UNF2007

Retirement- VTSAX for 401k/ Solo 401k and C and S Fund for TSP Taxable Accounts- went to cash 1 week ago. Lost conviction in some of my ideas and due to work requirements won't have the bandwidth to track things like I should for the next 6 months or so, so I'm sitting it out for now. Cheering you all on from the sidelines though.

53% in 2023, due to a pretty hard rally into year end in my little concentrated portfolio. Best performer for the year by far was INTC. Have held it for 3 yrs so it has been a drag on prior years, have traded in and out for tax loss harvesting in prior years. Really surprised how long it took the market to come around to the value of the idea of not concentrating 80% of advanced fabs in politically/geographically unstable areas. Had a few risk arb things I piled into with everyone else, Activision acquisition being the biggest one that added a few %. C was added in the low 40s a share based in large part on the information shared on here/ deep value proposition so thanks everyone who provided insight on that one. My biggest mistake in years past has been getting uncomfortable and selling to soon and not allowing the momentum reversal that happens in these beat up names to fully play out as they go above my IV calculation, plan to work on that for 2024, and play around with letting stuff run 25-30% above IV before exit. Hope to add 1-2 ideas this year. Separately I'm finally getting off active duty this year and will be able to work as a surgeon in the civilian world which carries at least 3X the salary of what I'm used to in the Army and maybe more with ownership opportunities in a new surgery center that is being built by the group, so will see how that plays. Will give me more capital to play with in the taxable accounts for sure. PHIN 25% C 25% DIS 25% INTC 50%

What a bummer, learned so much from him over the years not just investing but about life, dealing with adversity. RIP will be missed.

We have had vacation property in costal Florida for several years. The dwelling is insured by USAA, but the policy specifically excludes wind and flood. I have a separate policy for wind from Citizens. My two experiences with citizens have been awful, a few years ago one of the storms came through and did some damage to my roof, ripping off fascia and shingles. Citizen's came out and did an assessment, after about 3 months of waiting ended up denying my claim because their models(not actually measured) said the wind speed wasn't sufficient to cause the damage on the day the claim was filed. Then sent me a letter saying my policy would be canceled unless I could prove the roof had been repaired to their satisfaction, in a timeline they determined. I had another separate event where wind blew the flashing off my chimney during a thunderstorm and water leaked into the home and caused damage to the walls. Same story claims adjustor came out and 3 months later said it was a defect with the manufacturing of the chimney, and their model didn't show wind speeds needed for that damage. Letter in the mail saying all damage needed to be repaired or policy is canceled. My opinion is that Citizen's is insurance in name only, to allow for mortgage underwriting to continue. But they have no intention of paying claims, outside of maybe a major named storm direct hit, fortunately haven't had to experience that yet. Unfortunately the only recourse is to sue them, but then they have the right to cancel the policy, so outside a catastrophic event it doesn't make sense to pull that lever.

I work in general surgery, I really don't have a good answer for you. I think for most things a good primary doctor will go a long way. If you want to spend more time with the doctor I would consider concierge medicine/direct primary care. It has changed somewhat recently, but most primary care reimbursement is based on E&M coding, which generates RVU's based on a complex set of rules that require specific documentation to support. That documentation and all the back office support/cost is the rate limiting step. If you go with a cash based practice they will have much more flexibility on time they can spend with you/ flexibility with scheduling because they don't have to worry about all the medicare/insurance company rules. Thinking holistically is going to come from them getting to know you/what is important to you over a reasonable period of time. While Mayo and the others are well known, I think it would be a pain to travel out there unless your close or really need the world expert in something.

31.14% according to IBKR. Small concentrated portfolio. Some of the winners were TPL, which I initially bought in 2020 after reading a horizon kinetics report, and fully exited this year, thanks Murray! AMZN, which I just had luck with entry/exiting prior to the run down. Also DIS, that June to Aug window, again pure luck. Went to 80% cash by around mid August, decided I needed to sit out for a bit with the Fed moves, also took a new teaching position as surgical faculty with a cross country move, and preparing applications for subspecialty fellowship around that time and just didn't have the bandwidth. Biggest unrealized loss so far has been INTC, which I have held since 2020. Finishing up the book Chip Wars, gives a very good historical perspective on the major players.

