bizaro86

That $1500 isn't a first printing. That matters quite a bit.

As an fyi on value, that is easily worth thousands of dollars. The closest comp I could quickly find (the red first/first edition, also ex-library) https://www.biblio.com/book/security-analysis-principles-technique-graham-benjamin/d/951415339 Is listed for $9k USD. I suspect that price to be slightly high, as condition matters a great deal for these sorts of things. I'd guess yours is worth ~$5k USD.

Might be able to get a 0% mortgage on Denmark :)

This is an interesting quote from this article. I can’t say I follow this advice. My buys and sells are mostly based on valuation with perhaps a short term focus on momentum (letting winners run). I also tend to sell if a stock goes up substantially without change in corroborating news or fundamentals. Sometimes, it pays, and sometimes I leave money on the table, especially in bull markets. When markets seesaw and volatility is high, the buying /selling works very well. Also, if not selling based on fundamentals, what other guidelines is one using? Every single time I have sold a great business for valuation reasons I've regretted it. I think the alternative option is to hold great businesses as long as they're great. I have seen both. To some extend, I was playing the 1999/2000 tech bubble and I really didn’t regret anything I sold back then. Many would have lost 90% back. Even with great companies like MSFT, which did. put out good numbers all along, the multiple regression caused substantial losses that took a decade to make up. Current examples are a bunch or SAAS companies or even something like DIS. While I agree thwt DIS has great assets, I do wonder if the stock surge of ~30% has overextended the stock. The streaming competition is going to be tough and DIS estimates thwt it will take a few years to just break even. Then the cash machine ESPN is becoming a wasting assets. So what we have is a stock that may not have any earnings growth for a couple of years, yet trades at ~27x earnings ($5.2 earnings estimate for 2020), which is far above it’s historical range. I‘d rather own FOX or CMCSA Right now at far lower valuations and that’s indeed where I swapped proceeds from DIS sales into. This may turnout out to be a mistake, but I think it is a value approach and protects downside. I think a lot folks that talk about great business here have not really experience when the multiple compression bear raises its ugly head. Great points as always. There is some level where valuation becomes so egregious (==bubble) that it isn't reasonable for even an excellent business to earn it back. Microsoft in 2001 and maybe the SAAS companies now seem like examples. I'm conflicted about DIS, which is a company I do own in this bucket. I swapped my DIS for FOX pre-merger but took shares in the merger to capture the spread. I think DIS is fundamentally a better business than either comcast or fox, but the valuations are certainly divergent. I also don't think 2020 is likely to have much for upside surprises, especially on the first half of the calendar year. Whatever they get for Disney+ subs right away, there isn't really a big catalyst for new people until the fall of 2020. And the movie slate is way weaker in 2020. So I agree DIS is likely overvalued in the near term. I'm reluctant to sell, but have considered gregmal's thoughts from another thread about selling in the money covered calls with interest. The other one I'm having a hard time with right now is COST - great business, but I wouldn't even consider buying at this price. Maybe I should sell, but I felt the same way at $215...

This is an interesting quote from this article. I can’t say I follow this advice. My buys and sells are mostly based on valuation with perhaps a short term focus on momentum (letting winners run). I also tend to sell if a stock goes up substantially without change in corroborating news or fundamentals. Sometimes, it pays, and sometimes I leave money on the table, especially in bull markets. When markets seesaw and volatility is high, the buying /selling works very well. Also, if not selling based on fundamentals, what other guidelines is one using? Every single time I have sold a great business for valuation reasons I've regretted it. I think the alternative option is to hold great businesses as long as they're great.

I installed a sliding glass patio door this summer. Myself and my wife were able to do the job in 1 afternoon. It wasn't terribly hard, although if I had someone reliable I thought would have done the job for $400 I probably would have done that instead. It was really heavy, so getting it in/level was the hardest part.

