rkbabang

My wife was just saying the other day that shopping isn't even fun for her anymore. Walking around with a mask over your face, worrying about what surfaces you've touched, and sanitizing your hands, or the woman who just walked by coughing. The dressing rooms aren't open so you have to buy stuff and try it on at home knowing that you will need to go back again to return it, so you decide not to buy anything at all and just leave...

For Asian stocks I like Sea Limited (SE), a large growing market, the potential to be the Amazon of SE Asia I purchased it earlier this year and it has done well. I'm wondering about JD.com as well, I used to own it but no longer do. It's one of those companies I look at again and again, but I just don't think I have a good enough feel for what is going on in China to have the confidence to buy and hold.

And almost as much as the FTSE 100 "If Apple's stock rises 7%, it will surpass the FTSE in market capitalization." https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/apple-2-trillion-rally-market-capitalization-entire-uk-stock-market-2020-8-1029524339

Unless someone moves to a cheaper area there can be increased costs to remote work. Increased air-conditioning/electricity costs, office/computer/networking/bandwidth costs, etc, so I'm not sure people would be happy with decreased wages. But there is also a substantial decrease in transportation costs, so it might still be on the money saving side for most employees, I don't know. Do you think WFH would change usage that much? Most people seem to run a pretty good internet plan in their house already because of all their devices and streaming. Personally I have't changed much. I have changed my A/C habits a bit, but my bill has generally been in line with the prior year. I have saved about 3-4k miles driven from this so far which probably offsets any consumption costs. I guess it depends on the individual setup. I already had 600Mbps service so I didn't have to change anything, but I've talked to people who had to upgrade (2 working from home, plus kids doing remote learning and only had dsl). I did notice an increase in air conditioning costs, we basically cool the house to a comfortable temperature 24/7, where we used to turn it up 5 or 6 degrees during the day. But not doing my 30 mile each way commute makes up for that and then some. I bought a new monitor and bought a copy of windows to run on my iMac so that I could use that as a wireless monitor as well connected to my company laptop. Also bought an ethernet to usb-c connector to hard wire my laptop to my network. I guess technically I could have expensed that to my company, but I didn't bother. I also needed a new home office chair, because I found sitting all day in the one I had just wasn't working. For me it has been a plus financially, but I can imagine if someone had increases in bills and they didn't have a long commute anyway it could go the other way.

Unless someone moves to a cheaper area there can be increased costs to remote work. Increased air-conditioning/electricity costs, office/computer/networking/bandwidth costs, etc, so I'm not sure people would be happy with decreased wages. But there is also a substantial decrease in transportation costs, so it might still be on the money saving side for most employees, I don't know.

Agree 100%, I also highly recommend it. You might be interested in this Joe Rogan interview with Josh Dubin who is an Innocence Project Ambassador Advisor. Great interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trh7YWo2Bmo

What if you ask your investment manager what he thinks of Buffett and he starts singing Margaritaville?

Second Hand or Left Hand Milk stout? I've heard of the latter. The former makes me think about Cousin Eddie's beer in Vacation. "You look like like you could use a cold one!" Eddy says, handing his half-drunk beer to Clark as he cracks open a fresh one for himself. Ha,You are correct Left Hand. I wouldn't want to drink second-hand beer, they all look and taste like Bud Light at that point.

I was at a neighbors house the other day and he gave me a Second Hand Brewing Co. Milk Stout. Excellent. I told him that he ruined Guinness for me forever. Definitely the best stout I've ever had.

I still love working from home and would be extremely disappointed if I had to go back. Everyone of my coworkers feels the same way. Maybe we are all anti-social techies on the spectrum, but not everyone loves sitting in traffic to sit in a cubicle all day under fluorescent lights, just so we can talk about things in the break room for a few minutes. I can call any of my coworkers and chat any time I want from home. Also the emails at all hours thing doesn't bother me. When I'm off work, I shut down my computer and then I don't check anything until I turn it back on in the morning. I have access on my phone too, but all notifications are disabled. It sounds like some people are not very disciplined in separating their working life from their home life, but that isn't the fault of the people sending the messages. I sometimes think of something and fire off a quick message to someone after hours knowing that they won't see it until morning, and people do the same to me. If you can't pull yourself away from your work, then spending time in an office building isn't going to help you.

Yea but what if you hate Trump and just need an outlet? There is an entire politics section for their daily 2 minutes hate. I think it is more likely that this thread asked us to predict the future, which is hard. I would think having a view as to future is sort of important for an investor... It's easy to predict that the S&P500 will hit a new all time high than to predict when it will. It's the precisely when that is the hard part. If you always know the "when" then you can make a fortune with options.

Yea but what if you hate Trump and just need an outlet? There is an entire politics section for their daily 2 minutes hate. I think it is more likely that this thread asked us to predict the future, which is hard.

