Jurgis

Might work for easy yards, but IMHO this is still too limited. What if you have yard composed of multiple sections? What if you plant stuff - do you have to run wire again? I did not watch to the end, but I'd guess it might have issues if you have rocks accidentally thrown on grass or similar situations. Anyway, it's not bad, but shows why grasscutting is hard. Especially if you want to do it cheap.

BTW, with all respect to WP and NYT (and Bloomberg), they also have tons of clickbait nowadays. I don't read paper versions though. (I read paper version of Barron's ::) )

I fully support Alice Schroeder and everything she wrote in Snowball. Great book, great content.

Recap from past threads: I read Barron's cover to cover. I think WSJ is mostly useless or at least hugely overrated. Every time I've read it (in airplane or hotel for free), I've never seen anything useful. I have subscribed to WP and NYT this year (yes, because of ... ). Might renew or not. I don't read them, but click articles referenced in CoBF/friends' FB postings/Google news.

I don't think "inshoring" is something that will magically happen now. There's a certain amount of it going all the time. And then there's a large amount of Hollywood, Silly Valley, NYC, Boston that will never be inshored. Yeah, RE prices suck in CA and NYC. Yeah, taxes may suck too. But try to whatever-shore the Silly Valley companies. Not happening. Try to tell people who want to live in NYC to go to Boston or Cleveland or Detroit and see what happens. ;) So, yeah, there's some amount, but there's also a huge unmovable amount. I don't know if there is much investable from this. Apart possibly buying cheap RE in Midwest and hoping for better trends that've been around in the past. But then you have to talk about the migration to sunnier places, the land availability, etc. (Yeah, Chicago is cheap. Some good jobs too. I tried to tell a cheap friend of mine to move there and buy a nice house. He looked at me as if I'm crazy. So there...)

GRVY for a long time. Pershing Square. For search, one of the tax explanation links used to have a list, but possibly old and definitely incomplete. May I ask what is a goal of this? I don't think you gonna get any non-anecdotal outcome from looking at PFICs. Especially since they come in at least three different flavors: investment funds (Pershing), tons of cash net-nets (GRVY) and resource/gold holders (Sprott something?). The investment funds are most hairy for me to determine if they are PFIC or not. E.g. Investor Holdings. Or Exor. Or Bollore. I think it depends if their wholly owned subs are consolidated into and more than ??% owned, but IANATaxAccountant and all that. I guess cash rich net nets can be hairy too if they dance close to the limit.

Good question, though possibly not much investing related in near future. Let me take a stab. Cutting Grass - I think there's a commercial product available now. However, I think that it is very limited. I think the positives of this is area is that it's not life threatening, and possibly the market of lawn mowers is large. The negatives are that people are cheap and problem is complex (i.e. don't run over things, flowers, but cut dandelions, handle any kind of areas, etc.). I think in near future products will only handle regular areas, which won't displace 50% jobs. 10+ years, I'd say. Pickup trucks plowing out parking lots and driveways Municipal level snow plowing - Both of these assume self-driving cars + plowing (yeah, you need both, even if you don't think you do). So this is behind self-driving cars. Also limited market, so not much effort until self-driving is perfected. 15+ years. Forklift driving - in enclosed area/warehouse? 7+ years. Definitely disruptable. The only question is market size, which means how much effort startups are gonna give this. But with Amazon in this area, I'd say there definitely gonna be work on this and possibly fast. Airline pilot - Tech wise, airplanes already could fly with 1 pilot instead of 2 with autopilot doing pretty much all work. So 50% reduction immediately. But policy wise it's not gonna be accepted by humans. There's irrational fear of flying already, so there's not gonna be change until somehow humans accept 1 pilot+auto. Maybe 7+ years. Truck driver Taxi/uber driver - TAS Fedex/UPS driver USPS delivery person - I think these are all the same really: self-driving is the key. 15+ years. My self-driving schedule: Level 4/5 self driving available (but possibly not legalized): 5 years. (BTW, one could argue that Alphabet/Waymo already has level 4/5 self driving. I won't argue this strongly.) + 5 years for legalization / working out kinks + 5 years for replacing professions above. I'd like to see some non-self-driving professions: - Radiologists - Other medical personnel who perform diagnosis - Primary Care Physician - House painting inside / outside - Hedge / Mutual fund manager - Supermarket checkout (btw already 30-40% are gone due to self-checkout) - Hairdresser - Programmer - Auto mechanic - Cattle herder - Oil&gas rig worker - Online investing forum participant Feel free to add. 8)

Great questions. Don't know the answers. I'd think this is not easy to implement well.

