NeverLoseMoney

I think they only have to report the individual trade that puts them below a reporting threshold, not all the trades that happened before that final trade. That's why the trades that put Berkshire slightly below 20% and slightly below 19% were reported. Not sure what those thresholds are exactly in Hong Kong, but I think that's how it works. If you go below 5%, you don't have to report any further sales IIRC.

that's awesome...where did you see that? or was that photoshopped? I think it was originally posted on Li Lu's facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/li.lu.376043

I'm not from the US, so I don't know about the tax implications. But I saw that this "going private" transaction was done by a Scheme of Arrangement. In case someone else wants to take a look, the document can be found on this page. Why is the scheme consideration being treated as a dividend distribution? That seems strange. Are you sure that is correct? If that is the case, it could be that it has something to do with the US possibly being a "restricted jurisdiction" and that for legal reasons, formally the offer can't be made to you. Perhaps a dividend distribution of the amount of the consideration is a way for the company to get around that problem.

Some critical points about this book: Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors. It seems much of the book is not as scientifically accurate as Walker makes it out to be, so I don't think anyone should be too worried if you don't sleep eight hours a night but feel fine. I usually get around seven hours of sleep a night, sometimes a bit less, but feel fully rested. FWIW: I read the book and enjoyed it at the time.

Investing.com was mentioned by someone in another topic. I've been using that site recently and found it surprisingly good. It offers a wide range of countries. Data is for only five years though and it's annoying that the default view for financials is quarterly, not annual, so you have to click an extra button for every single page. But all in all I prefer it to Morningstar and Yahoo.

I'm on a desktop. The data can not be viewed properly without having to scroll through every page and having to collapse multiple items in the income statement, balance sheet and cash flow screens. It's completely cluttered. For example: I'm not interested in seeing how much of inventory consists of "raw materials", "work in process", "other", or "finished goods" when I'm looking for a quick snapshot of a company's financials. Of course, none of the things you deselect on a page are remembered by the site, so you have to go through this for every single company you look at. This redesign was clearly done by people who never actually use the site on a daily basis.

Also agree about Morningstar. They basically destroyed it and it's pretty much unusable for me now. I never thought I'd say this, but I think Yahoo Finance is the best free source for financials right now. You get five years of data and it's generally accurate. Most important for me is that they cover most international markets. If you're only looking at US and Canadian companies there are probably better alternatives. For free data about most international markets, Yahoo seems to be the only option.

Bloomberg published a follow-up article in which Burry discloses all his Japanese holdings: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-05/burry-s-picks-of-undervalued-japanese-companies-rise-in-tokyo His holdings are: Tazmo Co. (6266) Yotai Refractories (5357) Sansei Technologies (6357) Tosei Corp. (8923) Kanamoto (9678) Altech Corp. (4641) Nippon Pillar Packing (6490) Murakami Corp. (7292) All these stocks are up nicely after he disclosed his stakes, which might be a reason why he decided to talk to the press about his Japanese holdings. A known Burry holding might hold up better in a big downturn as well.

Article by David Webb suggesting the US could use the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to force Americans to sell their holdings in Chinese state-backed companies: https://webb-site.com/articles/trumpdump.asp This doesn't sound like a crazy scenario if trade relations continue to deteriorate. I think China for its part could ask their courts to take a hard look at the VIE structure that is being used by some leading Chinese companies to circumvent Chinese laws restricting foreign investment. I don't think there has been a clear answer from Chinese authorities about how it views the legality of the VIE structure.

So do I. .

