winjitsu

sounds like you need this calculator: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html

Option will get adjusted down w/ the cash, so effectively this will be a call on the new CPLG. I think its (1) undervalued (2) volatility (and iv) will increase drastically post spin. Mostly trying out the trade mechanics, so this is a learning opportunity for me, hence a tiny position size.

small position in LQ pre-spin calls in (h/t to clarkstreetvalue)

Loved it. Crazy thing is the math that they were using wasn't something super special ... just regression. I've been reading The Quants and it seems the theme was the first people to apply mathematical analysis to unique data sets (convertible bonds, options, stat arb... horse racing) made tons of money. The main guy in the article was worth over $800mm. I've read about wine funds, art funds, lottery ticket funds. Who knows how many unique markets there are out there.

Barbarians at the Gate gives a great overview of how the LBO industry was started and it's a fun read

Credit where credit is due, this is from a twitter user called Kong Ming. Old but still good. I'll probably delete this post soon. Commodities_Primer_-_RBS_2009.pdf Global_Mining___Steel_Primer_-__UBS_2008.pdf Global_Steel_Primer_-_RBS_2010.pdf Steel_Industry_Primer_-_Credit_Suisse_2011.pdf Valuation_of_Metals_and_Mining_Securities_-_Basinvest_2010.pdf

Big investments banks hold fundraising conferences + weekly events, but capital raising will come at a fee. I've sat on the other side of these cap-intro events, most are large funds or new funds with pedigree (former big fund partners launching their new strategy, new products from mega funds). Honestly, for a small fund, I don't think its worth your time and costs to institutionalize [get the right GP/LP offshore structure, get the expensive audit firm etc etc.... you set yourself to fail unless you get $50mm AUM+]. Sumzero has a database of LPs and you can put your fund info / write-ups on their platform waiting to be discovered. You can publish your quarterly letters on Harvest. You can cold email endowment funds. Tons of people with experience starting their own fund on twitter. Check out this tweet storm from Artko Capital:

Literally texted my friend yesterday saying that Hinkie is probably the best GM in the past 5 years. Wish more teams had the same long-term vision that he did. Looking specifically at knicks and nets.

MO, GOOGL, FB

Chess puzzles. I personally like chesstempo.com I'm big into meditation as well. It's incredibly challenging to keep focus and helps w/ several aspects of daily life as well.

https://hbr.org/product/hbr-guide-to-buying-a-small-business/10090E-KND-ENG Highly recommend the above book on search funds, basically tiny 1 man PE shops targeting companies with EBITDA in $1-10mm range. I can't recommend it enough. Book is based off a popular course at HBS. At the end of the day, it's all about access to deal flow. As some others have alluded, looking at websites [low quality] and working with a lot brokers is the best bet.

another one: https://www.seedinvest.com/ I haven't tried any of them. I am also biased against these platforms since I think the best rounds are over-subscribed anyways. Short answer to your question: Yes you can get involved, but it will take work since at the end of the day it's all about deal sourcing / getting access to deal flow. Are you accredited? A lot of the best start-ups are highly sought after by VCs and its the job of the vc fund professionals to spend a lot of time networking and deal sourcing. As a result, you'll won't have the same investment selection. Example: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-lightspeeds-jeremy-liew-invests-in-startups-like-snapchat-2013-12 Try something similar for a start-up you like? I don't think banks get any of the action till late stage [series c or later]. Your best bet is angel syndicates, getting in before a institutional seed round. You can probably attend a few pitches without having to make an investment to get a gist for what early stage investing is like. My city, Seattle, has a pretty cool club called Seattle Angel Conference which teaches new angel investors how everything works http://www.seattleangelconference.com/p/conference.html . Maybe your city has something similar? You could also get involved with an incubator or accelerator as a potential investor or mentor. It's a great way of getting access to potential deals. Universities all have startup incubators now. If you're vouched, you can probably get into the top pitch nights too @ ycomb, techstars etc Once you build a rep, people will come to you with deals, ask if you're interested in joining a round etc. Last option is go be an LP at some VC fund. There are alot of cool micro-vcs with sub $20mm aum. Basically one man vc shops with tight knit lp groups. Larger funds always raising money too.

