enoch01
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Posts posted by enoch01
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Be well Picasso. Thanks for sharing more of your story. It’s inspirational.
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I listened to first 3 minutes of today’s news conference from the WH. I couldn’t stop laughing. He talks about incredible things happening with the virus spreading and we all come together for a big celebration. WTF? Who wrote his speeches thr Monty Python troupe? It’s basically Saturday night life....
“I’d rate it a 10,” Trump said at a White House press briefing Monday when asked by a reporter how he would rate his response to the pandemic.
Surprised he didn’t say “11”. Notwithstanding, it was the most realistic conference so far, and for that reason offers a glimmer of hope that we will get our act together.
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Asset-heavy businesses?
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-7.5%
Sears and CBI competed for the biggest negative contributions. Should have gone levered crypto!
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SD,
At what price are you buying bitcoin, and at what price are you selling?
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my favorite was the piece on whether to hold cash or not.
I confess to never really understanding it. Here's the conclusion:
(my bolding).I again emphasize that this essay is not focused on remaining fully invested at all times, but instead advocates remaining fully invested when there are still compelling investments to be made."Isn't it tautological that one should prefer "compelling" investments over cash? That's just what a compelling investment means.
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+30%. Unless I start contributing more by posting about ideas, this is probably the last time I will post returns. Pretty lame otherwise.
Currently have 80% cash and 20% in Sears common + calls. I am bored.
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We use a concentrated equity portfolio, 4-5 assets at most - including preferred & cash.
We expect to have to double, or even triple down, on initial purchases - to a maximum 50% of the portfolio. The additional purchases will be margined against the whole portfolio, & the expectation is no further trades for 12 months; the monthly interest charge is a reminder we've screwed up. We then either sell 25% of the position on a double within the year, or enough to pay off the margin at the end of the 12 months. Depending on 'view', we may overlay a long or short trading position on the same equity.
Ultimately there will be some further opportunistic sales to recover our initial investment, & the preferred position will pile up.
When it gets to around 75-100% of original capital we liquidate & withdraw the funds.
On a net basis there may be 15-25 trades a year, depending on how much hedging we do (sell & buy of the stock itself).
We find it is enough to contain the urge to trade, and limits the total all-in cost for a year to about $250-350.
SD
It's difficult to wait for that first double on the fully hedged portfolio of 4-5 leveraged and optimized positions (netted out, of course). I find that writing BS on message boards helps pass the time - it's easier than sitting on my hands.
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Maybe "value shorting" is dead.
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Hi, all respectful value investors:
Kindly let me know if your or any organization you know is hiring summer student for 4 months starting May. My son is a first-year university student and looking for a summer job. He's willing to do any type of office or field work before resorting to the last resort of working at a fast-food joint.
IMHO, a first-year university student's choice is very limited regardless what their major is because initially they have nothing to offer to the employer and adds no value to the company. The only useful skill I can see is his expert use of various social media apps. Hence, it's understandable for employers to give him skunk work such as photocopying, data-entry, data-cleansing, cold-calling, data-collection on the web, regardless his intelligence level.
By the way, he gets more thrills from crashing a professional baseball game in Korea (https://youtu.be/Ke_XgF35LSg) and getting 80,000 hits on YouTube than meeting Buffett in person. Can't understand the teens nowadays >:(
There's no need to lecture him on pursuing one's passion or doing what he loves. Any other tips on helping a teenager find a first job are helpful and will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Don't do your son's work for him. Tell him to get a job and see how it goes. He's a university student - I consider that an adult. If he was interested in getting hired by anyone here, maybe he would've joined and started messaging people? I'm guessing he hasn't done that, so maybe you can draw some information from that fact.
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as far as i am concerned, if govt wants GSEs they can buy them, just not steal them. levine is smarter than that.
i just think levine nailed the reasons why the ONLY chance of recovery for private holders is through the courts. he just explained it from a different perspective.
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What are your guys' opinion of timhoward717's credibility? He's been teasing of having some major favorable news but hasn't come through with anything substantial. Wondering what his deal is.
Low.
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So I'll just give my thinking, I graduated ~6 months ago from a grad school with about 40K of "student debt". Now, I have cash in the bank to pay this off today if I wanted, I had the cash before I applied to school from saving for years.
I said, screw paying for grad school in cash: I'm taking out loans, and sticking that money in the stock market. Turned out to be a good decision (probably 80% luck, 19% copying this board, 1% me being functional enough to navigate an online brokerage account).
But now having graduated, it's apparently time to pay it back, and I'm in the same boat as your friends from the poker table. Heck I'm not even sure if I should pay it back. What are "they" going to do, come after me with a bat? Or maybe I just pay the minimum and kick the can down the road as long as possible. Maybe the gov't will eat the bill in 15 years. Why pay it back in that case? Maybe lock the interest rate, and sit on it.
And you know, the only reason I'd consider this is because what you mentioned is so prevalent. NOBODY is paying these things, so the ones that do are the suckers at the table.
Your attitude isn't unpopular, but if these are just forgiven what happens to the people who paid them, or those who paid cash for school? To me this seems like a very quick way to drive a huge wedge between age groups. Those above 35-40 have a small amount or no school debt, and those under have a lot. But the old guys running companies are in the older bucket, any chance there could be some spiteful discrimination?
My wife and I don't have any school debt. But if the government is just going to give out money why don't they just pay off my house or something? At the same time what universities are charging is bordering on comical. In the grab for as much cash as possible universities have done themselves in. What used to be a third-rail view, that going to college wasn't necessary is now catching on. I think they've made their own bed.
