JayGatsby

Is the technology reflected in the prices of assets being traded? With the .com bubble the technology changed the world arguably more than even originally envisioned, but the early companies mostly did not.

Oh that looks great! Thanks. Mine was well under $100k (BofA guy on the phone said $6k if I remember right.. none of it got to me). Hopefully they'll look into it anyway. Just sucks to not be able to pursue something knowing the perpetrator is out there looking to either hit you again or hit the next person. So far FTC is worthless. Filled that out a week ago. They're just now realizing Robocalls are more than just a nuisance.

That's disappointing to hear. In this case they created a fake LLC under my name. Some merchant processor gave me the name on the application. The fake business's address is at a UPS store in Atlanta. Manager was super helpful, said she had the ID on file of the person who opened the box, and would be happy to notify the police next time he comes in or give the ID to the police. Atlanta Police were legitimately mad at me that I'd suggest they'd do that, and said it was Denver police's responsibility. Obviously Denver police said they can't go to Atlanta so it seems to be dead from there, despite doing most of the work for them. FBI said they don't look into that sort of stuff, talk to the FTC. FTC just has you fill out a form. I've frozen equifax, although right now I'm trying to apply for a loan for a small business. Banks must lose a ton on this sort of stuff... you'd think they'd care a bit. Reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where Kramer is convincing Jerry to file a fraudulent damaged package claim, and his rationale is they just "write it off". Thanks for everyone's help. Hopefully someone at the government somewhere is actually doing something!

Random, but has anyone here been the victim of identity theft and actually been able to get the case investigated? As far as I can tell no government agency actually will investigate an identity theft involving a victim in one location and a suspect in another (in other words, basically all cases of identity theft). I've talked to local police departments in two jurisdictions as well as the FBI. FBI referred to FTC. FTC doesn't seem to do anything (they're just now starting to deal with robocalls). Don't worry, no damage to myself (financial or otherwise) so far, but definitely unnerving having someone run around with all of my personal info. No idea how they got it.

This guy seems to agree with that, estimating 0.45% based on South Korea: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-israeli-expert-trump-is-right-about-covid-19-who-is-wrong-1.8691031 (Opening in incognito got me around the pay wall. The title is kinda dumb, but good article nonetheless)

I think a lot of businesses can be made to be very passive. It just depends on the skills required to run them and how hard it is to find someone with those skills. Any multi unit business has basically setup each location to run itself. The key is just the right people. I'd make a list of all of the key tasks, who is going to do those, and which ones you're worried about.

A friend of a friend bought a few smog shops in CA. Did well from what I understand. Had some issues with one of the sellers, but nothing specific to the smog industry. From what I understand it was fairly passive. It's basically a bet on regulations, for better or for worse. In CA I remember I had to get the test even for a fairly new car. In CO they have smog checks on the side of the road and the government charges you for it when you renew your registration. Doesn't seem like CA would totally eliminate them, so I guess you'd just want to be comfortable with thew new volume. I dont see electric vehicles as a big threat personally. I just bought a new gas car. I don't see any benefit to electric cars. They cost more, are way less convenient, and arguable are no better for or worse for the environment. The only practical reason I've heard to buy them is government subsidies, and a lot of those have gone away.

Some of these things are a function of what you put into it too, so you have to put a value on the time to get a correct ROI. Most property management companies in colorado will charge ~40% a night for ski rentals, but they do everything

Travel, see what others have done.

Calgary as #3 most livable city in the world? ???

What's the name of the podcast? I'd take a listen. In the US I think the seller financing can stack on top of the SBA loan (maybe up to a certain percent?), I'm not sure if you can do a totally no equity deal. It definitely keeps the seller's interests aligned with the buyer.

In the US we have SBA loans, which are basically government guaranteed loans explicitly for stuff like this. They require a personal guarantee, but otherwise are great loans... high LTV, no covenants. Not sure if Canada has something similar. Also could try talking to the owner about seller financing. Sometimes this can be the best of both. If the owner knows you he/she may be fairly comfortable with the busines in your hands. So the owner gets to sell the business, while earning interest on the seller financing. Finding a good operator of a good small business at a good price is a unicorn. If your resume is good and you set about raising equity you should be able to do it fairly easily (sounds like people on this board have already filled the bucket!). Make sure the incentives are aligned for everyone, but don't sell out too cheap. Don't give up control. Also, know your investor's styles. A lot of PE investors like to "talk strategy" and build forecasts, but not do any actual work. If you're grinding it out at a small business while someone else wants to call and talk to you about what you're doing it can get fairly tiring (talking from experience lol).

Wonder if they do this intentionally to create a scarcity value around the fund? It must be awesome because they don't want everyone to know their secrets!

Poor governance will be apparent without a private investigator. Using personal dirt to achieve their objectives is a tactic fairly unique to Elliott. I'm sure others do it, but I haven't seen it. Even Ackman didn't do that. Elliott always denies it, but the same stuff pops up in each of their campaigns. I agree with activism as being overall good for shareholders, but I don't agree with some of Elliott's tactics.

