hillfronter83
-
Posts
319 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by hillfronter83
-
-
from merkhet 08:25:49 PM "The article is clearly written by Sunstein as an opprobrium on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and, in particular Judges Brown & Ginsburg, but it seems like he is indicating that they would be both be favorably inclined in our case. "
for the probability stats geeks among us:
now, while brown and ginsburg are not the only two "conservative" judges on the dc circuit. nonetheless given that the merits panel has 3 judges and there are 17 judges to choose a panel from, what are the chances that a panel with those two judges on it would be selected?
[spits 3 times]
Well that depends on whether the judges are randomly chosen or the plaintiffs and defendants can appoint them. If not randomly chosen, the probability is very hard to calculate.
i have read that it is random, using a process that court wont disclose
EDIT: found the link: http://www.law.du.edu/images/uploads/neutral-assignment/Neutral_assignment_links.pdf (15 years old so process might have changed)
In this case the chance is 1 out of 289. However I assume there are other judges that will also believe in law. :) And I still have hope in the US and believe Lamberth is a rare beast in the US judicial system.
In other countries like Russia and China, most judges are like Lamberth. The government is always right, no matter what it does.
thanks MM
in addition to brown and ginsberg, kavanaugh would have been favorable, but not any other particular judge to my knowledge
1 out of 289? i'll take those odds 8)
The possibility that at least one of two will be on the panel is about 33%.
-
CVR Partners (UAN) is a nitrogen fertilizer MLP controlled by Carl Icahn and they will buy RNF at 1.04 UAN plus $2.57 cash per RNF unit. Unit holder will vote for the deal on 2/15/2016. RNF entered some minority unit holder law suit recently. At 10% spread, market is price this deal to fail. In addition, RNF will spin off its Pasadena facility to unit holders before the merger. No idea how much it worth given it's losing money and has about $100m sales.
The deal was originally scheduled to close in Q1 2016. Anyone else on the board looking at this?
-
Adesigar probably posted this for fun, but I'll try to relate it to Mephistopheles' question:
Is the price really the decisive factor for choosing tax filing software? Isn't correctness, convenience, speed to complete the process, clarity of instructions, etc. much more important?
For anyone on CoBF, IMHO, the most important feature is the capability to painlessly and correctly slurp in your stock investment transactions from your financial providers. If I were you, I'd base my decision on this rather than on other things (like price). Although if you're a buy-and-hold-forever investor or invest only in tax deferred accounts, then perhaps this is not important to you.
+1
I have used H&R for years and you can get the deluxe version very cheap (<$10). However, it doesn't import the trade automatically so it's time consuming to figure out all the investment gain/loss, etc. Last year I found issues in H&R due to my flexible spending accounts so you can't rely on tax software 100%.
Before H&R I used a CPA, which I don't recommend since unless he/she is very familiar with your situation, you'll still need to fill out a lot questionnaire. My CPA ended up merely as a data entry person and last time I did tax with her I found many errors in my filing.
I'm thinking about TurboTax this year since I also set up an investment adviser LLC to handle my families' investment, etc. I would appreciate suggestions regarding Turbo Tax.
-
quick question - if i have a loss in a taxable account, can i sell the shares and immediately buy them in an IRA account and still get the tax loss? i know you have to wait 30 days to re-buy in a taxable account, but given the tax free nature of the IRA account i'm not sure if this is a way around the 30 day waiting period?
thanks
No. The same 30-day rule applies to IRA too.
-
increasing risk appetite.
You mean greed? lol.
-
But many Chinese, even people who are educated and intelligent, will read Buffett and Munger and Lynch and then conclude, well, fundamental analysis works in the West, but not in China. In China, they'll say, you have to invest based on government policies.
There is zero trust regarding public filing and insider trading is very common. That's why people (including myself) don't rely on fundamental analysis.
Right - I'm not saying people should naively adopt Western-style fundamental analysis, either. I'm just saying what I believe the consensus more or less to be.
The other possible way to think about the problem, assuming fundamental analysis was impossible or useless, would be that if you cannot perform fundamental analysis, you cannot invest at all, rather than that you must invest in a more speculative fashion. No one has to enter the domestic securities market. One can always choose not to participate (although seemingly, you cannot easily choose to get out once you are in!).
