Pelagic

What I find interesting is a lot of articles are free when they're first published then become subscription only a few weeks later. So you can at one point as a free user be following the article and the author's response to comments and the discussion on it, then be completely locked out even if you were participating in said discussion. It's also funny how there's no distinction in terms of quality on what articles become pro or not, some of those I've seen that start free and then become pro-only are little more than a rehash of the company's corporate presentation with little to no analysis done. Oh well, their platform, their rules.

Interesting discussion. It seems from your reasoning, there is a strong incentive to focus on a niche and build a story around it in order to attract capital. If you're the only small cap Somali value fund, there's probably a subset of investors that would be interested in investing in it whereas a small cap US value fund that invests alongside everyone else has a tough slog ahead in terms of selling themselves. Related question, does the comparative ease of selling a niche fund force managers into a corner where while it may be easier to attract capital, it's also more difficult to produce returns because of the constraints they've placed on their fund's scope - assuming they or their investors care about returns - some investors may just want "exposure" to a certain niche for a small allocation of their portfolio. I.e. they'd produce better returns as a vanilla value fund but wouldn't have a fund if that's what they were.

Currently reading https://www.amazon.com/1493-Uncovering-World-Columbus-Created-ebook/dp/B004G606EY In it they go into the period known as the Little Ice Age which affected mainly Europe between 1550 and 1750 causing extreme cold, poor crops, and generally unpleasant conditions. While the causes are varied, from solar output to volcanoes, one of the theories put forward for its cause is particularly interesting. Native Americans in the centuries preceding Columbus had actively managed the landscape of North America with fire. Yearly burnings of massive tracts of land, essentially the entire Eastern US from Florida to Maine and parts of the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys as well, created a landscape that was ideal for deer, elk, and other game animals allowing Native Americans to easily hunt them and move about. While the idea of pre-Colombian civilizations actively managing the landscape in a way that would be impressive even today is interesting in and of itself, how it ties in to the Little Ice Age is even more interesting. The theory goes that when contact between Europeans and Native Americans occurred and the resulting transmission of diseases caused a loss in population, the forest grew back. And in growing back, creating a dense understory like we see today in much of the Eastern US, it sequestered enough CO2 to have an impact on atmospheric temperatures, creating the period of global cooling we know today as The Little Ice Age. An interesting theory whether it explains the Little Ice Age or not.

This brings up a question. Does narrative matter more in highly technical startups in terms of attracting funding. What percent of investors are capable of doing the DD necessary to determine if what the narrative claims is the goal is actually possible. Someone in the industry like your friend, yes, the average VC - probably not and then they have to hire someone to do their DD and weigh that against the narrative and prior investment rounds where other investors presumably did their DD. In a less technical startup investors want to mainly see traction - not that that will necessarily translate to profitability.

Anyone else follow the bike sharing/rental space? Broadly speaking I feel the various competitors in the bike rental sector are where Uber/Lyft will be if/when autonomous vehicles become common place. Each has to maintain a massive inventory of bicycles and concentrate them in locations that best match demand. It's a race for each company to move into new cities and areas where demand is underserved and be the first in the market establishing what passes for a moat in the sector because people in that area have your app on their phone and are used to using your bikes. I think a lot of parallels exist between the current state of competition in this space and where Uber/Lyft and other ride sharing companies could end up, racing to establish themselves as the sole player in numerous smaller markets while pouring capital into more competitive markets. https://news.crunchbase.com/news/alibaba-bets-866-million-can-win-chinas-bike-race/

The problem as I understand it from other forum's that have dealt with it is that is malware that has infected the ad service provider so it's not something the site administrator can easily fix aside from turning off ads completely or finding a new ad service provider. I've never experienced the issue on my Mac but it was terrible on my iPhone before I installed an ad blocker app, making a couple sites completely unusable.

A lot of forums have been having trouble with this. It's server side and from my understanding is related to the ad service provider many forums use. A popup blocker will work to filter it. I downloaded the content blocker+ app on my iPhone (it was free) and it worked to eliminate it on another forum that had it pretty bad.

