bizaro86

Has this worked for you in the past? My heuristic of buying a bunch when I'm absolutely terrified has worked great so far. I feel like crap for the duration of the downturn but I make a lot of money. That said, there hasn't been a decade long decline during my investing life. It just seems like not buying when there's a reason for the dip makes it likely that you'll miss all the dips. In that case, something like dollar cost averaging or remaining a specific % invested might be better.

I agree with this, but am curious how much skin the game a sponsor would typically have? Between d&o insurance, underwriting, listing fees would the sponsors typically be putting up say 5% of the amount raised? Be curious for any rule of thumb...

This This play, which he only held for 1 day, was a 5x and more importantly helped him build goodwill with the next generation of investors. These are the investors who will be buying his holding company when it goes public. It was a smart business move that communicated to retail investors "I'm on your side." Step 1: establish credibility with the marks

Totally agree! If everyone was left to their own devices, we would have utter chaos! I'll be 52 in July, and even after everything I've saved and invested, I wonder if it is still enough. I also know that the majority of people my age and those heading into retirement have a fraction of what I have saved. Without CPP, universal healthcare, medicare, etc., there is no way they would be able to live a retirement life with any dignity. Cheers! I admit upfront that know very little about the situation in Canada, but I have a neighbor who was was an executive at velcro in Canada (he's now retired), he worked in Canada most of his career and his wife is Canadian. He worked the last 10 years of his working life in the US though. He's in his late 70s now and said that he'd love to move back to Canada, but he could never afford to live there because of the taxes. He claims that his standard of living would have to decrease substantially if he went back there, so he remains in New Hampshire. This seems to contradict what you are saying. As a rule of thumb, wealthy people are better off in the US and middle class and lower are better off in Canada. So your retired executive neighbour probably would pay extra to live in Canada, and Parsad's comment that the average person benefits greatly from the social safety net can both be true. Every winter (it is currently -27C here) I consider moving to California. The breakeven point where the lower taxes cover the increased cost of healthcare (for a good plan for my specific family situation) is a bit over $150k US in income per year. For lower tax states the breakeven would be lower, but probably still $100k+.

Wasn't there some rule change awhile back that required him to be diversified? How come he is allowed to have that much JOE?

I also voted nothing.

Nice, what dates? I sold some Nov $4.50 and July $3 last week. And then some July $.50 for $.05 which I think is a steal. What are your thoughts on valuation? Unless it goes bankrupt I think those $.50 ones are easy money and a 10% return on notional in 6 months. I think your $0.50 will remain out of the money even if it does go bankrupt.

Not having to explain things to clients is the best thing about only managing your own money.

In Alberta we require gas to be conserved. So if you want to produce the oil you build a gathering line for the gas. Simple rule, good for the environment. It also improves the economics of future wells because the pipelines are already built at the front end.

Biggest SPAC ever.

They haven't been willing to take written message for months. Which makes sense, because I'm sure its faster for an agent to verify you then listen to your issue, then deal with it. Getting a question in writing from a pre verified source is probably slower...

+1 I hope if they don't sell they have a better answer than "we believe in the future of the company"

IBKR chairman on CNBC today: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/28/interactive-brokers-restricted-gamestop-trading-to-protect-the-market-says-chairman-peterffy.html He is very worried about a broker or clearinghouse failure. He doesn't mention which counter-party he is worried about, but RH says they are restricting long stock purchases due to CAPITAL requirements. This suggests RH is thinly capitalized. I know RH investors aren't sophisticated enough to understand this, but if I was sitting on $20M paper gains at RH, I'd be very worried about the viability of my broker. Disclosure: long IBKR Edit to add: When you say that IBKR should permit bear call spreads, you are saying that IBKR should accept the counter-party risk on both legs of that trade. The trade might be low-risk for you, but very high risk for IBKR. That is an angle I hadn't considered. Thanks! But my understanding was that the OCC clears every options trade. So IBKR's counterparty on my options trades is always the OCC. If the OCC went down that would be a systemic risk, and I think there is a 100% chance the US government would bail them out. And IBKR reducing GME volume probably doesn't make any difference to OCC's solvency. These aren't OTC derivatives with a specific counterparty like the Bear/Lehman issues.

Blackberry is U.S. listed and files a 10-K so can't imagine Canadian rules apply. Blackberry is also Canadian listed and files in Canada. So Canadian rules also apply. As with most situations, US law doesn't overrule the domestic law of other countries in those countries.