Sorry, I editted my post. Basically investors are responsbile for their own money and they have to do extensive due diligence. This would be hard for anyone not have a presence within China. There are great investment opportunities in China for those have the ability, as demonstrated by BYD etc.
-
But many Chinese, even people who are educated and intelligent, will read Buffett and Munger and Lynch and then conclude, well, fundamental analysis works in the West, but not in China. In China, they'll say, you have to invest based on government policies.
There is zero trust regarding public filing and insider trading is very common. That's why people (including myself) don't rely on western style fundamental analysis. It is very important that you do you due diligence on the target company, similar to a venture capitalist would have done to a startup. My brother in law, who once was a CFO for a HK traded company told me company can even fake cash balance in its bank (not unreasonable if you think that both bank head and company head are appointed government officials). And we are talking about one of the big four as its auditor.
-
As reported recently, more Chinese are following Buffett and Munger. That's a good thing and I believe will be absorbed broadly there.
I doubt this is true. By my observation, Buffett is not popular among professionals since people want to get rich quick. And most of the investors are retail investors who probably never heard about Mr. Buffett.
-
It seems that many money managers charge a quarterly fee if it's a fixed percentage based on market value. I don't know how this is done with performance fee. To those of you manage OPM with performance fee, do you charge your fee all at the end of the year? Thanks.
-
Stable value fund, sometime called fixed income fund or capital preservation fund, if you have them in our 401K plan. They are guarranted by insurance company and currently returns about 2%.
-
Check out professor Damodaran's website: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/
-
I actually chatted with the guy who owns the property across the street. I think his name was Phil. He says he rarely sees him and that most in the neighborhood don't really know him. He sees Buffett driving out in the morning and driving back from work into his garage later in the day. But that was about it. And I think the guy had lived there for many years.
There wasn't any security until not too long ago when some guy came by trying to rob the house or something. Now there is security and there is a camera that takes a picture of every license plate that drives by, in case there is a car that keeps driving around or just to keep records of who's driven by. So even if you bought the property it doesn't seem like you really bump into him. You'd probably have a better chance walking around town.
In Snowball, it talked about all the kids on the block would crowd into Buffett's house to watch TV when the got the first color TV in the neighborhood. Probably before he got really famous and when Susie was around. I took a picture when I passed by Omaha a few years ago. Glad no security confronted me, lol.
-
There was a $0.5/share underwriting fee, which was eliminated or discounted for large order. So I would imagine NAV is slightly under $10/share.
-
$2100 on $280K property is not that bad. Good luck.
+1
I looked at it in 2011 and didn't see return very attractive. In fact, I rented a townhouse worth $400k for $2600/month. Here is the math: Property tax $6800, Home owner fee $5000. So if you pay 20% down, your interest and insurance will cost about $13500. The profit is about $5900, without deducting repair/vacancy/broker, on $80k downpayment. I would rather buy REIT. This is in NJ and property tax really hurts.
-
With interest at or near history low, does anyone have the same trouble as mine on where to park the cash?
Is there any investment "almost as good as cash" but earn a little bit more?
I think anything that's safe enough and liquid enough for me to convert into cash in 1-3 months should be good enough
I hope it's not just me... In this market I keep 30%+ cash...
Look in your 401k plan to see if it has an option named stable value fund. Some time the name varies such as capital preservation fund or fixed income fund, etc. But as its name suggests, it provides capital preservation while yields about 1-2% right now.
-
I'm so thankful that I found this board at the end of last year. Happy thanksgiving to everyone!
-
To an extent maybe. I agree with others that you have to have a knack for wanting to invest. There's a huge difference between sitting down and watching 8 hours of football on Sunday and sitting down and reading 8 hours of 10-K's and 10-Q's. I think the best overlap between my investing skills and fantasy football skills is drafting. My league does an auction for players, so it's fun to try and find mispriced players going for lower than comparable players.
Granted my team is only 4-3 this year. :-[
I think fantasy football is like porker. A lot of luck (injury, opponents...), but skill definitely matters. From what I saw from my league, people routinely over value super star players. I play in a standard league and most of the "draft guide" suggested RB over QB in the first round, which makes no sense to me. I'm 3-3 and hopefully will be 4-3 tonight. But I got the highest score in the league and a guy had the second lowest score is 6-1 :(
-
Exciting, Congrats!