So generally I'm looking for an asymmetric risk/return profile which will mean deep out the money low price options. Event-wise it could be a market correction, financial restatements (capital one) or some other event mis-priced with a LEAP date far enough in the future to allow the thesie to play out. Think of Ackman's HLF puts for his short, which I believe he has now closed and given up on. Thanks for the explanation. That's where I've tended to look as well. A thread dedicated to potential opportunities in this space might be useful, something like the "What are you buying today" thread but for LEAPS. Nickenumbers point in regards to economic tailwinds boosting share price independent of events is well taken. Options volatility and its component of their price tends to be heavily weighted toward current sentiment however, what's happening today might be just a footnote 10 months down the road. Fascinating topic - thanks for starting the discussion.

When you're looking at event driven LEAPS, I assume options IV is high due to the range of outcomes surrounding the LEAP. Where in the option chain do you usually look to buy? In/at/out of the money. Just curious as I know some people prefer deep ITM to reduce the vol premium whereas others go for at or out simply because they're cheaper. It's an interesting strategy. I know TD's Think or Swim Platform (its free and awesome if you trade options) has a function to view what the market is projecting as a 1 standard deviation move over the life of the option which can lead to curious predictions for events.

Autonomous cars will kill Uber/Lyft. Why wouldn't I take out a loan, have the car drive itself for the 22 hrs/day when I don't use it myself, and capture that $ myself? And how are people going to find and call your personal car to them if not through the Uber or Lyft app? That's Uber v3.0 after they figure out owning and maintaining a massive fleet of AVs is an expensive, low margin proposition. Uber 3.0 will connect your car with customers where their platform just acts as a middleman. Like the current version but without the drivers demanding better wages. WSJ headline circa 2032 - "MIT Study Reveals Autonomous Vehicles are Working Well Below Minimum Wage"

Makes sense, I was thinking more in terms of the drivers themselves which have little attachment to either and are a sort of revolving door of people that use the apps to make extra money until they tire of it, which I don't see as being their moat. Their platform connecting drivers/riders is the real moat as I see it.

I don't see the driver network as a defensible moat for them, drivers can and do switch between Uber/Lyft and other smaller ridesharing apps where they exist - most drivers will use both at the same time and pick up rides interchangeably between them. Furthermore, save for a small minority of drivers, most drivers don't see driving for Uber/Lyft as a long term gig, they work when they want, when they feel it makes economic sense to do so. Should they be priced out by higher costs (fuel costs for instance) or cheaper AV rides they'll stop driving. Where I see Uber and Lyft currently having a moat relative to taxi companies is in the platform used to hail drivers. People like being able to summon a ride through their phone and whether it's a human driver or an AV I don't see this disappearing anytime soon - not that taxi companies can't replicate it easily enough if they choose to. It all comes down to price though, if they're not providing the cheapest, or close to it, ride - riders can easily open another app. I usually price shop between Uber and Lyft before summoning a ride and there's no reason to think if a company running a fleet of AV pops up in my area and offers an app to summon them with transparent pricing, I wouldn't also check their rates. The "let's use our drivers as guinea pigs to prove the platform can work then undercut them with our own fleet of AVs" model has always struck me as funny. Technology is great, don't get me wrong I love tech and can't wait for self driving personal cars. But I feel Uber/Lyft are pushing for AVs because the technology exists rather than because of an economic case for it. If you have people willing to work for essentially minimum wage as drivers, is switching to a capital intensive model where you own and have to maintain massive fleets of self driving vehicles really the path you want to take? Perhaps they're making the case that driver's earnings are higher than estimated to justify their push toward AV to their investors.

Perhaps I'm in the minority but I tend to view pipelines and their associated risk as an engineering issue. Spending money on political debate seems wasted when it could be put toward better design, monitoring, and containment in the event of a spill. If oil companies and subsequently provinces are losing millions a day in revenue due to low differentials, there's a lot of incentive to design a pipeline that isn't going to leak and to replace old ones that might. The above goes for oil pipeline opposition, which does present a real risk in the event of a failure. NG pipelines are different and relatively benign in terms of their potential impact on the environment should they leak.

