=> fed does " mother of all QE's"=> 10y below 1.2%=> s&p 2700=> rising inequality=> Elizabeth Warren front runner for US presidency.

I agree that looking back it looks easy. But I distinctly remember how it was in the investment banks. It was about survivability in most banks. A friend of mine was interviewing at Citi when the stock hit $1. He was offered an internship, but the MD said, "Here is my business card, not sure if it would be worth anything tomorrow, but you would be pretty dumb to accept the offer now" At least I was not referring to banks or insurance companies. Not in 2008 or even early 2009. But after the crisis hit, past midway in 2009 sometime, after QE1 announcement, after the stimulus package was put in place, not at the very bottom of the stock market, regular non-financial businesses were still cheap. I regret missing out on those then. Investing at the bottom tick in banks needed balls of steel. And I am still not sure I would make that bet if it were to happen again. Like you mentioned nationalization, severe dilution etc were a big risk and in an alternative world those could have easily been the reality.

My biggest regret is also not getting the value inoculation in time for the 2008-2009 sale. It's like I just missed the greatest party of our generation. Who knows when or if ever, I will get another shot at such deals. That said, I am fortunate to have made the mistakes I made. There is nothing like learning from your own mistakes. You can try to learn from other's mistakes, but its just not the same. I would encourage everyone in their 20s to make as many mistakes as one can make, but quickly. The "tuition" is cheaper when you are working off a smaller portfolio ;)

The thing that I worry about in "less crowded" investment areas is not the competition from fellow buyers, but the motivation of sellers. I think it is incredibly important to understand who is selling to you and what their motivation is. Without that piece of insight, for all you know, you could be the dumb money at the table.

I am referring to the newly passed russian media law which prohibits non-russians from holding greater than 20% of Russian media assets. What CTCM will do is up in the air. The underlying business is doing ok, but there are real political risks involved even in non-energy and non-bank stocks in Russia.

Look up what's happening with CTCM for 1).

I just liked it better, but think he's generally boring and long winded. He reminds me of writers from the 19th century when people had nothing to do other than read a book that was 3 times longer than it should be and was a combination of story, travel guide, etc. In Business Adventures, the Edsel chapter almost killed me. About 60 pages and nothing happens. Here's the synopsis - it was a crappy car and they didn't research it properly or roll it out properly. I kind of liked the Edsel story. It was interesting to go inside an organization and find out how they came up with the design and roll out strategy in those days. Market research done systematically and tying it to design of a product was a pretty new thing in those days....so it was interesting to me how they figured those things out. This story kind of has parallels to how MSFT did some of its Windows design and launches.. The story most boring to me was Mr. Lilienthal's. "A pseudo socialist big govt guy moves to private sector,makes money and thinks private sector isn't that bad". What was the point? Piggly Wiggly was good. I was rooting for the guy...I just wish he had won against the exchanges. His ideas in retail were pretty interesting as well. WMT should do something like his last idea now, if they wish to compete against AMZN going forward.

+1. Banks have been anything but under regulated. Poorly regulated? Yes, but not under regulated. The issue with regulation as it is practiced nowadays is, we have very specific targeted regulation each time we see a problem. Eventually we end up with a monstrosity which can be a "moat" of its own. It also goes hand in hand with the political structure which seems to reward politicians who want to "protect" people from their own stupidity. You can never ever regulate stupidity away. Its a human right. Regulation needs to be simple and straightforward.....kind of like.."you go to jail if you cheat people or lie on your financial reports". "you can't lever up beyond a point if you are a bank and no, we don't use complicated, ultra stupid and frankly randomly-derived-finger-in-the-air, BASEL risk adjusted weighting to calculate your leverage, we do simple Assets/Equity from what you report". I was new in this country when the crisis hit, but I never understood the term "predatory lending". I had heard about "dead-beat borrowers" and "stupid lenders", but I was surprised to hear that in this country and in this digital age you could be swindled by someone lending you money. I guess I am not looking hard enough, but I would love to have these predatory lenders lend me money without my knowledge. The simple concept of "buyer beware" is systematically being flushed down the toilet and then we are surprised when we see stupidity around us.

Just paraphrasing a little bit. "What will make you happier 10 years from now?" If you decide to stick to your current job, do you think you will regret not going for the new job the rest of your life? If you move, considering the downside for your wife and kids, do you think you would regret that more later should the downside materialize? Choose what would let you sleep well for the rest of your life. You probably considered this already, but is there a chance you could relocate some place in between giving an hour commute for you and your wife? Its painful initially, but don't underestimate the human ability to quickly adjust to new realities.

