rb
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Posts posted by rb
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I say give sarah palin another go. Embrace the clown show. Go big or go home.
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So if the bubble bursts, do we get inflation or deflation? I see arguments for both.
You get deflation. Or maybe I should say deflationary forces. It may be averted by superhuman efforts by the government and BoC.
Right, so would this mean the Canadian dollar gets stronger and since we have such an import based economy day to day life would get cheaper?
Well... we don't actually have such an import based economy. Secondly, it's not entirely clear to me that CAD will go up. As I mentioned a bubble burst will have deflationary effects. Those effects will put upward pressure on CAD.
On the other hand the federal government will probably start to borrow lots of money - to finance fiscal stimulus, plug holes at CMHC,.... bail out CIBC. Hot RE money will probably start leaving Canada. And, i imagine that Bank of Canada will get really aggressive. All of which will pull CAD lower. It's hard to say for sure what will happen to CAD. My view is that CAD will go lower.
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Ok friends,
So I'm doing some weekly reading and I run into this sort of article.
Turns out that this week CREA put out the may numbers. So they're saying YoY detached homes in Vancouver are up 37%, detached homes in Toronto Proper up 17.5%, and detached homes in Toronto burbs up around 21%.
First of all, these are frightening numbers. But I went to dig deeper in the data and maybe I'm stupid but the numbers don't seem to add up. Just to caveat that both Teranet and CREA did not update their numbers for May so what we're looking at below are YoY numbers for Apr15-Apr16. I don't think it should make that much of a difference to shift the year by a month unless May 2016 was really a blockbuster month. So the numbers:
Van TO
YoY Change Teranet 19.8 10.5
YoY Change CREA 25.4 12.6
YoY Change Condos CREA 20.6 6.9
1. There seems to be a significant discrepancy between teranet and crea numbers. I mean crea numbers do have an upward bias but it should creep over time, not be so big just over 1 year.
2. While I wouldn't trust crea to babysit anyone's kids I don't think they'd go out and right out lie about the numbers.
3. If detached homes performed so well why are the averages so off? Is there just a handful of detached transactions and shitloads of condo transactions?
4. If we're really looking at massive - around 20% - increase in house prices is this the part of the cycle where prices go vertical just before they collapse under their own weight?
Any thoughtful ideas would be appreciated.
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They probably can tell you something. Not sure it would make much sense. Trump's own campaign couldn't even check the website of whatever organization the judge is part of. They just saw something about La Raza and off they went to the races. If I were to make such a mistake in a deck to a client I would probably be fired on the spot, not allowed to try to run a country.
Edit: Maybe a better question is why would someone who's supposedly worth $10 billion engage in such a filthy and despicable enterprise as Trump U just to net 5 million? Is it cause he needed the money or just for kicks? Btw, I don't think he needed the money.
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So if the bubble bursts, do we get inflation or deflation? I see arguments for both.
You get deflation. Or maybe I should say deflationary forces. It may be averted by superhuman efforts by the government and BoC.
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I don't even understand what he was trying to say, except that maybe he has a problem with liberals? I don't know?
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For what if scenarios yea, they're interesting. If things continue at this rate in less than 7 years 100% of household income will go to pay for the home in Toronto. Vancouver will be well over 100%. But that's ok because house prices never go down.
That's incredible. Does that include incomes rising at the same pace too?
That's with incomes rising at the pace over the past few years and RE rising at the pace of over the past few years.
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The Teranet data is very good but it doesn't go far enough. The previous peak was in 1989. The Teranet data for Toronto only goes back to 1997. Before that you have to use CREA numbers. I splice CREA with Teranet as Teranet data starts. You also have to keep in mind that CREA data has an upward bias in prices and growth rates due to their methodology. Teranet doesn't have bias.
For affordability I didn't build my own models. Part of it is lazyness and part is that I don't really work with RE so it's not worth it for me to invest a whole lot of time to build a complicated profitability model. RBC Economics used to put out a quarterly house affordability report which was decent. It overestimated affordability cause they wanna sell mortgages after all, but was good enough so I used that one. They stopped publishing that report last August - I wonder why?
For what if scenarios yea, they're interesting. If things continue at this rate in less than 7 years 100% of household income will go to pay for the home in Toronto. Vancouver will be well over 100%. But that's ok because house prices never go down.
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The people who are actually gifted enough in business and economics (unlike Trump) have better things to do with their time than become President (because they are so gifted). Gates and Buffett come to mind.
