bizaro86

Would an enduring power of attorney help prevent this? If your relative could present a court with a document saying "if I'm ever not in sound mind I appoint my son John smith my guardian" it seems like that would be governing, wouldn't it? I'd be pretty young for someone to pull this on me, but it seem likely that the time to prepare for stuff like that is before you need to.

Been busy. Last week or so: Wrote BRK.B puts (195 and 197.5 strikes) channeling my inner boilermaker. LIF.TO WEQ.DB SHLD debt

I don't understand how a stock can be up from its 52 week high. Unless that part of the pie chart is only stocks that are flat at a 52 week high?

Nice to hear that you have 500B to spare. ;) Probably want to use limit orders on that one.

If I had $1 B I certainly wouldn't burn it trying to take down Uber, but I'm pretty confident that with that amount of cash you could scale a competitor. I make no claims that it would be easy to raise, but you had quoted WEB on coke, and I don't think Uber is the same at all.

I could take on Uber with a few billion. You'd need the tech infrastructure, of course, which I don't think would be insurmountable. Then, you'd contact all the existing Uber and Lyft drivers, and offer them 125% of the fare collected if they drove for you as well, then charge 90% of Uber price. Cheaper for users and more $ for drivers. Drivers would sign up, because they can do both. Many already drive for Uber and Lyft, and I don't think Uber can make their contracts exclusive without risking making the drivers employees. You could leverage their existing driver base to gain scale. You'd burn money, of course, but that doesn't seem to be an issue for actual Uber. I'd start in big VC cities for maximum exposure to funders...

I'd pay 8x P/S for airbnb if that was available to me in a heartbeat. I think long term their margins are better than booking.Com (less advertising required) and their relationship with thousands of individual hosts is a moat. I think they have untapped pricing power as well.

Mostly nothing is that special about their brands. Nobody gets excited about chalet/montanas/Kelseys etc. They are in airports and strip malls. Swiss Chalet is bar none the cheapest sit down restaurant where I live (including family run ethnic food restaurants) so they have that going for them.

If it's going to AECO (which is in Southern Alberta) and then Dawn that is TCPL transportation. Alliance goes to Chicago. Firm is better than interuptible, but Alliance is better than TCPL because gas is at a premium in the Midwest compared to Canada, although AB gas has been strong lately...

Do you know off the top of your head - is the egress Tcpl or Alliance? The latter is obviously worth more, although a brief look suggests their production is relatively dry, which I think reduces the premium for getting gas on Alliance.

I did read the full text and that's about the gist of it. A couple of things about your list thought. There's nothing in there about increased production of automobiles in the US. Another major thing is the elimination of NAFTA chapter 11 - Investor dispute resolution system. Reasonable minds may disagree here but I think that it was boneheaded to begin with and personally I'm glad it's gone. I'm quite surprised that the Trump Administration wanted that one gone. I can't imagine it was hard for us to agree. I think the idea is that the "high wage" content excludes Mexican factories (at least for now) so that will push content in Mexican vehicles back to the US. I agree that Trump shot the US in the foot getting rid of chapter 11. Canada loses those all the time, and I don't think Canadians have ever won one in the US. Canada has paid out over $200 MM in claims, I believe all of that money has gone to US corporations. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/nafta2018 While the US has never lost one. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nafta-isds-weekend-1.4814141 Doesn't seem like something that hurts Canada to have removed to me...

The de minimus is only going up that high for duty, sales tax only goes to $40. The issue for online shopping doesn't tend to actually be duty, it tends to be huge brokerage fees charged to collect a couple of bucks of GST. My impression as a Canadian consumer is that Trump got a "win" but online shopping and cheese are both unlikely to get any cheaper. Sales tax means I still pay brokerage fees, and the quota is small enough that it'll go to US producers as producer surplus without really lowering domestic prices...

"Useful" in the context I'm using it means "statistically likely to result in income sufficient to repay the loan used to acquire it." I think it's quite likely the market would be able to figure that out.

Apparently that was an experiment to decide what the best price is, and they are now charging everyone the same price.

This is a net-negative solution. Take student loans. Yes you solve the problems of recent graduates with excessive debt relative to their earning potential. You also fvck over a lot of society because you have people who are capable of performing high-skill labor who will never be able to, because they do not have 250K liquid cash to pay for university. I suspect he means (and if so I agree) that the cost of tuition would come way down in the absence of government intervention in student loans. Interestingly, in Canada you can get a six figure loan to go to med school from a private institution that isn't guaranteed by anyone other than the student. I couldn't believe it, but a med student applied to rent a condo I own. I asked him about source of funds, and he showed me his loan documentation, and did a three way call with the branch (which I dialed). Basically, they were willing to loan him the money because the credit risk is good that he'll be able to pay it back. In a "no gov't backed student loans" scenario, the market would offer loans to some occupations, and the cost of education would likely decline as institutions are no longer able to fund professors who don't want to teach with student funds. I think it'd probably increase the efficiency of the economy, because you'd get more people taking actually useful degrees and people who end up in jobs that don't really need one wouldn't take one.

FGE.DB.A

The risk with Parq is ironically that they succumb to gamblers ruin and keep putting in a little more money to try and salvage the investment, and end up losing everything on it.

Did you mean to say you bought 100 shares? Because one option contract is for 100 shares, so if you just bought one your call isn't really covered.

Most jobs that family and friends could get for you are not professional jobs. Sure, family and friends can get you a minimum-wage-plus job, but jobs like that are not commensurate with the education level of a large swath of immigrants. I hired work out to an engineering firm here in Calgary, and there was a group there almost entirely comprised of people with the same last name, from the same part of India. The first one who got hired got jobs for a variety of extended relations. It probably helped that they all had excellent English and great technical skills... I suspect that combination would have set them up for success anyway, but having a good place to land probably sped up the transition.

I've only had one 10 bagger in my investing career, and it came from Barron's, so I have a soft spot for them. You can't get the print edition in Canada, which makes me sad. I've tried repeated to subscribe and nobody ever gets back to me. It isnt sold anywhere in Calgary either. I read it whenever I'm in the US. I should probably just cave and get the digital version...

Some of their assets might be cyclicals at peak earnings. I haven't followed this closely, but their 50% interest in wood river is a big heavy oil refinery in Illinois. It is making money on the spread between canadian heavy (WCS) and WTI. That spread has been at historical highs due to pipeline and rail constraints. While transmountain may or may not get built, the line 3 expansion probably will, and rail is ramping up. A lower differential will lower their profits at wood river. I'm not sure how big a piece of their business refining is anymore, but thought I'd mention that.

Too bad they're taking shares here.

Did they actually admit guilt? That would surprise me, and isn't implied by them agreeing to pay.

Real estate in AB is cheap on basically every basis compared to the rest of Canada. It has poor momentum/sentiment though, which is why I doubted the anecdote about a quick high-price sale was from here. I do think there are bargains, especially compared to the rest of Canada. I have a friend selling a four plex that has actual positive cash flow at in place rents, which isn't typical for Canadian RE, imo.

If nuclear power was going to get AB oilsands producers access to tidewater, they would do it. But we've already planned a coal shut down and put on the first carbon price in Canada, and none of that made any difference. The appetite in AB for more expensive changes to placate people whose stated objective is the end of our economy is pretty low. No new freshwater licenses are being given out for the athabasca river. New projects have to use brackish water from underground. While this would be out of my technical element, I think that would be unsuitable for a nuclear plant without significant (expensive and energy intensive) treatment.