Jurgis

Good thread to mention "The Founder" movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4276820/ Haven't watched it. I guess "Supersize Me" was already mentioned.

IMO don't use raise.com Most of the cards are people reselling gift cards bought via stolen CCs or to scam you or cleaning up drug money. Yeah, raise.com "guarantees" the cards for 100 days. But look at BBB reviews - the guarantee means that you gonna fight with raise customer service. Pretty much all TJ Maxx gift cards on raise are for $999.99 If that's not stolen/fraud/scam, I don't know what is. Yeah, sure, this is a grandpa selling a gift card they got from their kids. NOT. Caveat emptor.

Meta advice: for me personally, opinions of others have rather low correlation with my opinion (for books, stocks, movies, music, etc.). So pretty much try it and if you like it, continue; if you don't, move on. Yeah, unfortunately this wastes some time... but I haven't found a reliable alternative. I should +1 this though:

It would be interesting to compare the fallout in Alberta with fallout in places like Oulu/Salo in Finland after Nokia collapse. And maybe with Spain with their 20%+ unemployment? Maybe with more hard numbers? I have to admit that I was a peak-oiler once and even suggested someone in the family to go into well-paying (pun intended) oil engineering. They did not, so at least I don't have to feel bad for that advice.

I know that a lot of people recommend this book, but for me it felt dated and really very superficial. I did not finish it and don't plan to. IMO not worth the time.

Here you go: 8)

I was fired at the end of 2008. Got about half year salary payout - yeah, more cash to invest. 8) My 401(k) was already investable into stocks, so not much gain there... although I rolled it over to IRA at some point. Had to sell everything and buy it all back, but Fido gave me 100 free trades. Got a job at a startup in 2009. That lowered amount of new investable money. But also did Roth conversion at lower tax bracket due to some unemployment and lower salary at startup. It's good to have profession that is in demand even in downturns... 8) The big question in 2008-2009 was where to shift money. Yeah, buying quality works, but the real gains were made by buying stuff on the edges that survived and went up 10x+ I'd put WFC prefs somewhere into that area. I bought Euro prefs and energy stocks. Both were possibly a bit over the edge in terms of risk, but both did great. I'm sure I bought some crap that did not do well - ah, Chinese reverse mergers. 8) I held some WSC at the time... probably not the best choice for multibagger coming out of the bottom. Also, yeah, looking at stock forums from 2008-2009 is interesting. I don't think it gives all the picture of the time though. Hah, just found a post of someone talking about shorting stocks in January 2009... found someone talking of shorting BRK... Sounded like a good idea at the time, I'm sure. Maybe even worked for lower quality stocks. Did not work for BRK. Found this from Jan 2009: What was I thinking? ;)

Somewhat what John said, but also: This works only in rather limited money range: might work with exactly $100K, but if sum goes to $200K or higher, then X will start paying pretty high tax. Also gift amount is limited and at higher amounts might take long years to transfer gains back, which hits value of money (although money can be invested while it's waiting to be returned). Since this only works within $100-200K range, is it worth for person X to deal with all complexities to avoid paying some tax? BTW, even if it's legal, it might put person X under IRS audit flags, which might not be worth it. Also why not buy BRK (ok SP500 ;)), never sell and never pay any tax? ;)

It's also a question that anyone who bought "right after the dip" in 2008-2009, then saw their holdings go down another 30-80%... and likely did not have cash to make a meaningful purchase after second and third leg down.

Buy Lithuanian RE. 8)

$2.99 on Amazon today: https://smile.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure-ebook/dp/B019MMUAAQ?ie=UTF8&redirect=true&ref_=pe_2809830_220740320_pe_row2_b1_t Haven't read it yet.

This board mostly acts as if this is a sure thing too. ::)

That's not true, you pay a one-time transaction-tax of around 5-6.5%, then there are quarterly RE-taxes based on the "value" of the house. These are relatively low because the relevant values-table is from 1935. I guess the interpretation was wrong, but numbers were kinda right. 5-6.5% transaction tax is pretty discouraging for flipping or even normal sale-to-buy-something-else after couple of years.

