PatientCheetah

SINA

http://www.reuters.com/video/2014/06/20/cash-tagging-in-on-social-media?videoId=316494789&videoChannel=5 another reason time arbitrage works for quality companies

its exciting and has a good story. investing in it is really no different from investing in gold. its all about sentiment and understanding mass psychology. maybe it can do a steve madden, but what do I know.

its not the absolute number matter. Its the ability to pay. I wonder what the EBITDA coverage is. For example, S&P 500 debt level is currently at historical high but its coverage ratio is close to the historical low.

buying using stolen credit cards? I was curious why there were so many gift cards on sale at 80-90 face value. Then I learned hackers were laundering stolen gift cards using these gift cards reselling sites. The discount is warranted because any stolen cards have some possibility of being cancelled.

Also it is not liquid, I don't think there is a secondary market for it :)) Actually....there is. ;) http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=starbucks+gif&_osacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=p2045573.m570.l1311.R1.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0&_nkw=starbucks+gift+card&_sacat=0 Limit 1 per person. Can't scale :)

I don't think we should think in evolutionary terms, once modern man comes into the picture evolution goes out the window. Otherwise, the most successful people one can argue are those who are the dumbest as they tend to be poor and have more children in any society. I agree that it's less true in this country. I read a few articles on foreign brides. In China, Taiwan, and Korea, if you don't have a good education or own properties, you are very likely to be out of running in the domestic marriage market. Many poor farmers have to go to Vietnam and other even poorer countries to find wives.

You are telling me you think Uber has 1/6 odds of going to $100 bil? How many companies are 100bil today that went IPO in 1990s, and how many tech companies have gone to zero that went IPO in the 1990s? is the ratio 1:6? I didn't make a valuation call. That's the odd that VCs are paying. VC's business model is to make at least 40-50 independent bets. Most will go to 0 and a few will be 100x. The average VC returns are in the teens. Uber is probably the best business model that has come out since Facebook. Is this really crazy relative to Facebook valuation from just a few years ago? No one knows how things will work out in the future so no one is betting the farm on anything. Its all part of a much larger portfolio. If I have to access to this round, I will be happy to gamble 1-2% of my portfolio with the full knowledge that I can lose the whole thing. Higher beta higher uncertainty = smaller bets. I bet you don't play poker.

Also keep in mind that no one paid the full $18 bil price tag - the $1.2 bil is similar to a call option - let's say the outcome is binary, in 1 scenario, Uber is worth $1 bil, and in another, it's worth $100 bil, to break even in terms of expected returns, you only need 1/6 odds.

For laughs, think in evolutionary terms - having high status usually entails be very well off or having high positions in society, the two usually highly correlate, having a heavily skewed income distribution, smaller proportion of the society will have larger than usual access to mates

It really is a testament to the productive power of capitalism. Would you rather be wealthy 50 years ago or middle class today? Psychologically, I rather be wealthy 50 years ago. I think Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs make sense from both my experience and my parents' experience.

There is an easy solution for small investors - after a stock gets to its fair value, use a progressively higher stops that's wide enough to allow for normal volatility, maybe 15-25%. Doesn't work as well for large investors because liquidity dries up during corrections. In your examples, you have excluded the possibility of selling. Most momentum guys all have predetermined stops - that's why you see accelerated selloffs all the time after key technical levels have been penetrated. Soros and Cohen all made a boat load of money during the dot com bubble and kept it. It's not for everyone and takes substantial trading skill and understanding of mass psychology, and self-control/mental flexibility/decisiveness. Alright, I am going off on a tangent. I will stop now.

