bizaro86

I'm not familiar with this company whatsoever, but is it actually down by ~90% today? What service is showing it as being down that much? I've checked several and only Seeking Alpha is showing down by ~90%. Thanks! I saw it on the SA biggest losers list, pulled up the 10-Q and checked the P/B and whether it was actually bankrupt and bought a few hundred shares. The $13MM in trust preferreds that haven't been paid for years is a pretty significant factor in the current valuation that I also missed. I though this was an illiquid fat finger type deal, and it wasn't, so I've sold. Thanks to you both for helping keep my loss on carelessness <$100.

Bought a bit of CARV this AM. Small NYC bank that is down 90% today. Released (not very good) earnings yesterday, but capital ratios still look reasonable and I couldn't find any enforcement actions or anything.

Most likely options to succeed are to get a different lender or wait 6 months and try again. I have had success in the past by offering to pay for a 2nd appraisal. The bank picked a second appraiser of their approved list and gave me the loan based on the new (higher) appraisal. I met them at the property and provided comps that I thought were reasonable. Making it easier for them to give me the answer I wanted.

I suppose if they were willing to give up their Bank charter. And if they weren't a bank, it would free up Berkshire to acquire Delta without worrying about the Fed fretting over a very material commercial relationship... Good point. Also, Amex probably wouldn't need it's bank charter to attract funds if it was part of Berkshire.

One of the airlines seems plausible. I'd prefer they buy Aercap, but they don't seem interested in airplane leasing. On that I'd love to see in the next downturn would be DIS. At $250B market cap it would be big enough to move the needle, and the parks/hotels/cruise ships have plenty of opportunity to deploy capital at attractive returns

I have a screener.co subscription. Not free, but at ~$25/month it's not Bloomberg territory either.

If long term investors are capitulating, I hope WEB is buying their shares today on all our behalf.

Sold some BRK.B puts - added to IBKR with the proceeds+

Great post! I've been looking at GBT - seems like they might have a bit of a moat (local scale, language barrier for national entrants) and are down substantially (on poor results) recently. I'd be curious if you've continued to follow them, and if you have any thoughts. Big risk to me seems macro - if QC housing does poorly for a few years they will struggle, but I think it is a business that probably deserves to exist.

Interesting! Any suggestions there?

Before I read the author, I though this post might have been valueyoda. I think luck and skill are at least partially independent variables, and both are important. You can control for many important luck variables (siblings have mostly the same circumstances, for example, and don't turn out the same). I think it's also interesting how small "lucky" choices can have a big impact, like being in the right place to meet a spouse as mentioned previously. I married very well, but many of the characteristics that have been a big long term benefit to my life/marriage (my wife is a very hard worker, organized, etc) weren't things that I strongly selected for when I was younger and seeking a spouse.

I think generally speaking the big banks will do so for $50-$100/trade. I do anything outside the US/Canada in my non-registered IBKR account.

Great to be late! Buy at $0.80 and get all the worthless stuff for free. And maybe they will buy back the preferred at a big discount to the $120mm some day. Optionality... Couple of decent value investors... Roumell.... Factoring in the additional common shares and the elimination of the preferred stock liability, we estimate that the reported NAV will approximate $4.58. The shares currently trade at only $1.15 giving us an attractive 75% discount to reported NAV. Even under our most conservative scenario assumption, where we take certain significant haircuts to Management’s valuations and factor in future cash expenses, we believe the shares trade at about a 50% discount to NAV. Ravensource.... Free of emotional baggage carried by existing investors, we worked to determine whether there was opportunity within the chaos. With Dundee’s portfolio of ~100 names, we first performed triage to cull the smaller and speculative investments and focused our analytical rigour on the remaining few with tangible and obvious value. Our analysis concluded Dundee’s assets were worth in excess of the face value and 3x the market value of its preferred shares. We were also attracted to the preferred shares’ 12% dividend yield, equivalent to 15.7% interest on a bond factoring in the tax advantages of dividends. In the third quarter of 2018 we began buying the Series 2 & 3 preferred shares, based on a large margin of safety, healthy yield and potential catalysts for meaningful capital appreciation. Regarding optionality - there is certainly optionality here, and I agree that cash + DPM - liabilities/prefs is a pretty hard value. However, that optionality is absolutely not free, even if it has no upfront cost. Dundee is burning cash pretty quickly with spending on G&A, prefs, and making new goofy investments. So there is a true "option premium" being paid for the potential that Chad or something else comes in, in the form of cash burn until that happens. Realistically, I can't imagine anyone thinks this is a quality business/compounder, and I think most would agree that absent a big hit (Chad is a go!) that whatever your number for NAV is it will probably be lower in a year from now. Definite melting ice cube. I'm not saying it can't go up, and I chickened out and closed my short to take a very nice short term profit, so I have no position here.

I though Benjamin Moore only sold through their own dealers?

How big a piece of land? Not-close-to-a-city makes a pretty big difference to land values in Canada, and QC has historically been cheaper.

Regulated utilities in good markets might make sense here. A regulated return of 10% (or whatever) is worth way more than book right now, which is why these trade for more than their rate base. If energy storage ends up as an opportunity for utilities to put huge extra capital into their grids, they can grow their rate base. They buy capex for $1 and the market values it > $1, so that is potentially very accretive.

Maybe low cost producers of commodities that you think the battery chemistry will require? Ie - Lithium, cobalt, etc?

That is a lot of driving for a 6 day trip, imo. Toronto to Niagara Falls is 2 hours each way, plus at least 5 hours to Montreal and then 2.5-3 hours to Quebec City. I'd probably pick less things and do them more thoroughly, but that may be a matter of personal preference.

I feel like there should be a rule about coin flip analogies on this board. Between this and the PWE thread I feel like I've stepped through the looking glass. Maybe it's just me.

Is there any logical reason why bitcoin as a store of value should have the same total value as gold though? Land ownership is a store of value, as are diamonds and rare baseball cards. None of those things have the same market cap. That seems like a logical fallacy where total addressable market is assumed to be already captured. If you think bitcoin and gold compete in the "durable store of value, non govt intervention" market, is there any reason to think BTC will take 100% market share?

I feel the same way about their valuation. But every single time I've sold something I believe to be an excellent business for that reason I've regretted it, so I'm holding for now.

FRPH?

What are the odds you are offering? 70-30. But I won't make a real bet since (a) there's no platform that I'd trust (b) if bet amount would have to be pre-deposited, it's a negative return even if I win. B isn't true if the two people betting can agree on a suitable investment to keep the funds that they would otherwise both hold. When Buffett made his hedge fund vs S&P bet, they put the money in zero coupon treasuries, and then switched to BRK after treasuries rocketed, and did very well. Surely there would be some compounder the two parties could agree on...

Putting money into a uranium junior. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/06/03/1863599/0/en/Acquisition-of-Shares-of-ALX-Uranium-Corp.html

Did anyone have the prefs in a Canadian big bank brokerage? Have they converted you to tradeable shares? While the price action has been down (as I would expect) I haven't seen the volume increase I would have expected from such a huge slug of new shares coming available. I'm getting antsy to close the rest of my short (I bought some in at $0.94) but don't want to buy this aggressively, especially as it seems volume has been weak.