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JAllen

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Posts posted by JAllen

  1. Any online brokerage discussed here brokerage will be SIPC insured and you have nothing to worry about as far as safety, unless you have a giant portfolio that exceeds limits. If your under the limits then safety isn't an issue unless you fear the government goint under.

     

    Yeah, I'm thinking more for small institutional accounts that aren't big enough for many mini-primes. 

  2. Does anyone know what "Baupost" means?

     

    I'm naming my fund right now and have spent >50 hours on it moving from one to another with made up names, stereo-typical names, and names with my last name in it (it's Allen, not very unique).  Was just sitting here wondering what "Baupost" means so thought I would ask after some unsuccessful googling.

     

    Some general discussion and thoughts about hedge fund names would be greatly appreciated.  I would prefer to do this once and need to resolve this soon.

  3. thanks hester & pof

     

    fascinating story and incredible returns!

     

    looks like they beat buffett & watsa by a wide margin, do we really believe these figures?

     

    from reviewing annual reports and following the whole story, I have zero confidence in a clean sino forest

     

    it looks like chandler has plenty of experience with shady management that operates in difficult environments

     

    going to be interesting to see how this turns out.....

     

    regards

    rijk

     

    Don't forget to include the amount of risk they took when looking at their returns!  I'm sure it was all calculated, but they took considerable risk, especially in Russia it seems.

  4. I'm already "friends" with nearly everyone I interact with on a regular basis on Google+.  It's really simple: they're the people I email on weekly basis!  They haven't even opened it up yet!  In a few weeks I won't cancel my FB account but will hopefully rarely visit FB.  The integration (the black bar at the top of all Google apps) is indeed another guerilla in the room, IMO (with the accompanying notification box that turns red when you have one).  They already have tens of millions of people leaving their "messages" app open all day long; I'm sure they'll better incorporate that with + soon. 

     

    Disclosure: no position

  5. Tom Gaynor at the Markel brunch this year said that, among other places. Not sure if it is original to him, but it's funny and probably true. I'd love to see it backtested.

     

    That would definitely be interesting to do, but in the real world, friction costs would probably make this a lot less practical than a low-cost index.

     

    For an individual yes, but for an index fund or ETF to set this up there would actually be less transaction costs than a low cost index. All they would have to do would be copy every holding/transaction in the S&P 500 (or the Russel, or the Wilshire, or any index they are tracking) except for the airline stocks. Since they omit the airline stocks there would be less stocks and therefore less ongoing friction costs once the fund is set up.

     

    Even if it would add just 1% long term, it would be worth it as there is really no extra work once the index is set up.

     

    Couldn't an individual investor easily replicate this by buying an S&P 500 index fund normally and then taking a short position in airline stocks worth a few percent of that purchase (or shorting some other airline ETF)? 

  6. I was really curious about the motive of the NYT: was it to truly report the facts of the industry, or was the motive to cause an uproar and encourage others to discourage shale gas production?

     

    How many emails in total did they examine?  What proportion of them discussed potential negatives of the shale gas industry?  How did they get the emails?  If there are accounting discrepancies, who's doing something about them?

     

     

     

  7. My understanding is that there are new institutional "investors" in the market (college endowments, etf, mutual funds) that are driving the futures up based upon the thesis of peak oil.  In addition, you have a centrally controlled systems as in China "hedging" future needs.  This increased level of futures has driven the prices as well as production up based upon the ability to hedge that higher price today.  What has in essence happened is that the future oil price increase due to future expected supply/demand imbalance which is reflected in today's prices. If the "peak oil" thesis plays out as expected, the returns to oil will be nominal (because it is already reflected in the price).  If peak oil is delayed or does not materailise like what happened in the gas (increased supply) or the investor or China demand declines or doesn't increase as fast, the market price will decline to the average marginal cost to produce $60/$70s level as described by the Exxon CEO.  As a matter of fact if prices start to decline they may overshoot on the downside as in 2008/2009.  The only way for a sustained increase to is for marginal production cost to increase.  The difference between the price and the marginal cost is the "spectulative/hedging" premium.  From what I have seen, the marginal cost may have increased versus historical cost but is declining due to better extraction technologies.  Just my 2c.

     

     

    Packer

     

    Thanks for this Packer:  I haven't seen anything about this; how did you reach this conclusion?  I would love to read about this if it's possible.

  8. In America everyone is innocent until proven otherwise.  I like operating with this principle in mind during my daily life.  Doing so gives me the opportunity to evaluate new information as it comes in, instead of being bound by a consistency bias (among others).

  9. Thanks for everyone that originally responded to my initial question that was: "what web application might you like to see"?

     

    I'm currently making a web app that will email a list of stocks each morning.  I haven't decided on exactly how I want to do, where I'm going to get my data, and what are the criteria for inclusion. 

     

    In an ideal world, if you could get a list of stocks to research each morning in an email, which criteria and what metrics and information would you like to see in the email?

     

    This link (http://www.gummy-stuff.org/Yahoo-data.htm) has a list of metrics that appear to still be available and would be easy and free for me.

     

    Any general thoughts would also be appreciated.  Thanks again for the feedback!

     

     

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