yadayada

what is deep value investing? Isn't that kind of redundant. Isn't valueinvesting pretty much buying at a discount already. The value part is already kinda redundant.

if it is stolen, they probably didnt expect this kind of publicity.

The simulator thing, in and of itself, does not overly concern me, based on a couple of observations. 1) My next door neighbor is a commercial pilot. He has a number of books about airplanes, photo books like "Chicago from the air", and, in the eight years I've known him, looks up at every airplane that comes overhead...every single time. 2) I bartended at a hotel years ago. We had a number of Rail Road employees (Soo Line for those who are interested) who would stay there. It was remarkable....after an 8 hour day they would come to the bar and, for 6 hours, drink beer (not excessively, mind you) and talk about trains, the entire time, day after day. Many of these guys have elaborate model trains in their homes. Bottom line, I am not ready to call him innocent, but the flight simulator would be totally unusual in and of itself. -Crip I find it also weird that people think that could mean he is somehow crazy or something. Ofcourse some people are obsessed with it, but that should only mean they are better pilots, and not more likely to suddenly do something crazy. If they found a bomb making kit, or some kind of strange sex dungeon, then i would think there is more reason for suspicion.

well if your job is flying a plane, i would think that you would be sick of it after work. So why continue in your basement?

when does that start? I dont see a date anywhere

22_Tintin_and_the_Flight_714.pdf

I did actually. Plus if you read VIC, you can see a few interesting ideas being posted there lately. All ideas that only the smallest hedge funds can touch. And that have a much better risk/return then almost any 1bn$+ market cap out there. Which is what it is all about with valueinvesting in the end right? Finding the most asymetrical risk return scenarios where you dont have to be some kind of predicting genius to make a decent return. I think I read a buffett quote a while back where he wished he was a small time investor again. Because the opportunities out there in the small cap space are so abundant. Especially when the market is depressed. So why handicap yourself by looking at really large investors? Unless they invest in something really small. Personally I like to look at concentrated hedgefunds and smaller hedgefunds with really good track records. And see what their highest conviction ideas are. If they invest in a smaller company then they normally do, then it probably means that is a really good idea. Why else would they devote time to it if they can only invest a small amount. They would only do that if they believe there is significant amount of upside with a managable amount of risk.

if you can spy on hot chicks by hacking their laptop webcam, why the hell would you look for something boring like a missing airplane.

oh the nostalgia

i also see alot of people analyzing companies like apple. Why would you do that? It seems time is better spent finding some badly mispriced microcap with a market value of 90 million in some niche market. Seems that if you would spend an equal amount of hours on both large and small caps, that the latter will yield much better results over time. Plus there are less moving parts :) . And if you do this, it seems hard to not be close to 100% invested most of the time.

What do you guys think about not putting your money in an index when PE ratios go to 30 or higher? People always say today is better then yesterday, but it seems it can only really go down from there, especially in an enviroment like this.

Buffett also said that if he had like 500k$ -10 million$ to invest he would be 100% invested almost all the time.

Clear media, traded in hong kong. I would for sure keep this on your watch list. It is advertising , but they have a very nice moat in a business that will probably always be necessairy. Usually advertising is hit really hard in a crisis. Plus I think this is one of the few really ethical hong kong traded companies where risk of being ripped of as a western investor is really low. It is fairly valued now tho.

I agree with a lot of what you say, BUT do you think property in CA, especially L.A will continue to appreciate 7% a year for the next 20 years? If so, that $1MM house today will be something like $4MM 18-20 years from now? Wages have not been going up that fast... Who is going to be able to pay $4MM for a somewhat above average house 20 years from now? Heck, I am amazed there are enough people willing/able to pay $1MM for a house now... In certain areas of the country, you can get a very, very nice house for $100k or $150k. At some point, I would think business/buyers will start moving away from the high cost areas. Granted, living in LA is better than living in Indiana or Michigan...but at some point the cost simply is not worth it... You are starting to see this in the legal profession...work is being outsourced out of NYC and DC to Detroit and Minneapolis. You can get plenty of lawyers willing to work for $25/hour in the midwest....so work is moving out of the high cost areas. I think this trend will accelerate in the future. isnt this all the more reason its not sustainable. Less and less people got to buy a house, so now the next 20 years that number will rapidly be even lower, untill a cap is reached. Who says that cap wont be reached 5 years from now? Unless the chinese come in and start buying everything.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/apr/21/brain-training-online-neuroscience-elizabeth-day http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-tech/qa-new-evidence-shows-brain-training-games-dont-work/ so reading a book would be better"? Fiction or non fiction.

any thoughts on hellenic bank? Pretty big discount to equity. https://www.hellenicbank.com/images/media/assetfile/accounts%20notes%20092013%20english.pdf https://www.hellenicbank.com/images/media/assetfile/annual%20report%202012.pdf Would love to hear a quick opinion from some of the banking pros here :) Both to either invest or deposit money in this bank. reason I am asking is mainly because they offer 2.5% if you lock the money for 6 months. It looks like they have high cash balance. But their non performing loan balance basicly doubled in 2013 to 1.9 billion . It is a cyprus bank.

to the poker players, what made you quit, burnout or games dying?

