hillfronter83

muscle, any insight on this? From what I heard from my friend this morning, China seems to have things under control. They are still tracking everybody's movement and require people to wear face masks in public. But governments clearly think the worst may be behind and are now encouraging people to get back to normal life, such as going to restaurants, opening school etc. This is a small city in Jiangsu.

so during the weekend, I looked at some of historical flu pandemics, especially the ones from 1957-58 and 1968-69. Both infected between 0.25 to 1 billion people and caused millions of death. Then I went back and checked Buffett's partnership letters and found exact 0 mentioning of those events. I guess this time is different. Crazy time.

This is what seems to be happening. There isn't much people can do unless you are like Chinese government that can order people to sit on their asses for two months at home. Maybe cancelling some meetings, events, etc which will have a short term negative impact on economy. But to put number of deaths so far in perspective, outside of China, about 200 people died. Even if there are cover ups and let's say the number is 10 times bigger. But this is still less than number of people dies from traffic accident A DAY! It's the panic that causes more problem, such as this:https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-01/chinese-man-sentenced-to-die-for-murders-at-virus-roadblock This the effect of social media age: people are glued to their device and are getting news 24/7. We just can't help ourselves. A few weeks ago, it was climate change gal, then it's killing of Iranian general... In a month or so, people will eventually get bored and get on with their life...

Bridgewater Dalio's comments: https://www.gurufocus.com/news/1025881/ray-dalio-commentary-our-early-thinking-on-the-coronavirus-and-pandemics This is the first big outbreak in social media era. The (mis)information on twitter is mind boggling. I saw many non medical experts (maybe with some agenda) try to stir panic in market. The economic impact can be bigger than SARS, which lasted over a year, with many Chinese staying home, companies taking longer holidays, and travel bans. And China is a much bigger part of world economy compare to 17 years ago.

Hyten, I think you are thinking about this matter a little bit too much in the ways like a value investors who invested with Chinese RTOs in the 2011 to 2012. I have been following Chinese WeChat and talking to people on the ground. Shanghai is a pretty much a ghost town now. No one goes downstairs from their apartment. You can call that heresay. But I tend to trust my wife's friend who works for a biotech company in the US who has a PhD that it is a ghost town. The facts are that they quarantine an area that has the population of New YOrk City, LA, and Chicago and still has 10mm pop left. That's a fact. I am not surprised at all if there were 100k infected in WuHan. It's $10k RMB to stay at an ICU in China. So $1.6k USD. Most of the population can't afford that. There are definitely a lot more infection and death than the numbers that are official. Talk to a value investor in the western world, they pound the table and say "Don't fear monger, give me the facts." Talk to any Chinese person (wife and I are both Chinese) and we just know that the numbers are way more serious than the official stats. People have mentioned that the cause of death on certificates are often Pneumonia not Corona Virus despite the doctors telling family that it was definitely Corona virus. Why do you think the Chinese government is willing to shut down such large portion of its GDP? Don't be so dogmatic with the numbers and FACTs. Learn to be a bit flexible with it and bake in a large range of potential figures. Both the death rate and the infection rates are likely much larger. Invert the think, if the infectiousness isn't bad, will the Chinese government go to such length to quarantine? If the death rate isn't bad, will the Chinese government go to such length to attack this? To a certain extent, the reactions are likely over blown at this point, discount the seriousness by 50% and it is stil pretty bad. Yes, the death figure lags by quite a bit. I don't disagree that both patient and death numbers are probably much higher in Wuhan/Hubei area. China has under invested in healthcare infrastructure over the years. So resources are already stretched under normal condition. Now imagine there are suddenly 10 times more patients waiting in line to be checked out. That said, there is no incentive for areas outside Wuhan/Hubei to under report numbers. Yes, people all over China are staying at home and not going to public space. And local governments everywhere are announcing extreme measures, such as mandatory face mask wearing in public places and canceling events, to counter the outbreak. But outside Wuhan/Hubei, I haven't seen concrete evidences contradicting opinions of medical experts in the west that the virus break is similar to flu in terms of contagiousness and death threat.