I've mostly stuck to net-nets and businesses trading at extreme discounts to book value. My problem with buying better businesses at low P/E's or free cash flow multiples is mainly the language barrier. It's very difficult to get a good picture about a micro-cap Japanese company by trying to make sense of a Japanese annual report through Google Translate or something. If you're wrong about growth, or that low P/E, your downside can be quite large. I have some profitable, dividend paying companies in my portfolio that are trading at 30%-40% of book value. I'm hesitant to buy something that's trading at say, 7x earnings and 80% of book, because I think in Japan it can easily sell off to 40% of BV if earnings disappoint. Companies can get a lot cheaper than they would typically get in the US or Europe if investors become pessimistic about its prospects. There's some limit that these deep value stocks almost never sink through. I don't think I've ever seen a consistently profitable, dividend paying Japanese company selling below 25% of tangible book value (if you've got any, please post them below!). So I feel relatively safe buying these at 30-40% of BV and doing little analysis due to the language barrier. That doesn't mean that I'll do well of course, but I think I'm unlikely to lose. I've also tried to coattail some activist investors. I don't think any of those positions have worked out well. There's a decent book (bit too long and boring in some spots) about activism in Japan called "Hedge Fund Activism in Japan: The Limits Of Shareholder Primacy": https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Fund-Activism-Japan-Shareholder/dp/1107672503/. I don't think coattailing foreign activists is a good idea today either. As an example: I think one company I owned (SNT Corp. - 6319.JP) did a share offering in August, 2018 to dilute their large, activist shareholder. Perhaps I misunderstood the transaction and there is another explanation. For those who want to take a look, press releases can be found on the Japanese version of their website: http://snt.co.jp/jpn/, but not on the English version. Apparently they sold ~835k shares to "improve distribution and liquidity of their stock" (Google translate). I believe there was a "purchase limit" of 400 shares per customer. The company was already swimming in cash, of course. So I don't think much has changed in terms of the treatment of activists.

I like Legend Corporation (LGD.AX) in Australia. They are active in three segments: electrical, power and infrastructure, innovative electrical solutions and gas and plumbing. Market cap is ~$64m AUD. Net profit guidance for H1 of fiscal 2019 is $3.6-$3.8m. The true "owner earnings" are higher, because there is ~1m a year in amortization expenses that, in my view, are purely accounting charges. If they manage to make around $7.5m for the year (fiscal year ends in June 2019), the company is trading around 8.5x reported earnings. The CEO (Brad Dowe) owns almost 30% of the shares. He has a history of making bolt-on acquisitions. Acquisitions have been structured with earn-out targets. They have not used stock. In the last acquisition, the company disagreed with the sellers about the near term expected results of the business being acquired. They insisted on putting a $2m clawback in place. They were right and got their $2m back. The CEO is not an empire builder, but focused on buying cash flow generating businesses and buying them cheap. I've owned shares for a while and it was obviously a lot more attractive last year when results where a bit depressed, but it still looks cheap to me. The company pays a nice dividend (I think 5%+) as well. It's certainly not a multi-bagger or anything, but I think a solid company with good capital allocation at a cheap price.

This is getting insane. You'd think we are in the midst of some massive crisis. Or that every listed company in the US is cooking it's books... I know Tepper basically just declared the Fed Put dead, but all the writing on the wall, at least to me, seems to indicate that with a little more pain, a lot of folks are going to start looking to resurrect it. Twitter links & links to Bloomberg articles ... -It would be nice if this could be a data & facts driven discussion. Seems like a fact to me that he said it at this point. Are you worried about his statement? And is that why you'd have preferred me not to post those links? Because I'm a bit worried now that you might be worried... I'm not in fact, but that's how confidence works and it can affect markets. If it was mostly about data and facts there would be a lot more rich mathematicians out there.

Just dropping this in here. Apparently the big banks are fine: and https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-23/mnuchin-called-top-u-s-bank-executives-about-market-stability Never say your banks are fine if they are fine.

