Orange

It sounds like there are a lot of things that could go wrong. Currently cash flow negative. Idiotic local government to deal with. Lots of nearby vacancies probably means it would be a serious pain to rent out the space to new tenants or if one of the tenants left. Tenants use space to store valuables and are only there occassionally - increased robbery/vandalism risk (i realize insurance takes care of this, but it would be a pain to go through). Sounds like a buyers market, so this would be extremely illiquid and tough to sell. There are a lot of hurdles to jump over for this investment to really pay off. The best reason to jump on this is if you have a good reason to think the area will improve, something needs to change to break that vicious cycle.

According to this article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/02/25/bitcoins-price-plummets-as-mt-gox-goes-dark-with-massive-hack-rumored/ 744,000 of Mt. Gox's customer's Bitcoins were stolen, which is about 6% total. Mt. Gox themselves also owned 120,000 Bitcoins which were also stolen, so close to 7% of the total Bitcoin float was stolen.

Lol, there's a market for them. I don't think they are making a long term investment out of the Bitcoins that they stole. FDIC insurance cleared up a lot of the problems associated with bank failures for consumers. There is no similar policy possible for Bitcoins since it is decentralized, and the holders are distrustful of governments anyway. Bitcoins are less than 5 years old, public perceptions are still being molded on crypto currencies. A couple more of these situations and Bitcoins are going to gain the wrong kind of reputation.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/watch-mt-gox-ceo-mark-karpeles-admit-the-bitcoins-have-disappeared Mt. Gox is now officially bankrupt.

97% of recent peer reviewed papers conclude it is man made, according to the last major survey. There is little to no real debate amongst scientists as to whether it is man made, just the extent of our problems. But who cares about the scientific process, I get all my climate science from the only respectable source, Charles Krauthammer. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/may/16/climate-change-scienceofclimatechange

If you're a value investor and are serious about testing the value that your stock picking adds, you should be benchmarked against a value index, in my opinion. Something along the lines of the S&P's bottom quintile p/b or p/e or p/s. If you are hand picking cheap p/e stocks, you are only adding value if you can outperform the market's group of low p/e stocks. Otherwise, it pays to simply index to said group. That saves time, energy, fees (if you're paying someone to manage your money), and risk. Most value managers would never do this, of course. But that is because most truly do not add value, especially after fees. A basket of low p/e stocks always outperforms the larger market over the super long term, so it is a higher hurdle to jump, and the VAST majority of value investors/managers cannot make the leap. Nor should they even be trying.

While I agree, this is true with almost any random piece of value investing related writing these days.

This. There will eventually come a time when FB's valuation will no longer allow them this luxury, but for now, they might as well keep snapping up valuable tech companies using their overpriced pieces of paper.

This is the same thing that's said about every short seller. When I short a company I believe to be fraudulent I don't think to myself, 'I can't wait until all of the workers get fired and lose their source of income.' What I hope for is the market to recognize the facts of reality. Every day that it doesn't is a day that capital is misallocated. I imagine the same is true of Mr. Bass. Do you really think he's sitting there thinking, 'I hope that millions of people lose their jobs and are starving in the street'? Unless he's psychotic, I doubt it. When the market does not reflect economic reality, that is categorically bad. Assuming the Japanese economy is on the brink of collapse (I don't have an opinion), think of all of the capital invested every day on the assumption that it is not going to collapse. Keeping a charade going isn't good for anyone if you're thinking beyond the immediate moment. I think you have a healthy point of view. My experience is that most who short don't have that same view. I have used Salesforce.com, I've seen it change businesses. The stock is overvalued, when I talk to short sellers about it they are hoping doom and gloom and that the company crashes and burns. They can't separate the stock valuation from the actual company. In theory the stock could go to zero and the company continue to hum along like nothing happened. Bass clearly benefits from the Japan gloom and doom trade. If Japan fails his mortgage is paid off with cheap Yen, his fund makes a mint and he can go on TV again and say he was right and attract even more assets. I don't short anything, I don't think there's anything wrong with shorting, but I'd rather be optimistically biased. I'd rather things turnaround and do well than fail. In the end I want everyone to do well. Would it be better if Bass identified what he believes to be problems with Japan's economy, and then did nothing and said nothing because it would be too negative and mean? After Michael Burry uncovered the problems with subprime housing, should he have told nobody since people might lose their homes if he is right? That's an incredibly naive viewpoint. Without short sellers, cynics, and pessimists, market highs and lows would be even more pronounced. Society benefits when there is less boom and bust. Especially in times of bubbles, a dash of pessimism is a very good, moral thing for markets.

