Vish_ram
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Posts posted by Vish_ram
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Goldendoodles are the best.
Very sociable, docile, great to kids, ...
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Going through 2009 is like, you take a walk in the park, a serene and quiet one and suddenly realize that you are in the middle of a circular firing squad. And someone gave the orders to fire.
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Even though I voted for HRC, I understood the outrage.
- for last 30 years, the blue collar workers were screwed by trade agreements. Take a look at devastation in NC due to furniture imports, loss of mfg jobs...all were replaced by low paying ones
- the bias in MSM in not covering the real issues and focusing on fringe issues like racism, PC was rejected
- people got sick and tired of HRC's shenanigans. R attacks worked in the end. But she had plenty of material to go after
- Clinton cash machine was a scandal. How did a former prez made $100MM+ giving speeches, when middle class got shafted. Clintons were so oblivious, they spent so much time with billionaires and started to act like one and aspired to become one.
- ACA became a big issue. R hammered this hard.
- Except to elites, DJT was a very effective communicator.
Finally, look at what DJT has said. He said, Pence will do all the work and his job is to MAGA. I.e. He'll gold coat WH toilets and just relax.
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What's amazing is that a lot of the women who are coming forward share very similar features. You can tell that Trump has a certain type...
What's his type?
He gropes local & mostly marries imported
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The real disruption is when the solar cells advance really well to cover a Tesla with panels and run without recharge in moderate sunlight.
Tesla may not make a profit, but the potential impact to traditional car companies is high.
Don't worry about marketing savvy Pabrai, he'll come up with a new learning, say a new buzzword like "cross check manifesto" and retain assets. It will be interesting to watch a cyclical heavy portfolio meet the buzz saw of upcoming recession with bull market in 9th innings.
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I'm just amazed to see that one single investment caused them to move from outperform to under perform over 1 yr, 5 yr & 10 year time frame compared to S&P 500.
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Markets at a given point in time price in all known factors like population growth, gdp growth, inflation, productivity, confidence in govt. , expectations about rule of law etc into the stock. The stock is then valued with a given expected return (risk premium). If above mentioned factors are constant, then your actual return = expected return.
If any of these factors change, say if inflation comes in higher than priced in, then future expected return falls and markets fall. Inflation comes in the denominator in P/E equation. When Volcker jacked up the rates, future inflation expectations were falling down and P/E went up and market went up.
There are so many other factors that the markets will fail to price in
1) the pace of technological changes
2) globalization and impact of BPO, offshoring, cheap labor coming in, trade agreements etc
3) clout of lobbyists and enactments of laws favoring big companies: tax laws that result in companies like GE paying <0%, labor laws that favor big companies, laws that reduce power of unions (right to work), etc
The above 1-3 have generally favored S&P 500 companies in a big way.
Despite lower GDP growth, deflation, global slowdown the markets have managed to perform better due to ultra low interest rates (borrowing driven stock buyback, dividends, LBO etc).
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She is impressive but I am very skeptical of the valuation.
Remember when Eike Batista was worth $35B? It turned out the market was wrong and he was worth $0.
The economics of Theranos' business don't sound promising at all. I suspect it will be lower margin and more capital intensive than investors are hoping.
I see no reason to compare her to Eike Batista at this point. He was highly leveraged, operating in a fairly corrupt and bureaucratic country, in a cyclical, commodity industry, while being extremely promotional to push his public companies to ever higher valuations. She's been in stealth mode for 10 years working on technology and runs a private business that has only been valued by extremely savvy investors like Larry Ellison, and as far as I know they have no debt.
If anyone smells a bit like Batista at this point it's Drahi, in my opinion...
Not a slight on Liberty, whose posts I like. This episode just shows how hindsight is 20/20.
Holmes
1) highly leveraged "Steve Jobs" persona
2) was highly corrupt by suppressing negative findings , test's inadequacy, effectively put a gag order on ex-employees, send her lawyer goons to threaten John Carreyou who was doing some investigative reporting, kept her board in the dark, assiduously recruited non-medical board members....
3) was extremely promotional to pump up the valuation
AND
4) blood testing is a commodity industry
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This is what is so sinister about Holmes:
She carefully cultivated this image of Steve Jobs 2.0, and broadened the use of her product all the while knowing fully well that it doesn't work as expected. She was playing with so many lives. Just amazing how she fooled so many for so long.
Such ambition coupled with incompetence may work in hedge fund industry, but not in hard sciences.
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Vanguard VFINX or VFIAX.
too expensive, SPY is cheaper
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I voted for Trump in Georgia to edge out Lyin' Ted.
I liked many of Republican ideals (except for the social part). I think they've not lived up to their ideals. They increased deficits, wasted $T on needless wars and bankrupted the nation. They lost their moral compass & compassion. I still thought of voting for Trump until my 9 yr old daughter asked me, "Will Trump send us back to India?" I'm too worried. Today in her school, two of her friends said, if Trump is elected, you'll be out of this country. She apparently started crying. This has gotten too far.
I think I'll vote for Clinton. The inmates are in charge of Republican asylum.
With rising immigrant population, Republicans will be out of WH for another 20 years.
BTW: I do hate both the parties in this pseudo-democratic country where winner is decided by a few swing states.
