KinAlberta

An interesting read: The Bigger Short By: Jon Schwarz, Ryan Grim April 20 2021, 4:00 a.m https://theintercept.com/2021/04/20/wall-street-cmbs-dollar-general-ladder-capital/ Referred to in the above article: Is COVID Revealing a CMBS Virus? 23 Aug 2020 Last revised: 1 Dec 2020 John M. Griffin & Alex Priest University of Texas at Austin - Department of Finance https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3671162

“ unfortunately ” ? “As I look at the after-hours price, BRK-B sits at $173.50 - so the recent record is within sight, unfortunately.“

A one man shop had overhead of more than $500,000 per year? I think I may see part of his problem. Postage and printing alone can be a killer.

I wonder if there shouldn’t be a cute phrase about the increasing discomfort with cash piling (up while investors increasingly view positive market returns as inevitable) to serve as s precursor to Buffett’s quip about being greedy when others are fearful. Warren Buffett's Cash "Problem" Just Got $2.4 Billion Worse -- The Motley Fool https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/06/08/warren-buffetts-cash-problem-just-got-24-billion-w.aspx

Benjamin Graham only wrote six books and one of them was: “On Storage and Stability, a Modern Ever-normal Granary”. So I bought it and even skimmed through it. I always find it fascinating to see where finance personalities find cause for market intervention, regulation, etc. It’s refreshing to see the rational pragmatic mind fending off and challenging what often tends towards impractical ideological or dogmatic thinking. Anyway, are there a lot of parallels here between Graham’s thinking on commodities, the Federal Reserve’s approach to stabilization, supply management (in the news because of free trade talks with Canada) and protectionism? Eg The US Federal Reserve massively expanded its balance sheet buy buying up a surplus commodity (crap worthless paper that no one wanted) and then either let it mature (kept it off the market) or will sell it back onto the market when prices have risen. They pumped money into the banking sector, established ZIRP, stabilized prices/interest rates, etc. Supply management (Canada) - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_management_(Canada)

Family farms one of many concerns in unified fight against Trump's trade threats: Don Pittis Abandoned farms are a symbol of the kind of market forces many rural (conservative) Canadians oppose Don Pittis - CBC News 7 Hours Ago http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/trump-tariffs-canada-1.4707631

Scott, here’s a tough question. What has been in your portfolio (key contributors) over say the past 15 years? I think it’s important to include the last downturn because if not for the good fortune of government bailouts and FedReserve market meddling portfolio design and cash on hand matters most in downturns. As for Gods. If I knew God existed and that it created the universe, I think I’d worship it even if it hadn’t done much since.

Paying taxes owing out of my salary for those reinvested dividends would be a struggle. ;-) It’s always easy to get very rich reinvesting everything in the stock market - when you do it on paper for propaganda purposes. It’s a bit tougher in the real world.

Thanks for posting this information. That's very interesting.

He leaves this comment pretty unsubstantiated: "best portfolio of blockchain-related assets" Overstock's Huge Upside Hinges On Blockchain;... excerpt: Forte’s bull case for Overstock is all about the company’s Medici Ventures portfolio of 10 investments related to blockchain technology. ... “Given our view that not only is there tremendous value in its holdings, but it owns, by far, the best portfolio of blockchain-related assets among current publicly-traded equities, we believe the stock merits such a valuation,” Forte wrote in a Monday note. https://www.benzinga.com/analyst-ratings/analyst-color/18/01/11000795/overstocks-huge-upside-hinges-on-blockchain-da-davidson

Well said. Thanks for the comments. "theory and reality are only theoretically related" -Robert Grossblatt "Love of theory is the root of all evil" - William M Briggs

Hussman has a strong belief that valuations matter. Similar to Graham’s nonsense that in the long run the market is a weighing machine. This underlying faith in investors someday suddenly coming to some sort of quantitative value based assessment of the market they invest in, is constantly being brought up by value investors. I think Jeremy Grantham correctly surmised that the weighing machine proposition is just a belief in regression to the mean. Here again (see below) I’d say this common view is wrong, and is basically nonsense. The idea that valuations will only appear in the long run, that a look at the long run somehow a series of presents will change into a useful measure of value to influence investors to act accordingly is nonsense.this somehow out of an analysis of a series of prices which will average volatility right up to the last or most current point in the analysis . If capital flows always drive valuation in the short term, they therefore drive valuations in the long term. There is no long run weighing machine. Simply put, we can only live in the present and we can never escape the present to live in the mystical long run where suddenly valuations become apparent.

"Block chain is essentially the new dot com. " - SharperDingaan That may very well be true - or just "a flash in the pan". Interesting article (second link below) showing the 'sloppiness' of those rushing to seize the moment and of course - a whole lot of money. BTW, I have shares in Leonovus - have had some for a while and the addition of blockchain tech (as with OSTK, etc.) adds a secondary lottery ticket to the package. The latest rise is purely a mania for what can only be described as pure speculations. In fact, that's why I decided not to start a dedicated Investment thread on this little speculation as it has zero the intrinsic investment qualities that would align it with anything respecting the agenda of CoB&F. Hey, I'm early to such games - as back in the day I even owned shares in JCI Technologies (an early Torstar, Southam jv). It was so early to the internet that even Wikipedia has deleted its page for lack of links and Wikipedia's editors not understanding the nature of the early internet itself. :-) bolding above is mine

The Case Of Wilbur Ross' Phantom $2 Billion http://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/11/07/the-case-of-wilbur-ross-phantom-2-billion/