Travis Wiedower

I've seen people say similar things like this before (about Buffett) and I don't understand it. Just because he doesn't live the life that you would with that amount of money doesn't mean he isn't happy or doesn't have a great life. He comes off as someone who does exactly what he wants to do every day. How is it possible to have a better life than that? If he wanted to bang models and live on the God damn ISS he could've done that a long time ago.

I don't think Trump is comparable to Hitler, maybe I didn't make my point clearly. I said watching him (pandering to people's dislike of traditional politicians for example) has helped me understand how someone like Hitler can come to power (which that link discusses). I don't think Trump would turn into Hitler if elected, but he does want to do some crazy shit that isn't very American IMO.

This is frightening. I recently told my girlfriend that watching Trump has made me realize how someone like Hitler can rise to power. This sentence struck a chord with me: "Politicians, for their part, suffered from the delusion that the dominance of traditional conservatives in the cabinet would neutralize the threat of Nazi abuse of power and 'fence Hitler in.'" Many people today think that, if elected, Trump won't be able to do too much damage because lack of support from Congress. Hopefully our checks and balances are better than Germany's were!

Liberty, What is that picture of? Reverse image search didn't bring up anything.

lol I have zero loyalty to either party (especially to those two idiots), but I thought she won hands down. Trump started out fine, but he could barely form a coherent sentence in the second half. His Florida club comment has to be one of the most cringe worthy statements ever said during a presidential debate. With that being said, I won't be surprised if Trump gains more in the polls (as others have discussed).

I laughed at the Whole Paycheck nickname for Whole Foods--couldn't agree more! I recently shopped there for the first (and last) time and was flabbergasted that place is in business (and thriving!). I couldn't believe how many items were 2-3x what I pay from Kroger or HEB. How do middle class people afford to shop there?

It'll be interesting to see what happens in the polls after Clinton kicked his ass. Trump's performance in the primary debates didn't seem to necessarily correlate to his level of support afterwards.

One of my favorite investing books. Some of the stuff is a little out there (borderline illegal?), but it definitely got my mind working on ways to be more creative in my research.

Don, You took my quip way more seriously than I intended. I was just laughing at the image of some billionaire pouting to Obama about one of his tax loopholes being closed (#billionaireproblems). I don't know how you can think billionaires don't receive praise for their successes though. Buffett, Munger, Page and Brin, Zuckerberg, Gates, Jobs, Cuban--there are a lot of billionaires that are almost universally praised. I'm guessing most of the ones that get shit on (Trump) deserve it.

"the mistreatment of billionaires" lol

The Cooperman case and your example seem very obvious, but there is such a large grey area with this stuff. I've had one or two experiences talking to management where they said something that left me thinking "I'm pretty sure that's non-public and it seems material, but I really don't know for sure." I imagine this is more common in small caps because execs aren't as groomed on correct behavior. As an even more obvious example, just last month I met someone at an event, told him I was an investor, and he immediately says "Oh I work at x, you should buy their stock, we have [large announcement] coming out in a couple weeks." I was just like "really? I'd rather not know that stuff." It kind of annoyed me honestly. Disclaimer: I did not purchase x's stock :)

Cable Car Capital's Q2 letter spends a full page bashing Elon (he's short TSLA). I agree with quite a few things he said (Elon is obviously very promotional), but calling Elon "a common promoter" is a little extreme. In my mind, reducing someone down to being just a promoter is essentially saying they're a scammer selling hot air (Elizabeth Holmes?). Here's the letter: http://www.cablecarcapital.com/Cable_Car_Q2_2016.pdf

Cloning a Tesla overnight is always made to sound so much easier than I imagine it to be. GM's first serious attempt is the Bolt, really? That thing is ugly as all hell and makes me even more confident in Tesla's competitive position. When Steve Jobs created the first beautiful smart phone, I bet a lot of investors said these same things: "If the iPhone takes off, Blackberry and the others will just clone it, no big deal!"

I'm reading Physics of the Future right now (published in 2011) and in the last chapter the author talks about how solar paneled satellites on a massive scale could power the entire planet. He goes on to say the largest roadblock is the cost of launching rockets and that they'd need to be reusable to make the project realistic, but that reusable rockets are far off in the future. And then boom, four years after the book is published, Space-X lands their first rocket. That got me thinking that reusable rockets are probably going to change the world in a lot more ways than I previously thought (more companies will be able to afford more space experiments). It was also a good reminder of how hard technology is to predict. The author (Michio Kaku) is a pretty accomplished theoretical physicist and even he massively underestimated the rate of progress with launching rockets. Interesting article by the way, never knew that about the Wright brothers.

I got rid of my car a month ago and am loving it so far (live downtown with no children). When I need it, I do some combination of Uber/Zipcar/car rental. It feels like a waste of money to rent a car just for a long weekend trip, but then I remind myself how much I'm saving by not owning a car.

Yeah that seems like quite an exaggeration. A test launch failing and the Tesla/SolarCity merger not going perfectly is probably a below average week in his world. Nothing more.

And it looks like a smushed minivan. And yes, the big guys were doing electrics before Tesla, but I'd still argue what they were doing was mostly twiddling their thumbs. Tesla completely changed the world's opinion of what an electric vehicle could be. Tesla wasn't the first but they might as well have been.

Even if Tesla becomes a 0 in the future (certainly possible), there is no denying the positive impact that company has had on the auto industry and the world in general. The big automakers would have gladly sat around twiddling their thumbs with respect to electric cars had a viable competitor like Tesla not forced it upon them. And then there's Space-X which has arguably had a bigger impact on the world thus far and less of a chance of failure from this point forward. As far as I know, Elizabeth Holmes was a lot of smoke and mirrors before caving in. That's a big difference compared to a public company whose products we all use and/or see and a rocket company who we've all watched launch rockets.

Good stuff. Those bags under his eyes :-\

Google.com. Doesn't give me the latest talking head's opinion on why the Dow decreased 0.1% the day prior. Best investing homepage I know of ;D

Space-X. It blows my mind what they've been able to achieve in ~15 years and I can't wait to see what they do the next 15. I got goosebumps when I watched them land their first rocket back on Earth, something so many people thought was impossible.

Yup. In its current form, it sounds a lot better than it actually is (in my opinion). It'll be improved though.

"Meyer extends inexpensive short-term loans against their investments. Recknagel says he’s used the money to invest even more with Meyer." So he loans his clients money (which is backed by their investments) and then those loans are invested back into the fund? Is that legal?

Well said. Things are no doubt expensive, but I don't feel like we're in a bubble. Just closer to the end of a bull market than the beginning.

It still blows my mind how many managers can underperform for extended periods of time and still manage huge amounts of money.