Couple caveats about direct ownership that I heard from a German friend of mine: If you buy anything that is not up to code, you have to bring it up to code immediately and from your pocket. No grandfathering like in US. Yeah, friends had to put in new pipes into brick/concrete walls. Have fun. ;) You have to pay RE taxes for ?? (20?) years at time of purchase. Other side of the coin is that you don't pay RE taxes afterwards. Anyway, both of these were told to me as reasons not to buy (or if you have bought to never sell and buy something else). YYMV, this is anecdotal, does not apply to REITs, do your own DD, etc.

Yeah my 2009 was close to triple digits return. Makes you feel like genius for a while... We have some real geniuses around us. 8)

John, sorry to hear about your MIL. It is nice that you have organized her finances and finances of your father in orderly and positive fashion. If only all families had such good financial organizers.

I'll second what KJP said. Some of my thoughts about finding money managers: Read CoBF, note links that people put in their signatures or on the globe next to avatar. Some pro money managers have links to their business pages. If person uses their real name, you can google them too. Go to microcap conf maybe - there are some money managers going there. Or/and look for past microcap conf attendees and their presentations. Same for Fairfax meeting, though this is more Canadian-specific. There are usually US based people there too. Manager availability depend on country where you're in. I assume you're in US, but if not, then you should explicitly say so. There are managers here who can only take clients from US or Canada or Europe. Once you see someone you like and they may be taking new clients, ask for their past client letters/etc. and try to figure out if you like their style/etc. IMO, be careful about the high returns in concentrated portfolios without long history. They could blow up. It's nice to see 30-60% returns a year, but what if they rely on couple speculative stocks or something? Would you yourself hold such portfolio? If not, why would you go with a manager who does it? Even if they had a 40% return in 20XX? On the other hand, a manager who has a long history of good returns will have likely graduated to big league ... or is not really great... so it's a Catch-22... On yet another hand, a manager who runs non-concentrated portfolio may not be much better than index fund. Is it worth paying 2-and-?? for them? Maybe consider Sequoia? There are tons of other questions that may or may not matter to you: - If taxable account, does your manager generate short term gains ... or losses? - If SMA, how comfortable are you handling tax preparation based on your manager's trades (if they trade often/overseas, this might become complex)? - If hedge fund/partnership, how comfortable are you with filing K-1/etc. - Do you qualify for hedge fund/partnership? With that said, if there are US based managers who are interested in account that might be sized $XXK+, drop me PM too. ;) SMA preferred. Edit: Just to be clear, I personally hate to do K1s and I hate to do "am I qualified investor" crap, which is why I prefer SMA. Not that SMA is without issues. And yeah, bigger money managers won't do SMA if they already have hedge fund/partnership.

You'll get there Grasshoppers. 8)

You might get more answers if you'd mention what's the goal of this question. There's a number of professional money managers on this forum. They might not want to explicitly advertise themselves as you ask them to do. I'm not.

Yeah, sure. More like self selection bias. CoBF members who don't do well, don't post, and come shouting to this thread about their returns. And even with that 35% of respondents trail the index. So no, not really.

negative is <2% Yeah, sure. So why not have an option <0%? What's so magical about 2%? Risk free yield? Even if you held bonds for risk free yield, you would not get 2% in year since you're not holding 1 year bonds...

Yeah, but if you look at 2016 results, everyone's beating SP500. Conclusions? - People don't post their best ideas? - People invest in ideas that were not best (but worked out like best) - People short term trade - It's easier to click a poll than to post an idea (guilty here too). 8)

So obviously nobody lost money this year, since the lowest option is <2%... ???

Since we already have the short-term 2016 result poll up, I'm posting more relevant 10 year poll. Maybe gonna add 5 year poll for fun too.

http://jasonzweig.com/a-portrait-of-the-investing-columnist-as-a-very-young-man/ (Reposting from SI). This covers what oddballstocks and some other people on this thread talked about. Pretty interesting article. I don't necessarily agree with all sentiments expressed in the article about stocks.