Uccmal

I'm sure there has been grade inflation - although on Ds and Fs, I would note that Harvard was singing songs about the "Gentleman's C" back in the early 1900s - http://fdrsuite.org/blog/?p=3082 Also, the number of high school students attending college has risen from 45% in the 1960s to around 65% today (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/business/fewer-us-high-school-graduates-opt-for-college.html?_r=0) - so perhaps students are learning less per student, but the generation is learning more as a whole. I assume your argument for why giving Ds and Fs is good is that it motivates a fire under a kid's butt to learn? That's probably true, but if the profession he's entering is both selective and grade focused, won't the C serve the same signaling function once we all know the code only it won't have the same deleterious effects on the kid's ability to stay in college... As for college in general, I'm sure you can do great without it, but to gain access to many white-collar industries, a college degree is simply a necessity. Whether that's normatively desirable is another issue... My Wife's a prof. And my dad was one as well. If I had the same marks now as I did when I graduated high school I would not get into a Canadian University... 28 years of gradual grade inflation in high school. University gave me confidence. ie. I took a forestry course in 3rd. year. The prof. didn't want to let me in because I hadn't done botany. That just created a challenge. I got the highest mark in the course and I was drunk a third of the time. Would I have got the same confidence doing a trade. I suspect so but I may never have discovered investing. Wanted to be an electrician but I am somewhat colour blind which presented a minor problem....

I laughed when I saw it today. A dictatorship that routinely executes people for no reason, and is near the front lines of at least 2 wars wants me to trust them. Next on the news: Kim Un steps down and holds open elections in North Korea; Robert Mugabe gives his stolen fortune back to the people; Pres. Assad steps down and says "ooops, Sorry I caused all that inconvenience and death".

A few manufactured goods are pricier. What I have noticed is food inflation. Anecdotally, it seems really high. The government stats conveniently hide any real inflation.

Smart phone video of tanks burning up. Anyone guess on the size of these tanks: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-06/pray-us-libya-issues-cry-help-isis-advances-oil-fields Cardboard, I guess time will tell. This could turn very quickly.

Interesting observation. Leaving out whether or not I am good - doesn't feel that way right now, I am self taught at investing. My background is science, not tech. or engineering. For those who are able to learn, most any path will do excepting STEM occupations.

With the possible exception of the first item, I would immediately agree with all of the others, which makes me wonder if they are really that contrarian. I think most Americans think that America will continue to dominate economically and culturally forever. I obviously don't think that is the case, but I do think it is likely that the age of American dominance will last into the 22nd century. Also many people are realizing that college is a bad deal for a lot (most?) people. And also it is pretty obvious that the majority of online articles with WEB in the headline are clickbait. The first one intrigues me however. In what ways do you think WEB is overrated? Do you think he is just lucky? The theory that if you start with 100,000,000 people flipping coins and only let those who flip heads onto the next round, someone is going to get heads 25 times in a row? RE: WEB: Someone has to be the best. Luck and fortuitous timing certainly helped. His Aspergers allowed him intense focus. If his first investments had been a bust we would never have heard of him. It was the early success that built the frame for his later success. He is obviously very smart, very adaptable, and careful. Once he made the early money he focussed on preservation. Is he smarter than many other investors we have never heard of - unlikely.

Prem holds about 2 million shares, as I recall. That gives him 20 million per year, and a net worth well north of 1.2 B. The dividend isn't for him and never was. It was for other FFh employees who were shareholders. I imagine Prem lives well within his 600 k salary anyways. What could he possbily spend the money on? He's like most of us on this board - sensibly frugal.

That high priced handsets (smartphones) will be consigned to history, and BB, Apple, and Samsung will all suffer. That tech ecosystems are overrated, except google and facebook - for now. That a healthy balanced diet of real food is better than a low carb, high fat; high carb, low fat; paleo, or probiotic diet, or anything else some d**k invents to make money. That the way to stay healthy and fit is to eat less crap, and move around a lot. That WEB eats better than he lets on. That the reasons many 70 year old rock musicians are still alive, well, and energetic is because they got up and moved around their whole lives - exceptions apply as always. Okay, so the last ones are not business related. That 99.9% of Outside Passive Minority Investors returns will revert to the mean, and below, leaving a few thousand outliers, worldwide.