I’d say on average activism is a good check on management. However, there are some problems associated with it (short-termism, maybe too much focus on cost cutting?). Also, it looks like Elliott is “walking the line” in terms of what is acceptable behavior. The Elliot activism looks like blackmail to me. They don’t win by arguments, they win by blackmailing and discrediting people. It’s a pretty lowlife way of making a living. Also potential harmful for him and his employers, friends or family, if he ever gets into issues with the wrong people who pay back in his own currency and up it a notch. I agree. The private investigator stuff is crossing the line in my opinion, particularly as it sometimes relates to people's families. It's a fine line... if you think a CEO isn't 100% engaged in the company that's fair game, but they always seem to take it too far. Using private investigators to threaten people with sensitive personal information seems borderline illegal, but I don't know the laws on such things. I'm not sure any Detroit automaker would actually be offended that someone in their circle drives an Aston Martin. That's a different breed of cars than Detroit makes. Their developing economy debt antics are pretty devastating to the citizens of those countries. I agree the countries shouldn't be financing themselves off of debt, but that's how the system works.

I thought this was fairly weak actually. If you knew nothing about Trump and just watched this episode you'd think his net worth was close to $0. The story in the show is basically: Built successful Trump Tower -> Built successful casinos in AC then bet it all on the Taj Mahal-> Went bankrupt a few times -> Did nothing until the Apprentice -> Leveraged the Apprentice to do a bunch of sketchy licensing deals. Yet somehow Forbes lists a whole bunch of properties that Trump seems to own stakes in. https://www.forbes.com/donald-trump/ So there's a pretty huge disconnect between between what the show portrays and what Forbes portrays. At one point the show says Trump's PR skill is getting people to believe what they want to believe. That seems to be what this show does. The show seems to just avoid the $3B of property interests that Trump somehow accumulated along the way. Were these properties accumulated in a "Dirty" fashion, or were there just a select few that they chose to profile? The guy's obviously a showman, but I don't consider that "Dirty" on its face. Sidenote: I'm not a Trump supporter, so please don't mistake this as some sort of partisan pro-Trump view.

I think for regulatory to be a strong moat you have to have popular support as well. The problem for taxis was the popular support was for Uber. In New York the taxis were actually pretty good I found, but when I lived in LA you'd call them and they'd never show up. Contrast with say oil pipelines... very difficult to get built. First you have to overcome political permitting, then you have to overcome popular uprisings.

Think that's too general. Yes, don't take advice from people who are actually bad at what they preach (a lot of the business books they sell at airports). The poker players I know are actually quite rational and could be quite good investors / businessfolk. There's some pretty negative stuff online about Annie Duke's involvement in some poker related businesses. Whether or not true, I don't know, but she doesn't seem to be held in high regard in the poker community. So maybe in this case you're taking advice from the wrong person.

Not directing this at the OP, but the short thesis that Tesla is comprised of a bunch of crappy engineers who will never figure out how to produce a decent car seems beyond self-delusional. There's this weird personal thing from finance folks towards Musk that makes little sense to me. I agree with people that bringing a production vehicle to market is exceptionally challenging and this uphill battle probably isn't correctly factored into the current share price. Beyond that I don't see much intellectual honesty in the short argument. Anyways, that's my rant for the day.

I watched the HBO Madoff movie pretty recently. De Niro did a really good job as Madoff. Not a "best", but definitely worth watching.

Agree with all that. Two things though: 1. The US budget deficit (~$1T) is bigger than the trade deficit (~$500B). So doesn't that create a need for true outside investment in t-bills? 2. Country B still has the option of holding onto those T-bills or selling them. So if Country B has been in the market selling their peddling $500B of T-bills and now all of a sudden the treasury is also selling $500B of t-bills (math may be wrong.. not sure how much the deficit increased) because US taxpayers are no longer funding that $500B, all else equal shouldn't that increase in supply result in a decrease in price (increase in yield)? Japan seems to be the classic example of a country that has debt financed itself for a long time. The difference I've heard (haven't confirmed statistics on this) is that the buyers of Japanese debt are largely Japanese citizens. Not sure what the long-term implications of that are if the population declines and becomes net sellers, but at least for the last 20 to 30 years it's worked. Interesting stuff. I've never understood all of the fund flows with this money printing as well as I'd like. I've been one of the people saying inflation would go crazy since 2010.

That is not really correct. Why not?

This may have been an easy statement to make when main players in the treasury market are private entities, banks and insurance companies, foreign or domestic. Today, half of the treasury market is owned by foreign central banks and Federal Reserve, whose motivations are driven by as much politics as economics. This statement becomes more questionable. Over the long term, it certainly remains true. But that long term can be much longer than most people's investment horizon. Even putting politics aside, it seems like it's still supply/demand. As supply of t-bills goes up there has to be equal demand for rates to stay the same. Otherwise rates have to increase to stimulate demand. Foreign governments have a choice of investing in the US (via t-bills) or investing in their own countries. Like with companies, being dependent on outside financing seems risky because you're tied to the whims of those investors. T-bills are a complicated market though, that I'm far from an expert in. We'll see.

Life is short, have a diet coke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnZnSumfIlE

Sounds like JAB is going fairly well: http://news.keuriggreenmountain.com/press-release/business/dr-pepper-snapple-and-keurig-green-mountain-merge-creating-challenger Not sure of the tax consequences of the "special cash dividend"... that leaves a high possibility that it is taxable, correct? So if I pay $117, get $103, pay $25 of taxes, my basis is really $142 (before adjusting for the $103)?