bizaro86

I thought this substack piece was pretty interesting: https://turningroughstones.substack.com/p/how-45-different-best-ideas-played?s=r The author went through the 2021 "Best Ideas" contest on Seeking Alpha. He excluded a few things (warrants, crypto). I'd probably have kept the warrants and excluded the crypto personally, as my investable universe doesn't include crypto but does include warrants. Contests aren't necessarily a great source of ideas, but I did think it was interesting how he broke the results down by style. It shouldn't surprise this board that value was the winning style, and given the market in 2021 commodities were next. I would have thought growth type opportunities would be better for a contest type situation, as they usually have a higher underlying volatility. I suppose that might make them more likely to win but lower overall average returns. Although he declared the winner a value special situation/oil play (UNTC), which is basically the opposite of a growth stock as they're actively liquidating... I also thought it was interesting (although not especially surprising) that he concluded less popular authors had better returns.

Not Spek, but I'm a long term ROST holder (and adding below $90). I think management is quite a bit better than TJX, and I expect better growth from all the whitespace on their map.

I left a sarcastic response earlier, but in all seriousness I think Reed Hastings qualifies. First he took video stores DTC and scaled it for cash flow. Then he took that cash flow and spent it buying content for streaming, inventing a new category. Then he realized the studios would figure that out and started producing internally. I looked at Netflix when streaming started and figured the tech barriers were too high and passed. Oops. The only strategic mistake I see is a lack of M&A. They should have bought more established content. If they had bought Lucasfilm and MGM they'd be in a better position.

Coast Wholesale Appliances got taken over (or under, imo) by the majority shareholder. They have a great business model (I've been a long time customer for my rental properties) and had lots of high ROIC growth ahead of them. The valuation didn't reflect the business quality, so even though I made money I was pretty annoyed as I think it was a compounder. The one that really chapped me was Canadream. They are an RV rental business in Western Canada. Tons of demand, and they were expanding every year (again at high ROIC). Tripled in the time I owned it (under 3 years) but the takeover was still at a low multiple. They had a huge runway, and were improving utilization every year. Plus it was such a capital intensive business and such a small company that they had great reinvestment characteristics, so again a compounder. In both cases I think I lost a compounder the market hadn't recognized early in the growth phase, so the one time boost was almost certainly outweighed by losing the long term performance. Canadream especially I think would have easily been a 10 bagger.

Maybe if someone wasn't buying all the volume the rest of us would be able to get a few more shares down around that $10-11 range.

If you're seriously considering buying real estate outside of the Canadian city where you live I'd consider Calgary. It's cheap compared to most of the US, and VERY, VERY cheap compared to Toronto/Vancouver. When you add oil at $85 the near term picture looks pretty good. Also, if you ever plan to do the "leveraged recap" plan mentioned above mortgages i Alberta are non-recourse as long as you don't get mortgage insurance. But 20% down in Alberta is probably the same $ value as 5% down in TO. Since you're still in Canada it'll be easier to get a mortgage with your existing banking/credit info. I'm biased (I own quite a bit of Calgary RE) but I also haven't been this excited about the setup for RE here since 2009.

Spent some time looking at this, and will answer my own question for the benefit of others. It is MUCH more user friendly than screener.co in terms of entering data. I've become used to the idiosyncrasies of screener.co, but after 5 minutes I'm probably just as fast with this. Plus its considerably cheaper. So I've cancelled my screener.co and bought the Tikr annual subscription instead. The one piece of feedback I have is that for some screener variables CAGR isn't a good metric, and instead a trailing average is better (and that's something screener.co does do). For example, I often screen on Return on Equity. And I like the 5 or 10 year average ROE quite a bit better than the prior year or any CAGR based metric.

Has anyone used both this and screener.co? I have had a screener.co subscription for a number of years, but am thinking this might be a good replacement with some added functionality. Anyone used both?

Can one have a vision fund without being a visionary?

I dont think inflation helps utilities at all. The primary source if value is the regulated rate base, which is denominated in USD and guaranteed a return. Inflation makes the real value of that regulated rate base smaller.

I'm not saying they did well- anyone who owned AOL at the peak should have sold immediately. But AOL shareholders ended up with a lot more money than they would have otherwise had. Some of their losses got transferred to to Time Warner shareholders. It seems to me that if you have very overvalued stock the best capital allocation is to sell as much of it as possible. A stock acquisition is a backdoor way of doing that.

I think Berkshire has mostly not issued stock because the shares have mostly been fairly valued to undervalued during their history. There have been a few times they got pretty high and iirc thats when he did stock acquisitions (ie BNSF). A stock acquisition can be very good for shareholders if done with overvalued paper. For example, Steve Case doing the Warner deal may have generated more value for AOL shareholders than any other corporate action ever. The value was all transferred from Time Warner shareholders.

I have cable broadband, but would switch to the telephone company broadband in a heartbeat if it was cheaper. They both laid fibre in my neighbourhood, but so far every 2 years when our deal is up my wife calls and says we'll switch if they don't give us another deal and they do every time. We've lived here for 12 years and never switched or paid full price.

The Canadian brokers all sell order flow - so your order is sitting at a HFT awaiting a match.

Yeah, if you're planning on doing more than one trade outside of N. America it probably makes sense to sign up for IB.

I've spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to solve this problem in Calgary. The newsstand at the airport used to be the best place for it here. I have nothing constructive to add, but if you figure it out please post!

So the remainder of this basket is now worth a very nominal amount of money. It worked out ok for me, as I took more than my initial capital out when I sold down in the spring, but wasn't a success compared to the returns in the rest of my portfolio. That said, it did help me keep a steady hand as everything went up and to the right, so it probably added some profits that way. I'm looking at re-upping here. SPAK options have gotten so illiquid/expensive that I don't think they make sense any more. I'm probably going to re-up with the other names in the original post, and maybe some straight SPY OTM puts. Any other things people think are overvalued and/or have cheap puts I'd be very interested in hearing !

Thanks for sharing that. I never lived in a dorm, but that looks at least as nice as many at the school I attended. We also had no need for surfboard storage. It seems to me that indoor space might be less important in a climate where that is a valuable amenity.

My returns in my RRSP have been much, much greater than the interest rate on my mortgage.

I had a number of millennial tenants split up and move out to two separate addresses during covid. Although I don't think any of them were legally married. I'm a millennial, and it seems in general among my friends that the people who actually get married are pretty serious about it. But many people are cohabiting (using less housing as a result) without being married.

Are electricity and phone service already included in NYC rent? Those are almost always tenant paid here.

My understanding is the same as yours. Personally, I'd rather use a points or cash back Mastercard or visa and then transfer money out or IBKR once a month to pay it when due.

I think an arb etf has the chance of permanent loss of capital in a downturn if deals break and market valuations go lower.

I don't have any insight to why the operator is who it is, but the shutdown here is probably not capex related. Large energy facilities take turnarounds for maintenance often, usually either annually or biannually. You need to shut it down to inspect the pressure vessels, do the major service on compressor engines, etc.