Jump to content

turar

Member
  • Posts

    438
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by turar

  1. I'd say Amazon is a NO or a YES/NO. Revenues are indeed driven by software, since everything is automated and a tiny software glitch can cause revenue for the day to drop sharply (i.e. site down for a few minutes results in thousands if not millions in lost revenue). It is even more so with the emergence of AWS, Kindle, Digital, etc.

  2. Agree with nodnub about the lottery. In addition, most would choose a "lump sum", which is a lot less than the advertised sum, and then get taxed heavily on that remaining amount. So real payouts are usually a lot less massive than the headline numbers, albeit still large.

  3. To me it seems there's just much less of "livable/desirable" space in Canada, despite its overall geographical vastness. Just driving across the border from WA state into BC, you go from pretty sparsely populated rural area into a dense suburban area. Haven't been myself, but I bet it's same picture around Ontario/NY border, etc.

  4. Just watched this documentary on "Planned Obsolescence", and thought it was pretty interesting, still trying to reconcile this from an investor's side of things.

     

    The episode with printer was fascinating. A person's printer malfunctioned, he researched pretty deeply into the issue and discovered there was a "count-down" chip as part of the printer, that would count down and essentially stop the printer from working after a certain time. He then discovered a Russian website that provides a freeware that effectively resets the counter and the printer magically works again. Very disturbing.

     

    It goes wider and deeper into history and various other issues, which are all interesting.

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HnW6Mm5sUI

  5. The contrast between Florida with a median home price of $122K and Vancouver is pretty incredible. And Florida is arguably a nicer place to live.

     

    Sometimes I wonder what would happen to Vancouver if Harper's and Obama's border initiative suddenly results in elimination of Canada/US border and allow Canadians to live and work freely in the US.

    http://www.canada.com/business/Harper+Obama+agree+integrate+border+creating+security+trade+perimeter/4225641/story.html

  6. Yes, I've read about that too. Actually, they went to court against State of Virginia over withholding of the 30% tax on the grounds that they were a foreign entity, and initially the court ruled in their favor and awarded them an injunction requiring Virginia to pay out the 30%. However, the higher court overruled the ruling, BUT not on the grounds that it was a professionally-orchestrated operation, but simply because the lower court didn't have jurisdiction over tax assessment based on Anti-Injunction Act. As someone not very familiar with the judicial system, I found that whole case pretty weird. Details here: http://openjurist.org/20/f3d/589/international-lotto-fund-v-virginia-state-lottery-department

     

    Also, searching for Stefan Mandel on LinkedIn shows a person with that name in London, in "Investment Management" industry: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/stefan-mandel/2/662/3a5 :)

  7. I thought this was a very interesting story. In 1992 Virginia lottery had a jackpot of $27 million. To win the jackpot you had to pick correctly 6 numbers ranging from 1 to 44. And the probability of that was 1 in roughly 7 million. The kicker was that one lottery ticket sold for $1.

     

    What happened next is described here: http://books.google.com/books?id=ZhWciYyPt-kC&lpg=PA86&ots=mlnmUv7D7a&dq=lottery%20%2B7059052&hl=en&pg=PA86#v=onepage&q&f=false

    And also a bit here: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/28/us/lottery-investors-unsure-if-jackpot-was-virginia-s.html

     

    Makes me wonder if holes like that still exist in lotteries.

     

    P.S. Seems there are more stories and a Youtube video if you search for "Stefan Mandel" on Google: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENCA374&q=Stefan+Mandel&aq=f&aqi=g3g-v7&aql=&oq=

     

    Youtube video:

  8. 20% Currently, but agressively adding especially since Mr. Buffett mentioned his elephant gun. This was obviously a thinly vieled reference to Prem Watsa and Fairfax, slightly colonialist/racist in my opinion but its obvious that he plans on buying Fairfax and having Prem and Ajit run berkshire.

     

    It doesn't look that obvious to me. Also, the premium over book that he would be willing to pay can't be that high. I'd rather own FFH long term, than FFH as part of BRK.

×
×
  • Create New...