My impression was that you were trying to portray the author of NoNameStocks as a pump-and-dump operator. Most of my comments were with that in mind. Apparently you were just venting your frustration about something that you thought was wrong on the internet. Fair enough. It should be obvious that the best ways to provide feedback on someone's blogpost is to either comment on that post, or to contact the author directly. A comment on a blogpost can be read by all other readers and would be much more effective in warning people if that was your purpose. Why automatically assume that your comment will be deleted? That seems a bit cynical. If the author deletes your comment, that tells you a lot more about him. Then you actually might have a valid complaint and that would be a much better reason for a post here. Commenting or e-mailing can help a blogger learn and they can improve their posts based on your feedback. The overall quality of the blog might improve as a result and fewer complaints about that blog would appear on message boards in the future. All investors have lots of things to learn and bloggers are no different. Accusing someone of pumping a stock on a message board is pretty bad form IMO, but perhaps that's just me. If I disagree with someone I'll just say it to them directly. I'm not posting on Twitter to say I disagree with you.

I disagree with your suggestion that the purpose of the author's blogpost was to pump that stock. From the posts I've seen on his blog and my interactions with him (I've e-mailed him multiple times), very speculative stocks like this are just part of his investment style. I personally don't like most of these "lottery ticket"-type stock picks, but if he wants to buy them with his own money and write about why he likes those stocks, that's his right to do so. I've invested in a couple of, in my opinion, reputable companies that I've found through his blog. One of them, Comtrex Systems (COMX) was taken over this year and I did very well on that. Alpha Vulture, who writes a blog you say you like, invested in Hemacare (HEMA) which he also found through NoNameStocks. That's up ~4x since Alpha Vulture's post. He calls him "one of my favorite bloggers" in that post: https://alphavulture.com/2017/05/02/hemacare-deep-value-turning-into-growth-story/. So there were obviously a few gems among the NoNameStocks picks as well. Many blog authors (including me) are non-professional investors. They make big mistakes, they miss very important stuff, they might be typing a post at the end of a long day while under the influence of a lot of alcohol. It's crazy to "clone" them and to not do your own work. I think the stock action you see after some posts on particular blogs mostly shows that people fear they're missing the boat on an illiquid name and just skip doing their due diligence. Them buying a stock blindly and causing a price jump is however their responsibility, not the blog author's. It's a very different environment from 6-7 years ago when many more investors were scared to death of all OTC traded stocks and many bargains were around. If you disagree with an an author I think it's much better to just post a comment on their blog or to send them an e-mail than to post here and try to make them look bad. A comment or e-mail is a constructive way to share your thoughts and the blog author might learn something from you and appreciate you for it.

I think this also has to do with people discovering smaller streamers as a game grows. A person just getting into a new game may subscribe first to a big name streamer like Ninja but then decide to sub to a different streamer after a month or two. I'd be curious to see the figures for total streamers/viewers for a game like Fortnite as I think that has likely grown significantly while individual streamers who had a large following are losing some of those to other up and coming streamers. I doubt this is the case. There are strong "winners take most" effects in place for streamers where a small group of streamers will get most of the viewers and subs. Sure, there is a long tail and increasing overall viewership for Twitch means that more and more people can make a living from streaming games. The big guys will always grab the bulk of the viewers though. If they've not been growing for a while that is not a good sign for Twitch overall, including the smaller streamers. Twitch also just announced they'll be taking away ad-free viewing from their Twitch Prime members: https://blog.twitch.tv/changes-to-twitch-prime-a986f0d8c9a9?sf195911378=1. I think that also indicates that they need that extra ad income so they can redistribute it to smaller streamers. Taking a step like that is not a sign of growth and strength for the platform.