Well, ya like Kennedy who said he cashed out of the market when the shoe shine boy was recommending stock picks, I am now looking for something that'll be my tipoff to abandon this market. This is starting to be insane when rational people talk about investing based on the greater fool. Or use slippery slope arguments, like they will take away the taxis, then charge peanuts on each car, then run ads on the app, then this then that and voila it will be only trade at 55x earnings. I don't understand why people want everything to be rational. The market multiple is at 16x right now. Who knows what the right multiple is and what is the limit on the upside or downside? All we know is that the average is around 15x. George Soros is the master of human psychology. He is happy to ride any bubble and gets out when he sees a shift in psychology. After a stock gets to its fair value, watch how people react to earnings surprises, watch the strength of price momentum, and act accordingly. No need to get attached to anything both long or short. Value investing gives us the courage to buy high quality companies during panics but it is not designed to tell us how to get out close to the top. For comical relief: http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2014/06/09/turn-down-for-what/

What if market surprise to the upside? http://www.bloomberg.com/video/miller-sees-huge-upside-for-u-s-home-builders-_defjNtSTVWmOCD5qwYVog.html/ Negativism & cultural influence http://www.econmatters.com/2014/06/doom-gloom-sells.html#more

If each European still had their own currency, their currency would've devalued and their people's purchasing power would've decreased. To approximate a devaluation through austerity creates too much drama and human emotions. Deflation is the consequence of austerity. Stand in the shoes of an unemployed 20 something, he doesn't have a job, he doesn't see much future, so he is living in the moment. How will he increase his productivity 20 years down the road? How will he has the earning power to spend? Historically, too much debt usually gets wiped out through default, inflation and/or devaluation - lending money to deadbeats is almost always a bad idea longer term.

it's about reasonableness and likelihood :) but the main takeaway is that Uber is the kind of companies that we like to own but it lacks a prevailing bias (all Chinese companies are frauds 2011, dot com bubble burst, 09 crush, etc) to make it a homerun what is uber's moat? what is mcdonald's moat? what is facebook's moat? uber is a widely recognized brand, has the biggest user base with scalable infrastructure, it is its network effect that makes very hard for competitor to steal shares - the more users, uber drivers are on the network, the more valuable uber platform becomes.

Think of this way, Uber is a high margin franchise model with strong networking effect, it has proven that it can wipe out the taxi industry in many places over time in many cities already, maybe the valuation is not so high in 2-3 years. Let's do some math, the U.S. taxi industry alone has a $11 bn in yearly revenues, let's say at steady state, Uber gets 50% of the market and its take is 20% of that so that's $1.1 bil in revenue, PCLN is closest comparable I can think of, its net margin is about 30%. So for U.S. alone, the potential profit is close to $330 mil a year. At $18 bil, you are paying 55x earnings, not factoring in international expansion (already in Europe) and local delivery services. Not cheap but who knows, could be fair if it executes. The 100x returns have already been made by the early investors. By the time it becomes a public company, 1-2x is still possible but the risk is much higher. With its latest round of funding, it is probably game over for Lfty and other competitors.

Yes. I'm glad that Draghi realizes that Europe's main risk is in fact deflation and acts accordingly – and independently from Germany's stupid position. Yep, there is a German professor who is stirring the public debate against mutualizing some of the peripheral debts. The German public needs to understand that their high level of employment depends on selling goods to some people that can't afford to pay them back.

Tumblr sort of ruined the game to some extent. Now it is acceptable to use non-words or randomly take out alphabets from a word.

Tilson's T2 Partners had a relatively new presentation on the tactical aspects of shorting. Try to google it. I wished I knew these years ago.

I remember taking grad level Game Theory class - the craziest integration that I have done in my entire life, not sure how useful it was at the time.

There is a large opportunity cost of saving. As you get older, you have less time and less energy to do things that you would've done when you are younger. The key is to strike a balance - life should be enjoyed in moderation.

SODA

Europe is turning Japanese - still daydreaming about its glory days and unwilling to face the new reality. US isn't. US takes its writedowns and recap its banks and moves on to better things.

Its in one of the Buffett books, I forget which one - basically, AMEX was involved in a salad oil/water scam. Like any other financial institutions, if customers/users stop trusting AMEX and demand payables at the same time, AMEX was done for. Buffett became confident that AMEX had built up a loyal customer base based on his scuttlebug observations - he believed in the enduring nature of AMEX's franchise.