mrholty

I went thru a phase where I was burned out on most investing podcasts so I had to take a break. I found the We're Alive podcast - a Zombie podcast with hundreds of episodes. Well done, lots of twists and turns and great character development. It got so addicting to me that I listened to it for hours each night. Not the typical rec but sometimes you need to turn off the brain and relax.

I wonder if how much of the drop in the past few days was that perhaps Saudi's SWF owned some shares. That has been the explanation for the sell off in some of the resource stocks after the Saudi gov't told Saudi companies to liquidate their positions in Canadian companies. I like buying when others are having to liquidate so I bought some. Still a small position however.

I disagree with the others to just let it go. But I also agree that the tone and what you ask are more important that did you kill anyone. Both of my Grandfathers were in WWII and one also went in Korea. He was a Marine Pilot in the Pacific and was proud of his service. The other was an Engineer and did not come ashore on D-Day but a few days later and in the European theater. He was anti-war. I grew up and couldn't understand why he didn't want to talk about it when the other did. I eventually got both of them to open up as part of a larger context of who they were. Most people do not want to share things that they are not proud of and for many Vietnam vets they were treated very poorly when they came home (by the media, people on the street, even family) so they may view what they did as not honorable or something to be proud of. What worked for me is when I was going to be married. I asked him for some advice and if he had anything that I could show at the wedding. We had a table of family pictures. Asking about those family pictures was the best thing I could have ever done. He started to tell me about how he got married but more about how my Grandmother and him met (he was remarried). He told me stories of dating other women, including some women that a mother would not be proud of. That led to stories of his youth, the fact that his parents were rich and then lost it the great depression as his dad was a developer. That first discussion led to hours of other discussions and stories of youth, his first jobs, etc and he learned about me beyond the typical grandfather/grandson relationship. Eventually I asked him about his service. Nothing else. The stories were of boot camp, the hurry up and wait. Some stories of friends lost. Never about killing. I got to really understand my Grandfather at a level that my Dad never did of his Dad nor that I have of my Dad (and never will). I think some of that is due the relationship of Grandparent/Child vs Parent/Child but its also that I never pushed and he told me what he wanted to tell me. Several months later I came to visit and he had a box of stuff that he had from his service and he gave them to me. I was surprised and some of the items made sense based on what he told me, and several did not because he never told me the story with why he kept some of the items. The story you want is not if he killed anyone. The story is what did he do, see, experience during his entire life. Someday I hope I will have these conversations with my sons and grandchildren when they are old enough to not just see me as their father but as a person who has stories, however inconsequential. Good luck.

The hard part of healthcare is that everybody knows there is not one solution. Its going to take many solutions from overtesting, to price differences in drug to a real discussion of our lifestyle and the outcomes that come from it. One of the strangest things that I have seen as I have gotten older is how much we spend on end of care and yet how many people don't get decent end of life care. I grew up near LaCrosse Wi and I remember everytime going to the doctor they always asked my Mom is she had her End of Life Directives done. It simply was a question right after can we see your ID and insurance card. It wasn't unique to me until I went to college, moved away and started my own family that I realized I didn't get those questions. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/03/05/286126451/living-wills-are-the-talk-of-the-town-in-la-crosse-wis Hopefully, having these conversations with not just your health care provider but also your family leads to less issues, less costs for society and a more peaceful process. I volunteer my time at a local Hospice facility. What has struck me is the the variance of how people and families deal with this. One of the things I do is I try to help some people get their financial records in order. I've been thanked numerous times by both the people and the families and its real.

I'd assume the $150 cost is the cost of the doctor visit.

Wouldn't the cheapest answer be filling out an online form where you upload pictures of the spot for 1-3 days letting a VA (and ultimately a machine learn to identify). If it looks like an issue then a doctor can consult the pictures and order a script. That said, you could just move to Western Canada. 2 years ago I stayed at a VRBO with a nice family on Vancouver Island who was selling everything and moving to the US mostly for medical care. The wife had spent 15 years going to doctors for her issues and finally a visit drove her to Washington. Within hours it was diagnosed as Lyme disease. For years Canadians doctors told her it wasn't lyme disease as they do not have many cases. So they don't know how to diagnose and therefore don't test, creating this cycle of a lack of cases, etc. I still keep in touch with them and they are finally starting to accept this reality in Canada but its been hard for lots of people.