What? His net worth is 10+ Billion. Not gifted enough in business or economics?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-probably-better-investing-donald-233020366.html
I've seen these articles before talking about how trump would have been better investing in index funds.
These are simplified analyses that just look at starting net worth and ending net worth, with dividends reinvested.
2 Fatal Flaws in this Analysis:
(1) What they dont take into account is spending along the way. Dividends would not have been reinvested, and there may have been drawdowns on principal. They assume all of your wealth remains invested with no drawdowns. Trump lives an extremely expensive lifestyle (he owns his own 757).
(2) The word "Tax" is not even mentioned in this article. index funds are tax-efficient, but dividends would still have been taxed.
Let me first start with the fact that I don't see what one's personal wealth or ability to create wealth have with one's ability to be president. But Trump keeps bringing his wealth up so i guess an analysis of said wealth is warranted.
Now, 1) I think that a comparison of his wealth to an index fund is reasonable. Most of what Trump calls his net worth is a capitalization of his name. That makes him more like a company than a person so a comparison with other companies is reasonable.
2) Trump has indeed been spending like a drunken sailor to fund his lavish lifestyle. But so do a lot of companies. Lots of companies spend a lot on aircraft, executive apartments, etc. This translates into lower net income and thus lower valuations. Companies alse have to pay for CEOs. Trump doesn't
3) Index funds are very tax efficient, but so is real estate. Of course we don't know right now, but i somehow have the feeling that Donald Trump is very tax efficient.
4) I don't see why business people's performance shouldn't be benchmarked to an index. If your job as a businessman is not to generate value then what is it? If I can be brain dead and sit on an index and generate more value then you can then how are you a good businessman?
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Thanks for the insightful comments, Potato. Would love to see some of the research you described! What is "HAM"?
I was hoping to have a doc or video or something to point to when my friends come to me and say they're buying their first home, an investment property, investing in syndicated mortgages.. etc. To most of them it is a simple decision in that it is that time in their life for them to enter the RE market, they want to diversify, they can afford the biweekly payment and of course, prices only go up and if they don't buy now they will be priced out forever and die lonely.
You can put together a deck or dock for your friends showing the full RE Cycle peak to peak not just the past few years. Last peak was in 1989. If you graph stock market returns on that it is a real sobering sight. Also this way you can show them what kinda happened the last time when "prices only go up and if they don't buy now they will be priced out forever and die lonely".
You can also map affordability levels (hint: Toronto is at 1989 levels and Van is past those). You can also do cash flow models for different scenarios. You can also go through different "what if" scenarios. What if real estate keeps going up at x% per year? How will the market look 10-15 years from now? Does that world seem reasonable or even possible?
I've done the above for certain clients who were thinking about allocating money to RE and it scared the shit out of them. I can't share the deck here for a number of reasons. But having done the analysis I can say that one you start to work the models it's really eye opening. People talk a lot of crap about RE, when I take some statements they make and I build a model based on those assumption they look at the result and go "that's not possible!"
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I think there are a lot of closet trump supporters. I was 2x Obama voter. Was at Grant Part to witness history in 08'. Don't regret the last 8 years. However, I've noticed what this kid talks about....as my foreign friend says "we shall see"
Edit: This post has nothing to do with my leanings I reserve the right to keep that private. I will say this though I'm about where I think Munger is. However I wanted to share this because it is just similar to my observations of my peers.
I have heard a lot about this idea of the closeted trump voter.
In fairness I believe that there are a few people like that. In reality I don't really think that it's very meaningful. I'm a boring numbers and data guy so please excuse me for that. But let me introduce a tale of the presidential election on 2012. I know that it was an eternity ago. But during that election Mitt Romney polled like crazy with independents and indeed he won independents by 5 points. That's why Republicans were absolutely sure they were gonna win the election. And it's wasn't a bad assumption. You win independents by 5 points, you win the election. The problem which they did not realize is that a lot of those independents were closet republicans - people that were going to vote republican anyway but could not identify themselves as republicans because some of the later policies of the republican party.
My feeling is that the closeted trump voter of this election is the closeted republican voter of yerster-year election and thus it doesn't make much difference to the whole calculus. But it makes for much better copy.
