randomep

As I've said many times politics is a mental illness that infects the victims brains and shuts down logical reasoning functionality causing cognitive dissonance. You can't expect a rational polite conversation. Not here, not anywhere. How can someone think Trump saying that he grabs woman's private parts is disgusting, while at the same time think nothing of Bill Clinton raping women? Talk about calling the kettle black. How can Trump condone his boasting of sexual assault by saying the husband of the woman next to him has done worse. Did anyone think that his statements could be grounds for prosecution? Sexual assault statute of limitations could be 10-20yrs. The argument I keep hearing about the Trump camp is that, basically, both candidates are as low as mud, but Trump is less blemished so its ok he runs the country.

I suspect this isn't true because the average house price in bubbilicious Canada is up 28% during that time, and real estate is frequently leveraged. So, I'd guess the gap has increased. That said, I think now is a really bad time to measure average wealth in Canada because of the housing bubble. You know the table compared wealth in different countries in USD. So the CDN dropped 33% but property values gained 28%. If someone borrowed money to buy a house the borrower may gain alot but the lender loses a lot on the exchange, and I can assume that the lender is canadian. Most importantly financial assets dropped 33% over that period, and the canadian stock market isn't that hot either.

Woah, never trust these type of wealth statistics, they are heavily skewed by exchange rates. It is from 2013 and at that time the CDN was at parity to USD. Now Canadians are a lot poorer because it CDN = 0.75 USD

+1 cool!

Theranos Voids Two Years of Edison Blood-Test Results The company has told the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that it has issued tens of thousands of corrected blood-test reports to doctors and patients, voiding some results and revising others, according to the person familiar with the matter. http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-voids-two-years-of-edison-blood-test-results-1463616976 Damn, I got 2 years of insulin shots, and now I found out I don't have diabetes! :)

Respectfully, this is a conversation disqualifier. By selling 500,000 cars in 2018 at ~20% margins. Your 2 part response gets 2 questions. 1. why did you answer my post? 2. a) does that include government subsidies? b) with what probability do you think that 20% margin on 500,000 cars will happen? c) has Tesla made a profit margin on a single car in the past?

Picasso seems to imply Pabrai is ignorant. I haven't read too much about Tesla but I haven't seen anyone put it as succinctly as Pabrai. It seems as if the media is afraid of criticizing Tesla just like they were with Theranos. Pabrai is one of few that will point out the other side. If you want the disruptive argument I am sure Musk has 10 videos on youtube explaining it. Oddball says it right no point in trying to predict. I would do the same with my money, no point in trying to invest because right now it is a money pit and even if we all drive electric cars in the future, who knows if Tesla will get any of the profits. Michael Porter has said that companies in manufacturing thrive when they achieve some competitive advantage. I have no idea what is Tesla's competitive advantage, except as someone mentioned to me, ELON MUSK. I don't know where to find Elon Musk in the competitive advantage manual. Disruptive technologies are great, but this is an investing forum and I have never had heard a succinct explain how Tesla will make its investors rich.

All brash youth need to learn some lessons the hard way too.............. The thing is, at 22 how does he prove to himself he is a brilliant investor, let alone to others. I would argue he himself doesn't know what his returns will be when he looks back at his life at 55. yaya, I know that Buffett knew in his 20's he was going to be rich, and he was already planning how to distribute his wealth to his kids........

Wha? How do you figure that? Maybe if you distributed the demand across the entire day. But that's not an accurate way to look at it. Most people need transportation at roughly the same time as most other people. Commuting to work, commuting back from work are the two main times that come to mind. How are you supposed to spread your 3 cars across 30-40 people for a morning commute? Simply doesn't make sense. Also, you're assuming that once autonomous cars hit mainstream, everyone will want to car-share. Huge assumption that I simply don't think will be the case. I think plenty of people will still want to own their own car. I also think your longevity assumptions of 600k to 1mm miles are way out of whack. I think your assumptions and the conclusion you've drawn are absolutely insane. Ya I kinda echo your thoughts. Now I haven't read all of this thread, but where did this the rationale that we will want to own less cars come from? Are you saying empty driverless cars will come pick up passengers? I am a carless person. But I will buy a car if it is driverless and economical. So me as a datapoint says that cars will increase. The fundemental change of driverless cars is it allows people to drive who cannot or don't want to drive. So it will mean more cars on the road. How can there be more cars on the road and less cars? I disagree with both of you. Do you have teenage children? My kids don't even want to drive, neither do any of their friends. My son just got his license and I practically had to force him to get it. Yes in 10 years there will still be a bunch of old people driving their own cars (you and me included), but this will diminish every year as these people die off or get too old to drive. 30 years from now there will be almost no human drivers on the road. In 30 years anyone under 50 will look at a car with a steering wheel the way millennials look at CD Walkmans today. "What the hell is that for?". bang, did you read my post carefully? I told you I am w/o a car! I am not like you and I won't be driving when I am old, I am not even driving now! I bet I hate driving as much as your son, or even worse. But driving is an orthogonal issue to ownership. I hate driving but I love being a passenger. I have a GF who drives me everyday but that may change, a driverless car is like having a woman driving me around w/o the issues and the mood swings! I ride a bike, take the train and get a ride to work everyday. If I took uber how will that work? Will all ride sharing cars be able to support my bike? It is so much better to have my own driverless car, with a dedicated compartment in the back for my bike.