Anyone planning on taking advantage of forced selling in the names?

Sold some INTC and WFC, still like both, but I'm wanting to start raising some cash and both have run up quite a bit. Want to be about 50% cash going into Q3. Not a market timer, but has been harder to ignore that everyone and their brother (including my own) is speculating in the market right now. I don't see how the enthusiasm can get any higher, although maybe it can.

Had a patient come through clinic, had both vaccine series (Moderna), and was covid negative before I operated on him, I know because we test the day before. 3 weeks later he is in the ED with fever/cough etc and comes up covid positive, despite the vaccine, young otherwise healthy guy. n=1 but I'm still being very careful, the new CDC guidance notwithstanding.

For the guys that are buying puts on these overvalued names, what kind of duration are you looking at? I feel like this trade really requires some macro insight that I'm lacking. Mainly because your probably not going to see much if any correction in prices until something changes with interest rates/inflation and provides some alternative to equities.

http://www.columbia.edu/~dn75/Analysis%20and%20Valuation%20of%20Insurance%20Companies%20-%20Final.pdf Check that out, quite a read but helped me learn about insurance when I was studying it.

8% in the actively managed acct according to IBKR, kind of disappointing, given the opportunity set over the year and the numbers others have posted. But I had some extenuating circumstances, got deployed twice once for a 3 month Covid humanitarian mission and then to Kuwait for 3 months during the summer this year. The early deployment really screwed me as that was when everything was on sale and I was more or less out of the game. I keep about 70% of my NW indexed though just as a hedge on my own stupidity. Going over my moves from the year my biggest mistakes continue to be selling to soon, and sitting on to much cash (maybe lacking conviction in my ideas?). May start allowing things to run 20-30% above what I think the IV is going forward to capture some of that and correct for overly conservative estimates. Couple of trades that were interesting this year and worked out Bought KODK puts after the run on them entering the pharm ingredient business. Should have done this one at much bigger scale in retrospect. MSN, Net-net that worked out pretty quickly for unknown reasons, have to give credit to the Value Guys for that idea, again should have done much larger scale. XPEV and QS- not super proud of these as they are really outside the framework of what I do, basically greater fool EV plays that worked out pretty well, but again I failed to do at large enough scale. WFC- pretty much lucky timing here, value was so compelling it was hard to ignore. Still own this. INTC- largest position I currently have, third point getting involved is a plus. Have made this a meaningful position so if it works out will actually have some impact in 2021.

Welcome back, looking forward to reading your story.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-short-michael-burry-explains-104146627.html Not sure if this fits here, but definitely something I have been thinking about in the past few years.

We got an email from the CEO of the hospital system I work for, that they are implementing an AI program, to scan all charts and report if anyone is accessing medical records that they shouldn't. Right now they use a random audit system, but supposedly the AI will be monitoring every person on the system in real time.

