NewbieD

Thanks. I see the options but my broker doesn't have access to them.. Oh well, maybe it's for the best, short selling hasn't worked well historically for me:)

I'm interested in selling the turkish stock market due to erdogans actions. Does anyone know of an instrument to do this? Preferrably on the major US Exchanges or Eurex.

The banks have not started charging people for keeping Money. There is a ton of Money sitting at 0%, as usual, and I don't Think the amount has changed much. The major trend the last years has been people top-up their mortgage to the maximum. The interest feels so small to people that the banks have now introduced a limit based on people's wages (5X pre-tax income) in addition to their normal cash-flow and loan-to-value rules. This limit has been pushed by the financial regulators. There is also talk of reducing the tax-benefit of having a mortgage (currently 30% of interest is deductible). I don't think mortgages are gonna increase more when/if rates go down further. The banks have increased margins on mortgages as rates dropped so when it comes to Sweden I don't feel there is a pressure on bank earnings as long as they have enough capital to keep their loan base.

I think the main reason the swedish banks were relatively okay in the FC was lending standards was raised after 1992. There was never a problem with defaults on mortgages. There was however a liquidity crisis that was bad enough that three of the four major banks had to issue equity in 2009 - Swebank, SEB and Nordea. The government participated in Nordeas issue. Handelsbanken avoided this - partly because they hadn't gone on any adventures in the Baltics and Russia but instead focused their expansion on the U. Probably many other factors. Elsewere on this forum a book about Handelsbanken was mentioned: A Blueprint for Better Banking: Svenska Handelsbanken, Niels Kroner - now on my reading list. One aspect that makes Handelsbanken stand out is they have no profit-share bonus. Instead the employees are rewarded with shares in a foundation that they can withdraw from once they turn 60. This part is equal for all employees, from CEO to clerk in an office and can amount to about 3 million USD over 35 years. All differentiation in pay is in the wage on the contract. This setup obviously lessens the incentive to take "heads I win, tails you lose" bets. It seems they are able to attract decent enough personnel anyway. Rumour says part of the upside of working there is you can get by without putting in so many hours.

+1

Added some more barbaric relic since it looks like more Money-Printing might commence soon. Bought some in a Merger arbitrage (MEDA-Mylan)

I most my cash in a similar account. In general I think you can't go far wrong letting your cash being as liquid as possible. This isn't where you will have a big edge, but the decision to hold cash might be. For the patience part I feel it helps to have yield. Therefore I've bought a stake in SAS preferred shares yielding about 10%. Time will tell if it's better or not:) I like that the cash flow looks very safe atm and that there is a high incentive in the terms to repurchase these in 2017 which should make them less sensitive to any rate hikes.

+1 There are countries used to 70% of gasoline costs being taxes, without the economy tanking. It's time to switch to less silly big vehicles:)

Bought some TOBII. Decent entry point in a growth company dominating it's niche within eye tracking. Downside should be limited due to one Business Area with decent cash flow.

That would be unfortunate wouldn't it:) But a few insurance prices are hardly saving the world either. Might give this a try now, before GOOG's stock research robots take over the job. Thanks, the CFA Economics volume looks good.

jawn619: I've checked out the CFA and it seems a bit daunting and unclear if it will make one into a better investor. My current boss is a CFA who is extremely structured, detail oriented and risk-averse. Nothing wrong with that but it's not my way of being, and I can see the value as a trust building device. Now studying Damodarans book on Investment Valuation instead to get some ideas for how to improve my simplistic models. cmpnd15: Nice description of what investment is. If this was in reaction to the title of Assisstant: That thought was not born out of a desire to avoid having to make decisions but rather a way to get a mentor or two to learn from and being in an environment thinking about equities. Possibly even without having to study for a boring CFA exam:) They are focused stock-pickers with one big global strategy and some local smaller ones. A slow moving place, the first guy to leave after me left now 4 years later. It's a nice place to work except the IT challanges, once systems are running, are too predictable to learn much new and portfolio managers make 10-50 times the rest. YES. This path resonates more with me than the 'get your education first, then do' path. Like most I want to make a lot of money. But I think even more than that I want to pursue the joy of being creative and adding value doing something fun without compromising values of independence too much. Ideally something I can do for a long time and ripen as I grow older. For sometime I've wrestled what the meaning of my diverse background is. I.e. research assistant, ski instructor, poker, climbing instructor, building an apt to rent out in basement, one mobile golf-map app with sales of $150k (that was hard work!), now insurance analyst). You can only live life looking forward and I think the upside of this type of experience is a broader and fairly robust set of mental models. And I might not be great at it, but I do enjoy writing. The vibes you and others who have followed a non-standard path give off is proof positive that there is merit in listening to your own thoughts. It helps when the fear of leaving the herd roars it's ugly head:) Finding a niche and dominating, heard that before yeah:) A small experiment in that direction: www.scandismallcap.com. Not much there yet but the idea is to put my research there and help foreign investors access small, listed companies in Scandinavia. There is a language gap that an english speaking site can help breach. Also the capital markets are well-regulated, there is a thriving scene of tech startups and many companies are well run. This market is getting more efficient with more micro cap fund managers and research available but there is a long way to go and I think the foreign investments are very low. Yeah, results is what I would like to be judged by. I guess you mostly mean investment results. But the clarity of thought and process must be a big part of gaining trust, in practice. A few good years doesn't mean much statistically when working with concentrated bets. So yes, writing skill. How many % of Wall Street doesn't require you to sit physically in New York? Did this so far, and it's a fun style and feels more like a joy than hard work although a lot of thinking and reading is involved, when there is positive feedback from the markets. Much more interested in this than (being a part of) managing a strict mandate. Going for a PM role it needs to be semi-concentrated stock-picking. Good point. That feeling of regret and shame every poker player knows and to have it for years like e.g. Hussman should have trying to validate a failed approach would truly suck. And I still get a small pleasure every time some random person buys my old app for $10. Still curious what part, if any, of the research, sales, investment process you as money managers would feel comfortable to delegate to someone with less experience?