Social Finance, aka SOFI, is one of the largest and hottest fintech start-ups right now (around since... 2012?). Basically started with the idea that not all students should be paying the same rates on loans. Their market entry strategy was to only refinance the loans of students that attended top colleges (literally only schools like Ivy Leagues, Stanford, MIT). Major specific loan segregation is also starting. I've seen lenders advertising to computer science majors, as well as dentists and medical students with lower student loan rates. Corroborates your research and I think its a better market approach.

Yes, you bring up excellent points...HOWEVER, let me add some counter points. A). I very strongly suspect that a 3.0 and a 140 LSAT is not "bottom of the barrel" for a lot of skools. There are rumors that many skools are just about open admission. Obviously, a skool is probably not going to let somebody in with 1.65 GPA and a 130 LSAT...but I know for a fact that skools are WIDELY letting in applicants with undergrad GPA's of under 3.0. And these are people in the liberal arts...not science, business, etc. B). People should absolutely be responsible for doing due diligence....no doubt. HOWEVER, many skools are outright lying about outcomes for their graduates. Even more are publishing highly suspect figures and heavily gamed that would be VERY difficult to suss out. The mainstream media is complicit in this. Best example is USNWR annual ranking. If a car dealership, or financial advisor were to do what the law skools are doing, they would be in YUGE legal trouble. So how exactly is student going to do due diligence properly? Trusted institutions are lying/gaming the system. The interweb is starting to have some effect...word of mouth is starting to work...but this has been going on for DECADES. The truth is only starting to come to light. Of course, there is a bigger problem than just the law skools... I did a bit of work on the for-profit school shorts from a few years back (Corinthian College, Strayer etc.). I think this is essentially the same thesis... Schools took advantage of unsophisticated [uneducated, dumb, poor] students and taught them to load up on federal loans. The schools get paid immediately by the government, while the students and government are left with the bill. Since revenue/profit is based on the number of students rather than the student's financial success, there is a perverse incentive to enroll as many students as possible. Several of the for-profit schools were charged with of making falsifying grad/employment data on marketing documents. A few ways I think we could improves the system: 1) Stricter government criteria for loans to schools with poor graduation/passed bar/employment. Non-profit schools may be the next wave. 2) Allow student loans to be discharged at bankruptcy. Creditors will be much stricter at giving out loans and students will be discouraged from making poor financial decisions. 3) Create some type of market mechanism where schools and student's future success are aligned. This seems hard and is pure speculation on my part, but an example could be less tuition up front, but a royalty on a student's salary post graduation. 4) Allow students to pursue professional degrees at undergrad (medical, dental, law etc.). The US college system follows the liberal arts philosophy that students should not pursue professional degrees during their undergrad. Its archaic and unnecessarily adds several years of schooling for doctors and lawyers.

To add further to your point, while Liberties did not have GAAP earnings, they were *reasonably* valued on a FCF & EV/EBITDA basis. I don't think you can make the same case with Amazon...

Nuclear. The fact that India and China get around 70% of their electricity from coal probably has more to do with this than ICE vehicles. Modern internal combustion engines have comparably very low particulate emissions. It's one thing to plan to replace coal with solar/wind, it's another thing entirely to actually do it. Both countries currently receive about 4% of their electricity from wind while solar and other non-hydro, non-wind renewables account for around 1%. The process of actually replacing the 3,700 TWh of electricity generation in China derived from coal with renewables is daunting and a lot harder than some bureaucrat saying ok, no new coal plants we're only building solar and wind facilities from now on. It's not that China and India don't want clean air and low emissions, it's just that the scale involved in mind boggling. China is already the world's leading installer of wind and solar with the most installed capacity of each and together they barely makes up 5% of their total energy production. I think China and India will need to utilize clean coal technology extensively, as well as as much natural gas as they can get their hands on, I just don't see renewables scaling fast enough to address particulate emissions in the timeframe Chinese and Indian citizens want them addressed.

