bargainman

What's your strategy here? Some sort of arb?

Their intro video is pretty funny too

oof that bit about the medical association limiting supply really hits a hot button. In the meantime healthcare costs keep on climbing....

Interesting that Bitcoin seems better than ETH now, I thought it was the opposite before. What's the state of Bitcoin cash? Wasn't that supposed to solve this issue? Also how about all the mining/climate/carbon impact? Are any strategies to mitigate that panning out?

ha. Those are non-elites who can't afford to retire in state! The actual 'elites' stay

Anyone here know what the state of crypto and transactions is? Last I read Bitcoin and Ethereum had major transaction issues, meaning the scale of the system had not gotten there. Ie the requirement to get the blockchain updated was a costly and major impediment to someone 'paying for coffee w/ crypto'.

Apologies for the political click bait title of this video. I thought it was interesting though wrt housing, especially in CA and NY. Basically the 'yes, but not in my backyard' issue.

POWERUP 4.0: Smartphone Controlled Paper Airplane - POWERUP® (poweruptoys.com) Flying paper airplanes with my kid and smartphone

I guess I'll be keeping my 1997 for another year...

There are many options variations and enough greeks to shake a stick at. You do generally want to sell short term and buy long term, but even that has exceptions. Usually I buy LEAPs fairly ITM on long term solid companies and hold enough cash where I'm not overly leveraged. Were I to sell puts I'd probably become leveraged. I know folks who oversold puts and got wiped out a couple of times cause they weren't careful. Just cause there's no money out of your pocket doesn't mean there couldn't be. That said, I'm probably too conservative at times

What happened to make V and MA drop? Any thoughts on impact short or long term?

Oh I've certainly done this. Several cases where selling credits (either short puts or covered calls) have been some of the 'worse' financial decisions. I've learned to never go all in on credit selling. I'll always have some unlimited upside left open, mostly for psychological reasons, but also because if you cut off all your unlimited gains you'll likely greatly limit your returns over time. Plus it's easier to buy a leap and get unlimited (in theory) gains vs sell credits over 16-30ish months and manage those positions. Especially if you're busy

@ERICOPOLY why these particular strikes and expiration? If you don't mind sharing

MELI. Anyone else looking at MELI?

I bought $1k many years ago when it was Hansen. Then a few years later I sold $1K after it tripled to 'get my money back'. One of the dumbest financial investment decisions I ever made.

I park cash in SHV or MINT. Both are pretty close to what 'special deal open an account bank savings accounts' will give you. Plus I can hold these in any brokerage account. Lately the % has been awful but same for any 12 month cash like instrument.

wow, these are his best ideas now... "Of the total, 42.8% is composed of cash, U.S. Treasury Bills, money market funds, and investment-grade commercial paper with an average duration of two weeks. 30.6% is in St. Joe common stock, 12.3% in the preferred stock of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 8.9% in the debt of Imperial Metals, and 2.9% in the common stock of Vista Outdoors. Sears 8% bonds of 2019 compose 1.5% of net assets, with Imperial Metals’ common stock at 0.8% and Sears’ common stock at 0.1%. " what happened to you Bruce? :-( http://www.fairholmefundsinc.com/Documents/FairholmeFundsInc20181029.pdf

So does anyone have any thoughts on what caused Berkowitz to go from outperforming for many years to the streak of underwhelming performance? I still cannot believe that his best ideas were Sears, St. Joe's, and Fannie Mae Freddie Mac preferreds.

you don't need to purchase whole units. Satoshi units will do. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_(unit)

I wouldn't want them in my town that's for sure.

I've moved to script editor based.. eg: =getMidPrice("AAPL180119C00100000") where tools->script editor, then enter: function getMidPrice(ticker) { ticker = encodeURI(ticker); var response = UrlFetchApp.fetch("https://query2.finance.yahoo.com/v7/finance/options/" + ticker); var chain = JSON.parse(response.getContentText()); var ask = parseFloat(chain.optionChain.result[0].quote.ask); var bid = parseFloat(chain.optionChain.result[0].quote.bid); var mid = (bid + ask) / 2; return mid; } ymmv

Well it sounds like there's a large genetic component, so it's bound to get into shouting matches http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/19/genetics-politics-beliefs-encoded-genes-video_n_4455391.html https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-genetics-of-politics/

remember Lustig's talk. Apparently fructose is the biggest culprit, not necessarily glucose. Apparently it's digestive pathway is like alcohol and generates all sorts of toxic byproducts.

It is hard to respect a man who, at some point, can NOT admit a mistake. Buffett has always been great about admitting mistakes. (By the way...I revived this old thread to point out that some members of this board seem to have a greater mind for value investing than Morningstar's Manager of the Decade™. If Berkowitz had listened to those above this post and perhaps kept his Pfizer, White Mountains Insurance Group and Bank of America holdings instead of doubling and tripling down on Eddie Lampert...) whatever happened to.. 'we count the cash'??

Watch this video from the point of view of one of those contractors it's only a few minutes and quite elucidating: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestreptalks/2016/07/13/this-architect-says-trump-almost-destroyed-his-business-but-that-doesnt-mean-they-cant-get-coffee/#12f0d0806d9a This is a pattern and it has happened over and over again if you do any research. Basically his strategy is one of a lack of integrity and trying to arbitrage the deal when he can get it. It's basically a standard operating procedure it seems. He negotiates a deal, gets the other person to agree to a price, then gets other person to do the work, then when the other person does the work and sends the bill, then at that stage he doesn't pay it or he pays less than half. Then he sends his lawyers out to the person and tells them that they can sue him and they will probably win if they sue him, but it's the lawyer's job to make their lives is so miserable and make the process so long and difficult that they would just be better off taking less than half or even less than that of what they are actually owed by contract. He has bankrupted his contractors many times over doing this… And hey sure it works… This is why I brought up his earlier comments about the United States debt. He kind of made that flippant comment, about being able to renegotiate the debt. And yes we could definitely renegotiate the debt since we print the currency etc. But this isn't really about that. The fact that he goes in knowing that later on he's going to try to change/renegotiate the agreement, demonstrates an immense lack of integrity. And I'm certain this is something Buffett would never do.