My opinion, which may be wrong, but at this point is a right as anyone's, is that the election will be tight but will go mostly along party lines and will be quite similar to 2012. Trump will probably flip Ohio and Hillary will get North Carolina and maybe Arizona (a long shot but that state will probably be close).
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Your example skews where you use 10% interest rate loan (who pays that?) skews the case. Anyway there are several reasons why a company may choose to borrow to invest instead of using own cash. A couple come to mind quickly.
1. Companies prefer to have a certain level of liquidity. For example Buffett doesn't want to drop below 20B in cash. The levels of liquidity proffered by companies are determined by requirements of day to day ops and are a cushion for some future adverse event. It's better to borrow now when you can. When that future adverse event comes and they need their cash they may not be able to borrow it.
2. Tax reasons. See big US tech companies. Huge holdings of overseas cash which can't be used because they would have to pay tax for it. So they borrow instead.
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RB it is pointless having a discussion with you.
I pull data from the EU Commission on one of its own members and you say it is basically invalid. You then argue that GDP growth is unimportant as long as the leader keeps its people happy.
And then you tell me to go masturbate.
Wow! You have demonstrated all the characteristics of someone from the extreme left who wants to shut up anyone who does not think as he thinks.
I'm sorry about the masturbation comment. That was a couple of steps too far and I apologize. I'll edit my post and take it out.
I'm actually nowhere near the far left. It just really gets me going when people ignore facts or just make up their own just to support their ideology. My ire, by the way no by no means reserved for the right cause there's enough people on the left that come up with category 5 whoppers. Those people tend to hang out more with Bernie. In your case, I have read other posts you wrote so I know you're not an idiot, far from it. However, when you make a politically related post your level of research and analysis drops substantially to help you reach an ideological conclusion. What do you call that?
On the Germany's GDP growth. The number i posted yesterday in my last post i pulled from FRED which uses OECD data. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that there's some place on EC's website that has your number. I wasn't able to find it. Nevertheless it is flat out wrong. Just quickly going on Germany's EC page and click full forecast show's 96-11 GDP growth rate 1.4%. But I wanted to be thorough and use EC data-set numbers. So i went to EC's Eurostat Database (I hate that one! but I did it for you). When you pull the real GDP data for Germany (2010 chain linked volumes, Mn Euro) you get the following values: 2015 GDP=2,782,594.7 1991 GDP=2,038,505.4. That's a growth rate of 1.3%. Very similar to the OECD data set which was chained 2005 euros.
Also I think you misunderstood my point on GDP growth, so I'll expand a bit. Firstly, yes I do believe that as a leader your goal should be for your citizens to be prosperous and happy. Economic performance of course plays a big part. I haven't really seen a population that is destitute and unemployed and happy. But headline GDP growth numbers by themselves without context or detail are pretty useless in judging underlying economic performance and well being.
Let's look at an extreme example. Say you have a country with very good GDP growth. However this country has a set of policies that result in a very unequal set of outcomes and all the economic growth accrues to just a few people at the top. Well it would suck to be a citizen in that country because all that economic growth doesn't benefit you at all. So you need some context around the number.
Another reason why headline GDP growth is kinda meaningless by itself is that demography plays a very big part. So for the 91-15 period 1.3% growth was enough to produce a very good set of outcomes. The same rate for the US would have been pretty bad because US has a better demographic profile so i'm expecting a higher growth rate for the US. For example I also know that Mexico has a much better demographic profile than the US. So I'm expecting Mexico to post higher GDP growth numbers. So when Mexico has a higher gdp growth than the US I don't know whether they're doing better, I need more information.
I'll stop now cause this is too long already.
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There is an enormous difference between Ukraine and the other Eastern European countries. The major one is Russia interfering in its affairs which can't be denied, the natural gas accord, etc. It just does not have the liberty to operate freely. It should have kept its nukes.
So it does fit my thesis. If freedom is not there, it does not work.
Germany: "GDP Growth Rate in Germany averaged 0.32 percent from 1991 until 2016, reaching an all time high of 2 percent in the second quarter of 2010 and a record low of -4.50 percent in the first quarter of 2009."
Does that look like the U.S.? I mean if you exclude the Obama years. LOL
It will be about 0.5% this year. What would it be if they did not benefit from a lower currency due to being part of the Euro? Unemployment rate of 6.2% is good I would say.
