Jurgis

Depending on price changes today when market opens, I might shit (sic) a lot of positions into FFH. Was thinking cash, but FFH might be more attractive.

I guess you foresee Russia and US sharing influence on Europe, then... Nope. US giving up on Europe.

There was a Bloomberg article about global elite buying houses/land/resident-permits in NZ last couple years. Apparently pretty good hedge so far if you have 10-20M+. House/land prices already gone ballistic, probably will go even more now. Crap, I had NZ idea when Lord of the Rings came out... did nothing... coulda/shoulda/doesn't count. 8)

Wow, so did Prem do the right thing? News at 11... 8)

Russia takes over Baltics (if not more). NATO collapses. EU probably collapses too.

OK. Let me just slightly rephrase what I wrote above: I completely understand when people vote for change. In my elitist viewpoint, most of the time they have no clue that there is no simple easy way to change things so they would become happy/rich/etc. Let's see what policies will magically usher this change. My guess: we'll see very little or none and very little to no impact. What then? Another change? Or rejection of democracy and rise of dictatorship? Let's hope for just another change... in 2-4 years. BTW, Obama also promised change. IMO there wasn't much of big change apart of Obamacare...

If this vote against the elite yields positive results, I'll be happy for all Americans. However, in my experience populist votes for demagogues end up in crappy results for people who voted. So it only reinforces the view of the elite that they knew better. And the crappy results don't even stop the masses voting for another populist demagogue again. I thought that Americans were better than that. Apparently not. Now we will see the results. Unfortunately whatever happens nobody will learn a lesson.

Well, I had a better opinion about Americans until today. So: the optimistic scenario is 4 years of Trump + Republican Senate/House. Obamacare gone. Taxes down (maybe). Recession likely. Stocks down 20% or so. 2 Supreme Court justices who may or may not be very conservative. Pessimistic scenario: Recession to depression. Trump organizes the Trump-shirts. Free press suppressed. Next election cancelled. Possibly martial law. In short: fascist state in US. I still hope it doesn't come to that, but I'm no longer sure it won't.

So did anyone hedge?

Hm. I have Geico insurance. Check to see if other providers charge less. I bought a car a few months back, Geico quoted me $75/mo vs. $50/mo from Statefarm. Statefarm does not sell in MA. Geico is/was cheaper than AAA/Commerce. In general I hate comparing insurance prices since getting apples to apples comparison is a pain. Especially if you want to slider one or couple variables. I only got Commerce price comparison because I asked them about umbrella coverage and they don't sell that unless the auto ins is also theirs and the guy insisted quoting me their auto. (Actually Geico website is also screwed up on quotes: you can't get new quote by slidering some coverage without giving a person a call. Even though you already have their coverage and possibly want to increase limits. Crazy crap. I hate how all those %&*^ers make you jump through hoops and talk to some pushy agent to get a quote. Of course, they don't want to be nameless fungible commodity insurance cariers...) So I think I'll just stay. Thanks for suggestion.

If anyone likes art and are in New Orleans before Jan 2017, don't miss https://noma.org/exhibitions/seeing-nature-landscape-masterworks-from-the-paul-g-allen-family-collection/ One of the best exhibitions I've seen recently. To tie this to investing very tenuously - this comes from Microsoft's Paul Allen collection. ;) And if you're in NO anyway, Green Goddess is the best http://greengoddessrestaurant.com/ No, I did not do DD on Rick's Cabaret...

Hm. I have Geico insurance. Should I switch asap? I agree that Kirby salesmen were annoying. IMO See's is crap - but then IMO pretty much all American chocolate is crap. Did not have chance to try NetJets yet... :-\

And that's where we disagree. Yeah, US/European-democracy/republic is not perfect, but there's nothing better at this time in human development. Perhaps humans will become more ... something ... and then we can have other solutions. Right now that's the best there is. And just to respond to some things: there are incentives in voting/elections; there is government control: it's called elections/voting; the fact that your vote is one of millions is a feature not a bug: the outcome is based on majority will; Perhaps we should have voting on issues/laws rather than voting for people/parties. But if you look at referendums and California (not to pick on CA, but that's example I know) "resolutions" (or whatever they are called), the outcome of people voting for issues/laws seems to be even worse than when they vote for politicians/parties. Perhaps more-direct-democracy would work when people become something ... more. But I think I'm somewhat in the camp of "republicans" (not to be confused with GOP): I think that like we have experts for surgery, aircraft flying, etc., so we should have experts for governing. So no direct democracy, but some kind of meritocratic republic. (OT: I don't believe China is an example, sorry valcont).

