randomep

Last year I bought Adrenna which is in South Africa (ticker:ANA). This is a tiny company. They have about 55M shares outstanding and a $160M book value. (all $ here refer to Rand). I bought my shares at $1, thinking oh great I got $3 a share for $1. Then I just learned that the company will force me to give up my shares for $1.30, way below the book value. their reasoning is that hey the stock trades much lower so that's all we will give you. Holy smokes, but ok I make 30% in a year, or so I thought. Then I learned that the company will give me the $1.30 as dividend distrubution, with a 20% Za withholding. So now I get $1.02. That's what really scares me, so I get the $1.30 as dividends and I will have to pay normal income tax rates in the US, even if I get the 20% as credit towards my US taxes. So I could wind up with something like $0.75 left over. And then I will take a 100% write off of my investment, which is going to give me a tax credit at capital gains rates, which could be 25%. So then I get $0.75 plus $0.25 ($1 * 0.25) credit? So I make nothing through this??? Is this how it will be? thanks

Am I reading that right; they'll pay less than 1% on average annually for those notes? Fascinating. 2-sided question: 1-Why is he doing this? 2-Who is buying this and why? 2-I understand that the demand was higher than expected and that helped with size and yield and the offer may target Japanese domestic investors who are very thirsty for yield. It appears that many Japanese banks and other institutions are ready to buy anything with a yield superior (even if barely) to risk-free rates. It appears also that international investors who are exposed to domestic positive investment-grade yields (with the US among the last standing) can synthetically derive a positive return because of the negative hedging costs. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-03/japan-s-small-banks-load-up-on-risk-as-they-fight-to-survive?srnd=markets-vp https://www.schroders.com/en/lu/professional-investor/insights/markets/six-reasons-why-it-can-make-sense-to-buy-a-bond-with-a-negative-yield/ 1-About 15 years ago, Mr. Buffett was bearish on the USD and actually built financial positions as a hedge. The debt issue may be to hedge Japanese assets to be but that would be a break from decades of investments. The low rates may simply be too enticing. I assume the funds resulting from the issue will translated into USD and I wonder if Mr. Buffett does not expect extra return from currency movement as this appears to be an unhegded (or naked...) bet. Ya I also wanted to ask, has he ever acquired large foreign currency positions? This is just bizarre, he has no need for Yen, so what will he do with it? Hedge doesn't make a lot of sense either. He is in the business of earning US dollars. A bet? Maybe, but how much profit can he expect? Could the most plausible explanation be that he is hoarding Yen to ultimately buy Japanese companies?

frankly I am a little flabbergasted by your statement. How many people do you know have paid out $1M for hospital bills in their lifetime. And what percentage of the population has paid $1M in their lifetime? I mean say 10% (very generous) of the population can pay $1M, how many of them do? not to mention the other 90% that cannot afford it, so they are toast, or they just skip paying their bills. Even if you are worth $10M I'd think you'd be livid at paying $1M for an illness. Now if you are talking about long term care, well that goes into the yearly expense category and someone mentioned $65k a year, I think that should do the job.

Just the midwest? LOL

I have thought about this. I presume you are talking about P&C insurance. But for life insurance it is more clearcut. For KCLI at one time I read they said for each 1% rise in interest rates, they take a $140M equity hit. For each 1% fall the same amount equity increase. But on the other side when the interest rates rise, their products esp. annuities are more attractive, so they will have more business.... so in essence they say it is a mixed bag and they cannot say they prefer one way or the other.

How so?https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive I live in Canada. I have to heat my house. All electricity (hydro, in my case) used by this is then converted to waste heat, which helps heat my house. This is just a smaller version of baking in the winter (you get food and heat -- cogeneration?) reducing how much the furnace has to run... But conversely if I live in Arizona, the heat would cause me to run up the AC, so americans should offload their computing to canadians!

Ya our politics is fundamentally based on a premise that if we just do so-and-so or if things were just so-and-so, that we would collectively be so much better off. Is there a philosophy that says things are shit because we are just selfish pricks and it isn't getting any better. And we should just be glad we aren't in Rawanda or something? or am I the only one that thinks this way.

A once-every-hundred year storm that happens every decade :))

This is a sham. Despite what is claimed, I guarantee he doesn’t manage a hedge fund. These are SMA’s. Ah that makes a lot more sense. And those SMAs are empty but are still getting margin calls to bring their accounts to zero!

Well I left almost 20yrs ago for that reason (well kinda for that reason)

Most startups are run that way???? I have worked for about 8 startups (I have lost exact count), none sold a product that didn't work. My area is chip making in silicon valley. Behaving like that is like us selling a chip that doesn't work. Uh it is kind of hard to fake a video decoder or a WIFI transmitter. It either works or it doesn't work. She told the world on a secretive product and faked the results by diluting blood and using other people's machines. I have never heard of any of my companies getting into lawsuits with their employees. I can openly advertise what I am working on and at what company on my resume on Monster, there is nothing my employer can do about it. Despite the mystique of silicon valley virtually every company knows what every other company is doing, there is nothing miraculous about what we do, it is just a good culture to build stuff. I read the book Bad Blood and that is one shit company taking things to the extreme.