You look at all the data and the impact of 8 years of U.S. government heavy regulations and being involved in everyone's business and the numbers are trending closer and closer to Western Europe. The U.S. has not had its lowest growth rates and recovery since WWII because of population size. No. It was the same size as Europe before the Great Recession and was growing much faster. It is all these regulations that are strangling U.S. economic growth.
Even a man of the left is waking up now in France or Hollande and wanting to abolish the 35 hour week and all these tight labour regulations. The result is the threat of a strike by union at major refineries to halt the nation. To him I say, do as Ronald Reagan did to the air traffic controllers. Fire them all!
Venezuela is actually a great example of leftist populism a la Bernie gone wrong. A man, Chavez and now his successor, holds onto power by handing out freebies to less informed or the majority of the population until there is no money left. Yell against the rich and capitalists (Wall Street for Bernie). Tax them, seize their assets. What is fascinating is how fast it has happened. I have friends who left when he came into power and glad that they did since they are now rich vs their comrades.
Look, I am not opposed to all social programs. However, I think that they have to be very well managed and used for the less fortunate among us. We also have to ensure that everyone contributes to society and pay for these things no matter how small is the contribution. Being part of the team is key.
Regarding Trump and Bernie, I do believe that they have a finger on one thing that is really wrong in America and that is influence and lobbying over policies. Trump has cast a larger net which is the right thing while Bernie is only focused on Wall Street and ignore all the very powerful lobbyist and special interest in Washington.
Cardboard
Dude, I don't even know where to begin. I give you a reply based on data and you go on a rant with no facts. Instead you just scream buzzwords. Regulations! Ronald Regan! Obama the job destroyer LOL! 35 hour workweek!
You want to disqualify Ukraine, the largest country in EE because of a gas agreement with Russia where Russia sells them gas at below market rates. Because you know buying resources at below market rates is bad for an economy. All countries all over the world have foreign influences in their economies. It's in EE. It had capitalism, deal with it.
I point out that all of those countries in EE that you fantasize about have heavy socialist policies and you move away from the issue and go into a rant with no data points. Suddenly they don't matter anymore and they were the whole premise of you post.
Speaking of data points, you say that Germany had 0.32% GDP growth rate from 1991 to 2016. I quickly pulled Germany's GDP data from FRED from 1991 to 2014 (all available data on FRED) and it showed real GDP growth rate of 1.27%. So I have serious doubts about your 0.32% claim. Also if their GDP would have been subpar compared to LRAS you would expect to see high unemployment in Germany. You don't see that so I call BS on your whole argument.
I also see that you focus a lot on headline GDP growth number. As an economist one of the things you know is that headline GDP growth numbers are meaningless. It's all in the details. You can have an economy that's growing well where people are doing shitty and an economy that's growing more slowly or even shrinking where people are doing very well. By the way the job of a political leader is not to post great headline numbers and measure his "hands" to other leaders. The job of a leader is to make sure his people are leading good lives and are happy. If your people are fucking miserable but you post nice GDP numbers you have failed as a leader.
By the way, if all you care are GDP growth and taxes, I know of a country that has great weather, 8.7% GDP growth rate and 16% total taxes to GDP would you or anyone else want to move there? By the way there really aren't any Germans that want to leave their socialistic economic swamp to move to that pot of gold called the US. Dare to guess why?
Now if you want to have a reasonable argument based on facts I'm game.
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When I mentioned Eastern European countries I had in mind: Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Romania. Not Ukraine!
You have looked up their GDP growth and unemployment rate. Then compare them to France, Germany, Spain ,etc. Pretty striking.
Denmark or the model society for our socialists has a population of 5.6 million! Funny but, your numbers do not match the European Commission:
http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/eu/countries/denmark_en.htm
I didn't say either that Eastern European countries are there yet with their standard of living but, it is surely trending in a better direction than ANY, and I will repeat, ANY state that has tried light socialism, medium socialism or heavy socialism.
Should we look at Asia or specifically China and Vietnam to see how much they benefited from opening their society to capitalism?
The stuff that Bernie is talking about is very very dangerous. They say that Trump is a populist. What is Bernie then??? Once you start to feed the Pavlov dogs they come for more and more and more and before you know it, your society is upside down and collapses. Appeasing the masses to gain power that is how I call it.
Cardboard
Aside from Russia, Ukraine is the country with the largest population in the EE. It was part of the USSR and since the fall has embraced capitalism. You can't just discard the biggest country because you don't like it because it doesn't fit your thesis. Also those EE countries that you fantasize about all have a pretty large safety net. What you would call heavy socialism. Romania for example has single payer healthcare, day care and kindergarten available for reasonable nominal fees, large state pension system, and free post secondary education.