Eric, you say your quitting, but wont you get bored? I personally like a challenge myself, and working on something. And just hanging around the house at 40, and maybe shooting at some pigs every once in a while would leave me a bit unsatisfied with life. I mean you dont get to where you are by not having that attitude right?

they should change democracy, so you vote for ideas. And when you vote for ideas, they explain to you what the implications of those ideas are. And then when the people have voted, Random people who volunteered from the scientific community will be randomly selected to execute this for a very large compensation. And then after set periods, it will be evaluated how well they executed within the economic cycle, and people will vote if this will have to go on. Just think how well that would work. You vote, 'let the government take everything!' . Followed by a 'are you sure? This will ruin the economy' and 'would you start a business and create jobs if the government could take it away anytime?'. And it would eliminate voting for some popular airhead to be your leader. You take some of the human bias out of it, charisma cannot mess with the whole equation here.

isnt the idea of being a almost full time small investor to beat the market significantly, and not just do 10%? I mean you cannot count on 20%+ returns, but isnt that kind of the goal anyway? It is probably easier then alot of people think, but it takes some discipline. The difference between 10 and 20% seems to mostly be discipline. Buffett isn't a genius, the guy repeats himself over and over again. Never says anything new, that should tell you what it really takes. If he says he could do 50% with 1 million... What would variance be over 5 years? Seems to me that if you buy only really cheap, and look full time for those juicy special situations and micro and small caps, that doing north of 20% with a small amount of money isn't that hard. If buffett says he can do 50%? So if after 5 years, you dont beat the market by a wide margin, your probably better of to just sticking with it part time. Unless ofcourse you started at a market peak with barely any opportunities. You have an edge over both institutional and most retail investors, so technically you should be the most likely spot to actually get those nice returns. Most institutions have size to worry about, and most retail investors dont have the time because of their job. You have both.

I think the way to aproach this is to set aside like ~250k for living expenses for the next 4 years. Dont spend much. Be v frugal the first few years, which doesnt seem hard, unless you live somewhere expensive. And then put the other 750k$ in a brokerage account, that is your investing money. Now if you survive for 4 years on that, odds are extremly good you made money with the rest of it. Seems to me that things have to go really badly for this to go wrong. But I would def seperate investing account and living expenses account, and treat it like a 4 year experiment/risk. The 750k$ is your investing playmoney so to speak. So if there is a crash, you can still afford everything without having to sell in any bottom. if you make bank like packer or eric, your pretty much set for life after a few years.

Shouldnt you see that in the cash flow statements? I supose if they are expanding then it could be problematic to see that. But if it is a steady eddy business, they should generate alot of free cash flow right? And ofcourse make sure the free cash flow doesn't come from selling off assets or other questionable stuff.

it seems that if they paid dividends/stock buybacks, and it is a good business trading at a cheap multiple, the corruption is probably already factored in when you look at the bottom line. Lets say a company makes 50 million$ a year. Cost of goods sold is like 250 million, then corruption is probably already part of this 250 million$ cost. In the US COGS might be only 210 million $ for the same company. So if you can get this company for a PE of 5, it seems that corruption has to go up by alot over the next years to make it a bad investment. And COGS has to go up another 20 million$ in corruption or so for you to break even. But if COGS has been steady over the past years, that seems unlikely? Especially if it will hurt the country. Because at some point corruption will actually hurt putin you would think.

How about a small amount of margin in your IB account? Lets say you have 200k$, and you borrow like 60k$ or something? Nothing sexy, but how bad does it have to be for you to be margin called? Probably not the best idea in the current market tho. What would the rate be in a market correction? Is that 1.5 % fixed?

I have made a 180 on bitcoin and sold off the rest. I mean, it was 5$ a little over a year ago. And the number of transactions in the blockchain barely went up in that year. And it has had massive publicity in that time. It went from completly unknown to pretty much mainstream, and the number of transactions barely doubled. Clearly people dont use it. And looking at how practical it is, there are very good reasons it is only really used on blackmarkets. So basicly the fundamental value is measured in how much it is used, and it went from 5$ to 650$. The only thing that changed is hype, and day traders that speculate with it. You could say that it is massively overvalued. The fact that buffett didn't like it, and is not just neutral (ie: put it in his i dont understand it basket) doesnt make me more optimistic about it. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/warren-buffett-offers-7-key-investing-and-life-tips/ Honestly, my prediction, it will slowly return to a sub 100$ level in the next 5 years, and stay extremly niche. I dont think it will die off tho. Also the main selling point is that you can avoid banks using it. But that is only partially true, and really, why avoid banks? There is barely any inflation in the western world now, and banks work just fine for me honestly. Quick, pretty safe and no crazy fluctuations or risks with shady exchanges. The only way its really good is for ordering some quality drugs on the silk road :) .