I'm not sure how accurate these figures are but it's hard to imagine SA being able to sustain these kind of casualties much longer. Perhaps "Saudi-led" means Yemeni forces friendly to SA in this instance. The conflict does seem larger than I would have guessed though, I don't think I've seen any coverage of it recently in western media. Where are Yemeni forces receiving these missiles from and who's providing the training to operate them? Iran? Lotchka Missiles - sounds Russian to me. Of course they will sell to anyone, the same as General Dynamics. My guess of the direct supplier is Iran. I cant imagine that Saudi boys coming back in body bags in large numbers will sit well with the proles.

Following Cardboards lead. The entire oil field in Western Iran, Eastern Saudi will eventually be turned to glass, and oil prices will be hundreds of dollars per barrel. Its certainly in Putins interest. Sorry... just being provocative. I would absolutely hate to see Nukes used, but wouldn't rule it out. Desperate people do desperate things.

I just googled it. A missile was launched on Jan. 2nd from Yemen and hit a Saudi storage depot within Saudi Arabia.

Huh? The cleric was of a small minority in the country, backed by a country (Iran) that is already in proxy war with Saudi for awhile now. There's nothing new here, from both sides. "The House of Saud", as you call it, is extremely rich and powerful; they for sure will not be replaced from within nor would they be shot down from the outside. They have the full support of other nearby countries which share the same interest (resisting Iran's proxy wars) and of course local religious leaders with a very specific religious view of the world. And what war will be over exactly? Please. Egypt and Iran will also suddenly become happy friends? Iran will stop supporting proxy war in Yemen and various other locations? The centuries old war between Sunni and Shia will continue, in one form or another. And considering global economy's path, it might only get worse. This was not 0.02 cents on where oil will be a year from now, just on the content which is some sort of a twisted confirmation bias to support a thesis. I freely admit that I am inadvertently looking for comfirmation bias. I dont think we see a Saudi Regime change any time soon but we may very well see the civil war spilling over into SA. It is a situation they have tried to avoid by pre-emptively trying to contain the civil war in Yemen. The Yemeni rebels seem pretty effective and well armed. They are now targeting strategic targets in SA. This all leads to a massive increase in operating, and defense costs, for the Saudis, further eroding their ability to contain a civil war with a few million Shias via bribery. Bashir Assad has already shown us what happens when you launch an all out civil war against your own citizens. You end up broke, and fighting over an ever shrinking piece of the pie. The Saudi's, Iran, and Iraq, may realize that cutting oil production and pushing prices up is the only way to go, to contain the situation. However, Iran is not likely in any hurry to make nice. They have had 3 decades of various sanctions to diversify their economy. I suspect that none of this ends well for most of the middle eastern players.

That's a great memo. And I think IRR is the correct metric by which to judge the performance of someone like an individual investor, who is completely in control of his/her own capital. IRR, or something that's abstractly similar (ROIC, ROE, etc.), is what we all use to judge all of these companies we're investing in. Why wouldn't we use it on ourselves? The time weighted metric just seems like a way to avoid the truth. Most individual investors are absolutely not fully control of their own capital. You can't change when you receive your salary, or when you get an inheritance or a gift etc. If you got a big gift in 2009 you just got lucky, while if you got it in 2007 you got unlucky. If you don't try to time the market does it make sense to try to measure that? Agree with this, that is unless people are literally hoarding money, storing it away without ever intending to use it that timing is really out of our control. I have no idea how I did in 2015, calculating it will be a mess because money was moving in and out throughout the year. We purchased a house halfway through the year and I sold some stocks to facilitate the purchase. Would I have done better if I hadn't sold them? Maybe, but then again I wouldn't be living where I want to. In my view the purpose of money is to work for you, and in this case investing enabled us to buy a place we wanted. I'd like to think I can control the timing of my account, but I can't. When we found a house I couldn't wait until the year end to make performance nice and tidy. We bought a cottage. My total losses could have been even worse. I probably would have lost the value of what we spent using the same percentages. Not whining about my first world problems, thats for sure. Stocks will come back.