No criticism here, investing is super challenging. Just curious but why did you pick 10% as the stop loss? With a recent personal example, I have been holding a fairly concentrated position , (for me 50% of active portfolio), in NWL. Initial entry was around 21/share (I think it's worth about 35), drop to 15 within a month of purchase, I avg down to 17/share. Next it's back to 25/share in a month, hold. Next month back to 17, buy some more. Now back to 21. No fundamental reasons for those moves in my opinion, thesis has not changed. But in my experience that scenario is more the norm, when it comes to value stocks. A 10% stop loss would have immediately kicked me out of the stock within the first month of ownership, based only on the share price change. When in fact the lower share price is a boon, since the company was preparing to deploy about 5b, about half the market cap in stock buy backs, and another 5b in debt paydown. (still waiting for this, they have just retired some debt so far as I know). I actually can't remember very many investments I have made that have had anything less then 10% drawdowns at some point in the holding period, I almost expect it at this point. I should also mention, as a hedge against blowing myself up, with the concentrated style I prefer. I put about 50% of my net worth into passive indexing. I sleep much better with that arrangement, and when things go against me, it's easier to know that my retirement is never on the line, I take the whole Buffett aphorism about not risking what you need for what you don't need to heart. I fail all the time, to be honest. I have a mandatory 10% stop loss, so if that is hit, I am automatically sold out by my broker. With this rule, I no longer feel depressed and compelled to check stop quotes every few minutes. The flip side is that often stop goes down to this level, hits my stop, and then goes back up. However, there is no good solution for that. I researched various loss cutting points but I found that no matter what % it is, there will always be stocks that I could have given it 5% more leeway, and it would turn back and go up 100%. Since my personality can't handle it without a hard stop, I just make it simple by the 10% rule. I am aiming for 50% winning ratio, which is very hard. But with a quick loss cutting plan, and aiming for multi-beggars, I can afford to fail a lot of times. When I fail, there are usually two possibilities. 1. I am out of luck. In this case, I'll just find the next bet. 2. The general market is in the 2008-2009 type of nose dive. In that case I would just stay in cash. The flaw of this approach is that I will very likely miss the whole bottom during March 2009, watch the market go up for months while I am holding cash. I know most value guys will not be able to tolerate this, which is why they are value guys. However with my personality, I would totally be able to withstand this type of distress than the type of "buying now and be ok if the stock goes down another 50%" distress that value guys usually endure. To sum up, there are no perfect approach. It is basically an honest conversation with yourself of what the pros and cons each style has, and what you can tolerate. Can you tolerate a lot of realized small losses and still be able to start betting again? Can you tolerate seeing October 2008 to July 2009 when SPX went from 900 to 600 to 900 and be totally fine holding cash in this entire move? If the answers are both no, then value investing may be the style for you. But that means you have to be able to answer yes to the following questions: Can you tolerate large unrealized losses? If some really bad news came out after you already have a 80% unrealized loss, are you able to sell out or are you going to freak out and freeze? Can you watch SPX crash from 1500 to 900, thinking it is already the bottom, go all in 100% invested, and then see SPX going down from 900 to 600 and possibly taking your fully invested portfolio down by 40%, and stay cool? If the answers are not yes for both of the above questions, then value investing may not be right for you either. Then you'll have to find another approach. Keep in mind that no matter what approach you choose, there will ALWAYS be some flaws and your personality has to be cut out to naturally be able to tolerate those flaws EFFORTLESSLY. Also keep in mind that a lot of times, our minds are fooling us when we were just talking instead of playing meaningful amounts of real money. I always thought I could handle 50% unrealized losses on my stocks and be cool, until I actually start to have names that are down 30% and couldn't sleep. So the only way to find out is to try it out with real money. This is the whole reason I opened this thread for discussion. A lot of newbies warship Buffet and took his methods for granted that it has to work and it has to be the best method in the world. I want to bring people to realize that investors can only succeed when they use the methods that naturally suits their DNA.

I'm surprised no one else has commented on this, as a non-expert on this stuff it seems like a big deal, are the other cryptos at risk for this?

I tend to agree with this line of thinking, and the portion of bitcoins that have been lost due to lost keys is staggering, some reports say its like 23% of all the mined coins have been lost. Could you imagine if 23% of the gold reserve disappeared.

Sorry to hear about that. I have my own recent encounter with MLM. Wife was going to get a new ID card, and the lady helping her had a oil based air freshener in her office. My wife happened to comment that it was nice. Next thing the lady starts in on an MLM type pitch for this device, which she sells for 500$, but my wife could get one for "free" by agreeing to be a distributor and selling 10 of them. Not sure if this would require buying 5,000 worth of air fresheners, we didn't ask. Since she had all of my wife's info she said she would be contacting her in a few days....Not what we were expecting. I'm not sure how MLM's exist, but the simple answer is there are enough gullible people out there to support it. Same for 419 scams, robocalls, work from home, quack medical therapies pretty much any other scam you can think of.

