enoch01

Here are a few that I really appreciate: Packer16: media, telecom Planmaestro: financials twacowfca: insurance Tbone1, merkhet, txlaw, Kraven, Parsad: various helpful opinions oddballstocks: oddball stocks Hester (please come back): shorts ericopoly: riverboat gambling Apologies to all the other helpful posters I didn't mention.

It does seem like more people are saying that stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.

Great interview, thanks.

Thanks for posting!

1. $1 billion assuming a frictionless transaction. Money doesn't know if I own it or someone else does. 2. A dollar less than a billion. Lots can happen over 100 years. Why you would ever pay more than $1 billion makes no sense to me.

This book looks so promising I'm also going to recommend it to our neighboring planets. Too bad it wasn't written in the 70's. We could have included an audio version on Voyager 1's Golden Record.

Everything by [amazonsearch]Mo Willems[/amazonsearch]

+1!

Pre-determinism is a straw man. It is not a requirement for singular intrinsic value per universe. I have mentioned that each universe has but one past. And each will have but one eventual future. Just because it will have but one eventual future does not mean that it is predetermined. It's just the way things actually are. You go through life and at the end (looking back) you have a singular history. Therefore, when you were born there was but one not yet determined path that you would travel (out of many that you could have potentially travelled). Now, after travelling whatever path you travelled through your life, there was only one of them that you actually travelled on a per-universe basis. At birth, you have but one not yet determined future path per universe (out of many possible paths per universe). The concept of the omniscient being is just an instructional aid. You compared the instructional aid to predeterminism, and then threw it all out together under "predeterminism". Perhaps somebody can help me correctly label what logical fallacy that is filed under. Is it guilt by association, or red herring, straw man, or what? Or a combo? I'd be more charitable than to call it a logical fallacy - it's just a false premise.

From the Agreement: On another note, it looks to me like the future is just as much in HCP as in the dialysis business (maybe more?). The capitation model, plus scale, looks promising.

"I disagree. IV doesn't change. Your perception of IV changes along the turbulent path of discovery. You keep trying to predict the unpredictable, and blame it on the IV of the business rapidly changing. No." - Eric Doesn't Eric's comment "IV doesn't change" imply that IV couldn't have been another value? I have issue with that. IV can and does change. No, I don't think "IV doesn't change" implies that. IV is the some of all future cash flows, discounted. Those future cash flows will be certain values, and they will not be others. Like I said, everything else is educated guesswork. Take Coke as an example. Who will run the business, will there be a civil war in some country where they do business, will mayor Bloomberg try to ban their products, etc, etc. All of these factors and others (presently unknowable to you and I, presumably) will contribute to the future cash flows, which would be discounted to today. But, things could have turned out differently. The company might never have existed. Mayor Bloomberg might never have been elected, and on and on. In those cases maybe Coke's IV would have been different than what it actually is.

There are not multiple possible guesses at IV, but multiple possible IVs. The wave function will collapse to one particular IV when the observation is made in the future, but this does not mean that IV was destined to happen. Or in a many-worlds interpretation you might have BRK with a market cap of $1 trillion at some fixed point in the future in 60% of the universes, but BRK is bankrupt in 0.00001% of the universes. I added the bold, because I think it represents some confusion. No one is arguing that the one IV was "destined to happen", that is, it couldn't have been another value. Rather, the claim is much weaker: it will be some value X, and no other value. To me this seems to be above reproach. This is independent of wave functions or any other deliverance of the physical sciences - in fact it they have nothing to do with the question.

A very underrated album.

But again, how do you know that time will reveal the outcome of IV and how do you know when you are at IV? When the company goes out of business, count the cash it created (or consumed). Go back to any time in history and discount. If it is a product of cash produced and discount rates, and if both of those things exist, then IV exists. That is a helpful or harmful way for you to see it, depending on which market participant is doing the observing. Sign of a market top?

Either Justin Bieber will end up in an asylum, or he won't. Either ExxonMobil will produce $1 trillion over it's existence, or it won't. In these examples, it could have been otherwise, but there is only one way it will turn out. The rest is educated guesswork.

I don't know if Bass will be right, but the logic and rationality of his argument is correct in my opinion. Not only with Japan, but Europe, European banks and even to some extent the U.S.' ability to repay their obligations. I don't know what the outcome will be, but I can see that the risks relative to the risk premium provided in most investments is not adequate, and it is very concerning. Nearly as concerning as 2007, but a lot of the leverage in the United States has been mitigated...on a corporate level. This has not happened in Europe...nor China! Buy something if you think the risk premium is adequate, otherwise be patient...premiums always rise at some point...spreads widen...good investments at great prices will eventually become available. If Charlie Munger is not certain of the outcome of this grand experiment, how can any of us be confident in the end result? Cheers! I get persuaded by Bass, and then I get persuaded by counterarguments like Plan's. From that I conclude I probably shouldn't put much money down on either side. I do worry about rising debt levels, and central banks enabling profligacy. But for investing purposes, I don't know how to treat it. It's nice not having to swing at every pitch.

I'm too dumb to be able to tell whether Bass or our own Plan is correct :)

Great presentation, thanks for posting.

SRPT looks like a ten bagger in less than one year. Can I ask what the story is behind this stock? Caution: I am a layman and this is my first biotech stock ever. From what I can tell most biotechs are prime short candidates. I found this while looking for shorts because I thought the market might be getting hot - go figure. This could easily be an enormous "learning opportunity" for me. Boiled down: They have developed an "exon skipping" process to treat diseases. They are known for the experimental eteperlsin, which is a treatment for the horrific Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The disease is a death sentence; patients usually die before 30. Patients (boys) have a malfunctioning exon 51, and this results in their inability to produce dystrophin, which is essential for muscle performance. The drug partially restores the ability to produce dystrophin, resulting in a much milder form of muscular dystrophy (such as Becker's). The drug is in experimental stages, but so far the results have been stupendous. In this case the boys are not only stabilizing, but in some cases improving, which is unheard of with this disease. Researchers have confirmed improved levels of dystrophin with the boys taking the drug. Parents of treated children are posting encouraging testimonials on social media, and also meeting with the FDA to provide feedback. The company is considering applying for Accelerated Approval (http://tinyurl.com/l794qo) with the FDA, which could happen any day. There have been no serious side affects observed. Bears contend that the sample size of the test group is too small, but drugs have been approved previously with similarly small sample sizes. If eteperlsin gains approval, the company will have more good reason to apply the exon skipping process to other diseases.

Largest to smallest: Cash SRPT FIATY SHLD

Recent Barron's article (via Josh Brown): Did somebody say something about buying index call options recently on this board? ;D You can only get hurt playing when you are on the field. I have been spending more and more time on the bench.

Congratulations Sanjeev! Thank you for this site.

No, no, I think it's "continue to buy come what may".

Instead of thinking about the Medicare/Medicaid revenue as profitless business, maybe it’s just as easy to think about it as float that costs very little. The economies of scale that DaVita is achieving as they get bigger flows to the owners. Medicare is financing the operation and asking nothing in return. Does Medicare reimburse different amounts for the same service at different dialysis centers? If not, then DaVita's increasing market share enhances it's moat, so long as it continues to gain bargaining power on its costs. Update: Hm, I didn't realize they also carry about $8B in debt. That undercuts my idea.

Cash is a market put Very true. Plus, the yield on cash isn't that much below yields on junk, so I've got that going for me: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/08/us-bond-junk-idUSBRE9470P620130508 Fearful when greedy, etc.