Also you cannot compare GDP growth rates between developing and developed economies. Developed economies will have lower GDP growth rates for structural reasons. Good GDP growth for places like Poland and Romania are 5-6%. 3% not so much.
For Denmark I pulled the numbers from CIA factbook cause I hate the EU databases. We can change the data source if you'd like, but the story won't change. Also I used Denmark just because that's Bernie's fantasy and you were very disingenuous with your Venezuela example.
If your position is that Denmark is an aberration because its population is small and the system wouldn't work with a higher population. Then I propose we switch to Germany, a country which is a similar social democracy and has a population of about 80 million. We can pull the numbers and then you can explain to us how social policies ravaged that country's economy.
I'm not saying we should abandon capitalism or that we should have all that Bernie's talking about. But your view that any social policies destroy economies is non-sense. You may choose to have some of those policies or may choose not to based on your preference. But preaching economic apocalypse is simply disingenuous.
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Regarding history, you can't even see current news around you Palantir.
I know now why Trump has a Eastern European wife. These people have a brain and a memory.
These people were also forced to put on display a bunch of statues of Lenin or another Obama hero. As soon as they had the chance, they destroyed all of that and embraced freedom and capitalism.
After 20 short years, they are the pearl of Europe with solid growth and low unemployment or a striking difference from their Western counterparts. The EU is trying to impose various laws and other liberal plans on them and they are rightfully pushing back.
There is another country which embraced fully socialism or the ideal of Bernie Sanders and Obama: Venezuela. In 10 short years, people are dying, shops are empty, no electricity is available, no food, nothing. Civil war is likely next.
America is a great country because it has chosen freedom over domination by a few who would dictate them how they should live. It could become greater or like it was in the 90's if it reverses that trend toward socialism.
Regarding the elite Democrats who claim that they are doing this to help the people. To them I say lie and hypocrisy. Their true reason is to buy peace from the poor so that they can continue enjoying their upper class lifestyle: actors, tort lawyers, union leaders. Millions are still on food stamps and barely making it despite 8 years of their so called empathy. If they truly wanted to help the poor, they would stop enslaving them with small gifts and teach them how they got to the upper echelon themselves.
While I am not opposed at all to more available healthcare and education, the way it is presented and used as a tool to vote for them by the Democrats is disgusting.
And by the way, if you believe that free education is the thing to have, then look no further than France. Free does not mean that it will be put to good use. When one has to pay a little then better choices are made.
Cardboard
Nice straw man you got there Cardboard. Venezuela! Quick, everyone run and hide! As far as I know the Bernie talks more about US becoming more like Denmark. Let's look at that socialism ravaged country: 2015 GDP growth=1.6%, 2015 GDP per capita=$45,800, 2014 Average hours worked per employee=1,436, unemployment rate 4.7%, happiness index rank=1. Feel the devastation.
As for Eastern Europe being the pearl of Europe? I don't know what you're smoking but I sure want some.
Leaving Russia aside because that's another bag of fleas, the largest countries in Eastern Europe are Ukraine, Poland, and Romania. Stats:
2015 GDP per Capita: Ukraine $8,000, Poland $26,400, Romania $22,100
2015 GDP growth Rate: Ukraine -10.5%, Poland 3.5%, Romania 3.7%
2015 Unemployment Rate: Ukraine 9.5%, Poland 10.6%, Romania 6.7%
The unemployment numbers also have a strong downward bias because these countries have large agrarian populations that cannot be counted as unemployed but mostly conduct subsistence farming and tend to live in abject poverty. % of labour force employed in farming: Ukraine 25%, Poland 22%, Romania 30%.
That honestly doesn't look like anybody's pearl. Also i think that Eastern Europe's GDP growth rates were probably the last thing on Trump's mind when he was thinking about getting a new wife.
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The topic of the lie does impact his legacy as president. He was not convicted of this federal crime because the Senate either didn't believe enough evidence existed or didn't believe the charges were serious enough. Furthermore, it is not even all that clear that he lied. The "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" comment was not made under oath. Even he lied, but why should 330M Americans care that he lied about his extramarital activities? Why is that significant enough to overshadow his entire presidency?
A man that is willing to cheat on his wife might be willing to do other things...A man that is willing to lie to 330mm Americans might be willing to do other things to.
