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SHDL

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    I Need a Laugh. Tell me a Joke. Keep em PC.

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    A doctor tells his patient “you need to take this medicine now or else you’ll die.” The patient grudgingly complies, and survives. He then goes back to see the doctor and complains “hey doc that was some god awful tasting medicine you gave me — and you were wrong, it was useless, I’m still alive!”

     

    (This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, left or right, or actual events, such as the coronavirus pandemic, is purely coincidental.)

    Coronavirus

    in General Discussion

    Posted

     

    Trump is getting killed on how he has managed the virus and it is getting worse. So what does he do? He manufactures a new ‘issue’ that the news media will shift their focus to. The messier the better. Smart, smart man!

     

    However, this is not good for the US. Among other things, immigration brings in needed skills. It also provides a nice boost to GDP as all those immigrants provide a nice economic boost (need to eat and sleep somewhere).

     

    Yes this is not good. I am very worried about where this is going.

    Coronavirus

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I posted this link previously but the “BCG helps” theory does a curiously good job fitting several cross country/region differences in how things are going:

     

    https://www.jsatonotes.com/2020/03/if-i-were-north-americaneuropeanaustral.html

     

    Could be just a coincidence but interesting nonetheless. A controlled experiment is underway in Australia and we should know the results in a few months.

     

    Some conflicting data - France and Spain are not doing well. Spain is actually worse than Italy right now. Spain and

    France both habe BCG vaccination.Also, Portugal, which has no BCG vaccination and is poorer does much better than Spain, it’s direct and richer neighbor which does have BCG vaccination. So quite a few countries run counter this trend eventhough they are otherwise comparable.

     

    Reading the article it looks like Spain had it between 1965-1981 and Portugal had it between 1965-2017 — which seems consistent with the latter doing better?

     

    True, misread it, although this means that that the difference only applies to those under 40, which don’t tend to get hit that hard. Spain is also doing worse than Italy right now. There could be a lot of factors and it’s likely more than one.

     

    The figure at the end of part 4) partially speaks to this. It suggests that the death rate of young people is much higher in Spain than it is in many other countries.

     

    I agree there are likely a lot of other factors at play.

    Coronavirus

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I posted this link previously but the “BCG helps” theory does a curiously good job fitting several cross country/region differences in how things are going:

     

    https://www.jsatonotes.com/2020/03/if-i-were-north-americaneuropeanaustral.html

     

    Could be just a coincidence but interesting nonetheless. A controlled experiment is underway in Australia and we should know the results in a few months.

     

    Some conflicting data - France and Spain are not doing well. Spain is actually worse than Italy right now. Spain and

    France both habe BCG vaccination.Also, Portugal, which has no BCG vaccination and is poorer does much better than Spain, it’s direct and richer neighbor which does have BCG vaccination. So quite a few countries run counter this trend eventhough they are otherwise comparable.

     

    Reading the article it looks like Spain had it between 1965-1981 and Portugal had it between 1965-2017 — which seems consistent with the latter doing better?

    Universa Investments

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I think they were up a lot in 2008 too, like 8x or something. The fund is marketed as something that you might put a small portion of your portfolio into for hedging/volatility reduction purposes and there are certainly people/institutions that will pay for that sort of thing.

     

    I was always interested in what exactly they own, but I imagine that is a trade secret.

    Will Work From Home Be a Permanent Trend

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    If this WFH arrangement is going to be a semi permanent thing I will definitely need another bedroom...

     

    Which makes me think ... if companies are going to ditch their offices and have their people work from home, would they not need to raise salaries so that each employee can afford a decent “home office”? Would that really be cheaper vs just renting an office and having people come in?

    Coronavirus

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    It appears that some people are now seriously looking into whether (certain strains of) the BCG vaccine could “work” against Covid-19. See, for instance, the following blog post and the referenced links:

     

    https://www.jsatonotes.com/2020/03/if-i-were-north-americaneuropeanaustral.html

     

    From the NYT today:

     

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/health/coronavirus-bcg-vaccine.html

     

    Personally I think I got the virus a few weeks ago but had only relatively mild symptoms (headache, fever, fatigue, body aches) — and if the hypothesis here is true I may have the BCG shot I got years ago when I was living overseas to thank for that.

    A rare event in that cozy world

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I can’t remember if Goldman was ever involved but Apple bashing in the financial media isn’t that new.  It has happened in waves, driven the stock price down like crazy, and created great buying opportunities. 

     

    In the past though, the negativity was based on some legitimate concerns about the business and the question was whether things were overblown.  What is new this time is that the bear thesis is just … bad:

     

    Goldman Sachs just significantly slashed its price target for Apple, predicting 26% downside for the shares because of a “material negative impact” on earnings for the accounting method the iPhone maker will use for an Apple TV+ trial.

     

    “We believe that Apple plans to account for its 1-year trial for TV+ as a ~$60 discount to a combined hardware and services bundle,” wrote Goldman analyst Rod Hall, in a note.

     

    “Effectively, Apple’s method of accounting moves revenue from hardware to Services even though customers do not perceive themselves to be paying for TV+. Though this might appear convenient for Apple’s services revenue line it is equally inconvenient for both apparent hardware ASPs and margins in high sales quarters like the upcoming FQ1′20 to December,” Hall added.

     

     

    WeWork Valued at 35 Billion

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    IPO price keeps sliding.

     

    One thing I've wondered, and more so lately, is this.

     

    Has anyone here been involved in a funding round or gotten the up close pitch on this?

     

    I am super curious because I just have a tremendously hard time reconciling how enormous the valuation gap seems to be between what supposedly sophisticated institutional investors are paying for this, and what common sense and conventional wisdom seem to state based on whats readily out there. Its abnormally perplexing actually.

     

    I’m not anywhere close to the VC world but I’ve read quite a few reports about how certain parties like SoftBank are distorting the market.  One in particular I think talked about how those guys are acting a bit like hedge funds who are trying to make their short term numbers look good by pumping a little extra money in their illiquid positions and driving up their prices at the end of the month/quarter/year.  In the VC world that is accomplished by doing new funding rounds at higher valuations, but same principle.  Repeat that enough times and valuations can quickly go crazy.  Now I don’t know how common this is but it would certainly seem to explain some of the silly things we’re seeing. 

    Rotation out of momo/growth to value

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Bloomberg had a story about this today:

     

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-12/carnage-in-crowded-hedge-fund-stocks-may-mean-some-don-t-survive

     

    In short, a number of long short hedge funds appear to be getting squeezed out of their crowded positions and this could be causing/amplifying these effects.  That sounds somewhat more plausible to me than a “value strikes back” narrative given how certain names like TSLA, which are heavily shorted but are almost certainly not value investments either, have been rallying recently.

    FNMA and FMCC preferreds. In search of the elusive 10 bagger.

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I was already quite skeptical about the common shares with the dilution risk and everything but I feel more strongly about this now given how serious the people involved seem to be about breaking the old Fannie-Freddie duopoly.  I think this could also cause some difficulties as they try to recap because some of the actions they are recommending would seem to make the two businesses much less moat-y/profitable than they were previously.  In particular I’m not so sure anymore if Berkshire would be interested in committing a huge amount of capital to this.  But then again the market for utility-like enterprises is red hot, so maybe there’s not much to worry about.

     

    On the other hand I feel better about the preferred shares now that the risk of getting zero (say due to inaction by the current administration followed by an unfavorable political regime change in the near future) has IMO greatly diminished. 

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