Like Buffett says, you are never forced to swing and can keep the bat on your shoulder all day. Sure, HF's and Banks suck in many ways, but you have the option to at try to not play their games. Ok, I'm not using options or margin but yet I can't buy some stocks with cash? That's what what bothers me personally. THAT is a way better complaint in my opinion. The attention that this is calling to the fact that there has been so little effort to assure suitability is potentially a problem for Robinhood and any other broker that is allowing 18 years with no source of income who don't can't define an option to engage in option trading. I'm guessing they are not excited about the potential this has to stir regulatory attention. Yeah, brokers shouldn't be allowing people to trade things that are dramatically unsuitable for them. But they should deal with that at the KYC stage, not by eliminating trading on specific securities. I have many years of experience successfully trading options. I'd like to write long dated bear call spreads on GME. Interactive Brokers has stopped letting me. I would suggest that isn't serving any actual purpose.

I dont believe anyone thinks the market makers should be forced to keep trading. I certainly don't. If they had pulled out of writing new GME calls a long time ago this never would have gotten so out of hand, because regular market participants would have charged much more given the risk. Those MM are sophisticated institutions and can own their decisions. I think the complaints are mostly about brokers restricting access. The stock and options aren't halted, and with current margin rules there is no risk to the brokers.

I agree it must be a regulator enforced ban. You could easily not lend margin on long GME options and only allow covered short options. That would make the risk to the brokerage zero. And they would still keep making money from the current frenetic trading environment.

No $41t Sherlock. Would have never guessed stock prices would drop when people are not allowed to buy them. ::) These newly minted millionaires need to move to a real broker. IB lets you buy anything. Got an limit order for NOK below $4 in just in case things get really funny on the downside. IB is currently not allowing new GME options trades.

CBOE would have hard feelings about that. I think options are a slight net positive. GME will work itself out, probably with the company doing a big issuance, and I think it would be a shame to neuter markets as a result.

Yeah. I've used RBC, iTrade, and BMO. IBKR is way better than any of them. I compare executions between IB and RBC, and I save more on spreads than I pay in commissions. Plus the commissions are less.

Another way to look at this -- they converted their long duration bond portfolio into a set of income producing real assets at BHE and BNSF. The yields are better and the risks are better than long duration bonds at this point in the bond market cycle. Further, based on Christopher Bloomstran's deep dive, they used the accelerated depreciation credits at BHE and BNSF as a secondary method of reducing tax payments and increasing cashflows. As well, based on Brooklyn Investor's charts, they have built up a large cash component in their portfolio to backstop insurance losses and to provide optionality for opportunistic acquisitions. This is not all black and white but the big asset allocation shift of the last ten years (see attached) has been the movement of funds from longer term fixed income to cash and equivalents. This movement raises two questions (the indirect one raised by wabuffo and a direct one). The indirect (and retrospective) one: Returns would have been better if the longer term fixed income portion would have grown proportionally to float. The direct one: Does the current (and growing) allocation offer potentially significant optionality value? (my answer is yes) Part of the decision in shifting from bonds to other assets (cash, owned income producing assets) is about expected future returns. The move seems correct, but the unexpected happened during the recent COVID panic -- government became a lender of first resort where normally Berkshire would have had its pick of distressed assets. A similar crossroads is appearing now for Berkshire. AAPL is starting to flatline in terms of its EBIT growth and topline sales growth, but it's priced for some large expectations out of the business. Does Berkshire exit, partially exit or hold due to the expected tax hit? In 1998, Berkshire was facing a similar question with very sizable paper gains in Coca Cola, Gillette and American Express in particular. Berkshire had an out where they turned a ~3x BV share price into General Re with a merger where they acquired a substantial amount of float and a bond-heavy portfolio that they turned into cash. So, giving up a bit of equity to acquire a cashable asset was enough to de-risk an overvalued portfolio without incurring a very sizable capital gains hit from selling KO, G or AXP. Do they interrupt compounding at lower rates going forward and take the sizable capital gains tax hit? History says no, but the new answer may be something creative just like the last time. IIRC he has said not selling KO at the peak was a mistake. I think he is an expert at learning from mistakes. Maybe a swap for like the deal they did with Graham holdings somehow?

Lol. Maybe r/Wallstreetbets had it right. Hard to argue when even Charlie Munger is buying electric vehicle stocks on margin. I guess he did it before it was cool.

I like the Brookfield Office Properties prefs, BPO.PR.N and BPO.PR.P specifically. They are priced about $14 up from $10 but still very cheap. I thought this piece on BPO prefs was pretty good. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4398071-brookfield-property-partners-canadian-preferred-shares-will-remain-outstanding-and-are

12 months ago I would have given you 1000-1 odds that wouldn't be true.

I haven't been shy in the past about calling out mistakes at the namesake firms here. But I think the risk reward from switching to short term bonds makes it hard to call it a mistake. BRK doesn't have a big loss from interest rate derivatives, although they did miss a chance for profits in bonds from falling rates. But they also avoided a potentially large loss (if rates had risen). Buffett has consistently said his priority (rule 1) is to not lose money, and long bonds are a great way to do that if sharply rising rates are on the table. Because he is consistent with his stated plan and the overall results have been acceptable, I think its hard to call that a mistake. YMMV.