You seriously don't think Billy lying about what was going on in the Oval Office under oath was a serious matter?
If push comes to shove, you don't think Bill would lie about other more important issues?
He & Hillary have been involved in one shady, crooked, unethical deal after another, after another, after another. If she gets elected, it is simply going to continue. She & Billy need to be in the dustbin of history.
It's nice that's you're there on the wall beating the drum about Bill getting laid and lying to the American people about it, and how horrible that was. Only the thing is that the American people actually decided that they really didn't care that Bill got laid or that he lied to them about it. During the impeachment trial Bill's approval ratings reached a high of 73%. I don't think that the American people can yell "We Don't Care!" louder than that. During the election at the end of his second term Bill's approval rating was 63%.
Bush 2 was a good boy. Didn't cheat on his wife and didn't get blowies in the oval. This however didn't really make the people feel better about him going into all those wars and blowing up the middle east. Oh, speaking about lying to the American people that WMD thingy was a real whopper. Turns out that the American people did care about that one. Bush 2's average approval for his second term was 37%. During the election at the end of his second term his approval was 28%.
So yea you can dig up and fling old dirt as much as you want. The reality is that people really didn't care about Bill's affairs or what he said about them. But the people were probably ready to pay for hookers so that Bush 2 would get laid constantly and just wouldn't show up for work.
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Some of you are commenting on Hillary's staying with Bill. That is a complex personal decision and I would not be quick to judge her on that. I dated a girl and her mom was an intern at the whitehouse when Bill Clinton cheated on Hillary. On the day when Hillary apparently heard the news she cried a lot and was very shaken and upset. I was surprised to learn later in life that some marriages actually do quite well after 1 spouse cheats and the couple stays together. Not an easy decision to ditch the father of your child and divorce is almost always a mess.
Yes, it is a deeply personal decision to stay with a cheating spouse. HOWEVER, there had been numerous reports, stories, rumors, HECK, even a 60 minutes interview about "Bill's cheating ways". Bill has/had been unfaithful to Hillary on NUMEROUS occasions. Why would she stay with a serial cheater? Yes, everybody might have an error in judgement, a lapse, a temptation. Heck, maybe even twice...but how many times with Bill?
As to Hillary being upset, that was surely not the first time. She may have been upset because she feared the gravy train was over. She may also have been upset because there some semblance of deniability with Bill's affairs previously, now that was all over with.
Yes, it is Hillary's decision to stay with Bill. Color me skeptical though.
Finally, are these the type of characters we want in the White House? In addition to Bill, Chelsea & her husband are up to all sorts of hijinx.
Ok, yes, everyone knows that Bill cheated on Hilary multiple times and she stuck with him. Whatever her reasons are are hers.
On the flip side you have Trump. He cheated on his wife. While he cheated on his wife he had at least another girlfriend. So he cheated on his wife with let's say his mistress, and then at the same time he cheated on his mistress with another woman. Then according to him he cheated on both of those women with a whole slew of other women because apparently he was irresistible to the fairer sex, like a gift to women from God, whatever
Now your choices for president are Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump. I don't care what your fantasies may be. Those are your choices and one of those two will be the next president. You point out the fact that Hilary stood by her philandering husband. Ok. Is Donald, the master philanderer a much better choice from your righteous point of view? I'm not even going to touch all the other blaring facts about his ridiculous attitude towards women that have been thoroughly documented.
Having said all that, this whole attitude is ridiculous. You're electing a presidents. Whom he or she fucks or doesn't or stand by or doesn't is irrelevant. The job of the President of the United States does not have anything to do with fidelity or attitude towards a spouse. The president is supposed to do right by the people. Why do you people obsess so much about who blew who instead of focus about who will do right to the American people?
Did Bill Clinton do right by the American people? Was he a good stewart of the country? Are Hilary's policy proposals good? Are Trump's policy proposal's good (does he have any?)? Aside from this, why does it matter who blew whom and who did whom, and who stood by whom? You are electing a president, not a spouse!
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I am really confused by this idea in the US that is someone is wealthy or has been successful in business then naturally he or she is naturally qualified to be president or have a leadership position in an administration. A job that requires to craft policy and represent ALL the people.
A short list that comes to mind of successful business people that had leadership positions in the executive branch: Robert McNamara, Robert Rubin, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Snow, Hank Paulson. Not exactly a distinguished list of political leaders.
