Pelagic

Thank you sharing that, it's inspirational to say the least. I'm of the belief that there will need to be an economic incentive for colonizing Mars or anywhere else in our solar system. The "insurance" argument Musk puts forward makes a lot of sense at a higher, collective, level but I think history has shown time and again that the pursuit of wealth is a far better motivator at the individual level. I'm still curious what Musk sees will be the draw to Mars once the exploration stage has passed.

A lot of great info on this thread, thank you to all that have contributed. I have a little experience at the lower end of this as someone I work with does this on the side and showed me the ropes. As others have said it's a lot of legwork and difficult to scale. For anyone with experience purchasing larger size tax liens what was the negotiation process like between you and the owner? Many seem to be liens on commercial property like warehouses and strip malls that are worth many multiples of the lien amount which I assume provides your margin of safety as an investor.

I've always found it funny how much emphasis is given to debates in the presidential election, it definitely adds an entertainment aspect that in my opinion takes away from the substance. As much as the American media would have you think that elections come down to corralling independents or various groups like Latinos, the reality is turning out the base is still the best strategy. I've read that Romney would be president now if the same % of registered Republicans had voted for him as voted for McCain. Whether any of these candidates can obtain even Romney's numbers remains to be seen.

Multiple filters combined with the vastness of space is in my opinion why we haven't found anything, yet. I'd also wager that our first contact with an intelligent civilization goes something like when European explorers encountered Native Americans, with humans playing the role of the Europeans. I saw this about an asteroid with more than $5 trillion of platinum making a pass near Earth. Once space starts to become profitable I think we'll see a tech boom that leads us to at the very least operating throughout our solar system. This leads to another possible filter, space is likely filled with numerous uninhabited solar systems, a space-faring race would have to pass up 100s of resource rich systems on its way to us. Even if they knew of us, why make the trip, our solar system probably isn't all that special, if you're capable of getting here there are likely many others closer. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2015/07/19/trillion-dollar-baby-asteroid-has-wannabe-space-miners-salivating/

I think confusing intelligent life with life that has the desire/ability to reach space is a mistake. Even here on Earth there are relatively intelligent life forms that have no chance of ever reaching space. Take Orcas for example, they're the most widely distributed animal on the planet and by all accounts one of the most intelligent after primates. Still, their chances of building a rocket capable of reaching space with flippers for appendages are almost nil. As humans we're incredibly lucky in that we have both intelligence and the means to express through the creation of tools. It also helps we live on a planet small enough to make it relatively easy to reach space using chemical rockets. If Earth was more massive like some of the recently discovered Earth-like planets reaching space would be quite a bit harder using chemical rockets, if not impossible. At the end of the day, humans are the right mix of smart/crazy to be able to reach space and actually want to go there. I suspect this combination is a lot more rare than we can appreciate, space is a very hostile environment and most intelligent extraterrestrials would probably have no desire to go there. Couple that with how expansive space is and you get our isolation.

The point about driverless vehicles in industry is a good one. We're all so focused on the consumer applications that we might overlook how game changing it is in the commercial sector. UPS and FedEx could have driverless trucks that show up at a prearranged time at your door, you walk outside and grab your package. As someone who knows a bit about drone tech, this seems a lot more feasible than Amazon's ambitions. Trucking will probably the first major adopter of driverless tech, at first as an auto-pilot type system, then moving to replace the driver entirely.

I tend to think driverless cars are going to lead to less total cars. Where a family today might have two or three cars because of the need to leave them at their workplace or school while there, a single driverless car can act as a taxi for each family member shuttling them around town as needed. It will be interesting to see how auto insurers deal with driverless cars, I expect that if they become universal, there will be a large premium for individuals who want the option to drive the old fashioned way occasionally. The fleet of driverless cars on call is an interesting idea but I think people will still want a personal car, especially families living outside the heart of major metropolitan areas. The real question is will your driverless car be able to hire itself out while you're working and don't need it, wonder what the insurers would think of that scenario.

The total for all tests is $3300. It's probably much cheaper (5x cheaper?) than regular labs, but still a huge amount if you wanted to have a complete blood test. A lot of that price is overlapping screens. If you look at what some of the individually most expensive tests are they are screens for a number of things like a STI screen or drug panel screen whereas there are also tests for individual drugs. Also some are male/female specific as well, the actual price would probably be cheaper than that for a complete blood test for an individual.

Something to think about with met coal is that a lot of thermal coal companies often have met coal assets as well. If they're going bankrupt due to their thermal coal portfolio, the met coal assets are going to be available for cheap. It would seem met coal has followed iron ore and steel prices down over the past couple years having "fallen more than 70% from a high of $330 a metric ton just four years ago." So using 2011 numbers or comps is a bit optimistic. http://www.wsj.com/articles/met-coal-hits-lowest-price-in-a-decade-1434577741

If I'm not mistaken met coal is used in the steel industry, thermal coal is used for power generation. Not that steel is in high demand right now either though, just that in the long run met coal probably has a place regardless of what regulators say about coal fired power plants.

I guess it boils down to margin of safety. Find a position where it's heads I really win a lot and tails I can liquidate the company and get my money back and then some and I could see going all in. As just a common shareholder with someone else at the helm of the company though, it's a lot tougher. A 100% investment in a company's debt might be an interesting proposition however if it was cheap enough.

