ubuy2wron
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Posts posted by ubuy2wron
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I was telling a friend of mine "the only way Vancouver can lose it all is if they beat themselves"
They are too deep - especially on D. So much talent and speed back there.
I hope Luongo gets the credit he deserves. IMO, people just take this guy for granted, like he is expected to have a great game when he does so what?
Werent the Canucks outshot 2-1 at one pt in that game and he had over 50 shots?
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Aeroplan has a great biz. It is really like the savings stamp co that Warren bought every one hates Aeroplan and Air Canada but they collect the points anyway they can dilute the currency at any time and 30% of points are never cashed and expire. I currently do not own any aeroplan but I have in the past and will likely again in the future."I would bet a decent chunk of people would end up paying high rates. "
It's like the "6 months interest free" or "12 month interest free" gimmicks you see promoted by retailers. If you are a day late or a dollar short, you pay the full interest calculated from the day you purchased the goods, usually at 29%. So the poor slob who can't quite come up with his total payment on the final day now owes 15 or 30% more than he did the day before.
"Credit card companies business model does not work on the subset of people who are very knowledgeable in finance and are disciplined like you."
I use Aerogold Visa and acquire Aeroplan points with it and put almost everything through it. All regular purchases, my heating bill, car and house insurance, vehicle registrations and sales taxes on vehicles, etc, etc. I get all my bills on one statement and the card gets paid in full at the end of every month. I have flown with family from the East Coast to California, Arizona, Hawaii and multiple times over the years on the accumulated points. Most recently business/first class to Hawaii.
However Aeroplan recently announced that they are raising the points requirements by as much as 30% so I am in the process of re-thinking this card.
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I am saddened by his passing he made CNBC a better network and knew how important integrity was to his job.
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I have an interesting credit card story to relate. many years ago when my son was 12 we went to the car show in our home town. A credit card co. was offering a free tee shirt with a cool picture of some hot car if you would sign up for the credit card my son wanted the shirt so what was the downside. I filled out the application my son got the t shirt and a few weeks later I received a card in the mail with an initial line of credit of 3000.00 which I promptly stuck in a drawer and forgot about it. Once every few months or so I would get a call from the card company call centre asking me if I wanted credit they were always offering me low introductory rates for fixed periods of time. I had a mortgage at the time which was at a floating rate and sometimes the rates they offered me were at rates below my mortgage rate. So I began to take them up on their offers and just pay down my mortgage then when my low introductory rate expired I would pay off my credit card. This went on for quite some time and they were constantly increasing my credit limits because I always paid on time. I consequently sold my home and moved however I still had this credit card with no balance and a 32000 by now limit. I received an offer in the mail for 2.5% for the life of the loan. I called the card company and queried them yes thats there terms 2.5% for the life of the loan as long as I was current. I realized that with minimum payments it would take me 30 plus years to pay this off. So I wrote a check for my entire limit and paid down my mortgage and I know have a 30 year 2.5% mortgage on my home in effect. Of course the credit card co considers me to be a dead beat because I am always current if I am late my rate would immediately increase to 28% or some silly usurious rate. I took advantage of this over 3 years ago. The credit card co by the way was Capital one I believe.
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If you have a command economy it is axiomatic that you are going to have greater misallocation of capital and resources. Who exactly knows in the west where the leverage exists in the Chinese economy but it exists, credit growth has exploded.
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Hey we are on a value board after all but you are too funny ;DHumm our dreams are quite different ;D
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I think Prem is an investment god and he is the best hedge fund mgr on the planet IMO and FFH is a hedge fund in my opinion without the 2 and 20. I do not own any right now but at the right price I am all in I post a chart of the relative performance of my largest and only insurance investment right now ELF.
It's the first time I hear of ELF. I can't even seem to find a website for them... Do you have a link and/or a short investment thesis?
Here is a link to their sedar filings.
http://sedar.com/DisplayProfile.do?lang=EN&issuerType=03&issuerNo=00001249
This co trades at around 65% of BV currently. The co. has generated returns to shareholders comparable to FFH over the long term. My biggest wet dream would be FFH taking them over in a share swap.
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I think Prem is an investment god and he is the best hedge fund mgr on the planet IMO and FFH is a hedge fund in my opinion without the 2 and 20. I do not own any right now but at the right price I am all in I post a chart of the relative performance of my largest and only insurance investment right now ELF.
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Peter died from a disease that no amount of clean living could offset ironic yes. The book made me much more aware of how important his big picture as well as the balance sheet was involved in his investment success same certainly could be said for Prem and Warren as well.Any more info on this book - where can it be bought or found? I read "there is always something to do" - it is a good book. Surprising that Cundill passed away in his seventies given that he was a fitness fanatic.