What's most impressive IMO is just how cheap sending a payload to LEO using a Falcon Heavy is compared to the alternatives. Falcon Heavy can launch 70 tons for roughly 100 million putting the price around $700 per pound. For comparison the next cheapest option, Falcon 9, runs around $1600/lb with costs going up from there. Something to be said for economies of scale, although there's a lot more incentive to make sure everything works right when you have that large, and expensive, a payload aboard.

Do these ATMs function as a regular ATM as well or are they exclusively BTC? I have to imagine adding the ability to withdraw from a cryptocurrency account to cash (minus a healthy a transaction fee) wouldn't be that hard to program into new ATMs. Still, you have to ask yourself what percent of people have BTC and need to convert it to cash while paying the ATM's fees, and moreover, how many are going to be coming through that gas station and need it immediately - it can't be a large number of people.

I had a similar situation occur recently in an unoccupied apartment with a plumbing leak in the shower and the water company was happy to give me a major discount on the bill. Clearly the water was used but they still offered to refund about 80% of the bill when I asked if there was anything they could do, and did it quite promptly. I know we have large volume pricing here where if you want to fill a swimming pool or something they'll cut you a break as well. Sorry to hear about your friend's case, might be worth calling to see if they'll give him a break. If the first person says no call back and hope you get someone else, the utility probably has a provision for plumbing issues. Out of curiosity what did your friend's bill say the total amount used was? A constantly running toilet might do about 2 gallons per minute so 86,000 gallons a month.

A little more in depth look at China's citizen score. http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion Cultivating a country full of Baghdad Bobs

This was interesting, the 21st century version of a musical Christmas card except you get to hear how bad a job the CEO is doing instead.

I don't know if you're familiar with Breakthrough Starshot or not but their plan to send craft to Alpha Centauri is quite similar to this. Using Earth based lasers and light sails to accelerate the craft to 20% of the speed of light, they estimate the trip will take 20 years. Basically like firing a shotgun blast of many small craft hoping some make it to their destination and can send back a signal of what they're seeing to us. https://www.space.com/32546-interstellar-spaceflight-stephen-hawking-project-starshot.html

I was always under the impression FOREX traders report gains/loss on FX trades as ordinary income. If a crypto currency is bought directly buying "money" it should be no different than buying say euros with dollars and taxed the same way every other FX trader pays taxes. The distinction between buying through an investment fund and buying directly is a good one since in theory gains/loss in the fund should be taxed at the capital gains rate vs. the ordinary income rate. Lots to figure out but if I can be certain of one thing it's that the IRS will figure out a way to get as much as they possibly can.

Increased light pollution across much of the world and decreased night vision thanks to staring into screens for most of the day means that even those who do take the time to look into the sky are likely only able to see a fraction of what previous generations saw. Still, just because you aren't able to identify something doesn't mean you should immediately jump to an extraterrestrial explanation. I saw a sky lantern flying across the sky one night and watching an orange glowing ball race across at roughly 300 feet raised a number of questions, clearly it fit the bill for a "UFO" - then I saw 3 more pass by on the same course and got a glimpse of the paper bag part of one and mystery solved. With the increased availability of personal drones, I'm actually surprised we don't hear of more "UFO" sightings.

Take a look at some other fast food restaurants for sale on various business brokerage sites. I'm hard pressed to find any priced at even 1x sales much less 2x. Here's a search setup but there are other sites you can browse too. https://www.bizquest.com/restaurants-for-sale/?q=a3dpZD0xMjM= I guess the real question is whether you see your investment as being in the existing restaurant or in the brand and receiving a portion of all future earnings whether it be from franchise fees or from opening additional locations. Still seems expensive based off the numbers you've given us but if you think they can execute and use this location as a springboard for expansion then maybe.

Are the drones powered by renewable energy? ;) I'd recommend going to some of the startup events in your area and talking to startups and angel investors. Maybe an angel group would allow you to sit in on a few pitches that they get so you can get a feel for the market. Early stage investments are as much about connections and expertise as they are about money so figure out what you can bring to the table to help the startups you invest in succeed in addition to dollars.

TD Ameritrade's Think or Swim platform should have what you're looking for. Use the thinkBack feature. The free version has it if I'm not mistaken.

Frommi in the Google Drive links you posted it shows that the rebalance frequency is weekly, is that correct and did you notice weekly performed better over the same period than monthly/yearly?