LOL, this can't be legal. :o Its actually a spoof for comedy central It's real insofar as the store actually exists, although they just got shut down because they were serving food without a health permit. The guy behind it, nathan fielder, has one of the best shows on Comedy Central IMO. The style is business mocumentary, very funny and original show. http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/nathan-for-you

Here's a new Starbucks competitor that will more than likely do a great deal of damage:

I appreciate this.

Those are all lottery ticket stocks. Shorting them is like fighting in a war; long periods of boredom followed by short bursts of utter terror. Just one new "discovery" will set your shorting career 3 moves backwards. The short squeezes are brutal, the operators are crafty crooks, and the shareholders are greed driven lemmings that will stick around FOREVER. Shareholders know a cash flow negative pharma or junior miner is a lottery ticket, and they will put up with years of bad results and unfulfilled promises if they still think the company will eventually strike it rich. I would much rather short a struggling retailer, or a company whose product is on the verge of obsolescence. These stocks get worked out quickly, there is much more focus on short term results, and even if you are wrong you won't get annihilated like you will in a small pharmaceutical stock.

Obviously RTO's (foreign or domestic) are a good place to look. Shorting cyclicals and counter-cyclicals can be extremely lucrative if you know when to short in the cycle, and have the wherewithal to hold on. But it can be dangerous. Puts are a better strategy since the moves in cyclicals are big and happen quickly. If you buy puts on a highly leveraged cyclical right before a recession, you can make a ton of money while hardly risking any capital. Consumer staples are great to short during times when everyone is flocking to safety. They tend to be low vol, and the prices generally never get crazy. They are also easy to borrow, and often give you something to short during a recession. There are a ton of obsolete industries where you can find stocks that are walking zombies. Companies that produce yellow pages (I own a large amount of puts on DXM, and have made money shorting them during their last 2 bankruptcies), newspaper companies, stocks with fad driven products, retailers that are getting permanently out competed, tech stocks with products no longer on the cutting edge, etc... Obviously not all stocks in these industries are losers, but you can certainly find some real gems.

I would take a slice out of the next pizza I deliver, and replace it with the scissors. If the customer complains, I'll point out that technically a pair of scissors is worth more than a slice of pizza, so they are getting a pretty good deal. Then I'll use the slice of pizza I took to lure a neighborhood dog into my house, and keep it there for some time. The owner will eventually realize the dog is gone, and then they will post a reward for whomever finds it. That's when I'll return the dog, tell them I found it (make up a highly detailed, but mostly believable backstory), and collect the reward. I'll use the reward money to buy as many new scissors as I can buy. Then I'll repeat this process over and over again with each new scissor I buy, compounding my scissors by eventually turning each new scissor into hundreds of new scissors, and turning those hundreds of new scissors into thousands. After a while (a few months), I'll own every scissor in North America, and that's when the fun REALLY begins.

Even if you are convinced that a stock will burn to the ground, do not short until you at least see some smoke. Find value traps that are struggling now, and determine whether you think the business will keep struggling. Never short good or improving businesses, no matter the valuation. Valuation makes all the difference in picking longs, but the best shorts are worth 0, so figuring out an intrinsic value is irrelevant, it's not part of the process. What's important is finding a borrowable stock that you think will die soon. Whether it be from obsolescence, excessive leverage, poor business model, or fraud, it doesn't matter. If the company stops struggling and makes improvements, that's your cue to take the lick and get out of the trade. If you're shorting overvalued stocks just because of an insanely high p/s ratio, or whatever valuation metric, you have no such cue to know when to cut your losses.