Correct. It's easy to beat your competitors on price and grow if you don't need to make a profit. For now Amazon is not a business. It's a non-profit. You're looking at it wrong. For sure I am. After all a company is not supposed to make money. A company is supposed to create value. Reinvesting all your earnings internally is one way to create value. TCI didn't have any earnings either. Since reading Cable Cowboy, I see Amazon in a whole new light... I won't comment on AMZN, but it seems that companies with great capital allocation and minimal to no earnings can be quite mispriced by the market. Liberties, cough, cough. I'm sure there are other examples. 8)

I think your presentation of material behind this link does not do it justice. I almost did not click the link because of the quotes you posted. Then I clicked on it. And it's good. So let me try to entice others to click with this nugget: Click to read more. 8)

OT. Why not? My relative needs to do file a form because their spouse died. They'll probably go to the SS office. It's possible to do via phone, but likely then they would need to send in docs anyway. Which is a hassle and will take ages. Not sure if it can be done over Internetz. I think not especially since spouse died abroad, so good luck getting foreign death cert into Internetz. Closer to topic: they went through this issue with BAC. It took almost a year of sending paper forms through letters. The positive side is that BAC seems to finally done everything right. I have a friend whose parent died and BAC screwed up the whole thing royally. Not that this would affect investment into BAC... other banks have similar issues regardless of size. Actually sometimes smaller banks screw up even more. Anyway, we shouldn't hog the thread. Move to general for more discussion if you want. 8)

But will you? Buying MSFT (who survived and thrived business-wise) in 2000 was very hazardous to your returns. Maybe your argument is that RBC is never overvalued (ha) or that if we look at decades buying at overvalued price does not matter (not really true, MSFT or even SP500 at 2000 top was not a good investment for decade+). Maybe the argument is that if you average over time, you'll end up OK. That's tougher to refute. But I am not sure it's true either. OTOH, yes, if a company has a great business and a long runway, then current expensive price might not matter. If it can outrun the handicap.

Do I understand it correctly that ATM takes 20.5% to convert cash to bitcoin? ??? Some take 7%... but still.

My wife still owns a teeny tiny bit of URBN. I kinda like these guys. Hayne seems like a straight shooter with some good ideas (some possibly a bit wacky). Family still owns ~20%. (There is a bit of nepotism possibly). Probably would not invest (a lot) though.

But it bent? Bend it like Beckham.

./bow Sensei! 8)

There is no spoon.

I'd invest in BRK, FFH, Liberties. 8) How I would do valuation? Yeah, that's a problem, isn't it? Here I assume that nobody has filings, so secondary sources (Google, M*, Bloomberg, CoBF posters) are not available either. Without filings you don't even know sales, income (FCF), book value. So, perhaps you still can buy BRK, FFH, Liberties based on past history of "good corporate performance". Perhaps you can buy GOOGL/MSFT on moat or growth. But you may be hugely overpaying (or underpaying). Still, if no info existed, I'd guess people would buy based on past history and rough estimates (how many piano tuners are in Manhattan? 8) ). Some people do that even now. 8)

Didn't MtGox go under and everyone who held bitcoin in it get shafted? (Yeah, I know you coulda moved bitcoin out of its wallets, but still).

It can certainly be played that way, but not if you want to actually ever feel sustainably happy and satisfied and fulfilled, IMO. Wait, I don't get to kill random strangers on the street and jump on their corpses for fun? What kind of game this is? ::) ......... IMO the post makes some good points, but the metaphor used in it is crappy. Single player game does not mean "it's not competitive". Single player game does not mean that you are content. Lots of single player games are competitive and do not result in happy life. Also the image of "single-player game" conjures is that nothing matters but you. Maybe the author has not played many single player games, but yeah there's tons of "get millions in gold, get the castle, get the princess, get the superhuman abilities, get the McMansions" in single player games. Which is not what the author writes about in the article and definitely not what Liberty (and others) preach in terms of family, etc. Edit: Ah, DooDilligence just posted an exact link that "single player game" metaphor conjures in my mind: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-mental-tricks-getting-over-yourself/ . Solipsism. That's what single player game is. And that's not what author wants to say. ::) Be happy.

I thought that life is a crappy MMO. ::)

Just to throw a rock into this self-pity fest: was it really that obvious? Or is that all hindsight bias coulda-shoulda? Isn't this a very competitive business? What was the chance that this will be the huge X-bagger vs what happened to a lot of other convenience stores (nothing? crappy results?). I just read that Buffett underperformed SP500 with his Walmart purchase. And he also did self-pity fest (haha just kidding) about not buying more. Yet, it wasn't as obvious as it would have seemed... ::) Take care. 8)

LOL Capitalist bastards ;) The capitalist bastards don't give me online access even though I have the sub via miles. They should but they don't. (Might be possible if I jump through the hoops of phone capitalism...) :'( 8)

I don't think that's what I am saying. You can put me down for "I read what you write and I comment if I have something to say".

Another thing is that some deep-DD people have left CoBF or just don't post much anymore.