Here's Seth Klarman's take on checking stock prices. The relevant discussion starts at 7:51 Klarman: "I don't have a Bloomberg on my desk, I don't care"

One of the things that turns me off to analyst reports is the fact that they're quick to upgrade or downgrade a stock after an earnings announcement or material event when the stock has already moved quite a bit. The short term nature of their forecasts forces them into needing to be right, right now whereas most value investors would shrug it off and say a single quarter's earnings really don't matter much if your time horizon is 5+ years.

Just because someone checks stock prices frequently doesn't mean they take action because of it. Perhaps my favorite excerpt from Buffett's annual letter is an analogy of Mr. Market as a friendly neighbor who meets you at your shared fence to let you know what he's willing to buy your farm for that day. I think of stock prices like that, for the most part the underlying business hasn't changed much yet over the course of a day, week or month changes can incrementally add or erase billions in value. Yesterday, global equities lost about $1.5 trillion in value, yet our "farm" seems no worse off than it was the day before, save perhaps that little part of yonder in Southern Europe. Personally I'll keep checking stock prices because it's fascinating and a reminder of just how irrational markets can be sometimes.

It's hard not to check frequently, especially when you can have something like the SeekingAlpha app with your portfolio on your phone. Stuck at a red light, ok sure a quick look... maybe there's a compulsive stock checkers anonymous group out there for us.

I believe the jokes are mostly at his self-promotion, not at his art and charitable endeavors. Unfortunately, the Miami building is a mix: yes, it brings art, but it's also an office building for his company. So you might consider the criticism against it a criticism on art/charity, but others might see at as criticism of office that tries to be built under the guise of museum... Compared to the rest of the "architecture" in that area of Miami his building would be a welcome relief. You have a mix of older, small condo buildings and private homes in the quarter mile or so strip of land between Biscayne Boulevard and the Bay but once you move west of Biscayne Boulevard its warehouses with the occasional junkyard thrown in. The planning commission criticizing it on the basis of some kind of "standard" it doesn't live up to is laughable when you only need to walk a couple blocks to find junkards with scrap cars and 10 foot barbed wire fences. The building isn't my cup of tea but if he wants to spend his money on it, I say go for it, just about any well maintained, new building would be a positive for that area.

One of my favorite's

Time plays a big role too. The advantage of putting pre-tax dollars into a traditional IRA is magnified if you're expecting to withdraw from it in 20+ years. Also, if you've been compounding your pre-tax dollars for that long who knows what your situation will be and if your effective tax rate will still be 25%. The IRA gives you optionality in this situation whereas you take the tax hit on the Roth today. If your time horizon is shorter or tax rate likely to be higher then the Roth becomes more appealing.

I think a poker analogy works well for small caps. If you're a professional poker player you probably don't go and play for $5 or $10 bucks at the local casino, sure it might be fun but it's not really worth your time. Likewise, a fund with a couple billion in AUM is probably quite capable of finding deals in the small and nano cap space but it's not worth their time, they can't allocate enough to small cap ideas to move the needle. Just because a lot of posters here and on other value boards talk about small caps doesn't mean the market is saturated. Try telling the average investor you're investing in a stock with a market cap of 50m listed on the OTC and with a share price in cents, they'd think you're crazy, even if it's an amazing opportunity. Whether it's rational or not, people take comfort in either letting the "experts" invest for them or investing in things other people are investing in. Even on this board I have to tip my hat to those of you who find obscure companies and post them up as ideas and invest in them, blazing your own way in this business ain't easy since there is so much "conventional wisdom" regarding investing.

Just out of curiosity, and admittedly I know very little about the regulations pertaining to starting a hedge fund, is the Buffett Berkshire approach viable. I.e a hedge fund starts with seed capital in the <10 mil range and eventually buys a relatively small, undervalued publicly traded company and uses that as the investment vehicle.

Thank you for sharing that, I always look forward to reading Marks' memos. I found his strategy that uses 3-1 leverage to enhance yield on senior debt interesting. I understand it's just one of Oaktree's strategies but it's interesting to see Marks so candidly levering up to achieve higher yields. Must be nice to have secure, long-term financing to pursue strategies like that with.

How is that better than automatic bill payment services that are available? Not too different except it's all in one place as a single payment. From a personal finance perspective I think a lot of people would benefit from a single bill that itemizes their recurring expenses, perhaps with % breakdowns by category. Thinking about it a little more, charging a convenience fee is probably the wrong way to make money. The service could simply pay people's bill's for perhaps a small flat fee, say $5 - $10 a month and then if the subscriber is unable to make a timely payment, charge them interest. So if you would otherwise miss payment on the light bill or water bill, they'll pay it that month but you have to pay it back with interest.

A service that consolidates all your recurring bills into a single payment, they tell you what you owe and you write a single check for it. Maybe they take a percent or two for convenience on top of that too.

Borrow from lending club at 5 or 6% find a relatively safe dividend stock paying more than that and sit back and enjoy the free money ;)

I'm still having trouble wrapping my head around these. On the one hand we have PBR today facing internal scandals, low oil prices and government that uses them as their own piggybank when the need arises. On the other hand a hundred years is a long time, it's almost certain that the challenges faced by PBR today will seem minor when compared to those faced at some point in the next hundred years. I just find it kind of amusing they were able to pull this off when everything else said about them in the last couple months has been incredibly negative relating to their abysmal corporate governance.