ragnarisapirate

I know it’s kind of a dog on the governance, but I believe EZPW is buying back. They had a plan in place, and we’re doing so at a steady rate on a monthly basis, and even had it set up so that they could buy under certain conditions when the company was in possession of material info... Will get an update in the next week or two, when they report earnings and all that, but I’m hoping they bought a ton back in the past month!

It’s a shame that the natural result of this is that there will be less of an exchange of ideas, which was one of the great hopes for these technologies.

how do you lose money working as an attorney? ;- ) I should have said that I lost more money in the market than I made working as an attorney. The net result was that I poorer at the end of the year than at the beginning, DESPITE working hard as an attorney! I would have done better financially by liquidating my positions...goofing off, and delivering pizza a couple of nights a week. The latter doesn't seem like a bad life. ;)

Pawn shops. The only way you can screw it up is to develop one hell of a drug habit.

Good read. Thanks for sharing Sanjeev!

As you say, prices are high because of barriers to entry (the illegal nature, killing competitors etc). For pharma, they have patents to protect them for a period of time. I assume a patent wouldn't be granted to Pfizer for cocain if it were legalized. ;)

Why is there no talk of diesel vs gas? I would think that a diesle car would be one that people on this board would be pretty interested in due to the long term ownership that they can provide. After having one, I can't really see myself having a gas engine vehicle again, all things equal. When it comes time to replace what I have, I would think it will be either a diesle or an electric (because of where they will likely be, when that time comes).

That is a good graph, liberty. What I gather from that is this: even with a huge growth rate, all of ecommerce and ad revenue out there is still significantly less than yearly revenue for JUST Walmart. Furthermore, all of ecommerce and online ads are equal to about 2.1% of US gdp...retail is something like 27% of gdp... http://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/news/report-says-us-retail-sales-topped-45-trillion-in-2013-outpaced-gdp-growth/ Ponder on that for a minute, and it might change your perspective on things. There are so many ways the chips can fall, that it is pretty baffling.

It's a shame that this data set is so incomplete of a sampling. It's pretty fascinating to look at the breakdown of reported personalities on here. If there were INT_ support groups out there, they probably wouldn't have this high a percent of INTJ participants, as I would think that INTJ's would be responsible for sending their close ones to these groups out of frustration! ;)

Use your common sense! 4x return in 5-10 years in real estate doesn't sound very probable, though it's not impossible. There's a comment down the thread that says that if it's so good why the pitcher is not taking advantage of the opportunity for himself and that's usually a good question to ask to those selling "opportunities". As is mentioned, this isn't impossible... 4x return in 5-10 years. If it takes 10 years, thats 29% a year in the best case scenario... is that really that unheard of on a single deal? over a whole portfolio, its rare, but on a single deal? No. 4x money in 10 years is just ~14% annualized... that ain't unreasonable, especially if there is leverage (think the building in NYC that Buffett bought into with his personal holdings) It totally depends on the nature of the pitch though. Size would have a lot to do with it (it's a lot easier to generate high returns with a sub $100K property than a multi million dollar property). In this interest rate environment- that kind of deal is unlikely, though, there are instances where that can happen. A lot of times lending against real estate doesn't neccessarily go to those who can put together interesting deals: it goes to those that meet a check list that a bank (and more specifically, its regulators) want to see. I think it's a mistake to say that the pitcher of a transaction is guilty of malfeasance without analyzing the details of the pitch first. After all, say that a fund manager on here was pitching a stock idea to a client- would you judge them with the same criteria? Many of the ideas on this board have (easily) yielded the same returns that are being pitched. Would you care to post the investment details?

Depending on the size of your cash pile and lock up outlook, pretty much any high liquidity instrument (1) will do since interest rates are volatile at the moment. 1. Probably need assets to be interest rate independent, would be nice if inflation independent, and valued in USD. Try BRK if you want higher returns? I specifically pick BRK because Buffett tries to get returns to match IV growth for shareholders. Obviously no guarantees. I wouldn't buy many other stocks as a cash proxy however. Not the best solution but I'm guessing you've heard of the more practical approaches. Are you honestly recommending BRK as a cash proxy? Seems to happen towards the top of every bull market. Of course BRK will fall with the market when the market falls. If you want to own BRK own BRK, if you want cash then own cash. Yes, you will 'lose' out because interest is less than inflation. But cash is cash, it's optionality. Cash gives you the ability to buy something on the spot, whether it's a hard good (TV, fridge, football tickets) or equity. If you think you will need to buy something then stay in cash, if you don't need to buy anything and want exposure to BRK buy BRK. Bottom line is if you're looking to juice cash returns you're playing a risky game. I remember all sorts of weird income investments before 2007 with investors looking to juice their cash returns. Some did alright and got out ok, others lost out and all those extra gains resulted in losses. And the true value guys some out of the woodwork. ;)

