berkshire101

I view investing like mix martial arts. To get good, you need to take bits from everywhere to eventually create your own style. Value investing is just one art form. With top UFC fighters, most are well rounded and are exceptional in one-two things. Like Jon Jones with his length and wrestling, he's also good in other aspects of the game. So just being good with value investing is not good enough nowadays, in the long run anyways. The game is competitive nowadays so we need to constantly learn from other styles to create our own. Also, everyone peaks. Like in sports, there are people who figured out an inefficiency and make it to the top. Eventually, others figure it out. Like Conor McGregor with his striking. Other fighters learned if you make him tired then his edge goes away. I think investing is like the same. Traditional value investing might still work, but long term its edge isn't so black and white. So it's up to us to add to the depths that is value investing.

Ripple co-founder is now richer than the Google founders on paper https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/04/ripple-co-founder-is-now-richer-than-the-google-founders-on-paper.html Pretty crazy given that there is hardly any use for the product/service.

Jim Grant Is ‘Bearish’ on Bridgewater, Saying Dalio Isn’t Focused on Investing https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-05/jim-grant-is-bearish-on-bridgewater-as-dalio-grabs-spotlight Performance hasn't been good, mostly referencing performance since inception. Maybe Ray Dalio is cashing out at the top???

Just contact them directly and request the info. Say you're an institutional investor looking to invest and want more data for your analysis. Dataroma is a good starting point.

An article with some historical data about the S&P 500. https://frostyalpha.com/2017/06/08/a-tale-about-market-valuations/

Ran across this fund while listening to a podcast. It's an interesting take on investing and leveraging crowd sourcing with machine learning. How can a value investor compete?! :o https://www.wired.com/2016/12/7500-faceless-coders-paid-bitcoin-built-hedge-funds-brain/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/12/numer-ai-is-a-crowdsourced-hedge-fund-for-machine-learning-experts/ https://numer.ai/about

dilbert.com

Hi Oddball, Many thanks for the chiming in with the your thoughts on banks.

Thanks for the added info. The reason I ask is there might be a financial that has multiple lines of businesses. So one way to value them would sum-of-the-parts. But I need to understand what's consider debt and cash. In some cases, a credit service company's funding might rely more on credit facilitates rather than deposits.

Enterprise value is calculated as market cap plus debt minus cash. For financials such as banks and credit services, what do you consider as debt? SYF's liabilities that would be consider - I think - deposits ($43.5 billion), borrowings of consolidated securitization entities ($13.6 billion), bank term loan ($4.2 billion), and senior unsecured notes ($6.6 billion). In total, SYF has $67.8 billion in borrowing liabilities and $15.5 billion in cash/investments. SYF's current market cap is $21.2 billion. If you take the numbers above, the enterprise value would be $73.5 billion. Is this the correct way to calculate enterprise value for financials? Typically, the deposits and borrowings of consolidated securitization entities are secured by loan receivables. Would you include loan receivables in the cash/investments too? Many thanks.

Do you have a favorite newsletter that you're subscribed too? I never subscribed to one before, but thought about it since it could be a good source for ideas? Thanks.

The Donald. He's good entertainment.

Thanks. I looked at the site and his numbers don't quite add up to what I find. So not exactly sure what to use.

Does anyone know a good source to find PE ratios by country? I found this site: http://www.starcapital.de/research/stockmarketvaluation But some of the numbers don't match up to what an ETF is reporting. Thanks.

Has anyone heard of use this feature on Interactive Brokers? I wonder was wondering how helpful it is to look up hedge funds. Thanks in advance! https://www.interactivebrokers.com/hmf/en/main.php

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! Really appreciate it :) I guess I have some work to do now.

Has anyone even seen the technology in person to be sure that it even exists?!

Is anyone finding value out there? There's always good bargains if you look hard enough. However, I'm finding it difficult to find bargains in the Growth At Reasonable Price section. I mainly see energy and materials in the biggest losers category regularly and those are outside my area of expertise.

It seems like it right? Andrew Ross Sorkin cowrote the first episode.

I just watched the first episode on Showtime and it's amazingly good. Highly recommend it if you have time. The first episode is free on the site. http://www.sho.com/sho/billions/home It makes you wonder what really goes on at these big funds. :o

The P85D 8)

You have covered the down- and up-sides. But why not do this with a particular stock? With an individual stock you could have a better understanding of price to intrinsic value. For instance, I have been doing this with BAC at prices of $16-17 and currently with BRKB at $130-131. I actually start by writing a naked put. If it expires I try to do it again. If I get put to I write a covered call. Good point. It's mainly volatility. The probability of the SPY swinging +10% in a given week is lower than a single stock. What premiums and returns are you seeing by doing it on single stocks? Thanks. Here is how the 17-strike options turned out for me on BAC in 2015, Wrote 1/9/15, 17-strike puts on 12/12/14 for $0.24 per share. Put to on 1/9/15 Wrote 1/17/15, 17-strike covered calls on 1/12/15 for $0.19 per share. Wrote 3/20/15, 17-strike covered calls on 2/6/15 for $0.36 per share. Wrote 6/19/15 17-strike covered calls on 5/13/15 for $0.15 per share Called out on 6/19/17 Wrote 8/21/15 17-strike puts on 7/15/15 for $0.20 per share Put to on 8/21/15 Wrote 9/18/15 17-strike covered calls on 8/24/15 for $0.16 per share Wrote 10/30/15 17-strike covered calls on 9/25/15 for $0.15 per share Wrote 11/6/15 17-strike covered calls on 11/2/15 for $0.16 per share Called out on 11/6/15 Wrote 12/11/15 17-strike puts on 11/9/15 for $0.20 per share Put to on 12/11/15 Wrote 12/18/15 17-strike covered calls on 12/14/15 for $0.26 per share Wrote 12/24/15 17-strike covered calls on 12/21/15 for $0.21 per shared 12/24/15 called out Thanks for the trade info. Writing puts and calls seem like a good strategy, rather than just doing one or the other. I guess I'll paper trade with the idea to see how it goes for next year. I'm in no rush to actually implement this strategy as investing in regular stocks is hard enough haha.

You have covered the down- and up-sides. But why not do this with a particular stock? With an individual stock you could have a better understanding of price to intrinsic value. For instance, I have been doing this with BAC at prices of $16-17 and currently with BRKB at $130-131. I actually start by writing a naked put. If it expires I try to do it again. If I get put to I write a covered call. Good point. It's mainly volatility. The probability of the SPY swinging +10% in a given week is lower than a single stock. What premiums and returns are you seeing by doing it on single stocks? Thanks.

As anyone thought about writing weekly covered calls on the SPY? Say you own 100 shares of SPY at $205.68. You write a call option at strike price of $206 for $1.08 premium. That's about 0.5% gain (excluding taxes and fees). Annualized that, it's around 27%. Any thoughts to the downsize of this? You could be stuck holding the SPY, shares are called away, and might not get the premiums you want.

Here's mine so far. - Don't get fired from new job. - Write a novel.