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CAPE ratio link has S&P data going back 100 years, along with treasury yields
http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm
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A wonderful way to ruin your life is to view every spending through the lens of compounding.
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Ms Holmes mistakenly thought that being secretive and wearing a turtle neck will make her a Steve Jobs.
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I've thought about this topic but didn't dare to post till now.
Are the most talked about stocks on CoBF below average performers? I looked at the investment ideas and sorted by replies and get the following, and I've commented on their performance over the duration of the threads:
SHLD - a laggard
BAC-WT - good buy, I guess
VRX - permanent loss of capital (PL)
AAPL - great pick
ALS.TO - PL
BBRY - PL
BH - laggard
FCAU - ??
AIG - good buy
SD - PL
GOOGL - great pick
ZINC - PL
LVLT - great pick
Now I admit the number of replies does not indicate popularity. A lot of the bad stocks on that list got a lot of replies because they were in such deep trouble that there is a lot of unknowns and controversy. But there are both sides to every argument and most cases someone is fiercely defending the stock.
The list does show that the top most talked about stocks are not very good performers.
Just a thought to improve our collective stock picking skills.
Are you kidding me about LVLT? The original thread in CoBF about LVLT had scores of investors who lost their shirt (and underpants as well). LVLT had 15 for 1 reverse split and has barely outperformed S&P in last 5 years.
A typical investor putting equal amount of $ in stocks discussed in this forum will under perform S&P over time. Most cheap stocks are value traps.
Also 99.99% of oil and nat gas stocks discussed here have gone close to 0.
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As I've said somewhere else, investing is a very bad field to work in. You have a no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer baseline that outperforms >99% of investors and probably over 90% of smart investors. Think what would happen if we had this in other fields. You get sick and there's no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer approach that outperforms 99% of doctors. You want food and there's no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer approach that outperforms 99% of chefs. You want a haircut and there's no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer approach that outperforms 99% of stylists. Would anyone go to become doctor, or chef or stylist or whatever?
So to paraphrase Buffett "when an investor with a reputation for brilliance tackles investing business with a reputation for being very hard to outperform, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact."
And yet so many people continue trying. Me, myself, and I included. :-\
But perhaps this is OT.
What other profession offers gambling without damaging one's reputation? What other profession offers allows a person to claim credit for dumb luck? Other than lottery, what other activity offers instant gratification?
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If the smartest investor investor in the world bets for S&P to outperform an average of 10 hedge funds, then it really says something.
Also, even if an investor outperforms S&P over 10 years, what is the guarantee that it'll continue? In many cases, the out performance may be due to that style being in favor during that time or just plain luck that'll run out in due time. Remember Ken Heebner who did really well in CGM focus during commodity boom.
The other risk is that, as AUM goes up, out performance invariably drops. Also you live with a tail risk of not knowing when the fund would blow up or lose substantial money.
The other issue of mine (outlined in ZINC thread) is the foolishness of looking at CAGR from inception. What is the point if in theory 99% wont enjoy those gains.
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Im in the camp that oil will eventually will be higher in the future. I of course have no idea when or by how much for how long. I am comfortable though holding a diversified major like BP/CVX/XOM at current prices. They seem committed to the dividend (well aware that may change) and have diversified sources of revenue as well as the ability to cut costs to cover the dividend. Since these companies spend so much a say 10% cut in spending would cover ~30% of the dividend. The lower cap ex not only cushions the dividend but reinforces lower output over time.
Im happy with a 6.6%ish dividend from BP with chance of upside.
We've had two WW, industrialization of developed countries, and yet oil prices never budged.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Crude_oil_prices_since_1861.png
The jump in 70's can be attributed to oil embargo and '07 to supply adjusting to chinese demand. In long run, shouldn't oil mean revert?
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I found this surprising correlation (or causation?), between inflation and civilian labor force. A remarkable thing happened in 70's. There was a big addition to labor pool. I'm thinking that this influx of labor caused demand for everything to go up and hence the inflation. As labor growth shrunk, CPI followed suit.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1c0j
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Even the one who wrote his first biography.
I guess he likes an eye candy while eating See's candy.
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Is Buffett only allowing cute blonde ladies to interview him?
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[amazonsearch]Hooked[/amazonsearch]
Still reading the book. I like it so far.
The author helps us understand what is behind the success of companies like Facebook, Twitter..and what keeps the users hooked.
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There is a huge difference between div yield of S&P and FAIRX.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=FAIRX&a=11&b=29&c=1999&d=00&e=29&f=2015&g=v
We've to recompute the returns assuming div are reinvested. If you compute DJIA with div reinvested, the index will run into millions.
Why is America so rich?
in General Discussion
Posted
America is rich, but americans are poor.
Top 1% owns 35% of wealth; bottom 60% owns 4% of the wealth. It is like calling a dictator run sub-saharan African country rich, where the dictator has billions stashed in swiss banks and rest of the country are having a hand to mouth existence.
Compared to their european counterparts, an average american has a substandard living, lower mobility, poor access to health care, lower life expectancy, higher gun deaths etc.
An average american is just an economic slave with little prospect, no upward mobility, just given a daily dose of American exceptionalism, freedom, guns and religion and gets fucked in every orifice of his body by predatory, rapacious & unbridled capitalism. As an immigrant, I sometimes feel sorry for them. This wont end well in the long run.