Castanza

There was talk at our site to knockdown all walls and move to a cubical environment...I cited the below and the subsequent Harvard study to help put an end to it. But the truth is at our building everyone including myself work on "global teams" so collaboration (person to person) is quite rare to begin with. Personally I cannot focus unless I have absolute silence. Generally I sit with my Sony noise canceling earbuds (no music) and crank out my work. https://hbr.org/2019/11/the-truth-about-open-offices Harvard has quite a few studies showing the negative effects of Open Office designs. Everyone is different though. I think a good mix is the best solution. Somewhere I can go with team members to collaborate and then a place I can retreat to focus.

I still think about the day a friend and myself sold 200+ BTC when they were around $10 a piece.... Back in college a buddy recruited me into his half baked plan of turning our school library computer lab desktops into mining machines....Worked so well we decided to pull the plug thinking we were sure to get caught. We thought it hurt bad seeing it hit the 200's until it hit 20k....It's amazing how easy it was to mine coins not too long ago. Needless to say we ate a lot of beer and wings that semester... memories are priceless right? :P (at least that makes me feel better)

Plenty of photos here collected by abyli. Empty supply bins for masks, gloves and eye goggles. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/r0MgCEtpYRocZECSPcpDXA I also have photos of dead bodies on the ground in the hospital for hours with no one taking care of. They are covered by white cloth so I can tell they are already dead. While at the same time, I have a photo of the Provincial Governor on TV saying that they have plenty of supply and there is nothing to worry about! Best of wishes to your relatives. My wife (who speaks some Chinese) also looked at some news and told me that it looks quite concerning and that I should look into 3M stock. APT is also a bit interesting

Lol what? How were they diagnosed BEFORE being hospitalized? Why not? They come to the hospital, wait for 5 hours while infecting all other patients waiting in line (and being infected as well). Then they met the doctor, who asked the nurse to do a series of lab testing for them. Then results show positive. And doctor says sorry we don't have any beds for you today. Go home and try to come here again tomorrow to see if we have any empty beds. Your story sounds like a whole load of BS. There is absolutely no way the hospital is letting an infected victim just go home. They’ll house them in tents if there aren’t any beds and keep them quarantined. Are you from China? Have relatives. If China is capable of completely shutting down 15 cities, enclosing off-boarding passengers suspected of being infected in boxes, and building a 1000-bed hospital in six days you think they’d test someone, find out they’ve been inflicted and just say “you should go home and come back another day when there’s space”? Have you seen the videos of the hospitals? They are overrun. They probably don’t have enough tests and telling people to go home and stay inside is a decent way to contain something. Basically house arrest. They’re full of people full of panic. Wuhan has 11 million people, just imagine what would happen once you quarantine the city and everyone’s scared shitless. Of course they’d rush to the hospital whether they have symptoms or not. I mean that’s basically my point. Who knows how many are infected. But if it spreads as easy as it sounds like. Then 11mil people heading to the hospital doesn’t make it see outrageous for the number to be much much higher. Time will tell though. No use jumping to conclusions.

Lol what? How were they diagnosed BEFORE being hospitalized? Why not? They come to the hospital, wait for 5 hours while infecting all other patients waiting in line (and being infected as well). Then they met the doctor, who asked the nurse to do a series of lab testing for them. Then results show positive. And doctor says sorry we don't have any beds for you today. Go home and try to come here again tomorrow to see if we have any empty beds. Your story sounds like a whole load of BS. There is absolutely no way the hospital is letting an infected victim just go home. They’ll house them in tents if there aren’t any beds and keep them quarantined. Are you from China? Have relatives. If China is capable of completely shutting down 15 cities, enclosing off-boarding passengers suspected of being infected in boxes, and building a 1000-bed hospital in six days you think they’d test someone, find out they’ve been inflicted and just say “you should go home and come back another day when there’s space”? Have you seen the videos of the hospitals? They are overrun. They probably don’t have enough tests and telling people to go home and stay inside is a decent way to contain something. Basically house arrest.

There was one video of the Wuhan hospital with bodies just lying around. Between Hong Kong and now this China has a lot of issues. All we need is for it to hit EU where nobody has any money.... Not going to lie....I didn’t think this would pan out into anything.

