yadayada

Oh yeah, there's no doubt it makes sense in some scenarios. Keep in mind though you're talking about the highest tier in the state which has the 6th highest average rate of electricity in the country (Source: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a ). The average rate for CA is around 17 cents. I'm in Los Angeles and our highest tier during the most expensive season is 21.5 cents. Even so, I was doing some back of the envelope calculations for a household in my area and installing solar would yield mid-teen returns (after federal and state incentives). I was just pointing out to yadayada that in his back of the envelope calculation for the power consumption of the entire United States, using 37 cents per kWh isn't appropriate. I'm wondering if one were to sign a Power Purchase Agreement with Solar City, what kind of rates they would charge. Hypothetically, if someone was with Southern California Edison (Tier 1 - 13 cents, Tier 2 - 16 cents, Tier 3 - 27 cents, Tier 4 - 31 cents), and Solar City quoted a PPA for 20 cents a kWh, you would only get a system big enough to get you down to Tier 2 and no more. Has anyone received a quote? From their annual report I see that cost of installation is about $3/Watt so a 1KW system would cost them roughly $3000. This should generate between 1400-2000 kWh in California (more in SoCal, less in NorCal). Say 1700 kWh on average. If they sell this to the customer at 17 cents a kWh (average for CA), they get revenue of about $290/year. Federal and State incentives would bring the cost down (I have no idea what kind of incentives they receive) and maintenance would eat into some of that. Anyway, the stock looks absurdly overpriced but I'm off to do more reading since the industry is interesting and I'm realizing I don't know enough to even ballpark what they/any other company in the industry could potentially make. I would say a 19% efficiency is lowballing it? Can probably do almost double?

read up on nassim taleb's antifragility (reading amazon reviews will do, the book mostly rambles on for way to long). If I have a large amount of cheap stocks to pick from, and I concentrate in the best ones, I never worry on missing out. I can be very picky. If you stare yourself blind on one stock, and you would really like it at 20$, but it is at 27$, you won't mind if you miss out the move to 40$ a year later because you were invested in another cheaper stock. Probably the most important reason most people do not have killer returns is that they do not turn over enough rocks and settle for a somewhat cheap stock. If you really want mr market to serve you, you need to have enough stocks to pick from. Otherwhise it is pretty hard to be disciplined. You constantly have anxiety of missing out.

Coal fired plants don't increase grid stability but they don't decrease it either. Solar and wind both increase grid instability hugely. Currently demand spikes are managed in a few ways: you run jet engines with Jet fuel which is incredibly expensive, if you are really lucky you have excess hydro power and you can just reduce/increase hydro to deal with changes in demand (Quebec does this for Ontario), or you use transmission lines and geographical diversity which doesn't always work. Running jet engines with jet fuel because the sun is not shining is a hugely expensive way to avoid a blackout but scenarios like that are easily possible with huge amounts of solar power. The problem here is that no one understands how difficult it is to run a power system. Its not like a market. In a market demand does NOT have to equal supply at all times. If it doesn't markets don't clear and you have stuff lying on shelves. Walmart does this everyday and doesn't blink an eye. But on a power grid nothing can be left on the shelf for even one second. Demand must be mostly be equal to supply. Otherwise you will get changes in voltage and current and eventually blackouts. Small fluctuations are ok. But large ones have to be managed. For instance there is a spike in demand when people come home at around 5-6pm because people start turning things on. Solar and wind just make this much more unmanageable. yeah but solar will not be centralized. That means companies and residential area's will go off the grid. Which means more variance in power needs. Which means you need a lot of gas plants that can quickly ramp up and down. It means gas at night, solar by day. And on a rainy day you probably need more gas etc. So coal or nuclear will not do. even without batteries, 55-60% of power is consumed during the day. So if everyone goes solar without batteries grid needs will go down by roughly 30-50%.

yeah my guess is they will be very competitive in the solar panel industry with scale and R&D. And securitization will ramp up growth really quickly. Then costs come down in the future and return on capital will go up.