Purely investor point of view: 1) AAPL : at its core its a branded consumer company, which I believe has little moat. Lots of competitors with little ability to stop new entrants. Clunky products since Steve Jobs passed. Consumers are moving from iTunes -> Spotify. Apps are increasingly HTML based, so easily portable to other mobile devices. Points to the stickyness of the ecosystem really isn't that sticky. Large Gap 2) MSFT: Cloud growth is mostly coming from Office -> Office 365. Lost out on mobile OS which is much larger than desktop/laptop. Will probably lose out on the next big OS too due to slow bloated culture (AR/VR headset OS? Purely voice driven OS home consumer systems?). Moat: Network Effect 3) FB: I think its the new phonebook. Its value to users depends on the size of the network, so weaker for every new generation of kids, but stronger for those who have used the platform for a while. Important that they try to snap up any small competitor that's popular with younger demographics, but should have plenty of cash flow to do so. Moat: Network Effect + Economies of Scale 4) GOOG: Best in desktop search engine. Won big in mobile OS, which feeds mobile search engine. I think Android is worth more than Windows. Key will be keeping on-top of new platforms and making sure they own the search (again AR/VR headset OS? Purely voice driven OS home consumer systems?). Used to have a capital allocation problem with moonshots and Fiber, but the new CFO is more disciplined. Moat: Network Effect + Economies of Scale Large Gap 5) AMZN: Lowest cost retailer is the strongest moat of all the companies on here. Huge runway backed by the best CEO and capital allocator on the list. Moat: Economies of Scale I own none of these.

+1. I'm mostly doing shorter duration, greenblatt style event-driven trades (m&a arb, liquidations, spin-offs). I've been picking through a lot of bankruptcies as well ... Contura Energy and Vistra Energy come to mind.

Guys, we got it all wrong. The reason is social media :) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-10/mobius-says-low-stock-market-volatility-is-tied-to-social-media

https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-traders-creating-a-bizarre-new-feedback-loop-feedback-loop-feedback-loop-1491557400 Brings to mind Soro's concept of reflexivity and Taleb's Black Swan. VIX is up today due to the Syria strikes, but I've wondered for a while now why its been so low given all the geopolitical events happening. Whats the best strategy to take advantage of this? Rolling OTM index puts? [Attached article. By the way, if you're on Chrome, check out the plugin Bypass Paywall as a work around to get WSJ + other publication...] Are_Traders_Creating_a_Bizarre_New_Feedback_Loop..._Feedback_Loop...pdf

I use fidelity, but a real downside is they don't let you buy OTC/pink sheet stocks that do not have any filings on record. I think some bloggers like OTCadventures have covered this. I'm thinking of switching back to IBKR just this reason alone.

His thesis deck: http://www.bakerstreetcapital.com/BakerStreet_WAC.pdf

CAPM is a theory. If I accept that theory, I understand the argument that long-only is beta with factors. I don't accept this framework (I think it's crap), but I still understand your line of reasoning. Personally, I'm much more keen on adaptive market hypothesis, though it's not nearly as accepted or established in the literature. Agree to disagree on alpha, but maybe its all liquidity premium for us smaller investors anyways... [assuming I accept CAPM :)]

I think we're in agreement. Long only equities, is academically speaking, beta only with different factor exposures. Asness' Robo Buffett comes to mind. However, there are quite a few event-driven/special situations, market neutral, and distressed investors on this board as well which can lead to alpha. By the way, I think CAPM, beta, and alpha are a load of crap.

Yeah, mainly doesn't like the origins of the businesses because it was/is kind of scummy based on getting the cable franchises, feels he's a tax zealot, and (me talking here) let's be honest he's probably one of the biggest proponents of alternative metrics (like ebitda) which is partly used to enable his use of massive leverage and obfuscate the nature of the huge capital investments. Also, in my humble opinion, one should not be surprised that the would not automatically like/admire the largest private landowner in the U.S. or whatever, or someone who engages in all these corporate transactions and tracking stocks to "highlight the value". IIRC, he basically said that, because of the scummy way the initial franchises were acquired, he's ignored the industry and therefore Malone. I believe he did say that Malone is obviously a genius or something to that effect. Yeah, thanks for explaining.... Could you elaborate this one, does this just mean that he's not huge fan of Malone's roll-up strategy? Don't have the source handy buts it because of the self-dealing that goes on with Malone's entities. These guys pay themselves a exorbitant amount... (though shareholders have done pretty good following them).