I am the 81% I had 1-2years

Thoughts on competition from cheaper producers (mostly foreign e.g. tp-link)? Ubiquiti makes great products. And I think from an investment perspective they are attractive in certain lights (crackdown on Chinese networking gear, for example). But ultimately how do you get comfortable paying 35-40x earnings for a networking hardware producer? That is what is keeping me from dipping toes in. Yes the valuation has gotten a little rich. I bought most of my shares in 2017 and have only added a little bit here and there since. Basically I like the management and the products and how they run such a light operation, yet still manage to compete with the big guys. If it's one mistake I make over and over again it is selling companies that are doing great with management I like because of valuation (like when I bought NFLX under $3 (split adjusted) and sold at $11). I'm trying to learn to add to my winners not sell them every time they seem a little expensive.

I added a little to UI. They should be releasing earnings soon and with everyone working from home and companies large and small upgrading networking equipment, I think the expected earnings are way too low. Also they have been buying back shares and I expect they bought back a lot when prices were low. Even if I'm wrong about this qrt this is a long term hold for me.

I own a vacation home that I rent out most of the time. I've owned it almost exactly a year. I used it about 4 weeks in the last year and rented it out 194 days of the last 12 months. It has paid for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and all bills + about $15K extra. The bad news is that I put $100k down on it and spent about $40k on one time improvements. But the house is pretty much the way we want it now and almost everything has been fixed, redone, or replaced, so unless something breaks the one time costs should be very little per year going forward. Also we have started to increase our prices and have not had a hard time getting bookings, so we should be able to push that $15K extra up to $20k or more. Some thoughts about doing this is that you need a good local person you can trust. We found someone before we even bought the house. She owns a cleaning business and lives 5min from the house. She cleans in-between guests, does the linens, takes care of the lawn/landscaping, takes the trash to the transfer station, fills propane tanks when they need it, shovels snow in the winter, and will go to check on the house or help guests with anything that comes up. I don't know how we would manage it without her or someone like her. I would be constantly driving there to take care of things. Also, make sure the house is in good condition or you realistically assess what it will cost you to put it in good condition. I said above that we put $40k in improvements and that was with us doing 90% of the work ourselves. If we couldn't have stayed there and worked on it ourselves that would have been twice the costs. Our plan is to pay off the mortgage in under 8-10 years by putting excess money from airbnb rentals into the principle. Then when we are older it will produce income or maybe someday when I retire we will sell our main house and live there. We love the area, it has a great beach and it is on the prettiest part of Lake Winnipesaukee. Good luck with your search. And BTW if you are ever looking to stay on Lake Winnipesaukee: http://airbnb.com/h/TheBungalowAtSmithPoint Thank you! This is really interesting story! Would you say this investment is essential the equivalent of buying a residential REIT at book value? If you can make the choice again, would you buy this property or would you buy some residential REIT stocks? I see some residential REITs trading way above book and some trading way below book. But I understand that the book value can go down as depreciation though the actual property value goes up. I don't have trusted persons outside of Seattle. I wonder if buying beach condos make more sense in my case? The HOA will take care of most issues and I just need to find a cleaner who can do interior work. Do you have actual experience owning a condo where "the HOA will take care of most issues"? I've owned a significant number of condos and I've found that while that may be true for big stuff (roof leaks or similar) often if I want my space repaired quite a bit of my involvement is required. And many of the issues involved with owning a condo (appliances, etc) aren't HOA issues. I think renting by the night is likely to add more issues (what will you do when someone calls that the wi-fi isn't working?). Likely that's just user error, but still needs to be dealt with. I agree with the poster above that having a trustworthy on-the-ground person is the number one factor to succeeding in that market. The way we found our property cleaning person/care taker was to just start interviewing people when we were still just considering putting in an offer on the house. We found someone we felt comfortable with and 2 backups. Our instincts were correct as the person we felt most comfortable with in the interviews was the one that worked out the best. She has been great. The other 2 only did a few cleanings for us and didn't work out so well. We are still looking for another backup cleaning service and have had trouble finding a good/reliable one. One time this summer while my usual cleaning person was on vacation the backup just didn't show up. My wife had to go and do the cleaning with very little time to do it by the time she got there (we are about an hour and 15min drive away.) And yes, little things happen all the time that requires someone local to deal with. The latest was our smart lock got jammed and wouldn't open for the guest. Our care taker was able to swing by and open it with the key and then it just started working after that. That would have been almost 3 hours of driving if we didn't have a local person to call.