What you are missing is the role of the PBMs and others that inflate the costs to CVS, Walgreens, etc. so there is savings there. There is also savings of what Americans pay for prescriptions vs the rest of the world. I used to live in a neighborhood where everybody worked for a Pharma company. As described to me they view the US as their sales engine and accept what the other countries pay. That would be a major change. That said, I saw a graph of global spending on healthcare going back to the 50s or 60s (before nationalized medicine was common in Europe) and what was surprising was that the US even back then was paying 2x European countries. Nobody wants to discuss it anymore but tort reform or some change in the legal US system would probably reduce costs by 10-15%. Have several friends who are family practicioners and they all tell me that they over test everybody because you don't want to be sued for the 1-100/1000 chance you are wrong. Add in the issues where the doctors own the labs that they refer patients to and its a screwed up system.

Their chicken wings last year pushed the price up globally.

I have 3 boys 8, 6, and 5. I've had success with the 8 and 6 year old (sort of) on the delayed gratification. My kids are required to do chores around the house. Scrub toilets, take out garbage, scrub the bathroom sinks. They are also required to help set the dinner table and put away their laundry after I fold it. (I have not had success on either loading or unloading the dishwasher or the washer/dryer. They also get a weekly allowance (its currently $9/week) and they have a 3 part piggybank - 1/3 for stuff they can spend right away, 1/3 for something they want to save for, and 1/3 for "grown up fund" (college fund). If they ever want something at the store they can spend their $3 on gum or whatever. The other money goes and they save up for a video game or more likely Legos. I don't push the term college fund because I believe that if you push that term that is maybe what they think they have to go into when they get older. I recently ran across a situation where a guy is selling a bunch of old unused gumball machines for about 1/4-1/2 of what they go for on Ebay but its a lot of units (45). I've offered to buy 5 and then have my kids and I go out and place them. It would be a bunch of work to find spots but I think the business side of it would be beneficial. I'd help them upfront but after a while they would have to do all the work.

I had a friend who's wife made him build a chicken coop too. Not say this applies to you but I hear that it's becoming a yuppie thing. https://sf.eater.com/2018/3/5/17081232/silicon-valley-chicken-coop-backyard-status-symbol I sort of know the woman who run a monthly subscription box for chicken owners. I had been in a group of small business owners who were trying to get their business off the ground and she was in the same org but with a different set of people. I heard about her and met her for coffee one day. She was very discouraged and going to sell the business because the time was just too much. She called me about 6 months later and wondered if I wanted to buy it. She gave me the numbers and I was immediately interested. She stalled with cold feet and then 2 months later decided she didn't want to. She had outsourced the prep of boxing/shipping to let her focus on the other stuff. I've been told she makes $20k/month + on it now at about 10-20 hours a week. Damn.

Frankly she should be looking at jailtime for manslaughter if her product caused or contributed to any deaths. I recently was a juror on a case where the guy hit a bicyclist on the shoulder of a county highway as he was trying to grab a piece of paper that he dropped between the seats and went into the shoulder. That case of inattentive driving was not malicous but he's looking at 10 years. She and others knowingly and willingly lied and defrauded customers, regulators and plenty of others. When people get upset about inequality in this country this, the Bankers and the Freddie/Fannie discussion on here are signs that our morals are screwed up.

My father has an addition to gambling which cost him his business when I was a young kid and my house was seized by the IRS and my name was a black mark in the community for many years. (He was an insurance agent who branched out and actually started writing some policies in some niches where he felt the big guys were walking away from business. He was correct and when we closed the business this was one a few assets which had value). Where he lost money was he did a lot of work serving farmers in the Upper Midwest in about 8 states and he felt that gave him a house advantage over the commodities traders. He took his clients funds and tried to play the float before his policies were due to the parent company and early success led to bigger bets and bigger losses and doubling down until margin calls hit and took the business with him. 10 years later he is finally doing ok with his own auditing business for insurance companies but work takes him to live in Las Vegas and the family stays in flyover country. He comes home 10 months later lost his job and we get some letters from Casinos in Las Vegas that my Dad owes a bunch of money to them ($30-50k in full). Fast forward again another 15 years to 10 years ago and he becomes guardian for his Mom. I am nervous but he has a new girlfriend who seems to help him as a steadying influence. Turns out he fooled us. It took 3 years for him to empty her out of $120k. You can see in his withdrawl history where it starts and then where it goes from manageable to bad. Before this I decided that I will never give these casinos any real money. Like many others I went to Las Vegas for the first weekend of the NCAAs. When we started we just needed betting tickets of $50 to get a free drink and I could drink for free (+tips) for a few tickets that I would find from friends/others. As that weekend got busier and I got older we moved to the less busy 2nd weekend. Our group #s stayed the same and a few guys go every year but I go every 2-3 years and I like it less and less. Work took me out there for a convention a few weeks ago and I was shocked at how busy it was everywhere. I never remember it being this busy. table mins were up, etc.

