dealraker

Disagree with virtually every word you write. We have a market!

Commodities don't produce cash flow. OK...that's a new one on me. I'll have to twist my head around a few times to grasp that one. Bitcoin being compared to a commodity? I'll have to stand on my head and twist my head around mutliple times for that too. Weehaa, we do have differences of view don't we! Back to start we go! Here is the great thing about Bitcoin: At some point in the future you can be 99.9% certain that the price of this, whatever we want to call it or compare it to, will be far higher and likely far lower than it is today. Thus? Hell, we all can (and surely will) claim "VICTORY!"

So Justin says, "It is mine...and we are making no more of it thus it has tremendous value that's going up and up...dollars will chase us for all eternity." Austin, "My buddies are coming Justin...they all have funnel cakes."

When my nephew Justin was 4 years old he came down from Richmond to stay a couple weeks. He was a very bright kid. Entertaininly we were going to the Bar-B-Q festival with two lawyer friends and they had a son who was pure genius the same age as Justin named Austin. Austin at four? Well give a year and he would tell you the pres of the US at that time! Yep, bright-bright-bright. So we buy this funnel cake at the BBQ festival and Justin, who is already feeling very threatened (and we all were laughing out loud) by Austin begins to place it on the ground and squat over it. You know what we adults did? We called the funnel cake "THE MOST VALUABLE ASSET IN THE WORLD." And the two boys spent a few hours jousting for control of the cake while the adults laughed hysterically! BTC, let's hoard and squat over the stuff 'cause baby it is the value of the future...now and forevermore! Are there any adults in room here?

As value investors with something like Facebook we have this elaborate discussion here. Some of us, me especially, whine like stuck pigs about Zuck and his seemingly crazy use of our money. Parsad does his rational dance and behind the scenes we tend to buy more stock the more it plummets and the more "value" we think is there........that one day will show back up. Yep, value investors! Then with something like BTC? Oh my! We use the current quote as the value! Why? I sure as hell don't know. And those who are bullish or whatnot say, "This is just the beginning...it is going to millions and maybe more!" And my simple reply is that blockchain/crypto and such tech is likely a part of the future. And what is also likely is that the price of such things as BTC will just as likely be $20 as a mil or bil or whatever the current price. I love posts about crypto that are paragraph after paragraph of wording that I can read 20 times and not understand one word of it. The average Joe investor thinks of that as expertise and investment genius while I would think those of us here on a value website would think of it as completely worthless sideline lazy twitter and lack of any model of value. And I thought the value of something was the discounted such and such. Heck it is the current quote!!!!!! Really???

Love it Greg. Given I think BTC is junk? Then the prices between when it was $20 or whatever some time ago until the on and off hysterical chase ends aren't "value" in my view, they are just passing through quoted quotes thus entertainment. I'm always enjoying the process of predicting the NEW NEW THING - the next hysterical thing - the inevitable obsessive price chase of something. Things and people that are behaviorally or price intermittent are by their very nature the most addictive. I think many of the things chased today, political-financial-eccentric/rebel/cultural, are based on the middle finger gesture- screw you and the system and such..."I'm the rebel that can live without the government or system". I think the next ones chased will be old boring stand-by's, boring ass safety and low pe's will reign. People who chased get older, they didn't chase at the right time and such. So they lock down the hatches.

Always amazed at the excitement people get from the popular bunch selling something shiny and new, and often themselves, while giving common sense the middle finger. Most at least pretend to be profitable, but the totally non productive asset version is tops for crazy in my lifetime.

I have the same thoughts.

change...for your humor check out the stock chart and price for Erie Indemnity (ERIE) which is a very odd business such that even I have some difficulty explaining it. I have held this stock for decades now, bought it because the most agressive, very professional, and successful insurance broker in my area uses ERIE and he is such a person that I literally loaded up with the stock. I bought the stock when it was to us in the insurance business obviously reasonably valued and in the years since it basically has gone/stayed at such a valuation that I simply do not understand it. But the story is that it is now my third largest holding and along with AJG my net worth (and I am laughing- luck is my theme in this game not skill) has hit all time high's. All this is written to simply ask: When do you go "macro" and sell? It is a great question to be asked! And I mean one fantastic question that I decided decades ago that I could not answer and one I really haven't had to deal with because I don't buy the stuff that gets popular for the most part. Erie is valued such...and we both can finish this sentence. Still, it isn't Tesla or and cult Elon thing, it is a quiet business that thrives with zero fanfare or promotion. So it fits with me well spiritually. Still the valuation for years has made little sense to me. And I always think I should sell!

