rb

LOL! John, have you ever considered running for office? I think you'd do fine. ;) :)

Why BAM? Anything with valuation or just warm and fuzzy feelings?

Thank you, it's true that places like Singapore and Hong Kong are not good comparables. In general small, urbanized, advanced places are not comparable to larger, more diverse countries. They tend to be very wealthy and efficiencies work really well. In addition to enrepot places like HK and Singapore, i'd add others like Switzerland and Luxembourg, but the list doesn't stop there. As for other healthcare systems let me add an anecdote. Last year I traveled to Italy with a female. While on the plane she picked up an infection. It manifested as something that may look like a rash/inflammation. We didn't think much of it because stuff like that happened to her before and was always some benign thing. But within a couple of days it got so bad that she could barely walk. So we went to an emergency room in Florence. Now keep in mind that while this was very unpleasant from the patient's point of view, it was far from any life threatening situation. Nonetheless, she saw a doctor within an hour (the doctor spoke English). Got accurately diagnosed etc. We were charged for the visit. I can't remember what the bill was... something like the equivalent of 40 CAD or 60 CAD. Something low enough that we didn't actually file the insurance forms to get it back. Oh and when we got the prescribed antibiotic, the total cost was less than 50% of what the dispensing fee alone would have been in Canada. I'd go ahead and say based on that experience that it's a pretty good system. And it costs less than half of what the US system costs. Upon further research i've found that it has 25% more doctors per capita than the OECD average and 50% more than the US. So that probably helps a lot with wait times and such. Therefore I say, put Italy up on the board as well.

Anadolu Efes is actually a fine company if you're interested. But I'm not looking to buy anything there. Turkey is pretty much a basket case at the best of times. But when you have in charge an authoritarian mad man who's waging an economic holy war i think it's best to stay away. Turkey has all of the ingredients to be a big blowup. All it needs is a good stir. And there's a guy brandishing around a big spoon.

You're a financially savvy guy, so what I'd suggest if to read your loan contracts. Each contract should have a clause that adresses pre payments. I've had experience talking to people on the phone and they would either not be familiar with details or would give information contradicting what's in the contract. The people you get to talk to are not very experienced or well paid.

Why do you think that is? That an otherwise pleasant person becomes an asshole online? could it be some animal instinct that if you're an asshole in person you may catch a beating?

Winter tires are awesome! Also if you happen to drive a rear wheel drive vehicle you will come to discover that winter tires are not discretionary.

Being cheapskate value investor I just drank a glass of tap water instead. 8) I am sure I or someone paid for it with our taxes. LOL he just described distilled water. I use lots of that stuff.

::)

That's not discretionary. It is if you are British. True that! ;D

Those are not discretionary goods. They are durable goods. An economy can buy quite a few of those. The economic principle that drives that is called use, decay, and obsolescence. Honestly, instead of message board I would recommend learning a bit about economics. Pick up some books. Ideally written by some salt water economists. But if you do not want to invest too much time and just want to get some handle on things I would recommend "Macroeconomic Essentials" by Peter Kennedy.

That's not discretionary.

Well it could be a multitude of things. For one thing there's not that many women in finance. Finance itself is a sausage fest. Though weirdly enough most of my bosses in high finance (back when I was getting paycheques) have been women. The other thing is that CoBF is actually a pretty civilized internet place, but even here things have gotten a bit misogynistic more than a few times. So I don't think that as a woman you're particularly incentivized to identify as such. Another thing is that women that may be into investing may be a bit different from women that get into twitter brawls.

I bought some C-clamps today from Canadian Tire. Not sure what you mean by discretionary purchase. If you mean meaningless, last week I bought a pair of sunglasses from Amazon to bring the order total up so it would qualify for free shipping.

I never found that to be a problem at all. Do a bit of research so you know what you're talking. Ask pointed, relevant questions, and be professional and respectful. It may be a bit awkward at the start but I've found that once they figure out that you're serious they tend to open up and be quite forthcoming. Basically, simple rule. If you don't want to creep them women out then don't be a creep. Works well.

You know you guys could ask him or her.

Honestly I'd do it. But I'm pretty much a gruff, no nonsense finance type. These guys seem like they're doing an Internet publicity tour. So I don't I don't think that would be such a good idea. I wouldn't want to ruin your program.

I don't think there's been a poll. But the bottom line is this. There are women here, but it's pretty well known here that CoBF is a bit of a sausage fest. Now about LB. I'm a dude, but I've been going in the same direction as you're thinking. I've polled a lot of females I know about the subject. Favourability goes by chest size and income level. Basically the bigger the chest size the more they care about the product. But price also plays a big part in the decision. Anything below a C cup they don't really care about the product, anything will do. In terms of income, obviously richer people are willing to pay more for fancier stuff. I'd say that my surveys left me unconvinced that the customer base is solid and will pull the company through. The other thing that makes me hesitant about LB is that we had a lingerie company here in Canada called La Senza - it was bought by LB about a decade ago. La Senza was universally loved and the product was a fraction of the price of LB. Panties were like 3 for $5 and bras were starting from 2 for $10. he product was good. So I'm thinking if a company like La Senza could do it, why not someone else? Taking all of it in, I've decided that the signs are that LB isn't that solid. It's vulnerable on multiple fronts. And while it has a loyal customer base I don't think that's enough with all the leverage the company has. This is probably (a lot?) more than you've asked for, but I hope it helps.

