innerscorecard

I think you more or less follow this process, but with different brokerages, no?: http://www.samsung.com/us/aboutsamsung/investor_relations/stock_info/howtobuysecstocks/

But do you think all these decisions helped lessen your stress and thus improved your quality of life sufficiently so that it was worth it? Or were they just mistakes?

I just received Hooke's book and have begun to read it. I am learning a lot already.

I can't tell if a lot of what he says is just trolling or he actually doesn't know who Dan Loeb is, or thinks Seth Klarman is a growth investor, haha.

First you have Lynch with the tickets, and now this. We'll see what happens with Buffett!

Reading speculative fiction like this makes me too depressed about the real world.

Why would you invest differently in your Roth IRA and in your taxable accounts? They are both simply containers for investments, with the exception that you don't pay taxes on realized gains in your Roth IRA, since you have contributed to it with after-tax income. In fact, it would be better to do your active investing in your Roth IRA, as ERICOPOLY has done, and have index funds in your taxable accounts, yet you are doing the opposite!

Sardar Biglari's letters, of course.

"They’re priced between $76 and $320." "With social media campaigns spearheaded by the likes of Tess Holliday, Ashley Graham, and Denise Bidot encouraging women to wear bikinis and bathing suits that make them feel comfortable regardless of their size, Maxim associating with that side of the women’s body movement — not the objectification one — could be a good move." Very interesting - looking forward to seeing how this actually plays out. Makes sense to find ways to make money from the Maxim brand that don't involve selling subscriptions or advertisements. Selling clothes is hard - but maybe Lanphear can do it.

That's very exciting. My technical skills could always use improvement. I will get the new 6th edition.

Asking questions is not illegal. Asking questions stupidly can get you into trouble.

I completely agree with everything you said. And even having a presence in China doesn't guarantee that either, of course. It's necessary but not sufficient. I've seen big institutions, supposedly the smart money, being taken for a ride in really funny ways. People simply don't do the proper due diligence, especially when they have increasing risk appetite.

There is zero trust regarding public filing and insider trading is very common. That's why people (including myself) don't rely on fundamental analysis. Right - I'm not saying people should naively adopt Western-style fundamental analysis, either. I'm just saying what I believe the consensus more or less to be. The other possible way to think about the problem, assuming fundamental analysis was impossible or useless, would be that if you cannot perform fundamental analysis, you cannot invest at all, rather than that you must invest in a more speculative fashion. No one has to enter the domestic securities market. One can always choose not to participate (although seemingly, you cannot easily choose to get out once you are in!).

One thing that was interesting to me was the statistic of how many trading accounts were open - Solomon said less than 100 million accounts. I remembered previously seeing Credit Suisse saying there were 258 million accounts open, so this struck me as interesting. Something was lost in translation somewhere. It's never something I had researched before. So I went to the website of China Securities Depository and Clearing, where they say there are 90.9m investors - as opposed to accounts - multiple accounts are allowed now - as of last count (90.7m of which are individuals). 89.9m of these are in A shares (2.4m are in B shares). Of these, 30.2m transacted during the most recent weekly period for which there is data available (6/29 to 7/03). (Only 0.3m transacted in B shares.) So if you're going to see an immediate negative wealth effect, it might mostly be for these 30 million or so active traders. Website (Chinese only) is here: http://www.chinaclear.cn/zdjs/xmzkb/center_mzkb.shtml.

People already realize this. They just thought they could front-run the other suckers. Can you give us your perspective of the Chinese market/economy? You have a unique perspective relative to the rest of the board. I know just enough to know that I don't know enough to have a strong opinion one way or the other, but also that the strong opinions that most hold (whether Chinese or not) are completely unfounded and based on insufficient evidence. Things are ok here. I know and/or have spoken to (in Chinese) people from a big cross-section of society, from entrepreneurs to professionals to blue-collar workers, and in many geographic regions. (And yet I realize that is still far more biased and far too little of a sample size to say anything conclusive.) The frustrations of living here remain and will not go away anytime soon. But life goes on, and society is generally stable. And of course, things are generally better for far more people than not than they were 5 years ago and 10 years ago.

Looks like you had a great trip here!

I doubt this is true. By my observation, Buffett is not popular among professionals since people want to get rich quick. And most of the investors are retail investors who probably never heard about Mr. Buffett. Buffett is very popular. The most popular fundamental retail investor forum is called "The Snowball" (雪球网), after all! But many Chinese, even people who are educated and intelligent, will read Buffett and Munger and Lynch and then conclude, well, fundamental analysis works in the West, but not in China. In China, they'll say, you have to invest based on government policies.

People already realize this. They just thought they could front-run the other suckers.

Someone supposedly highly educated I know of (overseas graduate degree, works at a Fortune 100 company in a senior manager role) was happy that shares of companies she owns were halted for trading. She thought this was good, as it meant they couldn't go down, at least for now.

It's interesting that the podcast has not been updated for years now. I bet there are a lot of good dormant podcasts like that on iTunes.

I plan to read this. I have always been a big fan of the blog - I really like how Carlson writes clearly and logically, and yet does NOT simply just repeat the same thing over and over - he always turns over new rocks and gives detailed, analytical examples while at the same time being very big-picture and thematic.

Happy birthday - best of wishes for PDH, and thank you for your work building this community!

Not to mention people that got totally burned then find a reason to get burned again!

Yes, I hear their sponsorship message on the podcast a lot. I also frequently hear the sponsor message for New York Life Mainstay Investments (the sponsor of the Wealthtrack site as well), which is responsible for scams like this: http://blog.alphaarchitect.com/2015/04/14/the-impossible-sale-an-sp-500-index-funds-at-60bps-with-a-3-sales-load/.

David Winters appeared on Wealthtrack, and I couldn't believe how he twisted the truth. Everyone should listen to the whole interview themselves (http://wealthtrack.com/recent-programs/premium-winters-2/), but I also wrote an article about some of my thoughts on it on my site (http://www.innerscorecard.co/blog/2015/7/3/david-winters-is-digustingly-disingenuous). It's interesting that Mack didn't ask him a question on the Buffett/Coke dispute directly, despite that being her teaser on Winters last week. Perhaps Winters required her to not ask him about that directly as a precondition for having him on this time?