Yet iffin' yer net worth is less than let's say 50 mil or so you can mess around and (oh my hold the nose and cover the eyes) buy a tad more Facebook (based on Parsad's posts...which will be right but I still struggle...you know the price was down--- Zuck actin' up and such); or...buy some Wallgreens (which I did recently and oh my that one, the business and stock price, sucks); buy some Hope Bancorp (at less than 7 times earnings and oh my loan losses...you know those things are apt to be really bad); and I even bought a few of the other things - actually a whole bunch - written about here ad nauseum by Greg (which is superb stuff)... ...or write and obsess (I too obsess, just don't write) about macro...which'll freeze ya up in the middle of crossing the street leaving you in the Mack truck crosshairs. In any event there's the long run too, which Grantham is superb with...that is, as far as being an investor - which honestly goes against many, if not most, of the articles he posts as to predictions - predictions that don't rhyme with his beat-the-market investing. I inherited some back in 1975--- these days I calculate that my very diversified part of tiny part of Mr. Market often goes up or/and often d-o-w-n (down-down-down) 30-100 times - or actually more - of what I inherited--- in one day or even several times a day. Oh my! As they say, "In the long run..."

So basically every dissatisfied 40 year old male in my small town community quit their job and bought $150,000 of electricity burning stuff and started manufacturing legal "currency?" What the hell could possibly go wrong with this model?

As for Disney? I think the businesses requiring hours of eyeballs are possibly too numerous, may have gotten the max market cap possible, and just maybe something is beginning to give a tad. Tons of investment seem headed that way, all with huge expectations. Maybe peak profit margins are thus in the past too. But you know the story, along with electric car story, still wants to sell very well.

So as to those in the business of predicting anything as to oil and gas... ....there was this legendary dude named T Boone Pickens who most considered God of oil gas cycles and such. Uh yeah, I remember well his immense following. Dude started a fund...with huge fanfare. Lost 98 percent of his investors money..fast, real fast. An option to expertise investing as to oil and gas is simply to allocate when it's market cap is exceptionally low to total market cap. And do not do the "value investor" brain dead mistake of selling too soon. You simply can't make up in new bargain ideas what you lose from selling too soon.

One day I am surely destined to discover somebody somewhere who has thrived either investing in hedge funds and/or going all cash repeatedly with perfect timing. I'll let you know. One thing is certain...the day a market falls these guys will get their stories out. And when markets really tank reposts will be shared to such extent suicide hot lines will overload to levels of shut down. CNBC might even avoid Cathie interviews, now that will be something! In the meantime I own Erie Indemnity (ERIE)....and would somebody here who's is wiser than me please explain the stock movements to me?!

Greg I swear to God this is true and when the guy dies I'll tell you his name and you can see his estate figures. We have a near 90 year old guy in my club I have known since childhood who inherited nicely, his family owned shares of the local furniture business that sold to Masco for half a billion. But his part was less than 2 mil. Anyway he had this pathetic looking little shirt mfg business named Manhatten in a crappy old building. Sold the damn business three times and financed it. Got it back thru failure of new owners all three times. Closed it down. He contracted at one time making Polo shirts I recall. 20 years ago he gave 1 mil to the YMCA here. He's in my investment club. His largest stock holding was GE!!!! He has not sold! I know, he tells me regularly. He got a new computer...too old to figure it out! Had me and my brother-in-law come over to help him. My bro-in-law says "You know he's rich don't you...like really rich." I said, ""No damn way." We got his computer up and going, got his passwords set up. Got him back on his broker websites. Dude has $50 damn mil in those accounts. My bro in law says. "There's more." His daughter is 5 years younger than me but we lived close growing up and have stayed in touch...she lives in Blowing Rock NC and has no children. I could not help it...I called her and asked her if she knew his finances, she says: "Oh yea Charlie... I know all about it" Not a penny passed to her yet...she said laughing almost uncontrollably. Yea, these things are true. How they happen I don't have a clue. He owns a lot of stocks!