I'm in the US, Colorado right now. Your right that it may have just been consumer research disguised as a legitimate service, it crossed my mind. Another angle I was thinking about is how much of an incentive is it for the customer (if given the choice) to pick automation where no tip is involved or expected? As it stands now I have to pay a delivery charge and tip also. Maybe it will take longer to implement then I think. Just to examine it a bit more, quick google says the average domino's sells about 132 pizzas a day, I don't know what % is delivery, maybe 80%? So 105 a day, maybe allocate 25% of the volume to the automation to start, so 26, with a 5 dollar delivery charge, 130 a day? Over a week 920, a month 3680. Seems like it could pay for itself, maybe even increase profitability as you would depreciate it and could also deduct interest off a loan if it was financed? Obviously it would be a franchise by franchise decision, and your volumes would have to support it, but I bet for the right locations it could boost profitability. I have not heard of ANY self driving vehicles on American roads being used in regular commerce. It is all R&D at this point, unless I am tremendously mistaken. Are you in USA? Could this perhaps be a TEST to see if consumers are willing to do this? Much like automated vehicles for Uber & Lyft, I wonder if there is really a commercial market for this. How much of a savings will a typical Domino's franchisee save by having self driving vehicles for pizza delivery? A pizza delivery driver provides their own vehicle and makes about minimum wage from the franchisee. Tips provide the rest of his earnings. In my area of the world, the pizza delivery driver almost always provides their own vehicle. For an automated delivery, the franchisee is going to have to buy the vehicle. How much will that cost? I would guess at least 50k. How much cheaper will it be to run than having a delivery driver? What will the savings be if any? $50K outlay for a delivery vehicle is going to be a HUGE percentage outlay for the typical franchisee. The typical Dominos would probably also need MORE than 1 vehicle. I would think they would need at least 2, if not 3 or 4 (more?). I've heard rumors that the typical Domino's franchise costs as little as $150k to about $350k in investment. Way back when, I used to be a delivery driver when in college. On busy nights, which were usually Thursday, Friday and Saturday (sometimes Sunday), we would have up to about 10 drivers. On slower weekday nights, we would have 3-4. Drivers would also not usually work 8 hour stretches. Drivers would typically be promised a minimum of 4 hours, and then those who wanted to leave earlier could (if business was slow). So the franchisee could adjust labor pretty quickly. With self driving vehicles, you've got a constant expense, can't let a robot go.

Finished it sort of, the first 2/3 painted a picture of a poorly done transition, with a number of disgruntled career government types. Made many comparisons to how bad the transition was compared to Obama's, ....yet the government still manages to function. The last 1/3 I skimmed, it had something to do with data science and weather forecasting. I may have missed it but it seemed like a completely different topic that probably should have had it's own book, I didn't see how it really fit with the narrative of the rest of the book.

Wen't to order a pizza today from Dominoes, when I picked the delivery option they asked if I would be willing to have the pizza delivered by a self driving car, then had me mark a point on a map near my house for it to arrive to and said I would get a code to unlock the car when the pizza came. It turned out not to be available in my area, but maybe evidence they are piloting this in other areas. Has anyone else seen this? I've always thought the adoption for this stuff will be way faster then the average person suspects. Also changes the way to think about delivery, maybe restaurants that would not have wanted to provide a delivery service in the past will change, if you could contract with a third party company to provide the service?

About half way done, it's pretty entertaining read. Not very flattering for Trump. I get the impression of a man of limited intellect who decided to become president for unclear reasons, who is then surrounded by people who think they can push their own agenda by influencing him through various means. Hilarity ensues when he actually becomes president, proves to be difficult to control for his handlers and just generally creates chaos. Who knows how true the stories are, but again it's very entertaining.

Bought a position in NWL today.

I'm a physician/ surgeon and I totally agree with the sentiment in this thread. In fact through training I have always mentored the people under me to never take anything I or anyone else teaches without verifying it first. In training we even had a term for the info others tried to impart that was plain wrong or dangerous "black pearl of wisdom". Most physicians I have worked with are just as skeptical of the literature as anyone. If you adopt something into your practice that later turns out to be harmful, ethically that is a tough thing to deal with. In the surgical world for that reason change is glacial. In training we are used to having our judgement and opinion questioned relentlessly, that is what forces you to drill down to the facts. I will say this though, once a medical person forms an opinion about a topic, it's very tough to have them change their mind. I have been in charge of the journal club, this is an activity where we sit down as a department once a month a review relevant medical literature. I have noticed over time people really don't care what the literature says, if it contradicts what they are currently doing the literature is 'bad' if it supports them then they already knew that. Classic confirmation bias, that we are all susceptible to, hence my enthusiasm for always confirming advice or pearls that you are given.