Is is really? I do follow some gamers and there are way more viewers on YouTube than on twitch for those that stream on both simultaneously. From what I see YouTube has features to donate to players directly and better chat functions that Twitch has not yet implemented. This may depend on the player community and the game played. I see some players have 10k+ viewers in thr twitch app and they may not stream over YouTube. There is probably enough room for more players anyhow. Amazon made a very good buy. Twitch is the number one platform for live gaming streams. I don't think Youtube can take this particular niche from Twitch. They only started catering to game streamers 1-2 years ago and they were basically laughed at by all the serious streamers on Twitch. If you're going to live stream games for 4-8 hours a day, you're going to pick one platform. You simply can't dedicate this amount of time to two separate platforms. Currently, I think almost everyone who is seriously into live streaming games picks Twitch. So it's a "winner takes most" situation and I think Twitch has won. Google has started catering a bit to live game streamers only after they saw that Twitch blew up and they have simply missed the boat IMO, like they did with Google+. I see most successful Twitch streamers using Youtube for highlight videos for their streams, which the more successful streamers tend to outsource to someone who is skilled at video editing. They can still pick up good money by regurgitating their Twitch content on Youtube this way. The smaller streamers don't tend to bother, because they won't get the views on Youtube, so it doesn't pay for them to outsource this or spend hours doing this themselves. Youtube is still the place to go for gaming tutorials, walkthroughs, etc. I'm sure Twitch would like to take that from them, but they probably can't. People spend hours putting a good video together and they'll publish it exclusively on Youtube. Each platform has its own role in the gaming ecosystem. I do wonder how big Twitch can get and how many people are interested in watching a person play the same games every day. I don't see much viewer growth from the big streamers in the last six months. The hype from a game like Fortnite dies down over time and the viewers and subscribers leave as well. The streamer Ninja on Twitch dropped from 200k+ subs a couple of months ago to less than 100k today. With regards to investment opportunities in e-sports: I think the major e-sports tournaments and venues will print money. So I like what MTG owns with Dreamhack and ESL. But I think all that is obvious and probably already baked into valuations. The time to buy into a theme like this is when Amazon bought in, but at that time everyone will say it is crazy and you'll probably agree.

It's kind of interesting to me that the press release says "share repurchases can be made at any time that both Warren Buffett [...] and Charlie Munger [...] believe". So they both have to agree that shares are trading below intrinsic value before they can repurchase. Usually Buffett takes sole responsibility for capital allocation decisions. Munger might give his input, but Buffett is responsible for the decision to buy or sell a business or stock. Here they explicitly share the responsibility for share repurchases.

In my opinion GDPR is just a symptom of a disease that is more dangerous to Google and Facebook. The business of selling ads on the web has been getting worse and will continue to get worse. People are going to be less and less tolerant of ads on the web and of companies following them on the web. Google is already paying at least one producer of ad-blocker software to put Google on its whitelist to enable their ads to be shown. The increasing use of mobile devices (less screen space) and publicly reported creepy behavior of bad actors (Facebook a recent example) will only accelerate the trend. Of course you can offset that by growing in other countries, but I think the intolerance for ads will continue to increase and will be universal. In response publishers are looking to charge for services and content more and more. Google can't do that as easily, because their search results can't push their own premium services too hard without risking huge fines. So I believe that side of their business will get worse over time.

One port company that I've spent some time on is Xinghua Port Holdings (1990.HK). There are a couple of things I like about it: - It's a recent spin-off from Pan-United Corporation (P52.SI), a Singapore listed company. Xinghua got its separate Hong Kong listing in early 2018. It's likely that some of the Pan-United shareholders aren't interested in owning the Hong Kong listed port business and that there is/has been some selling pressure. - The ports are majority owned by Xinghua, most Chinese ports are majority owned by the government. - The valuation look reasonable. The two ports they own are Changshu Xinghua Port Co. (85.5% stake) and Changshu Changjiang International Port Co. (77% stake). Both ports are adjacent to each other and located on the southern bank of the Yangtze River. Cargo types include pulp and paper cargo, steel cargo, logs, project equipment and containers. The valuation looks quite reasonable to me. The market cap is $1.02bn HKD or 821m CNY. Net income for 2017 was 71m CNY (excl. minority interests). Book value is 748m CNY. So you're paying 11.6x earnings and 1.1x book value for a business that should benefit from an increased flow of cargo traffic on the Yangtze. What has stopped me from investmenting so far is that the growing revenues for Xinghua's ports over the last decade haven't translated into higher profits. Those profits have been pretty stable, but not growing. I haven't done enough work on the company yet to figure out why this has not been the case. That said, the downside looks well protected because the business has been consistently profitable. Their debt level of 624m looks quite low as well. Operating cash flow was used to reduce debt by 100m RMB in 2017. This is an analyst report from 2016 about Pan-United that contains some useful info about the two ports: https://brokingrfs.cimb.com/Y6MF761G5YImQr9s1dfxyS25w2irrtNiSvvcfwmEOoJwOO-lDrnrqsZNN5k7Rm9nCpMAgM2u6NZ4Tg2.pdf (PDF) If you or any other readers here do some work on the company, I'd like to hear your thoughts. [Edit:] I had some feedback on Twitter about the company and they appear to have a bad safety record. There was an accident earlier this year, which I read about, in which four people died, but apparently there have been other deadly accidents at their ports in prior years as well.

