Gregmal

I like what I have still but outside of Nintendo nothing screams catalyst upcoming. I did also recently buy a lot of EBay which I’d probably say would be my candidate for having a crazy good 2024. The amount of stock they’re buying back, the sale proceeds plus remaining 20% stake in Adevinta, plus the FCF from existing biz….something gives at some point.

I have not tallied everything and don’t plan too since I really don’t do much of anything but handle my own money anymore(plus as someone else mentioned, it’s a constant compounding journey and it doesn’t mean anything really that the calendar changed) but probably somewhere between 60-70%. Helped indeed by being 1.3-1.5x margined through the cash euphoria faze. Sticking to quality helped, and didn’t have any stinkers. Sized things well. Traded well when I needed to. Was pleased with my overall discipline as last year I made a point to shift to more quality buy and hold and this year transaction volume was probably 1/10 of what it woulda been for me 5-10 years ago. The journey and evolution are always ongoing though. Overall I spent significantly less time focused on investing and significantly more time enjoying life and that was the biggest win and basically the point of owning the type of quality in such concentrated fashion.

If it aint in an SEC filing or a basic newsfeed like TIKR or even Google search for last 24 hours its probably just nonsense. Like analyst opinions LOL Otherwise, I just source things from the real world. Everyone uses certain products. Insurance is a mighty good business. We all need a roof and food. Kids love YouTube and video games, high margins are better than low margins, low maintenance is better than capital intensive, etc....we dont need some chump with a subscription service telling us this stuff do we? On valuations, Ive seen enough people who think theyre mighty smart make total asshats out of themselves making valuation calls....theres one methodology and it aint Damadorians...its Buffett's "is he fat" test. If the business is "fat" IE clearly great, and not obscenely expensive, I could give two shits less whether folks wanna debate whether 18x or 26x is the appropriate multiple...Ill just own it through the cycle, no biggie.

100%. It’s entirely academic. No one is forced to use it. On a similar note, the longer my journey through the investment universe goes on, the more and more I realize how much time and effort people TOTALLY waste, worrying about all sorts of shit that they’ve been conditioned to think matters, but doesn’t. Personally, I haven’t watch financial news related TV in probably 8 years. No cnbc, no Bloomberg, nada. My dad asks for Bloomberg radio on the way to golf? Nah, z100 old man. Barrons? IBD? Those guys I realized are chumps maybe a decade ago. Pretty much everyone on X, which if you weren’t aware, was formerly known as Twitter, IS TRYING TO SELL you something! Textbooks? They teach one to memorize, not to think…garbage. So yea, pretty much everything people are told is a fallacy predicated on a system that needs you to be gullible. All one really needs in order to be a decent investor is some common sense and a reasonable ability to live in the real world.

Yea you also had a drawdown in 2018 it seems. Unacceptable

Yea it was tough. JOE +5% Nintendo +5% MSG +5% FRPH +5% Fairfax +5% UBS +5% Uber +5% AIV +5% Margin (-)6.5% Shoulda been in CDs and Billz cuz recession

So…how’d everyone do?

eBay

The worst Cramer has done to anyone is cost them their time. Half hour or whatever those episodes run. There’s significantly worse actors out there, who charge monthly and yearly fees for their nonsense. Didnt “Wall Street Legend” Whitney Tilson sell his newsletter to a SPAC lol?

Yea this decade's(actually now well into 2 decades LOL) biggest bums have been the "money printing bubble" conspiracy theorists.

Yea swung about 1/3 of my UBER into Tencent today..

What Im loving looking and laughing at lately is all these fruitcake permabears who are trying to claim rates going down is now bearish because thats signaling a recession LOL. It. Never. Ends.

I don’t think you need it to because if it does, at 5x you get rich really quick.

Recession prep

Yo LOL. One of those two I’ve been buying a lot of lately and totally agree.

Yea for some reason this one was just too immediately obvious and easy. I took some off at $26 and am debating holding the rest til the long term gains rate kicks in. Figured $30-40 per share inside 3 years was reasonable from $16-17 on day of the announced gift. Maybe too cautious on those projections

No problemo. Glad to see so many people making money! One of the elements of owning both that I became more and more fond of over the year was that these two investments in a way complement and counter balance each other in the portfolio. Either way rates go I win with these the only question is how turbo charged that gets. As long as there’s no major hurricanes it’s hard to lose with them!

Merry Christmas friends. This year was another rolling Christmas present. Here’s to many more!

Puts and treasuries obviously.

LOL everyone fears volatility, that’s we we have volatility

US Steel is up a lot too...must be euphoria.

Yea I started inadvertently doing this, and now my top 5 is > 100% lol

Idk but the “greed and euphoria” narrative really only seems paired with stocks going up. I don’t see much by the way of crazy positive sentiment in too many places. It still actually seems like the overriding emotions are skepticism and bitterness.

So what’s the new super bear target? 3750? When is the recession coming as well? Need to prep. What if inflation stays sticky icky icky at 2.197846% vs 2.0%? At some point we either learn or we don’t. New records make money. Old records make money. Broken records don’t.

I just think it should be obvious to everyone that this guess the short term stuff game is for suckers and inside of it are two types of people…. Leaches and scoundrels who don’t actually put money behind the stuff they’re spouting off about…basically analysts, tv personalities and subscription sellers…they make money because they finds an audience of idiots. And those that do put money to work and the results often tell a different story than the one they often boast about. Of all the folks I’ve met in my life who fall into this bucket, maybe 10-15% are legit. Out of that 10-15%, probably 90% don’t really seek to make public what they do.