Wha? How do you figure that? Maybe if you distributed the demand across the entire day. But that's not an accurate way to look at it. Most people need transportation at roughly the same time as most other people. Commuting to work, commuting back from work are the two main times that come to mind. How are you supposed to spread your 3 cars across 30-40 people for a morning commute? Simply doesn't make sense. Also, you're assuming that once autonomous cars hit mainstream, everyone will want to car-share. Huge assumption that I simply don't think will be the case. I think plenty of people will still want to own their own car. I also think your longevity assumptions of 600k to 1mm miles are way out of whack. I think your assumptions and the conclusion you've drawn are absolutely insane. Ya I kinda echo your thoughts. Now I haven't read all of this thread, but where did this the rationale that we will want to own less cars come from? Are you saying empty driverless cars will come pick up passengers? I am a carless person. But I will buy a car if it is driverless and economical. So me as a datapoint says that cars will increase. The fundemental change of driverless cars is it allows people to drive who cannot or don't want to drive. So it will mean more cars on the road. How can there be more cars on the road and less cars? The main benefits of driverless cars are cost (don't need to pay a driver), safety (lower error rate than human), and cloud control (efficient swarm management). Progress toward these goals has already been achieved by ride-hailing services. I think that car ownership WILL decline significantly in the future. There's no reason for a vehicle to sit parked in a garage when it could be doing useful work. Let's face it - if you could satisfy your transportation needs for $5-10 per day without owning a car, why would you own one? In some cities people are already close to this, but the problem is if you want to take a road trip or drive to the airport you still need a car. It's a bit like the US road system before the interstates were built - we don't have uniform service. The cost of service is still too high for some Uber driver to be wandering out in rural Kentucky. Once vehicles are driverless, the cost may well be low enough. What you said doesn't jive with reality. You asked a rhetorical question why people would want a car if transportation was cheap as if everyone's car decision was based on economics and utility. But all around us people make car decisions based on vanity. If everyone wanted to maximize utility we all be driving Prius, I mean what's the advantage of a Hummer or BMW or Lexus. And is that worth the double triple the cost of a Prius? Do a thought exercise, if there are a million little dinky driverless cars around and you could own your own luxury driverless car with your own bed, your own entertainment system would you want to use a seat with someone else gum stuck there. Or go to a first date in a shared car? In america our standard of living is very high, a household that has 3 cars today will find a rationale to own 3 driverless cars? right? I just don't know how it will turn out but you make it sound like it is a foregone conclusion. To me intuitively, a car becomes so much more powerful and useful for very little increase in cost. Why wouldn't we want more? This topic of cars reminds me of the proliferation of smartphones. Who would have thunk that a hundred people would gather my local park addicted to their phones? Who could have possibly thought of the Pokeman use case for smartphones and it is soooo popular when smartphones first came out 10yrs ago. So how can we imagine what the uses of driverless cars can be!

Wha? How do you figure that? Maybe if you distributed the demand across the entire day. But that's not an accurate way to look at it. Most people need transportation at roughly the same time as most other people. Commuting to work, commuting back from work are the two main times that come to mind. How are you supposed to spread your 3 cars across 30-40 people for a morning commute? Simply doesn't make sense. Also, you're assuming that once autonomous cars hit mainstream, everyone will want to car-share. Huge assumption that I simply don't think will be the case. I think plenty of people will still want to own their own car. I also think your longevity assumptions of 600k to 1mm miles are way out of whack. I think your assumptions and the conclusion you've drawn are absolutely insane. Ya I kinda echo your thoughts. Now I haven't read all of this thread, but where did this the rationale that we will want to own less cars come from? Are you saying empty driverless cars will come pick up passengers? I am a carless person. But I will buy a car if it is driverless and economical. So me as a datapoint says that cars will increase. The fundemental change of driverless cars is it allows people to drive who cannot or don't want to drive. So it will mean more cars on the road. How can there be more cars on the road and less cars?

We are in a low-growth world. All the low lying fruit is taken. GDP growth is slowing everywhere. So how can we get outsized returns in growth stocks if the fundmentals don't support it? I think that's why we see such a small breadth of growth stocks. It's all the likes of the FANGS and unicorns. Common sense tells me these stocks will not make outsized gains on average. Maybe people who buy growth see this and relying on the greater fool theory. On the other hand the wild gyrations will constant cause non-growth stocks to be very undervalued. And I heard that US total wealth is something like $60Trillion, but the stockmarket is less than $20Trillion. So probably most of that is real property. What do you consider a real property as an investment? Growth or Value? Would anyone say real estate is a growth investment???