I own a vacation home that I rent out most of the time. I've owned it almost exactly a year. I used it about 4 weeks in the last year and rented it out 194 days of the last 12 months. It has paid for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and all bills + about $15K extra. The bad news is that I put $100k down on it and spent about $40k on one time improvements. But the house is pretty much the way we want it now and almost everything has been fixed, redone, or replaced, so unless something breaks the one time costs should be very little per year going forward. Also we have started to increase our prices and have not had a hard time getting bookings, so we should be able to push that $15K extra up to $20k or more. Some thoughts about doing this is that you need a good local person you can trust. We found someone before we even bought the house. She owns a cleaning business and lives 5min from the house. She cleans in-between guests, does the linens, takes care of the lawn/landscaping, takes the trash to the transfer station, fills propane tanks when they need it, shovels snow in the winter, and will go to check on the house or help guests with anything that comes up. I don't know how we would manage it without her or someone like her. I would be constantly driving there to take care of things. Also, make sure the house is in good condition or you realistically assess what it will cost you to put it in good condition. I said above that we put $40k in improvements and that was with us doing 90% of the work ourselves. If we couldn't have stayed there and worked on it ourselves that would have been twice the costs. Our plan is to pay off the mortgage in under 8-10 years by putting excess money from airbnb rentals into the principle. Then when we are older it will produce income or maybe someday when I retire we will sell our main house and live there. We love the area, it has a great beach and it is on the prettiest part of Lake Winnipesaukee. Good luck with your search. And BTW if you are ever looking to stay on Lake Winnipesaukee: http://airbnb.com/h/TheBungalowAtSmithPoint Thank you! This is really interesting story! Would you say this investment is essential the equivalent of buying a residential REIT at book value? If you can make the choice again, would you buy this property or would you buy some residential REIT stocks? I see some residential REITs trading way above book and some trading way below book. But I understand that the book value can go down as depreciation though the actual property value goes up. I don't have trusted persons outside of Seattle. I wonder if buying beach condos make more sense in my case? The HOA will take care of most issues and I just need to find a cleaner who can do interior work. I didn't consider a residential REIT because this serves as a vacation home in an area we wanted a vacation home in as well as an investment. The property also has an oversized detached garage that We keep our boat in. Even when guests are staying in the house we drive up there get the boat and put it in the lake for the day. A REIT wouldn't serve as a vacation home for ourselves nor a place to store our boat right near the lake.

I own a vacation home that I rent out most of the time. I've owned it almost exactly a year. I used it about 4 weeks in the last year and rented it out 194 days of the last 12 months. It has paid for the mortgage, taxes, insurance and all bills + about $15K extra. The bad news is that I put $100k down on it and spent about $40k on one time improvements. But the house is pretty much the way we want it now and almost everything has been fixed, redone, or replaced, so unless something breaks the one time costs should be very little per year going forward. Also we have started to increase our prices and have not had a hard time getting bookings, so we should be able to push that $15K extra up to $20k or more. Some thoughts about doing this is that you need a good local person you can trust. We found someone before we even bought the house. She owns a cleaning business and lives 5min from the house. She cleans in-between guests, does the linens, takes care of the lawn/landscaping, takes the trash to the transfer station, fills propane tanks when they need it, shovels snow in the winter, and will go to check on the house or help guests with anything that comes up. I don't know how we would manage it without her or someone like her. I would be constantly driving there to take care of things. Also, make sure the house is in good condition or you realistically assess what it will cost you to put it in good condition. I said above that we put $40k in improvements and that was with us doing 90% of the work ourselves. If we couldn't have stayed there and worked on it ourselves that would have been twice the costs. Our plan is to pay off the mortgage in under 8-10 years by putting excess money from airbnb rentals into the principle. Then when we are older it will produce income or maybe someday when I retire we will sell our main house and live there. We love the area, it has a great beach and it is on the prettiest part of Lake Winnipesaukee. Good luck with your search. And BTW if you are ever looking to stay on Lake Winnipesaukee: http://airbnb.com/h/TheBungalowAtSmithPoint

I picked my spouse. I didn't choose my family and she didn't choose hers. Sturgeon's law applies to everything, including people. width=500https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_fill,g_auto,h_1248,w_2220/f_auto,q_auto,w_1100/v1555926662/shape/mentalfloss/sturgeons_law_wider.png[/img]

Same could be said about the general public. 1 is rare, both in humanity at large and in a family. The key is finding those people and partnering with them. Sometimes it's easier when they are not family members. No expectations not involving simply the business relationship.

You seem to have limited knowledge of families... ::) Worst idea ever for non-trivial percentage of people. :-X +1, no +100000000000 That is just about the worst idea I've read here in a long time.

Ah, Thanks. I've never been to the FL Keys. I've got to get down there someday.

Thank you. What does below MM 30 mean? What do you do outdoor in Utan, Montana, Wyoming? Shortly after Miami, I-95 turns into US-1. At the top of the Keys you're at around 100 and the end is Key West which is MM0. 100-75MM is basically tourists and fishing heavy, especially the 80's. 75-30MM is pretty much locals. A little blue collar and hick-ish. 30-0MM is probably one of the few candidates for a utopian community in the US, at least that I am aware of. Something for everyone, from culture, to food, to historical stuff. Fishing, diving, partying. People of all shapes, sizing, colors, and orientations coexist and everyone just gets along and wants to live life. Awesome place. You still haven't explained what "MM" means? Maybe I'm just dense, but MM30 doesn't mean anything to me. Is it a road?

What I see in my area is that housing prices are increasing and properties are going under contract the day they go on the market. I think people are fleeing the cities and looking for suburban houses. I think the cities are in trouble.

Nice! Great trade. I haven't been watching overstock since I sold the rest of my shares after Byrne left. So it was completely off my radar. I didn't realize it went down to $3.