I have. I struggle applying my estimates as if they are real outcomes. My concern is that either I am very wrong or everybody else is. Naturally my belief is that everybody else is but I also know that I am kind of an idiot and occassionally make decisions with blinders. (My wife would say I am too analytical however). Valuing normal stocks I can build ranges and feel comfortable with it. With this its a much Yes or No outcome and then from that the ranges of outcomes can swing wildly. So you struggle most with asymmetric bets? That's certainly a problem of mine. When the upside vs downside is 4 or 5 to 1 and you handicap the stock at a 75% probability of the favourable outcome, Kelly would say you should bet a hell of a pile of money. But, given the dearth of opportunities, it's not like you can tell yourself that you'll win over the long-term by applying the law of large numbers. So, it's more emotional/personality than intellectual/knowledge? That would be true of most of us. SJ Correct. I know its an issue for others as well. I am wondering how others deal and manage it.

I've heard some interesting stories about James. I wonder what his monthly ad spend is on yahoo.com and others. I listen to the Pitch podcast. There was one in mid-dec where he was one of the guys on the panel. He asked no questions during the pitch but then came in and invested the full amount. However afterwards he never returned the phone calls, emails, etc to follow through. Atleast call the guy.

I have. I struggle applying my estimates as if they are real outcomes. My concern is that either I am very wrong or everybody else is. Naturally my belief is that everybody else is but I also know that I am kind of an idiot and occassionally make decisions with blinders. (My wife would say I am too analytical however). Valuing normal stocks I can build ranges and feel comfortable with it. With this its a much Yes or No outcome and then from that the ranges of outcomes can swing wildly.

I've come to realize that my biggest inability is position sizing. The result of that is that I size all my investments the same and while I try to let winners run I do trim occassionally (I have it on my calendar 3x year) which probably has hurt my performance. I only carry about 8-12 positions at any one time. That said- I really struggle with special situations. Lets say there is a security that is a CVR or something. The Market values it at X. Your research says that its most likely worth 3x in 2-3 years. You can see an outcome where its worth 5x but there is a non-zero option of it being worth 0. You've tried to find others in the market but what you have found has not been helpful or less informed than yourself (or you may be overestimating your abilities). If you were me (and this is what I am thinking on a private investment) how much would put into a position size. My thought is to make this 1/2 of my normal position size. Small enough that it will not hurt but if I am right it could be valuable in the future. I feel like this is what I would feel comfortable investing in a friends dream business that I supported.

Is this correct ??? https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=4days The big ones are mining pools, some have tens of thousands of members each of whom can switch pools or start mining on their own with a couple of keystrokes. They also all know each other. Distributed 'security' as advertised doesn't really exist; you're really relying on 'inertia' and self interest ( the fact that the 'craze' is worth much more to everyone if nobody screws the pooch, and the 'ethos' that you don't take your money out). Nothing wrong in that (everyone eventually grows up), but it's a different way of thinking. SD I owned Bitcoin back 5 years ago and sold out after 9 months because it volatility was too much for me. I got interested because of the Silk Road in 2012 and sold before Ullrich got caught. Back then the sellers on Silk Road didn't like it because they preferred a stable currency. I bought/sold through Mt. Gox which shut down later and it took weeks on both sides to set up an account/ get my cash. A few summers ago work took me to China and I spent a lot of time with a few small(ish) business owners that were looking to retire as there were fears of corruption crackdowns as some of the heads of the biggest companies were arrested on their drive home from their towers. These guys were small scale distributors and these actions killed their business by 75% overnight as they waited to see what else would happen. Two of the guys told me that their plan had been to set up a "business" in Canada (Vancouver). Then use the business to buy an asset (house) paid for by the business. Then wait 2 years and sell the house at a loss (10-20%) but it was a way to get around the currency controls. But they had started to hear about Bitcoin as a way to get their money out without doing it via asset purchases. These mining groups are in China due to the huge subsidization of power to create domestic industry which makes their ability to mine (which updates the distributed ledgers) and due to these huge draws I guarantee that China will look to eliminate (reduce) it. RKbabang - Have you downloaded the software to have a ledger on your computer. I did back in 2012 and it took over 3 days to download and setup. (yes speeds were lower but I expect that due its growth the time would still be long). I used it to "mine" for a few weeks - got a little. The infrastructure is more fragile than most people think. (That said - I think there are uses for BlockChain tech but the coins feel like gambling).

