bizaro86

Being well rested makes a huge difference to mental acuity. My decision making is way worse when I'm tired. We recognize this for things like driving, there is no reason to think it would be different for more complex and multi-faceted decision making areas (like investing).

Basically any brokerage should be able to register the shares in your name. There would be a fee.

Yeah, I've been a buyer recently here at $9.xx I think I'd prefer to see them buy some more land vs buy back stock however. If they could get a couple more neighborhoods using their water they'd really speed up the tap fees, which is where the value is. Even if servicing the land was a break even proposition, accelerating the tap fee monetization by a decade or two has a big NPV affect.

It seems possible that it slightly overstates occupancy. My last office job you scanned your pass at a big glass door. If someone else on the floor was on the elevator with you, only one of you scanned. If you're the only person coming in today, that's one scan just for you, but 3 of you on the same elevator would still be 1 scan. Its also possible that scans would understate occupancy. Pre covid-19, I might have gone for a coffee and a lunch outside the building. I bet more people are staying in their buildings now (1 scan per day instead of 3-4)

Fairfax got 9.5 billion rupees ($134 MM) for 11.5% of Anchorage. The 2.7 billion is the implied valuation of BIAL, not the valuation FIH got for Anchorage. So the valuation of anchoeage is $1.165 B. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/12/16/1960880/0/en/Fairfax-India-Sells-Minority-Position-of-Anchorage-Infrastructure.html FIH has to take Anchorage public at a 1.3 B valuation, or OMERS gets more shares. The embedded put option OMERS got as part of the deal was in the money when they wrote it. If you assume BIAL is less valuable now (likely) then it is more in the money.

It will also be important to see whether OMERS renegotiates the valuation of the airport or goes ahead with 2.7B. The transaction is supposed to close by the end of Q3 2020. Why would OMERS renegotiate? They get a free look at the upside, and FIH makes them whole with a bigger ownership if the IPO doesn't price out. In many ways, the deal could be spectacular for them as written. If things stay slow for the duration of their option, they will end up with a bigger percentage of an irreplaceable infrastructure asset at a deep cyclical low price.

I am extremely (honestly!) curious how one would hedge an IPO allocation of a stock? How about shorting a basket of public companies in the same industry but are more over valued? I.e CRM? Or maybe they just have some insights that you don’t have? Maybe they have used SNOW’s product and found it’s extremely useful and have huge scalability? What insights you have that others don’t have so you have the confidence to discredit their investment decision? You said you thought it was a short term hedged trade. I like learning new things, so wanted to know how you thought they might have done that. I don't have any insights of any kind, and have no opinion on whether this is a good idea. I'm a bit concerned it is outside their circle of competence, but cloud databases are so far outside my circle of competence I have no idea what valuation is appropriate here. I certainly wasn't trying to discredit their decision, and that's not what the words that I wrote say. Edited to add: I really like market structure/capital structure arbs, and do them often.

I am extremely (honestly!) curious how one would hedge an IPO allocation of a stock?

It looks like he bought at an average cost of $308 USD roughly or about $420-425 CDN per share. It says he bought in the last few days before the press release...I would imagine it was around the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th, where the stock was around $425 CDN or less and volumes rose. If he is buying there, then I would imagine he is expecting a return of better than 15% annualized or more over the next few years. Cheers! The question then becomes is Prem expecting a 15% return a good predictor of future 15% returns.

I have circle-of-competence concerns about them buying money-losing tech stocks at IPO.

The prospectus says they have a market standoff agreement for 365 days. It isn't totally clear, but it seems they may not be able to sell this right away.

If they said they were going to index the equity portion of their investments the stock would go up materially the next day, imo. The market views their investing as significantly value destructive.

Switched my BRK call leaps (deep ITM) back to shares.

Occam's razor says it was the fee. Why else would he do it? If the IPO was actually imminent, why not just put OMERS in the IPO with a big allocation. Discount them the I-banker fee or something. The only way I can see the deal structure making sense is that it was specifically designed to get OMERS to agree to a higher price than they otherwise would have been willing to pay to get the fees to print. The timing fits that, it was right at the last minute for this years fee calculation. The deal has no downside for OMERS, if the airport ends up being less valuable (for some unknowable reason like a pandemic, for instance) they just get more shares to make them whole. No downside for FFH, they got their fee already. All the downside is at FIH, who could end up giving up a huge chunk of their best asset at a low price, right after paying fees for selling it at a high price. Seems pretty win-lose for minorities to me. I guess the other possible motivation is that Prem just wants to do a favor for his friends at OMERS. Sort of like the Torstar deal, maybe he's doing a favor for a friend with shareholder's money. That seems less likely to me, but even if its true I don't think its any better. Can you think of another motivation for doing the deal? I can't imagine anyone would seriously suggest it was a good deal structure for FIH shareholders...

The airport transfer is a pretty obviously egregious one. They marked it at a high mark to get fees, and only got that high mark by using sub shareholder money to guarantee the buyer their price was money good. They should have had to mark what was effectively a put option on a high volatility illiquid asset separately. After that experience I'd shake hands with FFH management, but would count my rings after.

I wonder if those statements are targeted toward insurance regulators. If they say in a filing they think they only need $X in capital it would be a bad look for him to say they need 5X in public. Just speculating.