I would hesitate to hire someone with a lot of debt including school debt. People who are skating close to the edge can quickly end up in financial distress which has repercussions for work performance as well as increases the risk of fraud or theft. Maybe it's not popular to say that out loud, but it's something I think about.
The cost/benefit ratio of college education is at least an order of magnitude higher than even just 10 or 20 years ago. My elementary school age children will have a very different graduate level education experience than I did (B.S. and M.S. in engineering). Besides the fact that the debt is a huge burden, there are so many more options for self-directed learning these days. In fact, I expect prospective employers may look favorably on someone who has been proactive and entrepreneurial in obtaining their education.
We will likely look for Advanced Placement classes, followed by community college options, with perhaps the last couple of years at a state school. And that's ONLY IF a college degree is actually required for what they want to do with their life.
In a way it's a little sad that it has gotten to this point. But the incentive structure established decades ago has made a mockery of the college education system.
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+5%
Happy New Year everyone.
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Here's my crazy idea for 2016.
SHLD.
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Now I'm just waiting for everyone to say I'm out of my mind so I feel better about buying it when/if it trades down to $15 or lower.
You and I are out of our minds.
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Ive poststed this in a number of forums. Page 41 of Bethany McLeans book states...
"A member of the group that sets federal accounting guidelines later explained that government wasn't actually going to exercise its right to take ownership of Fannie and Freddie. Instead, the bailout was designed this way because "driving the stock market value to zero" would "prevent current shareholder speculation resulting in speculators taking advantage of government intervention at the expense of others," according to the minutes of the meeting that became public in 2015"
What meeting was this? Where are those minutes located? Anyone know?
I got a little outta hand yesterday....apologies.
http://www.fasab.gov/pdffiles/oct08mins.pdf
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Merk, i get it. I sound like the crazy bird lady. And I will be the first to admit there is no evidence.
Is there anything that crazy about what's said in the forensic doc even if the dir signed off on it?
Don't know about crazy, but a little odd, yes.
"Why did federal regulators design a financial support program for Fannie and Freddie on the basis of academic estimates of future
performance rather than tried and true statutory accounting and claims-paying ability (which is the standard for all regulated
mortgage insurers)?"
http://www.fairholmefundsinc.com/Reports/FAIRX2015SemiAnnual.pdf
This non-lawyer agrees with merkhet: from a legal perspective this doesn't seem relevant.
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Ever since I switched over to just using mega-large fonts for everything, I'm getting through many more pages per day and have become a much better investor.
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+21% YTD, +83% TTM. LOTS of volatility last month or so.
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How is it that so many here know so much about all this stuff?
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Bumping up an old thread as a tale of caution.
Are you short anything? Or were you?
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You might want to revisit your ‘investment’ analysis
ASSUME that BOTH house buyer and professional landlord are WISE speculators.
Both would be using a HELOC to finance the purchase, and paying only interest. Both would have the minimum down payment, and the maximum CMHC mortgage insurance. Both will immediately walk away if a net loss on sale exceeded their down payment; it is why they bought the CMHC insurance. And, as both have an asymmetric pay-off structure, both will seek the most volatile housing markets possible; Vancouver and Toronto.
The professional landlord charges rent to earn a profit; either monthly revenue > costs, or net sales proceed less purchase cost > intervening net cumulative loss. Strategies of charge profitably on ‘normal property’ and hold forever; or undercharge monthly and trade ‘bubble property’ frequently. If the professional lives > 6 months in the bubble property, he/she gets to promote it every day (assessing timing), liquidity advantages, cheap rent, and a tax break when the property is resold. Standard handbook stuff.
Are YOU doing what that professional does? If you are not; it would be cheaper to buy versus rent the property from him - and keep the profit.
Most folk have a much lower risk tolerance than a speculator.
If you insist on paying P+I every month; YES it will be more expensive to buy versus rent – but that extra cost of P, is SAVINGS growing in your property and not cash growing in the LANDLORDS pocket.
Folk get uncomfortable when the average housing market risk tolerance, in their area, is > their own risk tolerance. The solution is a simple sale and move to some other area that puts you back into your comfort zone. Disrupt your mental and financial health, or temporarily disrupt your family life. I don’t want to hear it, is not an option.
Your choice.
SD
I'm glad I don't have to get into the game of trying to justify low single digit rental yields because I'm too dumb to understand what any of the above means.
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I am renting in Toronto suburb, $2000 per month, it will cost me about $750,000 to buy the place.
Rent is pretty reasonable. But the catch is the same house can be have to 630k last year.
So, yes up close to 20% in a year! :-\
Good for you on relatively cheap rent though. Prices sound like they are firmly in greater fool territory.
I'm astonished at how low some of these quoted rental yields are. Your hypothetical landlord's situation were he to buy it today:
$2k * 12 / $750k = 3.2%.
By contrast, I own a rental at an 11% yield in the U.S. Nothing special, I bet there's millions of them in the U.S. available at similar prices.
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Several weeks ago I closed about half of my put position on The Royal Bank of Canada (took it down to 2% position of current portfolio), only because I couldn't roll it to 2017. I'll ride the rest of the position into the ground. If the rest of it does go to zero this adventure will have cost me about 3.5% of current port. The funny thing is that all the ingredients are there for a bust, it just hasn't happened yet.
Canadian real estate - to the moon!
No asset goes up at 6-10 times the rate of inflation.
Sure it can, just for some reasonable or unreasonable amount of time.
POLL - With how much leverage do you feel comfortable? Question to board members!
in General Discussion
Posted
cc: the “have we finally hit the bottom” thread