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I bet Clinton chooses Sanders as VP. She's got no choice. If she chooses someone establishment, a portion of his supporters will go to Trump. Trump is smart enough to know this and has already started to appeal to Sanders people by attacking the flawed superdelegate system.
I thought that the U.S. VP had one job. To be there in case the President kicks the bucket. To have a ticket with a 70 year old candidate and a 74 year old vp seems a little non sensical. no?
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Thanks for the update on Hutchinson. I wasn't aware of the reorg. Now since Victor is looking after it I definitely wouldn't be touching it with a stick. I know several people who were at CIBC at the same time he was there and they're all unanimous in the opinion that he was a gigantic moron. So best of luck to his partners.
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Every time the portfolio of 7 absolutely shamed the S&P over a time period 10 years or longer.
Survivorship bias much.
If it was so easy to beat SP500, this forum would be empty and/or you'd be managing billions.
In reality even on this forum majority do not outperform SP500 long term.
Well... I'm not managing billions. I don't see what that has to do with anything. Cause there are not tons of managers out there that manage billions and consistently underperform and there are not managers that manage millions and overperform. I hate to break it to you but in this business there isn't as much correlation between the performance and AUM as talking heads would profess. Even if I'd be beating the S&P by 15% a year consistently I wouldn't manage 1 billion dollars. Thanks Fama! Despite all of that I make good money and I have a great relationship with my clients and while it certainly would be great if I made more, life is pretty good.
Normally, your comment about survivorship bias would be a good guess. However you discount the initial premise of the filter. There haven't been a whole slew of businesses that among other things are low tech, have a long and consistent history of profitability, and high unlevered ROEs that bit the dust in the past 10 years. Btw, for simplicity I threw in a market cap of over $3 Bn. There's probably a dash of survivorship bias but it is negligible compared to the sheer number of companies. This would begin to be self evident when you look close at those BRK criteria and realize that they are geared toward longevity of companies.
There were some surprises as we threw the darts and pulled data. For example in my view P&G did extremely poorly and Honeywell did surprisingly well.
As for the performance of this board vs the S&P I don't know. I'm sure members are tiring to beat the S&P. Are they successful? Pretty sure a good number are. There's a lot of very good narrative here that's why I spend valuable time sharing ideas. I'm also sure a lot aren't. Just look how many people were long and strong valeant - which is as far from a secure and long term business (as per BRK purchase criteria and others) as you can get.
To each their own. But to get back to your premise, if you can show a significant survivorship bias over the past 10 years based on the BRK buying principles, I will eat my words, the sole of my shoe, and I'll take you out for a steak dinner.
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ask her heirs
+1 to cherzeca.
Let them do it, it's their money anyway. They can be as stupid as they wanna be with it.
But the OP's question I think is a bit redundant on this board where we are doing research as active investors in order to get bigger returns than the S&P.
Now the advice in the 2013 letter is great. What the OP must realize is that advise was directed to a general audience. Buffett wrote it like a he would write and Op-ed in the New York Times. Aimed at a general public audience that is totally ignorant about anything relating to finance. For me it is a source of unlimited bewilderment why the general population would do endless research to save $50 on HDTV be are so ignorant and cavalier with thousands upon thousand of their savings. This is not limited to plebs, it extends to people that have millions upon millions. But that's another topic.
To the OP. It's great you read the 2013 letter advice. But you know what's also in the BRK letters? Since I don't know when, in the BRK letters there has been a section that details in a few points a business that Berkshire would be interested in buying. A couple of weeks ago I was pitching a potential client who only invested in super safe shot term bonds cause he was so afraid of anything else. So what I did was set up a crude filter based on those criteria in the BRK letter and applied it the universe of public stocks. Took the resulting companies and printed them on a dart board. We each took 7 shots. We did this for 2 hours. Every time the portfolio of 7 absolutely shamed the S&P over a time period 10 years or longer. The guy signed to an all equity mandate in the room.
This information has been in the letters for decades. Yes, it's didn't have a flashing neon arrow pointing to it, but it was there. Read the letters with an open, inquisitive, and critical mind. There's more there than you think!
HF Websites
in General Discussion
Posted
Wow! I actually clicked on the link. So funny, read some of the text too. I get the feeling that if you asked Trump to personally create a website that's what would come out. Thanks Picasso, that really put a giggle in my day :).