Would you hire your own delivery drivers or primarily use the various services? Skip the dishes is the dominant player in that business where I live. I was at Edo Japan yesterday (a stir fry franchise chain) and couldn't believe how many skip the dishes orders there were. It outnumbered it eat in patrons at least two to one. It seems to me that offering inexpensive options with multiple restaurant names could be very effective. (Ie a thai menu, a pizza menu, etc) I suspect even more niche cuisines would be worthwhile. The margins on a meal of pierogies would be huge, and the fact that you wouldn't sell many per night wouldn't be a big issue if you were splitting the overhead between many cuisines.

As follows 1br $1600-1700(towards the lower end you can take your pick of high quality tenants with 700+ credit scores), HOA $330-$350, taxes ~$4700, market value currently ~$160K per(pre 2008 sales where mid 200s) 2br $2200-2400(same as above wrt tenant quality) HOA $400 or so, taxes $6500, market value currently around $250-270k (pre 2008 300s) Here's the reason those numbers work though.. theres ZERO market for $3000 per month and up rentals here. So under $2500 and especially $2000 per month is super competitive. This is just a specific community I have multiple properties in, but by and large those numbers are in the ballpark for what I look for. Again I would reiterate that the way I am investing in the stock market, I need to be consumed by it and its heavily taxing mentally. So with these, Im not looking to have ridiculous returns, but simply have something simple that takes care of itself and does better than the passive 3-5% I'd get elsewhere putting in no effort. I also try to stay disciplined and avoid concentration risk. I'd like to get a few mil face value of properties; ie something that spits off a decent chunk of cashflow, but also something that is reasonable enough in size to offload to a local HNW investor if I ever wanted liquidity and found selling more attractive than the alternatives. What kind of levered cash yield are you getting including amortization? What kind of LTV do you get? What is reasonable long term appreciation? The rents you mentioned are actually in line with Queens NYC which I am kind of surprised by. What's the time to rent after a tenant vacate? I just rented one of my units in less than 10 days. I have heard stories of very high yields in suburbs but you run into issues with renting to a specific group of renters, i.e. college students and very compressed windows to find tenants. You don't get good yields in Queens from day one, but the long term price appreciation tend to be excellent. When levered 70-80%, the long term IRR are quite good. Would it not be typical to show a place for rental while the previous tenants were living there? The standard here is 30 days notice, and I've almost always found that sufficient to get places turned over with zero vacancy. Ie previous tenant moves out may 31, new tenant moves in June 1st. I've probably turned over my rentals 30-40 times, and this month is the first time I've ever taken a day of unplanned vacancy.

I found Danny Meyer's book "Setting the Table" very interesting for thinking about the restaurant business. He has obviously been very successful. He notes in one place that a great lease is a big key to a successful restaurant. He suggested aiming for 1 days average sales for monthly rent as a goal. That suggests to me your 3-4% is probably in the ballpark of being very good.

Management change happened approx. 2 years ago. As Petec says, the NAV has objectively been hardening. The risk lies in their pivot back toward the resource sector and their ultimate reliance on commodity prices. And management skill in making investments in a crappy industry. If the hardened NAV was likely to get paid out to shareholders thatd be one thing. But they're going to invest it in a portfolio of junior miners. Imo that deserves a discount to nav, as it's likely a value destructive strategy.

One business characteristic I think is interesting is something where you build a valuable passive asset as a sidebar to the primary business. This gives potential for a huge capital gain of you succeed, and offsets losses if you fail. I'll provide some examples. Car dealerships are an ok business, but owning large real estate parcels in the path of growth of big cities where the business makes the payments is attractive. Even if everyone goes Tesla I bet 10 acres off the interstate has value. The real estate is incidental to the business but a potential source of large profits. Similarly, many tech companies generate patents in the course of their business that have the potential to provide a bit of a soft landing from licensing. Wi-Lan is an example here. I was aware of a firm that bought a gas field that came with infrastructure. The gas was a terrible business, but they put 3rd party volumes through the plant and made out well with the ancillary business.

If you think the management change will mean that shareholders realize anything close to NAV (ie things are different this time) then this is absolutely a great deal.