Makes sense to me. Good result BTW. Over time the differences in the way things are calculated become less pronounced. For my total average cagr I just took the amount from 11 years ago and added back the net withdrawals. It gives me an estimate +/- a couple percent, nothing more. If its lower than 22%, say 18%, then it still indicates that I beat the returns of all mutual funds, and all etfs, over the same 11 year period. And we have spent so much money that I dont need to worry about size becoming an anchor any time soon. My family is very good at taking my high yielding assets, and reinvesting the proceeds in low yielding assets (home/cottage). "if I was single my pockets would jingle.....".

I have tried to work this through from a logic perspective - yeah right. Everyone involved in the middle east cluster***k, would benefit from higher oil prices, except the EU and China. For Iran and North Am. it is not a necessity to have higher prices with diverisified economies. For Russia, Iraq, and Saudi it is. From my perspective it seems that certain parties have an active interest in destabalizing Saudi, and Iraq. Russia for sure, would benefit by seeing the Houthi's in control of Aden, and seeing a supertanker sunk, or a significant attack on Saudi oil fields. Many are making money selling weapons to the aggrieved parties ( ISIS, al Queda, the Houthis, the Saudi Shia's, what have you). At some point a major pipeline gets blown or a tanker sunk. An act of all out obiteration of any one faction will result in desoarate moves by that group against the oil industry. The executions held in Saudi strike me as an act of desperation to achieve who knows what. They wanted to scare the minority and send some kind of message to Iran. What they may accomplish is a full on armed conflict on their own soil. The EU and US aren't stupid. No one wants to be seen as being too close to a regime in SA that may change any time, so you bring Iran in from the cold. It sure is a dog's breakfast, with conflicting motives, and strange mixes of ideological differences and economics.

Interesting thought is that the shale supply will only be reduced if there are bankruptcies.. Otherwise the shale producers only need a small period of time to turn back on their operations. It cannot be ignored that the long-term consequences of oil at sub-40 levels will lead to higher debt loads and political instability in oil dependent nations. Saudi Arabia cannot cut their social welfare and subsidies. The fear is that if the subsidies and welfare is cut then there will be protests and the population will turn against the government. The Saudis can deal with these prices for a couple years but it will be interesting if they will want to put that strain on themselves. Except, where will they get the money? If there is one thing we have seen since 2008; it's once bitten twice shy. This applies to investors, oil workers, suppliers who have been stiffed, etc.

I didn't really want to know: 2015: -20.1% 2014: -2.9 2013: 59% 11 yr. cagr average: 32% 9 yr. cagr average (kicking out top and bottom): 22% Total cagr from 2005 start to 2015 end: 22% (approx.) Contribution to these stellar results: SSW, RUS, MTL, Pwt actually helped this year, a little bit. Not many realized losses or gains. All results post tax - I Pay the taxes directly from my margin account. This could reverse so rapidly my head would spin or it could get worse...

I operate on the KISS principle. Try doing it this way: As in: (2015 End - 2014 end + inputs)/2014 year end + inputs Then: (2015 end - inputs - 2104 end)/2014 end Take the average of the two. Does this makes sense? I just try to be consistent from year to year. Its mostly for my own purposes anyways.

I've been following this board for three years and this is the latest I've seen this poll come up. Not a good year for investing. I ended up exactly matching the S&P which I guess is ok but given I was up significantly in the summer, it's disappointing. No kidding - its kind of hilarious in a pathetic sort of way. Last year peopke couldn't wait to brag. That's why I post long term results as well.

Except that I would have to revise all of my historical numbers from 2005 to 2013 much higher. From a Canadian perspective it is part of the annual results every year. In time everything works itself out. Working out this years results is tricky enough with the massive changes in my portfolio and ins and outs for living expenses, purchases etc. It will be another few days before I have it all figured out with reasonable accuracy.