-
For those of working in financial industry, does any of you get charged for the professional market data fee from your personal brokerage account? I just been told that I need to pay 150/month for market data since I work for an insurance company.
-
I'm not a fan of Chinese stocks listed on US exchanges for various reasons:
- The Chinese government has laws against foreign corporations owning Chinese companies
- Exchange controls
- Rule of law is extremely weak. Authorities in China protect fraudsters.
- Tax leakage???
The ones incorporated in PRC and in Hong Kong SAR (which is outside of PRC) are a little better than companies incorporated in other places.
Certainly there are risks involving such companies.
Here is a blog that might be interesting:
Well I learned the hard way that China really doesn't work the way I think it works. Apparently you can run away with a real business and all of the cash (!).
I forgot to mention that many stocks that are listed on both PRC and non-PRC exchanges have price disparities. The shares listed in China get a premium valuation. So you have to wonder why Chinese founders would want to list their company outside of China.
Chinese stocks (especially reverse mergers) are the one area of the stock market where fraud is extremely high and the shenanigans committed are rather egregious (e.g. running off with everything). Because there are close to zero consequences for committing fraud and because Chinese authorities are kind of on the fraudsters' side, you have to deal with an extreme level of adverse selection. And then when you think you understand Chinese fraud... maybe you find out the hard way that you don't understand it. For example, it's extremely unintuitive that Chinese firms were able to easily fake their cash balances to big four auditors. Cash is one of the easiest things to audit, yet local branches of banks were corrupted into providing fake bank confirmations.
There are things about China that are unintuitive. I'm not sure if honest Chinese business owners would want to list their company on foreign exchanges for legitimate reasons.
Not to argue the fact that there were a lot fraud in these reverse mergers. But you have to remember that most of these companies are microcap and riskier than a normal company. Here is an interesting research regarding these CRM:
I can think of a few reasons why a legit Chinese company wants to list oversea:
1. The premium on Chinese exchange didn't exist until the bull run in 2007-2008. Before that, Chinese companies' share traded at a discount on Shanghai exchange compare to Hong Kong exchange.
2. There were regulation restrictions that kept many of the companies we talked about here from listing in China. One of them was showing positive profit for 3 consecutive years, which most of the internet companies were not able to in their early years.
3. Many of such companies were backed by venture investors here in US, who would probably prefer US listing. SINA was backed by Dell and SOHU was backed by Intel.
Many legit companies were taken private by majority owners after muddy water short wave that drove their stock prices down. For example, SNDA was taken private at 20% premium by its founder in 2011. This suggests that there are probably value to be found.
-
I'm not a fan of Chinese stocks listed on US exchanges for various reasons:
- The Chinese government has laws against foreign corporations owning Chinese companies
- Exchange controls
- Rule of law is extremely weak. Authorities in China protect fraudsters.
- Tax leakage???
The ones incorporated in PRC and in Hong Kong SAR (which is outside of PRC) are a little better than companies incorporated in other places.
Certainly there are risks involving such companies.
Here is a blog that might be interesting:
-
Shareholders can form a group and register with the SEC as "active" shareholders to attempt to drive change in a company.
Interesting idea. I imagine it shouldn't be too difficult to create some serious voting power with the purchase power of this forum, especially with those microcap or nanocap. However, how do you define a "group". Will people communicate with each other through an internet forum loosely be viewed legally as a group? Any lawyers here?
-
I want to buy some shares for my 401K's brokerage window since it only allows mutual funds. However, this fund is not available with T. Rowe Price. Is it something that Francis is working on? Can I contact the fund to find out?
It's been awhile since I've asked, but anyone have any idea when the funds will be available through Fidelity?
Thanks.
I spoke with Francis a few weeks back on this issue and he told me that it would probably take between 3-6 months. My hope is that it is closer to three!
-
I was doing some research about some of the mutual funds mentioned above since my 401K brokerage account only allows mutual funds. Here is the pdf I came up, for those of you might be interested. The performance data are from Morningstar as of 3/7/2014. Total assets and holdings data are from Bloomberg and might be a little older.
CRA Income Tax Question
in General Discussion
Posted
This is ok and I have done it myself.