Well it basically has no trunk. I mean you can out a toothbrush in there, but not much more. And while you may be able to put an adult behind a 6 foot driver, that adult better be pretty small. Maybe there is some segment that doesn't care about any of that. But if you're deploying a sizeable fleet to service a market, why would you only focus on that segment. That seems like a pretty boneheaded decision in this case. Why go with Zoes when you can spend a little bit more for a more versatile car that can address a bigger market? Why go after a segment instead of market dominance? Let me put it another way. The first gen Nissan Leaf is one of the ugliest cars I've ever seen. I'd rather look at a guy's bare ass than look at that thing. But it has a pretty big trunk. Do you think that's an accident, or do you think it was done on purpose because Nissan figured it was gonna be used a lot as a cab?

There are a bunch of car sharing companies in Toronto. The biggest ones being ZipCar and Car2go. They've been around for a while. ZipCar for more than 10 years. They're also not that cheap. But make sense if you're a downtown dweller and just need to venture out of the city core every now and then. If you need to use them more than occasionally you're better off owning a car. Zip car is nice because it has a variety of car, whereas car2go (owned by daimler) mostly has Smarts. Speaking of which, who was the genius in Denmark that decided to stuff people in a bunch of Zoes? That's a horrible car!

Yea, but from what i can tell the homeowner gets to sell part of the equity and not pay rent on that bit. So advantage homeowner. On the other hand he gets to service the whole mortgage, the partial crypto owner doesn't pitch in, which isn't cool, but still rental yields>interest rates. I guess it all comes down to the fees and maybe other legal unplesantries. On the other hand, the crypto owner gets to hold an illiquid REIT, with no control over the underlying assets, no liquidity, and no yield. Sounds like the crypto guys is definitely getting screwed.

You can interview him if you want, it's your podcast. I took a look at their site and I'd say it's scammy. I can't say for sure who's getting scammed, the home owner or the crypto holder. I'm leaning towards the crypto holder, but it could even be both. It's definitely not a sound business.

I think that it would have an impact but it will be fairly marginal. One way to look at it is London. It has pretty low car ownership. It is structurally anti car: lots of public transit, bike lanes, congestion charges, etc. I was able to get around with no problem without a car. It also had a Uber before the was Uber. It was called Addison Lee. I left before Uber came. From what I understand Uber is somewhat cheaper. But Addison Lee was pretty cheap. Whoever was gonna give up their cars did it already. London has 330 cars per 1,000 population. But even there 90% of households that are not dirt poor and have a kid also have at least one car. Berlin which featured in the article has 342 cars per 1,000. So they're not that far behind. Then you have the sprawled out cities of North America. Cars are not optional. Take Toronto, it's big, and it has 2.7 million people. But the suburbs around Toronto are GIANT and have more population than Toronto itself. Toronto proper itself has about 410 cars per 1,000. It really doesn't have the infrastructure to go much lower than that. Uber is not actually cheap. I live a northern suburb but I'm close to the city boundary. An uber ride from my house downtown costs $70 each way. A ride to the grocery store is $10 each way. That's really expensive compared to having a car. Take another example. Mississauga is a western suburb. It's canada's 6th largest city with a population of about 800,000 - it's not small. Let's say you're a young buck, live downtown and don't have a car cause you would uber everywhere. Now let's say that you're dating a girl from Mississauga. To pick her up in Mississauga, take her to dinner in the city, take her home, and come back will cost you at least $250 in Uber fees. This would be typical for a big city in North America. As much as Silicon Valley would preach, services like Uber don't really compete with the car. They compete more with cabs and public transit. Urban planning policies have much more to do with car usage. And in North America we're not doing much on that front. So at least in North America I don't think we're anywhere close to peak car.

AV is a weird one. If it's true Av then it has value. True AV I mean like I can go out have a fun night at the bar with my buddies and then my car legally brings me home. Something like the Autopilot in Tesla for $10k where you have to ready to drive the car is a joke meant for people with more money than brains. I don't need Autopilot, I know how to drive. For what it's worth I think we'll have true AV at some point. It just looks like it could work and there's lots of money going into it. So I think they'll get there eventually. But I just don't see how it takes the automakers out of the picture. At the very least someone has to be making the cars. As we get to see with Tesla, cars are not easy to make. And they can't be a joke because it's an expensive product. Furthermore, I don't see how AV is a winner take all business. It's not a product like Google where it gets better everyday - once it knows how to drive, it knows how to drive. So even if a player is late to the party it can catch up. I also don't get the skepticism that only silicone valley can do this and automakers can't. Daimler has been putting AV-ish things in their cars as part of their safety package and they actually worked pretty well. Is it really that much of a stretch to think that if you give that team a few billion they're gonna come up with some pretty cool stuff?

Yea but who chooses/sets up those incentives?