winjitsu

What part of the value chain are you talking about? Actual Satellite Makers -- Intelsat, Immarsat etc. Terrible businesses, high technical risk (for geo-sync, $billions per satellite + insurance costs for failed rocket launches), need to create a new version every x years, several players have been in and out of bankruptcy and carry large debt loads. There are a range of different satellites, and the two types that are mentioned in this thread seem to be low-earth orbit and geo-sync. Geo-synchronous means the satellite is positioned far enough outside in space (22,236 mi) where its orbit matches the earth and the satellite will stay in the same relative position. These satellites are about the size of a school bus and cost billions, need pretty big rockets to launch, but the good is that you can have 2-3 satellites and blanket coverage a large country. Also, your satellite receiver can point in the same direction in the sky and not have to move (if you have had dish/directv, you would know what I mean). Low earth orbit satellites are small and cheap and don't necessarily need to be strapped onto rockets, but the problem is they are circling the earth at very high speeds, so to cover an area, you need a large constellation of satellites, not to mention a receiver that can switch between different satellites quickly. Definitely could be the future based on cost and ease of getting into orbit, but I don't think anyone has completely "figured it out" yet (except maybe Military? but we haven't gotten that technology yet). And don't get me wrong, Project Loon is cool, but its definitely a moonshot bet (low probability, massive payout). Have they even released a proof of concept yet?

Are you guys planning on targeting institutional investors in the near future? If not, is this an option that you feel is currently closed to you based on background/experience (i.e. would you have wished you had a wall street pedigree)?

Worth a mention: http://www.forbes.com/sites/morganbrennan/2013/09/18/the-zen-of-sam-zell-inside-the-grave-dancers-4-billion-business-empire/#47b993d13a75

Interesting to see how others are using their tax free accounts. My lt gains are taxed at 15%, so with that in mind, I'll throw in my two cents: I use my taxable accounts for GARP and speculative positions, as sometimes my losses can help balance out my gains. I started doing this after losing a bit in a position in my IRA, and realizing I couldn't claim the losses. In my IRA, I hold dividend paying stocks (reits and the like), and short term plays (normally mean reversions and event driven stuff). If you find your investment income starts to out-weight your job related income, moving might not be a bad idea as well (as mentioned by others -- that being said, sucks for us Americans with the draconian international taxes). I really enjoyed the book Free Capital (http://www.amazon.com/Free-Capital-private-investors-millions/dp/1906659745), and a few of the investors mentioned have moved to Guernsey, Switzerland, and Hong Kong.

Ehhh I think Paul Allen's recent massive profits from Vulcan RE has more to do with luck than anything else. About 20 years ago, Paul Allen began buying up large areas of land in a industrial zoned area by Seattle called South Lake Union, a gorgeous place between downtown and a lake, with to goal to create a massive urban park (similar to central park). It went to a vote and was denied by voters. Maybe about 10 years ago, Amazon was expanding like crazy and began looking for a new headquarter. They worked with Paul Allen to rezone and redevelop the area he owned. Once Amazon moved there, literally every single tech company in Seattle wanted to move to the neighborhood (FB, Google, Expedia, Alibaba etc.). As a result, land value there has increased astronomically, with Vulcan making a killing. EDIT: I'll also add in the Irvine Co. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine_Company

Erbey's investments OCN, ASPS. Greek banks.

He spoke at a UTIMCO meeting recently. A twitter user typed up his notes: https://twitter.com/ChesapeakeCap/status/707331740767879168 The direct link is here: https://t.co/xXGpVwg25A

Santangel's Review has the best formatting :) Attached Buffett_FCIC_transcript.pdf

I can understand the attraction of the company just because when mentioning MW brings such a visceral negative reaction(mostly to those who haven't spent the time actually looking at the numbers), my interest as a contrarian increases. There's definitely optionality with Jos. A Bank too, as I think the market effectively values it at 0, so any signs of operating profit would really lift the stock. Curious to see what the numbers look like once they shut down all the low performing stores. That being said, it was the current management that advocated for the merger, which was disastrous. I've read advice once on restructuring with incumbent managers -- managers don't suddenly become better capital allocators. And this is retail, so definitely a pass for me (I actually was at the PSQ AGM when they brought out Ron Johnson -- oh what fun).

On a similar topic, anyone have any rec related to books or articles on investing in REITs?

Forbes also published something recently as well and I'm slightly sad as I see a few of his positions go up before I've had time to research them enough :( I've been digging into NXRT and TLRD (formerly Men's Warehouse) NXRT: Burry's largest position REIT focused on rehabbing multifamily Class B properties in Texas and South/South East 10x 2016 AFFO (~1.26 - 1.30/share) Getting ~20% IRR on rehabbing, clear re-investing opportunity and at least 3 years before they finish projects Just a small kicker, announced two building sales in Q1 that are a footnote in the 10K, should see a nice NI bump this quarter Management buying stock hand-over-fist TLRD Stock went to the dumps after it took over Joseph A. Bank via debt and basically wrote off the entire acquisition Core business, Mens Warehouse continues to be very strong, post SSS over past few quarters/years Transitioning Tuxedo Shops from stand-alone stores to store-within-a-store with Macy's, should cut costs, while hopefully maintain margins Pays a nice dividend, (was like 6% at $16... idk how much now). If you told me nothing about the history of the company, balance sheets looks like a LBO. Strong core business and seems like it should be able to pay down debt. Joseph A. Bank losses should hopefully stop

I can get you in touch with several but you'd have to elaborate on the reason...

If you haven't seen this interview yet, Simmons drops some nuggets of wisdom towards the end: Among other things, I think he cites the data sets and testing/training platform they developed, along with algorithms for understanding market impact of their trades. His best performing fund, Medallion, is for employees only and that has been closed to the public for a very long time (and this is the fund you usually hear the crazy performance numbers from). I sat down in a cap intro event for one of his funds that was taking on money back in 2011 and returns were not that impressive and definitely lagged Medallion.

To bring this full circle, the difficulty with FCF is that you'll actually have to spend time to figure out maintenance capex. EV/EBIT works because you can quickly calculate it and screen for it. Without having read the book, I would guess that using a simple EV/EBIT screener allows you to buy a basket of stocks that will do better than indexes (similar to Greenblatt's ROIC/Little Book that Beats the Markets).