A whole world of NO! Don't steal from people better off than you because you're jealous! That's extremely petty and pathetic. Take a look at yourself :( Please don't tie the legs of the best swimmers. No one will try to be a good swimmer anymore. I'm a good example. I give about 60% because I don't think I'll be rewarded for doing more. Disagree. CEOs are types who would go for it even with less pay just because they're narcissistic and want control and power and show that they're in the lead. So they should be taxed since the demand there isn't elastic. If there is a high tax, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would still want to be a CEO. Bob Benmosche is a perfect example. He was negotiating with AIG which was controlled by the government, and one stickler point was his pay. He still got around $8M (I recall). If you cut his pay by 1/2 I don't think he would've come. Also here is a guy who made a different in the direction of the company. Some or most wanted to just sell the company off and return the government's money. So he made the correct binary decision. You can say a lot of it was luck in that it turned out well, but some can say there was a lot of skill too. One point about taxes and compensation is that we live in a world of prosperity and freedom. That means a person has freedom of movement and right to private property in all the prosperous countries in the world. If you tax a company or people too high they can move and they will. Look at what Pfizer almost did. If you tax capital gains too much they will take their money elsewhere. Unless you are going to take away those rights high pay and current tax rates are here to stay.

Appreciate you sharing GregS. That's the kind of second act I am thinking off. What Oddball mentioned is a person who is slowing down gradually from 40hrs a week to 0 hrs (which may be when you hit the bucket). Older people slow down but they also need a purpose. What I am saying is someone who replaces one career with another. They like the latter career better but didn't do it earlier because they didn't have the financial stability or didn't have the experience/knowledge. The latter career typically entails more risk and/or less reward but is more enjoyable.

There's a lot of musicians who became programmers or other tech careers. My guess it's the difficulty of making it as a musician and the brains-and-a-bit-of-creativity + ez-money of programming/tech that makes this rather popular switch. But guys........ you do realize the idea in the video is the opposite, the musicians you mentioned followed their dreams at an early age. He is saying put up with the drudgery and later follow your dreams when you are financiall set. So in your examples he means they would have to wait till they get a midlife crisis to play music hardcore.

A recent wealthtrack video really piqued my interest on the topic of second careers. At about 6:20 the guest says most young people are told to pursue their dreams and slow down later in life. But he thinks that the opposite is true because in the 20's a person can perform drudgery at work yet still enjoy it because the work world is exciting. So a young person should focus on getting established. And when their careers are no longer fulfilling later in life and they are more financially established, they can pursue their dreams. I have never heard anyone articulate this idea but it is my thinking. Wonder if anyone has thoughts and comments and experiences.

You forget that he has prostate cancer, that is hardly healthy.

If you hear Ted Bundy give a speech he would seem pretty normal and articulate also. I learned (probably later than most) in life that people judge you by the times you lose your cool and show your ugly side than the times when you are calm and unstressed.

I would elect an actual turd over Hilary so yes, that includes Trump. Hilary fits my definition of true evil. Hilary is true evil? So you will be afraid of her like you are afraid of Hilter, Mao, or Stalin running your country? Suppose Hilary does win the election and it is a 90% certainty based on polls. What will happen? Who will suffer, who will die? What will you do? Leave the country? (if you are American)

was he even born?

Fock! oh man that is so hilarious!

Sorry I don't get it!

I am sorry to say this but this is got to be the worst joke here :) :) :) :) :)

Warren Buffett buys no brainer companies. What is the probability that Warren Buffett's $30B investment in BNSF will go to 0? If something bad happens to rail he'll get a ton of dividends and then probably sell it such that he can break even with dividends. Downside and upside are limited. Anyone can see that at the time of acquisition. What is the probably the Nokia will go to 0 at time of acquisition? I'd say honestly at the time 25%? Someone has tons of cold hard cash and decides to plow it into something like Nokia better know what the hell he is doing. And Ballmer I can argue in hindsight did not. I can argue only a few living gods among us do.

But often times companies do depend 100% on the CEO. The MSFT CEO was 100% responsible for making the decision to buy Nokia which turned out to be a $10B writeoff. Here the CEO's decision cost the company $10B. Suppose you know someone will make the best decision regarding whether to buy Nokia. Suppose that person has a 60% chance of making the right decision. Whereas Ballmer has a 50% chance of making the right decision. Then roughly looking at it the CEO will make a $1B difference (10% of $10B). So how much will shareholders be will to pay for the CEO? Certainly more than 250x the average employee salary. Look at it another way, are you going to deny Yahoo shareholders the right to pay $50M or whatever obscene amount for Marissa Meyer? To the shareholders, she was the savior. In hindsight of course they were dead wrong. Shareholders in large companies feel CEOs deserve their pay for the most part. The issue is more one of deceit. CEO's break the law, run up short term sales to the detriment of long term shareholder value. We need a way to be able to claw back what they got if it is found later to be undeserved.