This probably isn't a perfect conparable, but Calgary office vacancy has been in the 25% range for awhile now. The cause there is low oil prices and pipeline issues, not Covid, so the city is well ahead of the curve there. This has been going on for years, and so far there haven't been conversions, even though residential has held up way better. Asking rents are holding firm in the $15 psf range, which is down ~70% or more from peak figures 5-7 years ago.

I think (especially as John has described it) AirBNB probably fits these criteria. About to IPO, huge runway. I think post-covid people will still want to travel, and they have the best market position in the travel universe. Margins should expand dramatically as they continue to grow. They will have to add pivot's to adjacent markets to get to FAANG size, but I think a 2-3 year double from IPO (assuming it comes in around the $25-30 B rumoured price) doesn't seem like a stretch.

I think Vancouver only riots when they lose. No evidence exists as to what happens if the Canucks win the cup.

Yeah, they added another 2 months since my last post, so the max is now 12k. I think the tax thing will be an issue for lower income types. Say 20% tax is owed on the 12k, (under 40k in Ontario) that's $2400. I think the number of low wage folks that will have that money saved by next spring is very, very low. I get it doesn't seem like an objectively large amount of money for probably anyone on this board, but for the types who struggle to pay their rent every month it will absolutely be an issue.

Does anyone know if these increases are going to affect "bare land stratas" in BC? or the increases only affecting condo stratas? Anyone know how to independently verify the financial health of a strata in BC? Thanks I would expect the percentage change to the cost of insurance to be the same, but the portion of your fees that is composed of insurance is likely much lower in a bare land condo, as there isn't much to insure. I'm in Alberta not BC, but here condominium corporations publish audited financial statements that you can purchase from the management company. They charge an unreasonable amount for them (imo) but its a must-have before buying a condo. I like to check how the actuals compared to the budget (if they came way over the fees are likely not sustainable). Also, check the reserve fund. If contributions are lower than called for in the report OR if the balance in the fund is lower than called for then fees will likely go up and/or a special assessment. The one exception is if a big project has been completed early. I own a couple of units in a building where we did the windows 2 years early. So instead of having the $250k that the reserve fund study calls for us to have saved for windows, we have $250k worth of new windows.

Anecdote alert: I think Canadian tourism increasing will be a partial offset for Mexico. Many people I know (myself included) cancelled a winter holiday or spring break trip somewhere warm last year. If its possible to go go (no 14 day quarantine on return) people will want to. Given the situation in the US, Mexico seems relatively more attractive, so while the pie will be smaller they should have a bigger share.

I own a vacation home that I rent out most of the time. I've owned it almost exactly a year. I used it about 4 weeks in the last year and rented it out 194 days of the last 12 months. It has paid for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and all bills + about $15K extra. The bad news is that I put $100k down on it and spent about $40k on one time improvements. But the house is pretty much the way we want it now and almost everything has been fixed, redone, or replaced, so unless something breaks the one time costs should be very little per year going forward. Also we have started to increase our prices and have not had a hard time getting bookings, so we should be able to push that $15K extra up to $20k or more. Some thoughts about doing this is that you need a good local person you can trust. We found someone before we even bought the house. She owns a cleaning business and lives 5min from the house. She cleans in-between guests, does the linens, takes care of the lawn/landscaping, takes the trash to the transfer station, fills propane tanks when they need it, shovels snow in the winter, and will go to check on the house or help guests with anything that comes up. I don't know how we would manage it without her or someone like her. I would be constantly driving there to take care of things. Also, make sure the house is in good condition or you realistically assess what it will cost you to put it in good condition. I said above that we put $40k in improvements and that was with us doing 90% of the work ourselves. If we couldn't have stayed there and worked on it ourselves that would have been twice the costs. Our plan is to pay off the mortgage in under 8-10 years by putting excess money from airbnb rentals into the principle. Then when we are older it will produce income or maybe someday when I retire we will sell our main house and live there. We love the area, it has a great beach and it is on the prettiest part of Lake Winnipesaukee. Good luck with your search. And BTW if you are ever looking to stay on Lake Winnipesaukee: http://airbnb.com/h/TheBungalowAtSmithPoint Thank you! This is really interesting story! Would you say this investment is essential the equivalent of buying a residential REIT at book value? If you can make the choice again, would you buy this property or would you buy some residential REIT stocks? I see some residential REITs trading way above book and some trading way below book. But I understand that the book value can go down as depreciation though the actual property value goes up. I don't have trusted persons outside of Seattle. I wonder if buying beach condos make more sense in my case? The HOA will take care of most issues and I just need to find a cleaner who can do interior work. Do you have actual experience owning a condo where "the HOA will take care of most issues"? I've owned a significant number of condos and I've found that while that may be true for big stuff (roof leaks or similar) often if I want my space repaired quite a bit of my involvement is required. And many of the issues involved with owning a condo (appliances, etc) aren't HOA issues. I think renting by the night is likely to add more issues (what will you do when someone calls that the wi-fi isn't working?). Likely that's just user error, but still needs to be dealt with. I agree with the poster above that having a trustworthy on-the-ground person is the number one factor to succeeding in that market.

I wonder if this is partially related to the recent permission to go to 25% of BAC. Seems possible that he doesn't want more than $X of banks, and likes BAC the best. So the selling of the others could be rotating in to his first choice which was previously not permitted.

I got some Kodak OTM puts at the open.