Old dealraker is chatty this a.m.; don't take me too seriously. Some amount of look-back as to macro posts during all the previous era's would probably produce some amount of lessening of intense worry. Years ago in the 1990's I simply loved Bill Fleckenstein's posts about the dot com and subsequent profitable tech severe over-valuations, he was perfectly right. Then Hussman comes along, he's a terriffic read too, his stuff at one time literally made more sense than anything to me. Still, I just read and held stocks and such. March 9, 2009 was also entertaining for me...you say "that's sick Charlie" but remember I'm hardened from the 1980-82 period when prime was 20 and I had a $500,000 personal baloon loan out that I was not able to make bank delivery on. But anyway... We have leaders...elderly supposed billionaires who literally, and I mean literally, are out scaming and begging the poor for money every day --- along with elderly, extremely elderly who can barely read the teleprompter, in office leadership. They are elderly for so many reasons...they are all out-of-it via age and their completely separated from reality life. Day-traders...very old leaders of the USA are insider trading and my guess is that's more their focus than you think. Ain't it awful? Kennedy, in my growin' up era was 3.5 decades younger. Clinton, comparatively young, in my view was simply brilliant. No, I do not align with a political party! I like the quick thinkers who are scheming enough to force others to compromise. In any event I picked a few things out of the blue. One of the posts changegonnacom made included "I woke up and..." All I will add is that all kinds of "stuff" is in your guys future and more so on average than me because I'm older than most of you. You have absolutely no clue whatsoever what this "sfuff" is. Again, I always state that what you are obsessed with now is missing what is far more relevant and important...that you aren't even aware of. I assure you it is there and waiting to (as changegonnacom would say) wake you up. My guess is that it is so significant that the macro you write about today will be lost from your memory. In any event I processed all that was "awaken" in this discussion years ago, you should have too. We quote hedge fund runners, they'll be new ones and we'll quote them too. Jim Chanos will be out and shout; Hussman's still looking for "he was right high five's" (that's called fees no matter the performance) from his bunch. My guess is we'll have difficulty going forward with having free elections and some of you will initially like that, but then most will eventually engage to stop such and it will be very ugly trying to stop what "we" allowed. My guess too is that if you don't go nuts one side or the other and get yourself killed or imprisoned you'll live a lot longer. And investments, not cash, will be the way to go. Along with that I'll further say that avoiding the current euphoricly supported winners will enhance your investment outcome. We seem to be obsessed with Meta and Google. Old dealraker will simply say one thing: Bet cha the bargains are elsewhere...'cause that's almost always the case. Don't take me too seriously, just chantin' and chatting up some of my biased and slanted stuff. Wife and I are headed out for a few days of NC hiking in the mountains. Was just yesterday, October 2021, ARK was supreme...SAAS stock raging and

Spekulatius my outcomes are basically no different than yours and CVS is a clear example. First, I'll entertain you on my "genius" of getting acquainted with CVS. My grandmother lived to 96 and in her will provided for her 2 sisters to live within her estate funds till death. But the house next door had been owned by her sister and when her sister (my great aunt) died she left me and my sister her "back yard". So we owned a tract of land on what should be a good commercial corner. Anyway there was an auction when granny's sister's both were dead and I went along with the major bidder on the 3 adjoining tracks to that "back yard" I owned and sold it as part of the big tract. My proceeds were $20,000. This was 1990's. The man who bought it all (all the tracts together) paid less than $100,000. He immediately sold it to CVS, I mean literally within a month, for $850,000. Yep, that's some investment genius from my family right there...a bunch of pretty astute business people who just watched $750,000 get made in 30 days...right off our backs! We don't take ourselves too seriously; we chuckled. Oh, by the way the guy who made the quick $750k? He too was in my investment club, he owned the local super-successful hardware store and was a huge real estate investor. He likely knew CVS was looking. So anyway, I said to myself, "Any organization that can pay that much....well hell they MUST have something going on that's good." I bought CVS stock. As I remember, and I'm not looking at a chart here, just going off my memory....the stock went messing around for a while. Then at some point went up tremendously, dropped 50%, then went up over $100, and the dropped like a damn rock! And now back up some....and so forth. Yep, that's my story for most of my holdings. That is except for a very few. I'm probably smart enough today to know better when to sell, and more so what not to sell. But it took me almost 50 years to get here. I am not a great investor whatsoever. I did get lucky though and I would not have gotten lucky if I sold stuff, again the Berk's and AJG's and a couple more like NSC. So honestly my bias is based on being lucky and thats about all there is to it.

The seller was an estate and it went through the trust department. Yes Hope will have a higher level of loan issues over time than either Cathay or East West, it is Korean and that's just the way it goes. All taken into consideration with "hope"! Net interest margin is generally very low at all the Asian American banks, that's their model. Huge savings accounts, generally large relatively (to other banks) low yielding CD's are common, low efficiency ratios, an entire different model than mainstream banks.