Here's a goody that seems like a joke, that I am not making up. A fellow board member told me about how Kmart was giving out 30 cent off a gallon coupons at a local gas station for every fifty bucks you spend. You could put three together to get 90 cents off a gallon, up to fifteen gallons. I drive a hunk of junk, gas guzzling truck, with a 34 gallon tank, so I could use a lot of them pretty quickly, or, just give them away to friends. I went to Kmart bought a 50 dollar gift card, using my discover card that gets 2% cash back. To my surprise, I got a coupon. Then, I bought another 50 dollar gift card, and used the original gift card to pay for it. Along came another coupon... I did this like 20 times, just standing at the same register. Each coupon probably cost them about 4 bucks, if the gas station subsidized them a hair. Eventually, the system stopped letting me do it. I then spent the last gift card on some heavily discounted, or competitively priced stuff that I needed for rent house projects. The beauty here, is that SHLD likely lost ~100 bucks and I effectevly made nearly 100, for me spending about thirty minutes in the store... Plus, I made their same store sales look better, to the tune of $1000 or so. I'm no expert in retail, but that seems like a bad business model to me. If I'd had a moustache at the time, I was definitely twirling it. I shit you not.

yes please share!

I'd spend that on an idea if you count all the stuff I have done in the past, that has a cumulative effect... For example, researching backlogs of companies in the past help me understand the backlogs of companies that I look at in the future... Maybe that is what he was getting at?

Playing devil's advocate- one could argue that these are in fact essential things, as they act as a humane population control... dying of a heart attack after washing down a juicy cheeseburger with a coke seems a lot better than starving because there are too many people out there relying on food infrastructure that isn't developed to where it needs to be for a significantly larger population. Additionally, with the study NASA just put out on climate change and the like, it's arguable that there are too many people anyway.

Somewhat sarcastically, how about stocks with a high margin of safety, that have an identifiable catalyst in the next, say 2 years? If a recession comes, your dividend plays may not work out. Bonds and like securities aren't really yielding much now anyway.

Sounds dangerous... being a good investor is being willing to sit on capital until you know the pitch you want to swing at. Being disciplined enough to sit on cash for another 6 months (when you really don't want to) would probably be good exercise.

Curious if anyone has looked into plays on the capacity of natural gas- ie pipeline owners or companies that manufacture parts or service them. NOT natural gas producers or consumers. It seems that with the coming glut of plants, that would be an interesting play.

I used to say low cost broad market funds, but am starting to think that those are a bad idea. It seems to me that there are too many people doing that sort of thing now, and that they only increase market volatility (which, probably isn't the healthiest thing for someone to see happen to their nest egg/retirement account). We might be entering into a time where small mutual funds might actually be able to out do the market. Think about the stuff that Paul Sonkin is doing for Gabelli. I'd feel comfortable with someone investing in that. That, or tell them to buy into BRK like companies (FFH, MRKL, LUK, etc). At this point, BRK is kind of a market fund anyway, but run by people who actually get the whole price/value thing. I don't know that we can say that about a whole hell of a lot of the companies out there with multi billion dollar valuations. Speaking of this, why has no one put together a value investor ETF? Just load it up with the companies that I mentioned, and sell it as a product, taking a percent or 2 for managing it? Monish Pabrai talked about a guy doing this with the A shares of BRK, before the Bs came out, if I remember correctly.

Is that due to different spending habits (ie some people spend everything they get) or differences in wages?

Bump...

Congratulations Jeff! Cheers! Thanks fellas. Hopefully, we can create some value. :) Feel free to email with suggestions.

I've started reading his books, they are quite good and should appeal to "value investors". Thanks! Just ordered the newest one. Looking forward to it.

I don't have nearly the readers that you do, but, I do agree that a lot of the people reading my stuff don't invest in a lot of the things I talk about (that said, I own a fraction of the stocks you do). I do agree that the value field is getting crowded though- but, it seems like it gets crowded in a bull market, where people start seeing the good returns that value guys got when the market started rising in the previous recession, and wanting to emulate... There are a ton of nano cap stocks that are now talked about as value plays, when they are trading for 3-5x what they were in the recession- and considered total piece of shit stocks (that were actually great little companies) EVI, IBAL, and a host of others... Packer could name off a ton of this regional radio carriers (that, I by the way, was too stupid to invest in despite him telling me too!). Same thing with a lot of the regional banks (well, financial institutions in general) now. What I am getting at, is I want to see what this forum, or the value investing community looks like when a whole bunch of us make a bunch of bone headed decisions for a year or 2 in the next downturn...

Well put. DTE: do you think that the government can do anything that doesn't involve legalized theft? (this is rkabang's cue)