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I like cash as well, I think he is wrong on the 10 percent interest rates tho. Look Europe right now is in worse shape as far as balance sheets are concerned than the US was when the run was started on the investment banks and then the rest of the banks. If Greece or Ireland goes there goes the European banks they pretty much all are dominoes at that stage, how the heck do you cobble togeteher a tarp program quantitative easing etc. which is all that stopped the US from the abyss, with the current form of European govt, the answer is you can not. They have no way to inflate their way out of this the amt of money that is destroyed if the Euro comes apart is too much for me to comprehend. I think you could see a situation where both gold and the US dollar spikes and everything else does the opposite. I also think it just might start next week. If I see unusual weakness in the Euro US cross when it starts trading in the far east on Sunday night my time be prepared for some fireworks. I also think that the ultimate source of all of our problems is the fact that exchange rates are fixed between the the worlds largest trading partners and the worlds largest creditor and debtor nations. For the capitalist sytem to work there has to be winners and losers we can not all be winners we can not all be above average. The US is going to survive this but get ready for higher taxes AND no medicare. Both sides of the political debate are going to have to give up what they cherish the most to dig out of the fiscal hole they have dug for themselves. Sorry for the rant and the negative tone but I think the world is about to get a whole lot more interesting again.
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Give me a break assembly workers in China making 7 dollars a day in the south 7 dollars and hour.Very poorly written and biased article IMO. Filled with cherry picked examples. For some reason it cites Deutsche Bank as an example even though that example has nothing to do with labor. And in case the author of the article didn't notice, the South has a bit of an unemployment problem right now. Unions are anathema to employment. I could have just as easily written an article lauding the free market for allowing firms the opportunity to provide employment to the south due to its low labor costs and right to work laws.
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I use exactly the same strategy to isolate the currency effect. As A cdn investor the US dollar headwind has been pretty gruesome if you want US exposure which I believe is the cheapest mkt right now. I am going to put on a largish MSFT LEAP bull spread if the mkt gets cheaper over the summer if people get scared I am going to get just a little greedy.I really like your market logic Sanjeev.
"In MSFT's case, our position is through in the money call options...nominal value is 3%, and notional value would be 20%...so we are pretty long! If the price gets hammered, then we will step in and buy equity."
Another strategy that I have been experimenting with is to sell a put with same strike, duration and notional value once the stock gets hammered at or slightly below my strike on the call (the call is in the money when I buy it to minimize premium cost as you mentioned before, close to equity). The position becomes automatically a synthetic long.
An advantage over buying the equity at that point is that I receive a nice premium to sell my put or much larger than it would have been when I bought my call. Fear premium could also be elevated at that point. And I am still not investing a dime more, actually receiving money (note: the impact on margin/buying power is identical to buying the equity).
The issue is that I still have to deal with the expiration of the contracts. At that point, I will be forced to buy in the equity or settle if below strike (due to put) or cash in a nice gain if well above strike (due to call) or realize my likely loss if above strike and decide what is next.
Of course, this strategy won't work if the notional amount on the call bought at the beginning is much larger than what one could afford to buy. 20% of a portfolio could be significant if no cash is on hand. However, I guess you could still sell fewer puts than the number of call contracts or the equivalent of buying the equity in an amount that one is comfortable with. You would still receive some premium or lower your cost of ownership.
I like using options especially with U.S. stocks since it minimizes the currency impact having very few dollars involved to replicate an equity exposure.
Cardboard
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Unfortunately, our timing stinks usually. We are almost always early in and early out due to our conservative nature.
This is the complaint of EVERY value investor, we started buying too soon and we sold too early. Think of how awfull it must be to be a momentum investor you are buying too late and selling too late. ;D
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There may even be some social justice in your proposal. The most serious problem facing Greek society is the level of cheating on taxes since gambling is a voluntary tax which is almost impossible to cheat on you have created a sytem of increased voluntary tax payments.In this attached letter, we offer a solution, which will go a long way in helping prevent a likely Greek sovereign default. It is not a comprehensive solution, but a strong start to a daunting circumstance
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I just purchase spreads put spreads or call spreads it solves the excessive premium problem.I have short on them. Not doing well, maybe it's a .com thing. I don't like puts because of huge premium.
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NOBODY is building any new housing of any consequence and millions of more families are about to get foreclosed many will have to become renters.
The moment that happens they'll just rent the unit that is being sold.
These rents are far lower than the mortgage they were trying to pay.
Surprises me that people aren't noticing that foreclosures simply mean people with extra money to spend on consumption. Except for the squatters that got 18+ months of sitting in the home without making payments of course. But generally speaking, the rents are nowhere near the 2006 level of mortgage payments.
It seems to me like the prior rent level must have been artificially low, due to the oversupply of housing during the construction boom (people who should have remained renters bought new homes, artificially depressing rents). Now the opposite situation over the next few years if construction remains depressed -- a housing shorting, artificially boosting rents.
Of course, people argued that over supply was the main impetus behind the housing collapse, but refuse to accept that a supply shortage is looming. They want to instead point out that Japan house prices just kept going lower, despite their population of home dwellers doing the same (which doesn't seem to matter to these bears, for whatever reason supply/demand isn't in vogue).