I've previously worked in IT at an investment manager / mutual fund company with $10b in AUM. My current dream job is to go back to them (leaving my current insurance pricing role) and start with them as an assistant portfolio manager. They have 6-7 portfolio managers where I live. Don't have any assistants on the investment side but they've grown quickly and might find they can spend a small part of the new flow on my meager salary. And I could get a nice reference for future investment work. Now thinking about how to frame my suggestion. What would you, assuming you manage a medium sized fund that has grown quickly, want help with? Trade execution, reporting, transactions etc are already taken care of by others. Yes, I know it's a bit backwards to ask what your dream entails 8) But I'm firstly looking to cross the gap into the investment side and am willing to do whatever is helpful, as long as it's some small part of the investment process. For those working in the industry - have you seen this type of move work before? Success factors?

+1. The question is close to meaningless. Value is what you get, and price is what you pay.

Can't name any of the top of my head. I Believe you are right in that outperforming 4%+/year by following someone is hard/impossible. The difficulty in my mind it is strongly correlated to scale. I would believe quite a few fund managers running $100 million plus could outperform 4%+ / year managing say $5 million. Your universe of stocks go up and your transaction costs go way down. Paying for stock-picking makes more sense if the universe being picked from isn't available as an index. My intuition is I can have a decent edge in the universe I invest in (Scandinavian small cap stocks) up to maybe $10 million.

Wikipedia has a pretty good article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_money_loan Never heard of this type of loan where I live (Sweden).

Best interview with Soros I saw so far. Thanks!

How did you buy the oil? USO? Bought "Long Olja H" from Handelsbanken. Underlying is the LCO Brent futures. Seems similar to USO. Slightly higher feese, but for some reason had better returns. Not sure if it's random noise in how they happened to trade contracts or predictive, see file.

Bought some oil for the first time today. Level of analysis: The price has declined because of new capacity and lower demand. I think the demand decline can't be big seen over a few years - most oil is used in transportation which won't decline given no wars. The new capacity is Iran and Saudi pumping more, as well as frackers. The frackers seem to need USD 50-60. Saudi will pump less as soon as possible. I think we'll see a higher level, say 40+, within 18 months.

Interesting, could you share your thinking on Tableau? And/or relevant links. I've noticed that it's getting traction at my work. But that's it. They seem to have a similar Product to QLIK.

Down jacket from Decathlon for €40. Personal shopper for 2 hours for €70. The Ad for renting out my basement.

Agreed. Enjoyable read. Merkhet, what class did you have to read this for?

Audi A4 or A6 Avant TDIE Saab 9-5 TDI or 9-3 TDI Volvo V60 or V70 Drive My SaaB was chip-tuned when I bought it. Fuel consumption seems to be about 20% reduced 8)

+43,7% in SEK About 50% invested in two swedish small caps (Effnetplattformen and Bahnhof) rest in AAPL, BRK, SBUX, GOOG and some fixed income. +39.9% 2014 +71% 2013 Learned from my poker years that big mistakes tend to come after this type of good runs so I realize I might now be prone to take on too much risk and have too unwarranted conviction. Edit: F/X is about 8% on the swedish stocks, maybe 6% total.

Listened to this one to and from work. It's pretty good but a bit long-winded IMO. The main thing I learned was you can accelerate the return on your capital by being the catalyst. And that after a while, your reputation proceeds you and creates a virtuous circle. It's also heavy on intimidation based negotiation tactics.

Just read Investing: The Last Liberal Art by Robert Hagstrom. Now Reading a fiction for once - the follow-up to Shantaram. Looking forward to Strategic Risk Taking by Aswath Damodaran arriving.