If what you said is true, that makes this virus far less deadly than we think today? On the investment side, these type of event usually marks the end of a long bear market. Just think about how the end of SARS marked the end of a long bear market in Asia. Is it possible they're hiding deaths as well as infections? If you look at numbers out of Wuhan and abroad, the death rate is indeed not that high. Similar to normal flu.

Probably a little different in that weed has a bit more chemicals in it which is why people smoke it in the first place Start cook spicy Chongqing hotpot for dinner everyday. Maybe your neighbor will be the one complaining :)

Big congrats on very solid results, especially on the following :): BMY management came out today saying there is very good chance CVR will pay out. The price is approaching "fair value" (75% chance for each drug to get approved, I trimmed some. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/09/reuters-america-bristol-myers-confident-of-approvals-linked-to-higher-celgene-investor-payout-bristol-exec.html

None of my positions are even close to 1% of share o/s. I'm interested to know what companies they are. What I found annoying was that for illiquid stock they wouldn't allow you to enter order to sell at bid or buy at ask because of "dramatic price movement". For example, if last trading price is $3/share, they won't allow me to enter a sell order at $2.5/share, even when I called them. By the time I can enter an order, the bid/ask will disappear, or at least not at size I wanted. With the amount of commissions they charge on penny stocks, I'm looking at options to move assets somewhere that have 0 commission.

I recently read a few books about Japan that helps me understand Japanese company and business in general. Japan's New Middle Class and Japan as Number One both written by Harvard east Asia scholar Ezra Vogel. Although both books are initially published decades ago, I think a lot still apply in today's Japanese business. How to Ignite the Low Desire Society by Kenichi Ohmae which talked about challenges faced by Japanese society today.

Did around 18% overall. Interesting that my taxable account where I did less trading was up about 40%. In hinder sight, made several unforced errors trying to "speculate" for quick profits that backfired. This board certainly made investing a lot more fun. Thanks and wish everyone good luck in 2020!

Thanks for the response. I literally got email from the CEO after reading your response telling that they got approval for distribution.

Hi, Early this year, I bought some shares of BioBlast (ORPN) for MA arbitrage. The merger consideration was paid in ENLV shares and some CVR depend on certain assets sale. Before the deal closing, the assets were sold to SEEL for $3.5m in two payments and some future CVRs. When I emailed the formal CEO of ORPN, she said the first payment is waiting for Israel court ruling for tax and legal issues and should be paid out "hopefully in a few weeks". Fast forward a few months now, I still haven't received any payments from CVR and CEO is not returning my email. Should I be concerned about receiving the payments?

I looked into this, it seems that the right implies a ~62% probably for each drug to approved, which is lower than the estimated probably. From that perspective, it seems like a good value. What tells me to hold this odd is the Fact that the terms of this CVR (all three drugs need to be approved at a certain date) makes it so easy to avoid a payment for BMY, which amounts to $6B total, if some articles are correct. They can just push through 2/3 of the most important drugs and get them approved as quickly as possible, then delay one until after the cutoff date and presto, they just saved themselves $6B. Doesn’t take a genius to think that this will cross somebodies mind at BMY’s management. They could be quite opportunistic about this depending on which hurdles will develop with any of the 3 drugs even if it’s not the plan right now. For sure the intentional delays are a risk. But I don't think they are a deal-breaker. Some good discussion in the comments here. My own view of how management in large corporate settings works, has over the years dimmed enough that I assume that if there is a possibility to game an outcome, it will be gamed in all likelihood. Don't disagree with risk from intentional delay. However in this case, they already filed NDA for ozanimod and its decision is due in a few months. Since CVR is tradable, i expect market'll react on ozanimod decision, which IMO is a high probability event.

I bought more BMY CVR.

