Vish_ram

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.

CAPE ratio link has S&P data going back 100 years, along with treasury yields http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm

A wonderful way to ruin your life is to view every spending through the lens of compounding.

Ms Holmes mistakenly thought that being secretive and wearing a turtle neck will make her a Steve Jobs.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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

Picture is worth a 1000 words. http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2014ltr.pdf See page 23

Even the one who wrote his first biography. I guess he likes an eye candy while eating See's candy.

Is Buffett only allowing cute blonde ladies to interview him?

[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.

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.

Low oil prices could be net positive for economy in short run. Low oil price disproportionately benefits low income groups. They almost have no savings and spend whatever extra they get. The spending boosts the multiplier effect.

Gio Please continue these kind of posts in "General discussion". It highlights two economic insights that is not generally apparent when currency changes. 1) S&P 500 firms profits from Europe will show big drop due to currency translations 2) Low EUR will create resurgence in exports and it might pull the economy out of doldrums. Any posts that give an insight offers value to others. The ones that don't add value are a) Mindless criticism & ad hominem attacks b) Comments like "I sold BAC/XYZ at $$ before drop and got lucky".... Adding several hundred stocks to a portfolio produces market average (mediocre) returns. I guess the same applies to a forum.

Paulsen's perspectives http://www.wellscap.com/docs/emp/20150108.pdf The median P/E chart is scary. It looks like low interest rates have lifted all boats.

Thanks for sharing. What I've learnt and still learning is 1) value investing can still help you lose tons of money, just like any other forms of investing 2) A P/E of 10 that you think is cheap can trade at P/E of 2 and still be cheap and can still declare bankruptcy. 3) Any famed investor's (or even super investor) opinion can go wrong. The superinvestor will still cling to fame and you wont cling to your money. Remember a famous investor's proclamation "book value is solid" 4) In any successful trade by any investor, it is hard to know what % of success can be attributed to the "dart throwing monkey" or to brilliance. 5) The #1 enemy of an investor is the urge to make extraordinary returns. A high probability of low returns is much better than low probability of high returns. 6) You don't need a lot of money to be happy.

I feel nauseated when ever I read long term predictions and particularly the ones that predict gloom and doom. Every time I go to the county library, I see a rows and rows of books that have titles like "coming collapse of dollar", "coming inflation", "coming deflation", "oil at $XXX"...I wonder if those authors are spending the rest of their lives writing apologies. None of them have materialized. US continues to march ahead Any prediction of unfunded liab is useless. we're seeing great advances in medical technologies (one eg is Elizabeth Holmes). The prognosticators merely want attention and are no different from those clowns standing in street corner holding a sign "The end is near".

I have heard this many times but I don't know what exactly this statement means for small investors. IB claims that their execution is better than other brokers. For a large trader this is probably important. But how does a small investor benefit. Is it in small stocks? In IB, if I use a limit buy, many times I get the trade executed below the limit price. I've never seen this happen in other brokers. These small savings add up.

When GDP falls in two successive quarters. On a serious note, you'll see a recession when - yield curve inverts - your not too bright neighbor or cousin makes a killing trading stocks - quit rate starts dropping - U6 bottoms out - gdp gap goes into negative - Fed tightens - talking heads talk about soft landing - junk bonds live up to their name - inflation heats up - housing permits starts dropping - construction employment drops - LMCI activity graph tops out

I think the saying correlation doesn't mean causation may apply to this. WSBASE bore no relation to market prior to 2008. see graph http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=USL The market wasn't supported by fundamentals but by Fed actions. To that extent, Fed action (WSBASE) supported stock prices, the correlation exists. Once economy recovers, the fundamentals will support stocks and we will start seeing that divergence soon.

When the 70's oil supply shock (Arab oil embargo) came and oil zoomed up, there was an unprecedented capital investment to drill and extract oil. The world became awash with oil and until recently oil was in doldrums. The new commodity demand shock from China (with prices going exponentially starting 2004) caused a similar effect. The commodity co's loaded up on debt and spent capital like drunken sailors. We'll go back to 2004 price levels (WTI @~40, ) and settle down. in the meantime, the debt laden co's will go bankrupt, commodity etn, funds will go under. A bulk of US citizens don't own or own little stocks. They'll get the benefit of lower commodity prices and start spending. A new resurgence will propel non-commodity stocks. The issue with China is that, the Chinese central bank is like 1929 Fed. They may not have the tools/policy/mechanism to prop things up. They'll have a steep learning curve. In the end, the commodity firms will fail to return above cost of capital. RIO Vs S&P (until 2004) https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=0&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Linear&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1085169600000&chddm=1771653&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NYSE:RIO&cmptdms=0&q=INDEXSP:.INX&ntsp=0&ei=VtWIVJnZM9GtsQfW34GwAQ After 2004: https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=0&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=Linear&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1418253745909&chddm=1152897&chls=IntervalBasedLine&cmpto=NYSE:RIO&cmptdms=0&q=INDEXSP:.INX&ntsp=0&ei=VtWIVJnZM9GtsQfW34GwAQ

When ever I view the cash flow statement of large companies, I'm stunned by the amount of debt issuance to buy back shares. (look at AMGN) I made a graph of non-corp debt to GDP. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?g=TeJ How will this end?

- One is using GDP and other GNP - In many places i've seen them use non-financial corporate eq , the fortune one may be adding financial ones as well. I followed the ones in http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Market-Cap-to-GDP.php - Also the fortune one seems to include OTC stocks, the others may not be including those - I tried to gauge the impact of adding financial ones and it pushed the ratio to above 3; I dont know why this differs from bloomberg/fortune ones Here is another graph where i'm showing the fin equity in right y axis. https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?graph_id=164130&category_id=0 The right y axis is interesting as fin co's never dropped much in 2000 and had a real bubble in 2007. Their collapse in 07 was very dramatic compared to 2000.