frommi

Japan has not really printed that much money until the start of Abenomics? When too much debt is the problem, QE is the only workable solution isn`t it? They have to print enough money to offset the negative money velocity. And ideally the government spends more money financed by the FED. That way you simply can`t have deflation. At the moment the FED is not printing money and the government is spending less, the outcome of that is what we see at the moment.

I really doubt that the US will go into a long phase of deflation, but in the short term its always a possibility. As soon as the market drops the FED will turn around and anounce the next round of QE. And that is necessary until the deleveraging is over. Since the FED will then own most of the government debt its just an accounting number that the government can easily erase if it chooses to. They can simply print a trillion dollar coin and give it to the FED and the debt magically disappears. Thats the beauty of having full control over the supply of money. EDIT: This was not possible in the 30`s, since the currency was gold backed, so it was a totally different situation.

AXP and PWE

No it is the strongest currency because it is one of the few countries that is currently not expanding the monetary base. And as long as that is the case, the trend will probably persist.

Is there a correlation between investment performance and having the highest quality data? I can`t see a reason to pay for data, but of course i understand that people that sell data have a different view on this aspect. :)

3) the first step, i see this as a prerequisite for everything else. If we aren`t able to do this, than forget about everything else. 1) maybe in 50 years. 2) running out of time ... 4) maybe in 500 years. :)

Bought GOOG,PCLN,CMPR,BRK.B,LUK,BAC,CHEF,HEI.A,LBRDA,VRX,CSU.TO,PDER,DNOW,LKQ .... Sold puts and covered shorts. I really have to think about this summer hedging stuff very hard going forward, perhaps i should just stay invested during downturns.

Looks like a possible deal will be a) greece transfers 50-70 billion € of assets into a trust fund and immediately starts realizing the proposed reforms. Money is only paid after each round of votes in the greek parliament. b) greece exits the € but is allowed to stay in europe and gets structural help out of the EU-honeypots. Ball back to Tsipras ... New referendum? :)

I would put OUTR and Cimpress into the quality pocket, only Sony was a true turnaround. But in general he seems to favor businesses with high RoIC and insider ownership/management qualities. But i may be wrong, perhaps he can answer that himself, i think he is a reader of this board. :) EDIT: And maybe even Sony was a quality investment given the value of pictures+music.

Mecham`s returns are probably a good proxy for this, ~38% CAGR over the last 6.5 years or 22% over the last 15 years.

Greece and the target 2 saldo should put us easily above 110% Debt/GDP and there will be a heavy contraction in GDP because all other european countries don`t pay in the same currency anymore. Its hard to see how this will all unfold and what the consequences are, but germany has a tendency to default instead of inflate. I hope that doesn`t happen.

+1, can you see how germany will not default at the end of the €?

Because introducing the € should have been an act that is not reversible, so they made no rule for an exit. No politician has thought about the current situation, politicians generally only think about what happens until the next polls.

Because there is no rule to leave just the €-zone, they have to exit completly and then can ask to get back into the EU.

Depends on if they can get rid of the debt outside of the €-zone. If yes they will be so much better of in 2-3 years, that italy will follow sooner or later. (Remember that they had a big surplus last year and they can tax all that €-money that is flowing back into the system.) The problem this greece vote has created is that nobody will bail out any €-country in the future.

Happy birthday!

NWH.AX and RSSS.

Funny how this topic of diversification vs. concentration pops up again and again. And still everybody has other definitions of this, for some concentration means 1-5 securities and for others its 1-15. For me it seems like in larger cap companies >500 million $ float the market is pretty efficient, but it has a tendency to undervalue companies with higher leverage be it operating leverage or leverage via debt (but not always). And this is because people are scared of leverage and underestimate the effect of operating leverage. ( Or is it just getting compensated for the risk of leverage in good times? :) ) The other is in micro cap companies where 1 seller can influence the price so much, that it is temporarily depressed. But this is the area where the most work is involved, because you can`t rely on the work of others. And there probably will never be a working hedge fund in this area, because investing in microcaps is not scalable. On the other side momentum is a strong phenomenom in the investing world which creates the value situation on its own (but only when stocks go down long enough). So for me these are the yin and yang of investing, you can`t have one alone. So as long as there is momentum, value will be working as well.

I can understand what they are doing. They help the clients protect against themselfs when they have only small downside volatility and make this capital more sticky to their company. For the average Joe this is probably not a bad deal.

Pointless to look at P/E ratios, there is no correlation between P/E ratio and next year or next 3-5 year returns. Shiller P/E has a small correlation. The risk is in earnings going down/margins contracting, not necessarily in P/E ratios contracting.

Not really macro related, but these stories feel like its the end of 1999 again. http://microfundy.com/post/121345282105/how-bubbles-are-blown-biotech-edition-exhibit

After thinking about FFH i sold my shares today and i am now 80% in cash. Its pretty close to fair value and was never in the last 10 years more expensive than currently based on bookvalue multiple. I have 3 scenarios for the next 2-3 years: 1) Prem is right, deflation hits, stocks tank and bookvalue goes up 30%, expected win: 30-40% 2) like 1, but bookvalue multiple goes back to 1, so zero gain. 3) Prem is wrong and bonds get further slaughtered, 30% loss. The expected value of this is zero when you equal weight these scenarios, so i stay on the sidelines and watch from now on.

This just depends on your view of inflation. With so much debt around the world i can just not see long term inflation picking up, maybe for a year or so dependend on currency movements. But i am a little biased by Prem Watsas view, so maybe something else is going on. Who knows? :) But i am pretty sure that the low in german bonds is behind us, because negative 10 year yields just make no sense. But i doubt that shorting bonds is a wise idea either.

I read this board most of the time through feedly (or pretty much every RSS reader will do it), this helps to skip very fast through all the stuff thats not interesting to me. Maybe this is a solution to the "filter" problem?