"DWYL (do what you love) is a secret handshake of the privileged and a worldview that disguises its elitism as noble self-betterment" Striving to get a job that you actually like is now an elitist privilege? This is insane. I half expected the article to end by lambasting the feeling of happiness, calling it the "bounty of the oppressor" or something. "Yet another damaging consequence of DWYL is how ruthlessly it works to extract female labor for little or no compensation" You have got to be kidding me with this. Who could possibly hear somebody say "try to find a job that you actually like doing" and believe what they are actually trying to do is oppress poor women. The kind of pathetic PC victim culture that Slate feeds off is why I am reticent to call myself a liberal anymore.

That is literally the only reason I (loosely) follow this stock. I would never let my money get near Sham Gad's hands, but this situation has the potential for a short term bloodbath if Gad is forced to liquidate somehow. Especially if a market correction comes, and Gad is forced to sell on top of that, this stock would be the buying opportunity of the century.

Pot has been used by millions of people pretty much ever since the 1960's. Thats 50 years.

I too am a guidance counselor who moonlights as a heart physician.

If you legalized weed full stop - allowed people to possess and grow as much as they wanted - large scale production (like that of cigs) would not be very profitable. Neither would the tax revenues. This is the pragmatic problem for legalization, there's not as much money in it. Even if you are a heavy user, you can grow all the weed you need quite easily, the same cannot be said about alcohol/tobacco. For example, one properly cultivated outdoor marijuana plant will take between 2-4 months to grow and dry (depending on the strain grown), and most plants yield over a pound of finished product. How much is a pound? To put it into perspective, a joint usually has about a gram of weed in it. There are 448 grams in a pound. Heavy users of alcohol and tobacco spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on the habit each year. If someone wanted to smoke 10 joints a day, all they would have to do is grow around 8 outdoor plants in the summer. 8 (plants) X 448 (grams yield per plant) = 3584 grams/joints or 9.82 joints a day. All expenses considered (including rolling paper), this wouldn't run more than 100$ a year. So the profitability is not there for mass producers like it is for alcohol/tobacco. The only lucrative area for big business would be the dank market - extremely potent marijuana that is too difficult for most people to grow - which usually must be grown indoors and yields A LOT less.

;D Some people really live in a bubble.

http://steelturman.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451bab869e20115705d8f7f970b-pi

I was in Denver on the second day of legal retail sales, and went to a few dispensaries. It's fascinating purely from a business perspective. Being there on opening week is witnessing the birth of an industry. There are rank amateur operations and there are more professional ones. Really, most of these businesses are still figuring things out. I saw a customer come back because they accidentally sold her an empty container. No business answered their phone, and some had major neighborhood smell problems (meaning I could smell weed from a block away). But so far this has been a huge success. The customers there came from every walk of life, every age. Many people I talked to, like myself, came from out of state and planned full vacations (skiing, hiking, site seeing, shopping, and of course buying legal pot) just for this weekend. Other states are going to be clamoring to legalize weed after they see the tax revenue that Colorado pulls in, the savings on enforcement, the increase in tourism, and the overall benefits of having a segment of society shift from recreational alcohol use to that of recreational pot use (Less addictive, no overdose or poisoning potential, less long term negative health effects, safer to drive on, etc...). California will probably be next, with Maine, Alaska, and Oregon probably joining in at some point soon. It will be a snowball effect, mark my words. Going there made me proud of my country. We have the highest rate of encarcaration per capita in the world, and in most of the US we allow a fraction of personal freedom compared to some countries. However, the US now has a major city, and a beautiful state, where the marijuana laws are more lax than 100% of Europe. We're leading most of the world in this realm of personal freedom.

Very impressive, Kraven