maxthetrade

That's it and a high quality triple sec like Cointreau!

You basically need a camera, optics and an equatorial mount to compensate the rotation of the earth and if using longer focal length and/or a lower quality mount a guide scope and guiding camera. With today's DSLR's it's possible to get some decent results, cooled slow scan CCD or CMOS cameras will give much better results though because of higher quantum efficiency, lower dark current and readout noise etc. There are very high end cameras like EMCCD's available too, they are quite expensive but allow extremly short exposure 'lucky imaging', a technique that allows to essentialy freeze the atmospheric turbulence and to use only those select frames with the highest resolution. In this case you don't even need a high quality mount. There is a very wide range of optics available for astro imaging, from a well corrected telephoto lens to telescopes in the 1m+ class. For bigger aperturtes and for longer focal length you need a very precise (and hence more expensive) mount. Don't skimp on the mount! A well corrected APO refractor like the 4" Takahashi FSQ is a good choice for beginners. Very easy to handle and very well built. Reflectors are much cheaper but require some knowledge about collimation, they are the only choice if you want a big aperture and longer focal length. Refractors are prohibitively expensive at larger apertures. A good mount is crucial if you want to obtain great results unless you're using a very short focal length or you're doing lucky imaging. For smaller apertures and short to medium focal lengths (up to ~1000mm) a cheap chinese mount like the EQ-6 will work reasonably well. If you want to do some serious work I'd recommend an Astro-Physics, Paramount, 10 micron or something similar. A good book to start is Ron Wodaski's book about CCD imaging: http://www.newastro.com/book_new/default_new2.html Another good resource is https://www.cloudynights.com/index I already mentioned Adam Block at https://www.adamblockstudios.com/ Very nice guy with a lot of experience. Depending where you live in the US I may be able to get you in contact with some local astrophotographers if you are interested.

Yes I did take those. I took those from a rather light polluted suburban location just above zero with a corrected (Wynne corrector) 12.5" Newton which I built myself, carbon aramid honeycomb sandwich tube, 12.5 f/4 parabolic mirror with a SBig ST10ME and a SBig STL11000 on an Astro Physics 1200 GTO mount. I also built a 24" f/f4 Dobson for visual use. It's a very rewarding hobby if you're interested in science. I have a friend who was an instrument specialist for the ESO La Palma spectrograph, I'll never forget the skies at this location, the winter milkyway looked like a 4 lane Autobahn Omega Centauri was breathtaking compared to M13 even though it was just above the horizon. We took an image with an amateur 12.5" that showed objects not identified on an image taken with the 8m+ Subaru telescope! I you're interested in astronomy I highly recommend to visit some premier location in the US. Since you're in the US I recommend the Kitt Peak Outreadge program. If interested you may want to contact Adam Block at https://www.adamblockstudios.com/, super nice terrific guy! You can see some of my images here: https://ccdware.com/ccdstack_image_gallery/

A couple of years ago I was into astro imaging, part science part art. I really enjoyed it but unfortunately Germany isn't a very good location for this hobby.

A fine cigar now an then is great! I've restricted myself to 1-2 a year too. I'll give the Especial No.1 a try! Speaking of Montecristo's, I'lll never forget the Double Corona's I had with a couple of friends on the day of my colloquium. The Romeo y Julieta Churchill is great as well.

Probably makes more sense to look at real rates.

Great discussion. I very much agree with petec, it's not that Fairfax changed their investing style, they are simply now at the sweet spot of a commodity cycle. I hope they don't screw it by overstaying.

I agree, Fairfax looks pretty attractive at these prices and as you pointed out they are well positioned. I've thought about increasing my position but it's already huge.

Berkley posted another fantastic quarter, should bode well for Fairfax: -Net premiums written increased 26.6%. -The current accident year combined ratio before catastrophe losses of 2.2 loss ratio points was 86.0%. -The reported combined ratio was 88.2%, including catastrophe losses of $48.5 million. -Average rate increases excluding workers' compensation were approximately 9.3%. Robust premium growth was driven by continued strong rate increases in nearly all lines of business combined with higher exposure growth. Record underwriting income in the quarter reflected year-over-year margin improvement and a further reduction in the expense ratio. We anticipate that the factors fueling the Company’s growth should remain in place for the foreseeable future and that compounding rate increases in excess of loss trend will further contribute to underwriting profits as premiums are fully earned.

That reminds me of that Hussman guy, I used to read his comments a couple of years ago, he always made a compelling case for a big correction. If I recall correctly his stock picks weren't bad at all but he had hedged away all gains. I just looked at his funds performance, what a desaster! He's the perfect example why it's not a good idea to base investment decisions on such models.

Sure but it's still fun to estimate future market returns and more than an interesting excercise for people who invest in index funds. Of course no one knows the future, so it's best to think about future returns in terms of a probability distribution.

Yeah I remember that article very well! You are probably right that returns will be worse considering record profit margins, ultra low interest rates and beginning valuations. Fortunately that doesn't matter too much for small scale stock pickers.

What will returns over the next 20 years be? Considering today's valuations probably pretty similar to the returns over the last 20 years or even worse if interest rates are much higher at the endpoint. Isn't that an amazing chart? Who would have thought in 2000 that the Dow, S&P and the Nasdaq would have performed equally well after 20 years (excluding dividends)? Today reminds me a lot of 2000, crazy speculation in some parts of the market and reasonable valuations in other parts. Fortunately this valuation divergence is again the basis for future outperformance.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Sold some Jan 23 BRKB $370 and $430 calls

Not directly related to business but a good example how AI will change how science will be conducted in the future: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/exominer-neural-network-kepler-exoplanet-discovery/

What do you consider as an overweight position, 10%, 20%, 30%? After selling DLTR I'm thinking about buying more FFH and the maximum exposure I'd like to have. I'm pretty comfortable with 20% at this price but probably won't go above 30% even if it gets cheaper.

Yeah because they royally screwed up on their shorts! I'd love to see them sell the cyclical crap at good prices, delever and buy some decent buisnesses like DLTR, BRK etc.

Well the real trick is to buy quality cheap https://www.markus-saletz.at/shop/chateau-leoville-poyferre-2006/ One of my fears is that Prem misses the opportunity to sell the crap at at good prices.

Which translates to an estimated realtime BV of 223.5, or 1.26x. I've been adding June 24 calls earlier today.

Thanks for the discussion guys, I was completely unaware of the tax consequences, shows that Germany isn't the only country with byzantine tax laws. If they define success as simply bumping the share price without buying back a menaingful amount of stock I'd be dissapointed. That would remind me of the stunt they tried to pull off with the BB buyout. Usually I'd expect arbitrageurs to make sure that enough shares get tendered but in this case this seems impossible unless there is a loophole that allows some entities to avoid the tax consquences. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Nice move even if that means paying Omers the usual 9%.

That makes sense, thanks for the explanation.

Last week I had written $116 covered calls on DLTR. The stock closed ~$113 on Friday but about half of the options were execercised despite beeing way out of the money. Why would someone excercise these options? Even if you knew about the Mantle Ridge news it would have been much cheaper to buy the stock.

Excellent summary of the costs of the dividend policy.