sarganaga

Here are a few articles about how insurers use credit reports to "help" determine rates: https://www.edmunds.com/auto-insurance/does-your-credit-score-affect-your-car-insurance-rate.html https://www.nationwide.com/car-insurance-credit-score.jsp https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/car-insurance/credit-scores-affect-auto-insurance-rates/index.htm If the insurer can't check your score, it can't tell that you have excellent credit. A few states such as California don't allow this.

My wife and I were both affected by the data breach according to Equifax. After thinking about the potential problems, we believe that having someone attack the money in our existing accounts or committing crimes using our identities are the biggest problems for us. Credit card misappropriation, payday loans, & other borrowings are pains to resolve but less serious for us. If our credit rating is impacted by having any of these happen, we don't anticipate borrowing money for much of anything anyway. We're content with our current credit cards and use them for convenience rather than a credit line. So this is our situation. Here's what were doing so far. (1) We signed up for the free credit monitoring with Equifax and also for free monitoring with AAA. I don't expect this to stop anything, but it will let us know if something nefarious is going on. (2) We signed up for "True ID" at our local DMV. This was a little bit of a hassle, but might be very useful in resolving murky questions of identity in disputes. (3) Retirement accounts are now set up as "No Money Out". To take it off requires a personal visit. While doing this, we met a few minutes with the branch manager and the person who processes this paperwork and explained our reasons for doing so. (4) Verbal passwords and voice recognition protocols and now set up for phone calls to all accounts. (5) Wherever possible, we have setup two factor authentication for online account access. (6) We have not done a credit freeze yet. I'm concerned about auto insurance price increases as a result. I'm sure there are other places where the credit companies have inserted themselves as indispensable cogs with penalties for their non-inclusion. Also, a credit freeze is nowhere near bulletproof for stopping the bad guys, as discussed in the recent Forbes articlehttps://www.forbes.com/sites/nickclements/2017/09/13/3-reasons-a-credit-freeze-wont-protect-you/#385db10a42e1. I'm not sure if we will do this or not. (7) We both file income tax with PIN numbers. This is what we've done with our situation so far. What I mostly take away from what I've been researching is that all of us are on our own. Government officials and corporate types may make some concerned and thoughtful noises, but not too much important stuff will likely get done. This is a big deal and going to get worse.

Looks like Equifax had an earlier unrelated data breach in March that is now being reported. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/equifax-data-breach-months-before-big-one-hit-report/

The eliminated that little jewel from their terms of service for this breach, although I guess it might apply if/when they screw up the credit monitoring.

Yes, this is huge. We can be compromised for the rest of our lives with this one. Maybe this will be a catalyst to come up with a different solution than the way SSN and credit checks work (e.g., freezing that is easy to do and not cost anything and requiring that the freeze be honored, at the liability of the issuer)... I really hope this obvious solution has a chance of becoming reality. This makes sense & should be easy to do. However, the scum that inhabit the halls of congress are richly rewarded for seeing this doesn't happen. If the financial wizards didn't suffer too much for their role in 2008-2009, probably won't suffer too much this time. Equifax should be facing financial death penalty for this. As noted above, I would like to think something positive and simple could be done, but unfortunately join you in the skeptics camp.

Thanks for the info. One email leak for me....for now

Didn't see your other thread. I agree with your suggestions & possible investment implications. I signed up today for the monitoring. My wife's signup date is tomorrow & she will signup then. At least Equifax has taken the arbitration condition off. Unfortunately, this seems like a really big deal that will hang like a dark cloud over our finances for many years to come.

The masterminds at Equifax managed to allow the personal data of 143 million Americans to be stolen. This includes social security numbers, date of birth, addresses, and other info as described here http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/11/technology/equifax-identity-theft/index.html Been searching for security suggestions. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/06/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-embrace-the-security-freeze/This seems to make sense, but there are inconveniences with credit freezes, even perhaps significant increases in your auto insurance rates if your credit records can't be accessed. FWIW, both my wife and I are affected by this. Anyone have any thoughts or experience in dealing with possible/actual identity theft?