Which is essentially paying $18,800/year for 5 years (or about 100k) for your Canadian citizenship. For US healthcare, it's crazy expensive if you're not on an employer-sponsored plan. It's absolutely ridiculous. If I was retired or whatnot, and not wealthy, I would not be living here. I always ask, who is getting rich from all this? Is it the doctors? I don't think so. The government? Doubtful. Insurance/Pharma? Now we're getting warm... I don't think you absolve blame from a) the bloated hospital staff and b) the doctors. Around here each private practice has a small lab in the basement and while they are a "seperate company" if you look into it they are owned by the doctors. They draw blood/something everytime you go in. The money flows back to the doctors. My wife is friends with many docs and PACs. Its strange that it was an issue 15 years ago but has died. And that is Tort reform. Estimates are 10%-15% of healthcare costs are due to additional services/tests performed so that doctors don't get sued. If you ask them privately they will tell you its 2x as much as they run tests when they know its nothing. The other one is end of life care. NPR's Planet Money did a thing on LaCrosse Wi a few years back and have updated it. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/10/05/496751771/episode-521-the-town-that-loves-death There should not be this much variability. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20140306.633790/full/

My understanding is that # of gas stations in US/Canada are shrinking by 1-2% annually. That may not sound like a lot but model out 10 years at 2% and eventually there will be a tipping point where you have massive closures. (I live in a small town where there are 2 main roads that intersect the city and there were 6 gas stations but now there are 3). I spent some time looking at this. Dover and Fortive are the two big players in this industry. Its hard to break out their gast station financials but they appear ok. The guys who know what they are doing (Casey's, Wawa, Love's) are going to just steal share. My wife visits our version of this local chain Kwik-Trip 3-4x for every time she gets gas. Milk, butter, eggs, potatoes, and bananas are all cheaper than the local grocery store. Free ATM machine. etc. This place will eventually swap out 4 of their 16 pumps for electric and grow it over time.

I know you could research this pretty easily for any particular model just by looking at local prices for used cars, but is there a public data source that tracks and aggregates this data for all models in one place? Lots of people often refer to Kelly's Blue Book as a good source. But that is not what my family uses. They use NADA Black Books. The 2 brands may be related but I think the Blue Book (and its online presence) is more of a retail channel and the black book is more of the exec channel. From family conversations they use one book when negotiating trade-ins (black book - wholesale) and the blue book when showing what the average guy is paying. My BIL is a wholesaler who takes calls all day when dealers are trying to move inventory and he said business has materially slowed starting in October and continued. He doesn't deal in exotics and moves a lot of trucks and regular sedans.

With regards to salary I compare it to competitors that are similarly sized.. Bigger issue for me is the makeup of the board (try to look at the last 3 new board members and figure out what they bring to the company) and the size of the board. For me this is one of the last things I look at so I rarely find an issue because if they already hit the boxes they are going to hit this. I generally invest in small and micro caps. I have only killed 2 potential positions because of this.

That has more to do with it being illegal than it does the heroin itself. I think the fact that they are illegal kills far more people than these drugs would if they were simply sold like Tylenol over the counter. A huge reason people OD is that they don't really know what they are taking or the proper dose for the purity/mixture they have just purchased. Is it cut with elephant tranquilizers, rat poison? Does it have fentanyl in it? Is it more pure than the stuff you bought yesterday or less? How would you know? It isn't like you can sue the manufacturer if it isn't what you expected. I know that the Advil I buy at CVS isn't cut with elephant tranquilizers just like I know the vodka I buy at the liquor store isn't going to make me blind or kill me. you are correct in that if it is cut and what it is cut with causes many issues and if it was sold via a prescription it would be safer. I'm pretty liberal with regards to much of our drug laws/customs but I cannot support and think its incredibly naive to think that if Opiods were legal we'd be better off. Your last comment in that you cannot sue the manufacterer is somewhat incorrect. In the case of a HS classmate of mine who lost her brother to a heroin overdose the police found the dealer and he was charged with manslaughter as he was selling heroin that was pure and not cut which is not the standard. They made the argument that he knowingly put peoples lives at risk by selling a more pure substance.

Ended at 25.4% which tells me I should just index based on the lack of time I can spend on it.

Syncora (SYCRF) former muni insurer who is sitting on the pinks for 10 years. Still governed by NY State but they have a few catalysts that should clean up the balance sheet and the liquidity mismatch. I've said this for 2 years however but it feels closer than ever and mgmt seems willing to talk to the marketplace.

This is a hard thread for me to read right now. My niece just lost her boyfriend to a heroin overdose this week. What blows me away is that my county has had 2 deaths this week from heroin. Both drugs were cut with elephant tranquilizers. What? How does one get elephant tranquilizers and decide that is what you are going to use to cut.