to further add, in order to generate that in a year, you need about 430 million KW in solar panels. If you assume 10% that is 43 million KW. They are now building a factory with 200,000 kw capacity and expect that to scale to one million within 2 years. And then even more after that. So that will provide 8.76 billion KWH a year. So in year 4 they could have well over 2 gigawatt of solarpanels generating electricity. 1 or more gigawatt added every year. If they sell that for 35 cents per kwh, that is 6.3 billion $ in revenue. BUT they probably only generate power half the time. And are only a few hours a day on full capacity? So probably safe to cut that in 4. that is 1.5 billion$ in revenue and growing rapidly since they are basicly the only company doing this by then. Im curious what kind of margins they get on that? And as solar tech advances their costs will go down. So in a pretty optimistc scenario they probably generate a couple 100 million a year within 4-5 years. So I guess it looks pretty overvalued. it does look interesting if price would come down to 30-40 $ range in the next few years. Then you could potentially buy a very rapidly growing company with a huge runway, and a strong value proposition for 15-25x earnings.

If we do some math, it looks like they will be basicly a utility like company right? Except now the source is not some central place with a grid to homes, but will be on the homes it self. The US consumes about 3.8 trillion kwh in electricity. this costs about 37 cents per kwh on average. So that is 1.4 trillion usd. source for this is here: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=us&v=81 So if Solarcity captures 10% of that, that would be 140 billion$ in annual revenue. Apparantly Musk bets that more energy will come from solar then from anything else within 20 years. Wouldn't that be a bet that Solar city would basicly be a company with at least 10's of billions in revenue then? With only a 3% profit margin, that will be 4.2 billion in income. Kind of very rough, but I guess if you think long term and believe the whole solar thing then a 6 billion valuation is not so crazy. Did I make a big mistake anywhere here? If we assume that solar will be the future and solar city can take nice market share here.

im curious, why don't we use these already? I wonder how many charges there are without losing much of it's capacity? It seems the only real obstacles for wind and solar right now are some engineering and economies of scale problems. All we need is to set up the factories and start to crank large amounts of these things out for cheap.

disagree it could go much lower. 30% of coal mines are burning cash I think. If it goes much lower you would have to see a lot of new supply.. Or sharply reduced demand. But demand will grow, and I doubt much new supply will come online now. A good way to play this is Emeco. Australia is lower cost then China with coal mining. So likely that more mines are shaken out in China first, and Australia will be the first to benefit. I would not like to pick most of the pure play coal stocks. This way you will have upside even if it does not pick up much. it is like a free option. I do think solar will be the future. The more I read about Musk, the more I think batteries will come down quite a bit in price in the future. Solar price will go down and efficiency will go up. And if people have battery cars they might hook it up to their home and be completely self sufficient. With Musk's super battery factory, costs might come down a lot here. And this way you don't have to buy a battery just for your home. I think the Tesla S has a 85 or 60 KWH battery? Now the average household uses 30 kwh in 24 hours I think. Probably like 12-14 kwh of that is at night. So with a 60kwh battery, that would be less then 1/4th. So solar will not come from the grid, but wil cause most people to use very little power on the grid. And I think at least 2/3 of the grid supplies residential. Add in companies putting solar on their roof, and utilities might get in trouble within the next 10 years. I mean cost of solar is coming within the range of wind power already. And solar will still get a very high effiency on cloudy days compared to sunny days, because most of the energy will get through the clouds. So You don't need to live in some tropical area to benefit. Just google cost of solar, and you see plummeting cost graphs everywhere (even without subsidy). So even without batteries in most area's 40-50% of energy needs could come from solar for residential and some industrial area's. The average household consumes 20-30% more energy during the day. This will probably also reduce the need for nuclear. Energy needs will be more variable, and nuke plants take some time to quickly shut down and start up. Just my crazy speculation :D

a great investor is always "wealthier" if he rents. I heard a story (may not be true) that Buffett never wanted to buy a house when he was younger. Having said that, buying a house may keep your wife happy. it may provide a more suitable lifestyle, roots etc. but economically, if you are a great investor, investing the down payment at high rates is what makes you way richer if you rent. Not saying one is better than the other. the thing is great investors can do both and still be extraordinary wealthy. if I was young and also someone who could compound at 20+ rates over long term, I would wait to buy. +1 most people on this board are worse of buying. Especially if what you put down is a large % of your networth. If you have like 5 million then it matters a lot less.