If you put $1 MM in cash in a box and then lit the box on fire, I think you'd have a hard time getting someone to pay you NAV of $1 MM for the box. This has been cheap on a nav basis for years, and management keeps incinerating money. Implicit in any thesis that this is cheap seems to be the assumption that "this time it's different." Maybe it is different this time, but that's not a bet I would make.

While this isn't directed to me, I doubt the previous poster meant bid 49.98/ask 49.99 for bid-ask spreads. If Buffett wants to buy a full company away from the stock market, he probably needs to pay a premium, maybe in the 30% range. The ask for the whole firm being greater than the ask for a single share. Similarly, if he takes a big position in something, once disclosed (either quarterly or at 5% of target) that has the potential to increase the price making the remainder of the position more expensive. Oh, spare me. I apologize if my post offended you.

While this isn't directed to me, I doubt the previous poster meant bid 49.98/ask 49.99 for bid-ask spreads. If Buffett wants to buy a full company away from the stock market, he probably needs to pay a premium, maybe in the 30% range. The ask for the whole firm being greater than the ask for a single share. Similarly, if he takes a big position in something, once disclosed (either quarterly or at 5% of target) that has the potential to increase the price making the remainder of the position more expensive.

I had a number of Mawer funds in a DC pension plan at my former employer. The performance was strong in both up and down markets, and the stock selection seemed rational and well done whenever I reviewed their holdings and quarterly buy/sells. I would recommend them.

I really like the mental model of a good (or at least decent) business that is undergoing market dislocation of some kind as a potential compounder. Less has to go right, and multiple expansion can improve things materially. One that might fit that narrative right now is Ulta Beauty. Growing, strong economics, but concerns about everyone switching to ecommerce and missed earnings have brought the stock down quite a bit.

I think I gun manufacturers would be a bad short for your basket. If a staunchly pro gun control president is elected, the second order effect is that those who fear gun control will go out and buy a bunch of guns prior to any enactment. So there will be big profits in the short term that the market will react to.

Charter and comcast aren't really a duopoly imo, they are more like non-overlapping local monopolies. Barriers to entry are huge. I think that is the answer to your question actually - barriers to entry. Oil a d gas is fragmented because there are no barriers to entry. I could start an O&G co pretty easily. By comparison, starting a plane manufacturer has huge barriers to entry. Even if you succeed designing and manufacturing a great airplane (hard!) Without worldwide support it's hard to sell. (Eg Bombarider cseries didn't succeed until it became the A220 with Airbus support)

You're probably actively hurting the environment. Alberta has stringent regulations on venting and flaring associated natural gas production. Many places don't, and vented methane is a way worse greenhouse gas than CO2.

Calls on HGV. Speculation, obviously, but I think the chances of a deal getting announced are relatively good. Blackstone knows the economics well and will be attracted to the ability to put significant capital to work at high returns, and Apollo being in the mix pushes the price up.

What composition of natural gas are you assuming here? The natural gas in most distribution pipelines is something like 98% methane. They have dew point requirements that require it to be so.

Thanks! This should make the "new posts" feature much more relevant for me. As a related note - is anyone aware of a way to "ignore" individual threads? While I don't want to ignore the general board entirely, there is one thread I'd like to ignore as it isn't relevant to me and clogs up the "new posts" list sometimes.

I can't see WEB wanting to own fox news. Economically, you'd have to leave the political perspective (or you'd lose your customers). But I'm not sure, "owner of Fox News" plays well for him socially.

You can't use it for real estate equity. You can use it for real estate debt (ie write mortgages). You can do this through a MIC or directly through a trustee that allows it (Olympia Trust is the biggest player in that market. Some more info here: https://revnyou.com/rrsp-in-real-estate/ Whether that's a good idea or not is something up to you. As far as I know the only way to own real estate in an RRSP is to foreclose on a mortgage it held. And there is a limit on how long your rrsp can hold it iirc, which is risky because you could be a forced seller.