This makes a lot of sense - at least me, personally, longinvestor. It’s also possible that the guy paying millions figured out that he has exactly zero chance of convincing Buffett and thereby winning some credence for bitcoin. What if someone asks (again) Buffett or Munger about this topic the day after lunch? It’ll probably be rat poison still. $4M down the drain. You got to pick the right medium to market your product. Please feel free to mentally bent it the way you want, longinvestor, I personally still think that this dinner/charitable activity was never from Mr. Buffet's side meant to become a "clash between "religions"". Oh-well - here we are. Well, the newly minted fact is that Sun is the one postponing. Sun is under investigation for fraud and not allowed to leave China.

Picked up some MSG too this AM at~$271. I am not sure what caused the sudden downdraft , but noticed that MSGN is doing even worse, is this team related? I added MSGN in two slugs this am at 19.5 and 19.2, adding to my existing position. Knicks whiff on free agents is why they’re down. Dolan looks like an even bigger idiots after his February boasting. Fans are pissed. Hopefully this puts Jim over the edge and he sells the Knicks. Why MSG over MSGN or vice versa? I own both. MSG is a top 5 position for me. With over $1B net cash you are basically paying for the Knicks here, and getting the Rangers, Rockettes/Radio City Music Hall, The Garden, and the Entertainment biz for free. The lower it goes the easier it becomes to plow money in. Under the $6B market cap number, there really isn't a better risk adjusted security out there. These are one of a kind assets that always do well over time. Pick any decades and then scale out. The returns on sports teams are insane. Even the mediocre ones. Here you own the best in both sports. MSGN is pretty simple. Very simple and straight forward contract pricing with easy to project cash flows. They have, and continue to pay down debt, and buyback stock. You have about a $2.3B EV which is quite reasonable considering this is the only public RSN and easily the best one out there. The Knicks sucking also puts a bottom on the attractiveness of both, as it really can only get better from here. My rule of thumb with MSGN is its worth about $30 in a sale. At $25 its fairly valued as a public company, but under $22 it's an easy piece of paper to start building a position in. Under $20 its a steal. MSG is a buy and hold forever. MSGN you'll have to trade to get your returns. I get that Knicks is a more famous club and has much better fan base in NY area regardless of its dismal performance on court. But why do you think Knicks is worth more than $5b while Nets was sold for $2.3b last year?

Exactly, in general the underwriters have a big incentive not to blow up the IPO because it is horrible for their reputation and for future business. In general I don't think it is a very bad strategy to participate in IPO's and sell on the open. And it's probably not possible for big players to do this too often because they'd lose access to deal flow. Could very well be that the market is not 100% efficient here. The main risk is that the hot IPO's get oversubscribed, i.e. you subscribe for $100k and only get $10k worth of stock. But the few times that there is a turd you probably get a full allocation. So the risk/reward is a bit skewed. In some European countries there is a preferential treatment for retail investors, i.e. you won't get pro-rated on the first $5k you invest or whatever. That changes the equation substantially and I try to max out the preferential treatment in all of these as a hobby. Pretty sure that is +EV. Interesting. China A share has a lottery system since it's typical for price of IPO stocks to go up 50% after trading start. However, it's limited to Chinese investors, I believe.

Does anyone have experience with SEC filings by private companies that don't trade any where (not even OTC)? What are the purposes of filing 10-Q or 10-K for those companies? How reliable are those filings compare to a public company? Thanks in advance.

Very impressive track record with a diversified portfolio. Very interesting read. Thanks for posting!

About 3.5% for the year. Lost money on many of my long positions. At the end of the day, special situation and a couple of acquired stocks saved me from overall loss.

Merry Christmas! Wish everyone a great holiday and new year. Happy investing! Vincent

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-19/the-triple-jeopardy-of-ke-xu-a-chinese-hedge-fund-quant

I suspect the call buyer would exercise the call immediately, so you wouldn't get the chance to lend your stock. This is indeed what happened. Looks like my shares were called.

Thank you, Sanjeev. Done!