Yeah it is like a game of hot potato. You look good, but the next guy in office will be the victim of your mess. I hate that landlords are usually awefull and it does not feel like your own place. Had land lords trying to barge in multiple times unnanounced because they felt it was their place, and they should inspect it. Or they try to kick you out because they want to sell it. And then when you want to get your deposit back, you sometimes have to proof you did not destroy anything. Or else you get some cleaning bill of 800e. And even then you gotta call em up 5 times before they send the money. That said I will keep renting untill it will not hurt investment returns in stocks much. If you can beat the market with stocks, it does not make sense to buy, unless you are rich already. Lol UK is spiking up more then singapore. And if you pull out germany next to it, you don't even have a 100% increase over like 30 years, yet for the UK the increase is 1000%. That must be a bubble. Also looking at spain, they are even worse then the UK. And then Japan is barely up too. Is this only affected by policy and easy credit? Or is it caused by age of population? House prices are down in Japan in the last decade. And south africa is through the roof.

Yeah i would not bet on a shortage on water. With constant discoveries like this being made lately: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186704-mit-creates-graphite-solar-sponge-that-converts-sunlight-into-steam-with-85-efficiency

I think there are two long term threats to coal, gas and solar. The problem with shale gas in Asia is that there is often lack of water supply. Gas fields are enourmous though. So it is not likely that coal is replaced by gas anytime soon in even the most optimistc scenario. Also since exports in most optimistic scenario's will only be tiny compared to energy needed. I do think long term, that solar is a threat. But that is at the minimum on a 7-8 time frame. So meanwhile demand for coal will almost certainly rise. Increased demand in asia will vastly outstrip reduced demand for coal in EU and the US. Also Australia has a lower cost base for coal then China, so you will probably see more domestic coal producers there being shaken out then in the rest of the world.

I think that article talks about oil. Shale oil and gas are very different. Gas they blow water into rocks to crack them and get the gas out. With Shale oil It hink they just take rocks out of the ground and crack them above ground which is relatively more expensive. It has different cost and risks drilling shale oil vs shale gas. I think shale oil is overrated too.

I love that bit where Louis CK asks Rumsfeld if he is a lizard on some radio show and then Rumsfeld goes off to tell some story about some time when he met a really nice couple when he was with his wife, and how they invited Rumsfeld and his wife to dinner or something, because they liked him so much. It is like a reflex for these people :D . Here is the clip, really funny:

I got way better at that stuff once I realized that the right body language is huge. Not so much what you say, but the way you say it. Women are animals too, just like us. Except they are not so much attracted to looks and shapes but more to status and dominance. If you want to understand how human behavior works, think about what type of person you needed to be 50k to a million years ago to survive and reproduce succesfully. The women who were attracted to alpha male types (but not complete psychopaths) were most likely to live and succesfully have offspring. Women attracted to weak men would get less food, and would be more likely to die by the hands of some other guy or wild animals. Because the world was very dangerous for a 5 foot tall pretty girl. You basicly needed protection quick, because being alone would hurt your chance of survival. Especially if you had kids. That is also why I think girls usually mature earlier then boys. A lot of things suddenly make a lot of sense if you think about this in that context. Ofcourse if you look at it now, those instincts make no sense. The world is very different. But those instincts are still in place. And if you pretend they do not exist things can get ugly. And I think on the one extreme end you have the guys who think women are just angels. The white knights. They are usually the whipped types who have to ask permission for their wive with everything they do, and their wives/girlfriends completely run over them and run their lifes. And then they get taken for everything they got in a divorce because their women completely lost all respect for them. And on the other extreme you have those sociopath pick up artist types who see women like objects they can use for sex and all they have to do is pull some of the right levers to get it. They completely obsess about it. Like that mystery guy in the book. Did not seem very healthy. I like to be somewhere in between . That said, this book is not the best to read I think. They go a bit overboard with it and it does get tedious.

I guess you are right. But still the point that that is bad seems to stand. They either spend it, it will be destroyed or it will be invested and help other people. A larger supply of capital will lower the cost of capital over time. In the middle ages you had mostly loan sharks to go to because there was not much supply of capital. Which meant low mobility. So with a very large 1%, they will either spend it or invest it. Or it slowly rots away through inflation (least likely probably). And not to forget that part of it is given away. Some of the richest people have given it away and accomplished amazing things. Governments all over the world do a very poor job at a lot of things. Rich people giving money away should be more effective then having it go through the bureacratic system of the government. Another thing is, you do not hear people up in arms about the massive amount of tax money that is being wasted by governments. This is not other people's earned money sitting in some account, this is actually the people's money partially being pissed away.