That is exactly what is happening they are not renting the home they were in they are renting the home across the street. The bank will not allow the owner to become a renter in a short sale and the mkt is now rapidly being dominated by short sales instead of foreclosures. The price of these homes have fallen by 60 percent the buyer who has good credit can rent for a price of less than 1/2 the previous owners mortgage payment and generate a positive cash flow. The winners are the owner and the renter the losers are the US taxpayer and the banks or who ever held the original mortg.
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Sorry for the fat fingers again. The observation about real estate being a poor investment does have to be based upon falling rents or else we ain't value investors we are just price speculators and Mr. Dodd and Buffett have been wasting a lot of breath. I am as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs right now about the valuation of a lot of equity investments at this stage and I have been trying to hedge my 50 percent equity exposure (the rest is cash) with a volatility bet. But a foreclosed house purchased @ 50% of replacement cost and a good long term tennant looks like as safe a bet as one can make right now. I think what you find in depressions, residential rents are pretty sticky people finding difficulty in paying the rent get room mates. NOBODY is building any new housing of any consequence and millions of more families are about to get foreclosed many will have to become renters.There was another post that said, the real return on housing is practically zero. that means given some inflation ,what ever home price appreciation we got is purely in nominal terms. Now if you are going to have deflation, home prices are sure to drop even more.
You are ignoring the value of the cash flow. I guess a utility yielding 14% is not worth purchasing if the price gains are merely nominal? I mean, that's really the issue here. You are asserting that real estate is poor investment but not discussing the fundamentals. Just speculating on price movement.
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There was another post that said, the real return on housing is practically zero. that means given some inflation ,what ever home price appreciation we got is purely in nominal terms. Now if you are going to have deflation, home prices are sure to drop even more.
You are ignoring the value of the cash flow. I guess a utility yielding 14% is not worth purchasing if the price gains are merely nominal? I mean, that's really the issue here. You are asserting that real estate is poor investment but not discussing the fundamentals. Just speculating on price movement.
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It is obvious that real estate is a bad place to be? On what basis do you make that observation? Is it because of a prediction of declining rents or declining asset prices clearly the two are linked but I presume the asset prices follow the rents as opposed to the reverse.
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Just to give you an idea of how bleak it is here. Debt-to-GDP is forecasted to rise to 120% by 2012 and close to 1 Euro in every 3 of the total tax take will go towards paying interest on the national debt. Unlike most other sovereign nations, we do not possess a printing press to QE our way out of trouble. Just like every dog on the street here knew that the Irish banks were finished in 2008, most people here acknowledge that it isn't a case if we default, it's when. Just last week, the government made a desperate grab for private pensions (similar to what Argentina did), we all know what happened in Argentina after that event. At the moment, the smart money is piling out of Irish financial institutions as there is a very real fear that the Irish government may go one step further and start confiscating deposits, or possibly exit the Euro, creating a new currency that will let them default by the backdoor (i.e. QE).
Ballin I said to myself just on the weekend, if I had any dough and I lived in Ireland I would be looking how to get the heck out. If I had no dough I might stick around as it made no difference. What do you see on the ground in terms of people letting their feet do the talking.
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I learned the hardway about investing in Chinese reverse takeovers. I purchased debs in Noble China and ended up with 10Cents on the dollar when co. insiders stole everything. I still have a problem with outfits like Citron however. There is no question that the short side exposes scams and profits from it which is a good thing. I still remember their tactics with FFH however.
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Ireland is unfixable the Irish people will eventually figure it out and vote for someone who will tell the ECB to stuff it. I do not know how you can fix the European problem with out money being destroyed which is deflationary. I think the world and the markets are about to get a lot more interesting I also think we just might see some bargains again. I just pray that it just ends with a downturn in mkts sometimes it ends in gun fire and blood shed.
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I loved it though I wished they had added numbers to the present as it would probably show the air is out of the balloon but at the same time it scares me to death as I live in Vancouver where the current ratio is over 10. http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/KeyFacts-AverageHouseholdIncome1991-1996-2001-06.pdf
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In spite of the hair on this dog of an investment ,the business is actually VERY interesting if this co was run by a strong actuary with a good marketing arm it has a pretty good moat. Having to die to collect your life insurance seems pretty unfair for someone who is clearly terminal some life insurance co's will allow you to get some access to your estates capital but they rape you in the process. It will become even more unfair going forward as medicare becomes gutted. The only way some people will be able to afford medical treatment will be to make their hospitals beneficiaries or to get advances from insurance co's. talk about unintended consequences or Catch 22.
Congrats to the Canucks
in General Discussion
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Parsad when the Canucks got that goal with 14 seconds left I smiled because I know you would have an ear to ear grin me thinks a Canucks Stanley Cup victory would make ya happier than FFH trading at 1000 lets hope ya get both. ;D