MBI Swapped it for JPM warrants

Hi rpadebet - do you expect higher / faster growth to continue & what do you see as the moat for this business? How is it possible to do high ROA / ROE ? No competitors? I think we had this discussion last year in the AMNF thread itself. My thoughts haven't changed much since then. I am not sure of a moat presence here, but they are small enough for the growth to continue a while longer. They are growing by selling the same stuff in other geographies. The exit scenario I still think is, once they have a decent sized business, some major buys them at a big premium ( operating expenses are still big part of AMNFs expenses which to a major buyer is all synergy). They made 0.036 EPS last quarter. Assume no more growth and they maintain this EPS for next year, they are @ 0.144 EPS. Stock trading at $2, so PE of <14. So you are not paying for growth and you get a very decent 3.6% dividend yield (approx 50% payout ratio)

Amnf ... Reports record quarter after record quarter, increases dividend like clock work (3.5% yield), grows revenue and earnings at above normal rates. Still you don't pay for growth at current price.

It would be weird to go from mattress section to tools section....what kind of weirdo stuff were you planning..

Error out when I am about to panic and sell/buy. Make me go through hoops like captchas and brain teasers for a random amount of time to predict how impulsive I am and limit my buying or selling based on those results.

They were auctioning Eddie's master plan for Sears on ebay.... ....highest bidder surprised to find that auctioning off the master plan was the master plan

LEXCX portfolio They haven't changed their portfolio since 1935 and have handily outperformed the market since.

This reminds me of "buy what goes up, if it doesn't go up, don't buy"

Almost there... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-22/buffett-s-lapses-highlight-growing-pains-with-compliance.html

A 100 years from now, the opportunity cost of this is going to really really hurt :-\. It maybe even close to today's BAC settlement by then.

12 2026 14 2028

Why sell puts? why not own it outright. Its still pretty cheap.

+1 Undergrad college education is mostly about the experience especially if you get there in late teens or early twenties. I went to the top school in my country too, tuition wasn't very expensive, but 10 years out, the only things I truly remember from that education are the "out of classroom" experiences and the lifelong friends I made there. What is the ROI of that investment? Even if the tuition were 100 times more expensive, I would do that trade over and over again. Without those experiences and friends, my life would be totally different. Would I pay 250K for it in today's dollars? In a heartbeat, knowing what I know now. You can't make these decisions looking forward. Only when you look back at it, it makes sense.(paraphrasing Steve Jobs here) Grad school is different. That decision should be mostly driven by ROI. As far as the cost of average tuition goes, I don't think a fixed dollar amount for everyone is fair. Colleges should be paid in lifetime equity (kind of a tax on lifetime earnings). Colleges should be free to get into, and then depending on how well you do, that education should be proportionally expensive. Since most of the value of that education accrues in the intangibles like brand, experience and relationships, it should be worth different amounts to different people.

Well done! I agree that you really are helping out the immigrant workers in the long term, by making them come here legally.

The latter. It's likely a lose-lose situation if you bring it up. From the company's perspective, they are the victim of stupid visa laws. From the foreign workers' perspective, they just want to advance their position in life (like you, when you immigrated). Perhaps some of them are truly talented and would like to move to the US; unfortunately for them it won't be happening. Is it fair that they should have less opportunities in life because they weren't born in the right country? As far as you go, the company may retaliate against you. From your boss' perspective, your boss would rightfully be pissed off if one of his employees was trying to sabotage the company. This has nothing to do with depriving truly talented immigrant workers of their rights to move to the US or take my job. If my employer feels they can do a better job than me at a price cheaper than mine, my employer has every right to replace me with those individuals, wherever they are born. That's free market. I fully support that. But if those same workers are being brought here illegally (when there are legal alternatives) to probably save a few dollars by circumventing the system, its not a fair market because they are artificially reducing their costs. If I can find an illegal way to reduce or not pay portion of my taxes because I think tax laws are stupid, I can also artificially reduce my costs. Would that be acceptable course to take? We can debate whether the costs imposed by the immigration system are a form of trade barrier/protectionism (and I would definitely support the side arguing that it is a form of protectionism). But it doesn't mean those laws can be broken. Just because we don't agree with a law doesn't give us the right to break it, whether the eventual result is fair/just. Just because we see some laws being broken, doesn't automatically mean we gain a right to break other laws.

with this logic you would rat out your neighbour to the police for smoking some weed in his back yard. I would start to think, who is really hurt by this? If something is illegal I dont give a shit, drinking whiskey was illegal in the 30's.. They are not the same. An individual and a company are different. Also, if there were a legal way to smoke weed in your own backyard and yet my neighbour chose a illegal way, then I probably would complain. Also it goes without saying, I believe that if we don't like a law, we should change it rather than encourage breaking it.