In about 1994 Outstanding Investor Digest did an interview with a guy who recommended buying shares of Cathay Bancorp, a California bank that served mostly the Asian-American (mostly Chinese-American) population. Southern Cal at that time had massive fires, huge earthquakes, its own awful recession, riots in the streets. and of course OJ Simpson was in the news. The banks in Cal were getting slaughtered both in operations and stock prices. Still Cathay had a 20% return on equity and was selling for...(this people is simply incredible)...book value. All while... ...on the east coast Mr. Eddie Crutchfield, we used the term Klutzfield, the cigarette smoking CEO of First Union was out in public stating that he could "using the accounting that we employ we can pay 5 times book value for a community bank and make it work". Yes, Fast Eddie could pay, and did pay, 4-5 times book value for community banks earning 10% on equity and make it accreditive to earnings via the great flush of equity and past/present/AND FUTURE expenses right out the old drain! First Union had an interesting game back then and it displayed itself pefectly clear in its financial statments. Remember Buffett says, "A librarian can read the numbers, but it isn't the figures that count, it is what they mean." So Fast Ed had a near 30 percent return on equity because everything was flushed in one-time charges that analysts uniformly stated "did not count" and years-years-and years of (YOU GUESSED IT!) zero book value growth. Red flags? To me a screaming YES; to bank analysts? No problem. So local banks including the dominant one in my town (that I inherited stock in decades earlier) were getting 10-12% on equity and selling for (OH MY LORD!!!) 4 times book value! Yep that's the truth and nuthin' but the truth. Hmm....anybody picking up on the game Eddie played? So my local dominant bank that sold for 4 times book at $25 per share eventually settled for something in the $7 range as Cathay and others in the Asian American California world got things going once fires/quakes/riots/recessions/and OJ cooled down and soared. Then came the financial crisis of course. I said to myself, "The two years before he joined Buffett at Berkshire Munger had 30-something percent declines in his mostly financial stock portfolio." Yep, my faith was in shake-down mode...while I said to myself, "Hell, I'm Charlie." Charlie is my first name. We survived. I've owned both Cathay and East West since their origin on the exchanges. But I have not bought a bank stock since East West came public in the year 2000. Again, for you stats people, East West came public, no economy issues at this time around Y2K, at book value while earning 20% on equity. THAT my friends is near guaranteed success. But to cut to the HOPE of the matter, a few days ago me and several members of my family who have invested in these southern Cal based Asian American institutions all bought shares of Hope Bancorp, symbol HOPE. We bought because a family member (we are a partially Asian American family from souther Cal) works as a bank analyst in that area and a large shareholder was wanting to bail at basically any price. So we paid about $12.75 for some shares, it wasn't a small outlay for us. Hope serves mostly a different Asian American population than does Cathay and East West (they also serve mostly different populations too). And Hope doesn't have the very successful history of Cathay and East West. Still these banks are treated with incredible respect by their managements and community. It is far different than in Asia itself, and different than in the US too actually, it is a special culture. Failure is not an option in their eyes. Hope, the stock, has moved up a tad. But it is still about 7.5 times earnings. I look for both loan growth and growing but relatively low loan losses for a few years going forward now. I post this just for stimulation, to give something different to think about. We can't Facebook/Google 24/7 or at least I can't. Banks are as ignored as I've ever seen them today compared to other stuff. These banks are treated with the upmost respect by management

You missed my point. Skills anyone? Or is it culture? We are dealing with low performing isolated people here, you can't just compare ours to yours. But they share not working.

In the southern half of my county in NC 18% of the working age men are on disability. I can assure you they aren't liberals, they DO NOT vote democratic, and they are not black or Hispanic...so start somewhere the grievance thinking other than that. But working skills, either physical or mental or even emotional are very limited. What do we do? I certainly do not know. I know many of these men and some do work for cash off-and-on or in some cases quite a bit of part time seasonal work when needed. But that is not out of the ordinary. Up in the top half of the county, particularly the local city, the Hispanic population of 11% has a disability rate of working age men of less than 1% and the city rate overall is far lower than the rural areas in the southern more rural parts.

When I read macro absolutes and macro certainty I often wonder if these absolutes/certainties are more successful at controlling/manipulating the reader or the writer? The Chinese converted/brainwashed prisoners by making then both write it down and then state it publicly. We have the web now so one is both.

I feel like making a Greg-type comment (I love them Greg!) about my f***ing Facebook/Meta investment. But my wife says, "Don't do it...you aren't any good at that." So I just hope Greg does another one. But to sneak in --- could it be that Zuck sold enough ($17 bil wasn't it?) stock that what's left is is play money? Anyway, its a small thing for me but still pisses me off in that I began buying at $11 and something and today's pricing I have a 35% loss on it.