I buy anything that catches my eye @ Marshalls/TJMaxx. :P Which pretty much means that I'm brand agnostic and not target audience for your question. I don't buy NKE, since I don't wear athletic apparel. For my yoga/zumba/tai chi classes, I just wear Walmart/random-TJMaxx sweats + free tshirts + 20 year old Adidas sneakers... I think I have another pair of brand new 20 year old sneakers, which were gifted to me and I never wore them yet... 8) Anyone wants to buy mint condition shoe antique? ;D Edit: Actually I still have 25-30 year old shoes that were made in two countries that don't exist anymore... German Democratic Republic and Czechoslovakia... ::) Had a shirt made in North Korea, but that's gone now... 8)

Human beings in general are screwed up in the head. Politics may just be the place where this shows up most.

Well, I guess I am in the minority who buys clothes in stores. Haven't bought online and don't plan to. My wife in the same boat. But then I buy from Marshall's/TJ Maxx (shoes from DSW), so I guess I don't support most stores/malls/brands either. In general, I agree that clothing/shoes retail is hard and I would not invest in most companies. My wife's portfolio has some TJX and some URBN (not a recommendation). I wonder if NKE is going to suffer as other brands or if its sufficiently superbrand to not be affected. It seems to be coming into somewhat interesting price level.

Yeah, you got it. :) I was talking about market cap based index funds in general. There are some differences what happens with market cap based index mutuals vs ETFs, but I wasn't concentrating on that. Edit: Yeah, http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2016/05/passive/ talks about things I mentioned as well as a lot more. 8)

MKL just got shot for their results.

Thanks. Got them. 8)

Left as exercise for the intrepid readers. 8) Hint: most of the answer is in my previous post.

Indexing does not remove acquisitions, doesn't remove private buyouts. For the rest of this post I talk about market-cap based indexing. There's a lot of other indexing, which is harder to reason about. Some of other indexing is pro-valuation-rerating (value weighted indexes), some is neutral, some is contra. Market cap based indexing is neutral in terms of valuation rerating. I.e. unlike what some people think, if company X has market cap Y and its market cap rises to Y+Z or drops to Y-W, index funds do not buy or sell X. So in essence index funds remove float, which should cause a faster valuation rerating if such occurs. (This is not true if company is not in the index - so yeah, that's a potential issue if everyone buys SP500 rather than Total Market Index. But it's not clear if SP500 will become "overindexed" compared to the rest of the market). Market cap based indexing is also valuation rerating neutral for inflowing money. Some people argue that this is not the case, but any new money buys percentage of companies stock based on their market caps. So the effect on valuation is the same for all companies in the index (for both company A with market cap 100B and company B with market cap 100M additional money buys the same percentage of market cap, so stocks of both presumably go up the same, changing valuation the same percentage. this can be distorted for low float companies though.) In general though, pushing something to "logical extreme" is usually not a good mental model. First of all, most things are broken if pushed to logical extremes. Second, most things are not broken precisely because they never go to logical extremes. So usually when someone presents an argument that X is bad because it's bad at its logical extreme, the argument is flawed.

Seriously though, I'd probably die if I had to focus on single task. Sometimes single tasking works great. You're in the zone, you write something post/email/program concentrating just on it. Or you read something concentrating just on it. Sometimes single tasking sucks: 1. There are real interruptions in work. I.e. you do compile your program, you do run tests. You can pretend that this is not interruption, but it is. Your choice is either task switch or to meditate until you can continue. Maybe the solution is to meditate. But it's still a real interruption and real task switch. (Yeah, you can try to get better tools and environment to avoid these as much as possible. 2. Sometimes things just need time to settle. This happens quite a bit to me. You read something, you write a reply and then half hour later you have much better reply, better arguments, better understanding etc. Or you are trying to do something and it's not working. But next day you have new ideas how to do it, new insights, etc. If you push for single tasking, you lose all of these. So task switching is pretty much key solution here. Unless you're genius and you have best response to everything immediately. 3. Poor cousin of 2: sometimes you don't get into the zone and work is just not happening. Switch might help. The danger corollary though: you can procrastinate by persuading yourself that work is not happening. So careful here. 4. Task switching because one task is boring-but-you-have-to-participate. Yeah, I know that teleconference example from the article. Yeah, you have to decide if you can just skip the boring meeting instead of task switching. Sometimes you can't. Then you have to decide whether you're better off trying to follow all the boring stuff in it, or task switch. Yeah, this is risky as the example suggests. And, yeah, you're not gonna get 100% from either of tasks that you do in such case. This one is the most dicey out the four. Tread carefully. <Tests just finished, switching back to my other work> 8)

Interesting <wait gonna check my email> article <let me restart my software tests> but <gonna nibble on that cracker a bit> what was I saying?

Elites bullshit is a bullshit overall. I've seen cooky populist cousins elected and they are worse than professional politicians. Pretty much every professional and successful independent that gets elected is ... guess what? ... "elite".

If you can answer, how do you assign probabilities to the inside view? Maybe an example would help. :) Thanks and good luck.