SD, PDH : Premier Diversified Holdings. ; PD: Precision Drilling Me: Nothing new: Good oil related cos. and PWE So you are pro SD and PWE? I own both but I have to tell you that in my opinion Saudi Arabia needs to raise prices or SD and PWE are in for a world of hurt. Having said that I think I am going to buy some more this year in my Roth IRA. Probably in the next month or two. I guess I have to ask, why the confidence? Should I just read the dedicated threads on the two from start to end? I think he meant "SharperDingaan" and not "Sandridge Energy" Yes... we got buried by acronyms.

SD, PDH : Premier Diversified Holdings. ; PD: Precision Drilling Me: Nothing new: Good oil related cos. and PWE

seems about right to me. And then +/- 5% (probably more on the negative end). Page 6 of this essay has the distribution of 10 year total returns, since we're talking about it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uwawteaj86zfz1l/2014-03-25%20Hurdle%20for%20Active%20Investors.pdf?dl=0 And to the person saying <5% returns--this would be the first time in the period since 1873... Is that your work Race? If so, nice job. Warning: rambling dissertation ahead. If I absolutlely had to produce a number I would lean closer to 5%. I think were in for a couple of decades of tech/productivity driven deflation. The last such event was the 1870s to the 1890s. My tactic, subject to change, of course, is to invest for dividends. Companies that can keep their dividend above the compounded cost of borrowing, without borrowing to sustain it, are the place to be in a slow growth environment. Amazon et al, are driving costs for goods down relentlessly. Profit margins get squeezed for everyone who produces goods, including Amzn. I am in the market for a smartphone and its not going to be an Apple or Samsung. My Ipad is 1.5 years old and I wont ever be spending $700 on another tablet. Predicting the next high flyer is beyond impossible. In the last 15 years we have seen entire industries get buggy whipped: printing, pulp and paper, coal is on its way, photography, digital cameras, recording, Videos, newspapers, books. Others have been upended completely but are still thriving, such as telecom. My stock portfolio is leaning toward the industries that seem to survive every upset: energy (oil for now, and renewables); communications infrastructure, transport, and banking. The top operators such as Google, Apple, Berk, amd BAM have all gotten into these spaces. Has anyone noticed that your friendly neighbourhood auto mechanic has been replaced by parts swappers. They plug the Pcode reader in, and it tells them what to replace. They have lost the ability to think, and diagnose problems without their devices. People and companies that can actually think will be successful. I dont know how the hell you identify these apriori. When the internet first started in Canada, there were hundreds of little providers. Slowly but surely the incumbent phone and cable companies bought them up or ran them out of business. I think you will see the same thing happen in energy now: ie: exxon as an energy company rather than an oil company. Buffett as usual has also seen this. Parts of Berkshire are becoming a great big cap and trade operation. They can trade carbon credits earned at the renewables division to other divisions to reduce costs. As per Sharper D's comments, I wonder if Buffett makes an all in bid for Suncor in order to create a carbon sink - make money by not selling "dirty" oil. Now I am really off the reservation. The one thing I find worrying about using S&P data is that it misses the majority of the worlds markets, which have generally not performed as well as the S&P. The growth of the S&P will reflect worldwide growth rather than US growth going forward.

Yes.

At least its a lot more tax efficient, but on the other hand the 500 original companies of the S&P500 outperformed the index (and when you equal weight at the start even more). So maybe its a good idea to build an index yourself with >100 companies. It shouldn`t be too hard to exclude the crappy businesses. On the other hand you are back to active investing then. Maybe do it like Buffet and make buy once sell never decisions, that should be even better. My goals for 2016 are 1) hold my weight 2) make more friends 3) stop trading options, OTC, microcaps and illiquid stocks and stop making stupid short term trades. (the last one was already on last years list, if someone has an idea to force myself to not do it, its welcome.) Number 3: For the first time in years I have no options. Trial and lots of error have taught me that calls only work during massive dislocations. My market gambler did however buy me a new fender amp - Bought and sold VRX leaps one morning, and got out of the way before I became a long term investor.