Lol what? How were they diagnosed BEFORE being hospitalized? Why not? They come to the hospital, wait for 5 hours while infecting all other patients waiting in line (and being infected as well). Then they met the doctor, who asked the nurse to do a series of lab testing for them. Then results show positive. And doctor says sorry we don't have any beds for you today. Go home and try to come here again tomorrow to see if we have any empty beds. Wow that’s crazy, hope they end up alright

Starter position PBCT

Absolutely agree. I’ll still most likely refrain from leverage. I avoid most types of debt in my life and choose to live with the loss of potential gains. I guess I mostly wanted to revive it to see what the mentality was alongside this ever increasing frothy market. Thanks You don't necessarily need debt to lever your position. The biggest leverage-fest that we've ever had on this board was probably the widespread purchase of bank LEAPs and Tarp Warrants. Lots of people on this board made lots of money from that opportunity. The LEAPS and warrants were objectively cheap, and it was nice to not be at risk of a margin call if the market temporarily moved the wrong direction. The second biggest leverage-fest on this board was when a smaller group made heavy purchases of FFH LEAPs back when they were objectively cheap. That one was one of my most expensive errors -- I bought the stock for less than US$100, which is all fine and dandy, but other guys harvested 40 and 60 bags off the the LEAPS. The third most significant leverage-fest was BRK options and LEAPs about 4 or 5 years ago. I think it was TWA's thread "The Mother of Easy Trades" that really identified how stupidly cheap BRK had gotten, and how even more stupidly cheap were the LEAPs. Once again, I was stupid and just added shares rather than lever the hell out of the situation... I need a painfully obvious opportunity before I use any meaningful amount of leverage (either debt or options). So far, my errors of omission have cost me a shit-load. SJ Wow that thread is full of interesting stuff. Thanks for the insights. I guess hindsight it always 2020 right?

Absolutely agree. I’ll still most likely refrain from leverage. I avoid most types of debt in my life and choose to live with the loss of potential gains. I guess I mostly wanted to revive it to see what the mentality was alongside this ever increasing frothy market. Thanks

Do you have general rules of thumb that you follow? Most people who I see use margin seem to limit their exposure to say 10% of their portfolio.

Not to bring this back from the dead, but I'm curious what everyone's appetite for margin is in the current environment? Personally, I don't use it, but I have seen a lot of discussion (inner circles) regarding it.

Got some CMCSA under $46

$WMB

Government debt will never be repaid. If any government on earth needs to repay debt, and can’t roll it over, they will default. This applies to the US as well. We are running 5% deficit as a percent of GDP in one of the hottest economy ever 10 years plus into a recovery, how would we ever repay debt? Give it a recession and we run at 10% GDP deficit quickly. Government debt is never repaid, it is only rolled over. Say the euro goes extinct. What does that even look like? What is the path forward from there for European countries? Italy will still have its issue regardless of the euro at this point right?

There are trade-offs wherever you live. This "dorm" feeling as Greg put is it the exact reason I chose to not live in a big city for any extended period of time. People are annoying all over the place. You're just much more likely to encounter them in a city due to proximity. Personally I prefer to walk outside every morning to see a few deer grazing in the field, over some meth addict sitting on my steps. My wallet also thanks me! But to each their own! Different strokes for different folks :P

Macro is so unpredictable and speculative. It's interesting to discuss for sure (everyone loves a good apocalypse thesis), but there is no sure way to effectively use any of this to your advantage. It's much more effective to hedge yourself on the personal finance side of things. Hedge your career with other skills outside of your current career path. Don't over leverage yourself with personal debt. Build a solid emergency fund. Take care of your body. One way or another, life will go on.

I would recommend never writing anything defamatory. Something like "Could you please stop smoking so much weed so I can sleep." is probably fine. Always keep it as hearsay. I don't know much about the laws where you are, but you never know how these neighbor spats can spiral to ridiculous levels. Last thing you want is to be sitting in some court where this guy is suing you for harassment and he has a pile of threatening letters as evidence.

+1

I really like Vanguard's dilapidated look (though sometimes I get the updated screen edition and it looks worse). I keep my core holdings there and the interface is so clunky it pains me to even think about trading on it. This is probably the reason why I haven't had many sell transactions on Vanguard over the years and that portfolio has been outperforming my actively managed account by a wide margin. I guess, I'm glad that the fees are now 0. :) The amount of click-throughs is annoying. Lack of solid mobile platform is also a bit annoying.

For those who care. Vanguard finally joined commission free trading on equities. Also looks like they will finally update their online experience (about time). https://pressroom.vanguard.com/news/Press-Release-Vanguard-Expands-Commission-Free-Platform-Beyond-ETFs.html

Adding to $DISCA, $BP, $WMB, $T

I hear this daily from my wife who’s specialized in Neonatal Intensive Care. :o

Stumbled upon this old thread. Discussion seemed relevant and interesting enough to bump. https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/impact-of-low-interest-rates/50/

I guess it depends which core themes you find the most interesting. I simply liked the nihilistic theme in Demons. You could argue that some of his other stories are more entertaining, but if your're reading Dostoyevsky you're not really after a surface level story. I guess I shouldn't have assigned a favorite as I read them over a long period of time. I'm one of those people who will read 25 books at a time.