Wouldn't say this is always true, Malone didn't do it? TCI was one of the best performing stocks over that long timeframe. Yet he got little of the pay off untill the infamous Liberty media thing.

only 6% of the wealthy (north of 500k$) got their money from inheritances. According to a survey by PNC wealth management. Shouldn't this be more by now? I guess the posters argument is that three things will happen to a inheritance. It will be invested, which is good. It will wither away , so inequality goes away, or it will be consumed. Also good for the economy.

If they use a lot of buzzwords and constantly come up with 'x step strategic plans'. Overpromising. Excessive compensation - crooks are often bad managers. They rely on being the confidence man to get what they want, not on their skills. This video is also a good study on good vs mediocre CEO's. Notice how Musk answers every probing question straightforward in a informative manner. The CEO of the other company constantly starts out with some unrelated story that makes him look good when he is asked a question that answered with a honest straightforward question would make him look bad. Basicly things are bad, they will spin around the truth, stay vague and tell positive unrelated anecdotes to throw up a smoke screen. If they are good and honest, they will tell it like it is. Generally I would not trust people who answer a probing question with 'well look I want to bias you and put myself in a good light by telling this unrelated story/anecdote before I vaguely answer your question'. If they have nothing to hide they could answer it quickly without the horseshit.

As Churchill said, 'you shape your houses, and then they shape you'. The recent interview with Guy Spier where he describes his system to be patient is a great example of that. If you know yourself to be impatient, you can create an environment where it's easier to be patient (ie. a room with no electronic devices, don't look at stock prices during the day and only submit orders when markets are closed, move to a calmer city, etc). That is an interesting concept. I read about research done on the link between success and self control. It turns out that more succesful people make sure that they put themselves in a enviroment where self control is easier. They do not necessairily have more self control. Basicly, if you want to lose weight, do not buy cookies and do not go to the supermarket if you are hungry. And do not live across a really good bakery.

In the comments of that peter schiff article. Might interest some people here. The article itself was very mediocre at best, but this comment was excellent. It seems that capitalism will enhance automation and productivity, which will be good for everyone in the end. And socialism is envy, that will hurt the 1% and the 99% in the end. Probably the 99% more then the 1%. And the general public is generally in favor of it because they do not fully understand it's implications in the long run. If they knew they would not want a government this large, regulating and arranging as much stuff as they do now.

if you are a type A, find other hobbies or interests to release that energy in. If investing is your sole thing, you are likely to make mistakes.

Or you can do what this guy does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_EjKKGSXus

why do you hate scribd? Works just fine?

websites in niches. Especially great if you have a certain hobby. There might be something you can do here, and you will not hate working on it. A friend created a website relating to a video game he played. I think he made nice 4 figures a month with v little work after the initial work. Another one is getting stuff cheaply elsewhere (asia for example) and selling it in EU or US (wherever you live). I heard of a guy who would get cheap firewood from poland and sell it in the netherlands to do it yourself stores nicely packaged. They would put it on sale, and he made some good money from that. Nowadays China is getting more expensive though, and with more people exploiting it and higher pay in China, there is less money to be made. Probably have to try other countries like vietnam or something. He also ordered a bunch of electric flyswatters from some guy in china, several containers, and basicly did the exact same thing. Made almost 6 figures on that. That was fairly recently. These things are often not that sustainable, but they can pay of nicely and be high margin if you play it right. Obvioulsy you need some marketing and sales skills. You basicly need to convince some stores to put those products in their store. He did not have any friends higher up in those chains or anything like that. I call this arbitraging temporary inefficiencies. I think Pabrai had some interesting things to say about this. I would also say that almost all the mentioned things so far are terrible. Anything with food seems high risk and low return and it almost always ends up being a full time job. Working for the government also does not seem a good use of your time most of the time. Also snack machines require high upfront capital and scale to pay off. Just investing that money in stocks would probably a better use of your time. Another market that has serious inefficiencies is the translation market. If you know more then one language I would seriously consider looking into that. A family member made about 90 euro's per hour translating for the police. Wasn't super highly skilled or anything like that. And with that kind of work you often have a lot of freedom and can work from home. You can often do this on the internet and it pays well. Often interpreting gets paid very well. If you already know a second language this is a skill you can learn relatively quickly. Can expect to get north of 20 euro's per hour and work whenever you feel like it.