There are big differences! Merriwether made money for investors sometime in his life right or else he wouldn't have risen up the ranks. He made bad bets, but those bets are still probablistic. He can at least try to explain that way somehow. Holme's contribution? Nobody got rewarded for believing in her. She didn't contribute to science. Her ONLY contribution is as a warning to investors especially private investors. She has pissed away more than $1B cash. Who in their right mind would let her piss away more money. Such a person would have to be blind to TV interviews where she lied and lied again, and to stupid to read a few pages of the book.

Wow I finished the book, I highly recommend it. Best book I've read/listened since the Big Short. some facts you may not know about Holmes: - raised $700M dollars - cost safeway $300M investment in their wellness centers (this is before Walgreens) - cost walgreens $130M (although they got back $20M ? in a lawsuit) The amount of wealth destruction is immense... BUT here is the kicker..................... ...... ready?.................. - she is shopping about for investors for a new company WTF!!!!!!!!!!

With everything done with lasers now the younger generations will never know what it is like to need to clean the lint off of mouse balls in order to continue working. Honestly I don't get it...... :) BTW I still use one with a ball..... it works better

health care in the US........ any thoughts on this? I am worried because I am invested in the MCOs

Hi all, just wonder from those of you have that experience in this. Let me start off by saying I don't really know the details of this plan, this belongs to a friend who is not very money savvy. He is self-employed and made a lot of money one year. On the advice of his accountant he set aside a big chunk of profits in a pension plan (and tax is deferred). He insists it is defined benefit, not defined contribution. I am familiar with defined contribution as I have 401k, RRSP, IRA. But how does a person control this defined benefit plan. Their bank/custodian don't like them and he wants to move it. So I was wondering where can he move the plan to? Can he move it to a discount broker where he controls the investment decisions? Like a IRA?

From the point of view of a angel investor, when a college dropout comes to you with no experience with their hand out, I would advise, be surprised if they succeed like bill gates steve jobs or zuckerburg. Don't be surprised if they don't know how to run a company. For the most part those 3 college dropouts invested their college years before any investors gave them money. Bill Gates knew he was a millionaire in 1980 when people were interested in investing in Microsoft. Its pretty easy for an investor who has access to those 3 dropouts to part with their money. Lets see what Holmes had to show that she was worth millions: angelic looks, some really good salesmanship, some connections to the military. They showed stuff that was smoke and mirrors, but nothing audited. (read the article to see what I mean) I myself am in a startup that has received lots of money. I am very very wary because I know the kind of people that invested in my company invested in Theranos....... This is a very good cautionary tale and I've said so in my earlier posts.......

Yeah, to change the world, you need to be like Bill Gates--old and well-educated. Wait a minute.... Never mind. Imagine what Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs could have achieved, if they hadn’t dropped out of college ??? OK OK I ADMIT IT I SHOULD'VE THOUGHT MORE ABOUT WHAT I SAID ABOUT COLLEGE DROPOUTS!

https://www.wired.com/story/a-new-look-inside-theranos-dysfunctional-corporate-culture/ Is it a surprise a company run by a 20 some year old drop out from stanford is dysfunctional? The gall they have to think that they can turn an industry upside down. TBH, that reminds me of Musk.

You know when you mentioned nortel and valeant, a present-day company comes to mind.......... its just at the tip of my tongue........arrrgh ...... its some car company........ oh well I'll let you know when I remember the name.

What else could Oddball mean?? lol

I love reading about secret millionaires. Who wants to bet that these people have better rates of return over their investing lifetime that the Sp500 or Donald Trump??? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/06/nyregion/secretary-fortune-donates.html

This topic comes up every few months I think. It basically says today it is hard to beat the contemporary market because somehow it is more efficient. But there are also other threads that say the market is more much volatile than earlier times, why is that? The latter statement is pretty easy to confirm by looking at the s&p 500 index over the last 150years or so (preferably on a log graph). You cannot say that the market was more volatile over some other 30year period compared to 1988-2018. For some it may be hard to reconcile these two contradictory views. A third line of thought goes well there are "insiders" or people with vastly more resources who have amassed a disporportionate amount of market gains. Why question for them is, who are hey? It isn't Buffett or Todd Combs or Weschler then who are they? Aren't those 3 gentlemen the ultimate market insiders? It is obvious to me that alot of whom we consider market insider type of money managers are simply making their money off fees and in general lag market. So who the hell is actually making good money off the market? It seems like the type of folks that are in this forum, or the types in the big short. You just don't really know who they are ahead of time until they are rich and fat. Only then can you tell who they are and how they did it (probably in a Michael lewis book)

Exactly what I was thinking... expecting to invest a big bonus by then ^^. But if you two are saying it many others are thinking the same thing...... so it is a contrarian indicator.... I would bet the opposite of this, whatever it is.

Its Yellen and Obama's fault.