This sounds a bit like market timing. From chapter 28 (Dry Tinder) of The Snowball: "The conflict he was beginning to feel was a struggle to find investments for the partnership. He had managed to find some of the few undervalued stocks that still paraded through the Standard & Poor’s weekly report: Employers Reinsurance, F. W. Woolworth, and First Lincoln Financial. He’d also bought some stock in Disney after meeting Walt Disney and seeing the entertainment showman’s singular focus, his love of his work, and the way these had translated into a priceless catalog of entertainment. But the concept of “great businesses” had not entirely sunk in, and he didn’t load up. Instead, he bought more Berkshire, and built a $7 million “short” position in stocks like Alcoa, Montgomery Ward, Travelers Insurance, and Caterpillar Tractor—borrowing the shares and selling them against the risk that the market would plunge." And the footnote that goes with it: "Buffett and his chief administrative officer John Harding chose a set of representative large-cap stocks, in effect creating a market index. Buffett did not want to execute the trade through a brokerage firm because the broker kept the proceeds from the sale and paid no interest to him. Harding contacted university endowment funds. Buffett went personally to Chicago to get shares. The idea of lending directly to a short-seller was so novel at the time that most universities passed. However, Harding was able to borrow about $4.6 million of stock."

Why would I be concerned? Don't touch Tether with a 5-foot pole and you'll be fine (it's 100% a scam). The theory is that they are “printing” thether out of nothing and using it to buy bitcoin, thus inflating the price of bitcoin far above its actual demand. I’m not sure how much of the bitcoin demand is tether related, but long term it means nothing either way. That's only the Thether Bitcoin price. Not USD/BTC. It has no effect other than some fools parting with their money. An interesting piece of research: http://www.tetherreport.com/. "Summary Author’s opinion - it is highly unlikely that Tether is growing through any organic business process, rather that they are printing in response to market conditions. Tether printing moves the market appreciably; 48.8% of BTC’s price rise in the period studied occurred in the two-hour periods following the arrival of 91 different Tether grants to the Bitfinex wallet. Bitfinex withdrawal/deposit statistics are unusual and would give rise to further scrutiny in a typical accounting environment. If there is questionable activity, the author believes a 30-80% reduction in BTC price could be forecast."

If it goes to zero, any exchange with exposure to Tether/Bitfinex will suffer major fallout as well. It gives authorities a valid reason to freeze exchange bank accounts. It's going to cause a huge shitstorm. I don't think it's going to be a small, isolated event. Even when you're a massive crypto bull, I don't see why you would want exposure to any coin before Tether blows up (provided you think it's a scam of course). Everything will be a lot cheaper after.

Are any of the crypto bulls here concerned with Tether (USDT)? Especially the "printing" of new USDT and some indications that the main people behind it are also principals of the Bitfinex exchange. Apparently major USDT printing occurred after bitcoin crashed to $10k and some say those were being used to prop-up the bitcoin price. Supposedly USDT are backed by US dollars in a bank account (in an obscure Polish bank if I recall correctly), but I'm very skeptical about that. I thought this was an interesting video about this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=MwKYbT9MoPE