Been playing since the late 1960's. Public card room games in Vegas and SoCal at medium stakes (5-10 NL) and up have gotten very tough. Even 2-5 seems to have quite a few competent players when I've looked at that. Higher stakes wannabe pros keep moving down the food chain trying to find games they can beat. Very few, if any, new recreational are players coming into the games. The rake keeps going up. Skill levels continue to equalize. Looks like a race to the bottom.

Capital Allocators by Ted Seides is good. The Meb Faber Show also has some valuable info, some especially interesting stuff on asset allocation, good guests.

You might want to consider some of the reasonably priced royalty stream plays which are discussed elsewhere on the board, such as Pardee Resources.

Here's what I would do if starting now. Figure our what you would like your ideal overall asset allocation to be. Meb Faber has some useful white papers and a book on this at his website http://mebfaber.com/. Consider buying assets that are cheap now ... emerging markets, especially small caps (you can get broad exposure through First Trust Emerging Markets FEMS and other etfs), Japan, etc. Hold cash to buy investments in the other components of your ideal allocation as they become "cheap" enough for you to feel comfortable. Periodically survey investments in the under owned segments of you ideal allocation to find candidates that meet your criteria.

Added to Pardee Resources (PDER). New small position in Cosan (CZZ)

I like the approach of the AlphaDex funds by First Trust. They are not cheap with approximately .60- .80 expense ratios, but combine both value and momentum factors. This seems like too much to pay for US oriented etf's, but for the small cap emerging market etf FEMS , which I own, it seems reasonable. Here is a link for etf info https://www.ftportfolios.com/Retail/Etf/EtfSummary.aspx?Ticker=FEMS

It's essentially a collection of assets that were under the control of the Beijing Municipal Government. The mishmash of businesses is not that unusual in China (ex Cheung Kong, Cofco, Chinese Resources Holdings before some of its spinoffs,Jardine group, Shanghai Industrial, etc) . As to the cheapness, who knows for sure? I think it mostly got caught in the downturn of Chinese stocks. Some people probably didn't like that they invested ~US one billion in Russian natural gas fields. They have monopoly like status for most of their businesses in Beijing with growth opportunities outside the area in water, natural gas distribution, and beer. It's about a 4% position for me. Their website is user friendly and has quite a bit of info about the company, structure, future plans, etc http://www.behl.com.hk/en/global/home.php

Beijing Enterprise Holdings... 8x forward earnings, 80% book, 4.5x cash flow. Water infrastructure, Natural gas distribution, largest beer producer/market share in Beijing. mid teens 1,3,5,10 year earnings growth. Pays 2.5%+ dividend.

Murray Stahl has written extensively about this in his commentaries at Horizon Kinetics. http://www.horizonkinetics.com/articles.asp?pageID=5&topicID=41 Depending on your point of view, these are either a well reasoned indictment of the passive index juggernaut or the wailings of a active manager who is fearful of his AUM disappearing.

Mosaic (MOS) Bought some a few days ago when the stock dropped 6% on news of their Vale fertilizer purchase. Added today. Up to 2.5% total position.

A bit more PDER

SBR (Sabine Royalty Trust) ... top line oil and gas royalty trust with interests in Texas (including Permian) & other parts of the South/Southwest

Gold 31% Cash 22% SBR 16% DRFRX 8% PDER 7% FEMS 7% DMLP 3% FDT 3% CHOEX 3% 7 figure portfolio

(1) Fooled By Randomness - Antifragile - Nassim Taleb (Taleb's series of books as an expanded explanation of a single idea) (2) Investment Gurus - Peter Tanous (3) Hedge Hogging - Barton Biggs (4) Hedge Fund Market Wizards - Jack Schwager (5) The Intelligent Investors Guide to Profiting from Stock Market Inefficiencies - D. Robert Coulson

Sabine Royalty Trust SBR

Pardee Resources PDER

FWIW, I bought CHOEX (Chou Opportunity Fund) in late June for the following reasons: (1) Chou's stock/security selections are very different from other stocks I own. Put another way, he buys things I would never buy or don't understand such as SHLD & VRX. (2) His long term record is pretty good. (3) The fee reimbursement for 2015 & waiver for 2016 is not commonplace & IMO demonstrates a lot of integrity.