scorpioncapital

IB charged me $500 usd.

I question the concept of allegiance or patriotism to debt payback. I mean, I can move now to a small European country with no to little income tax and no tax on capital. They don't go to wars, they don't have to deal with so many people. Things run just fine. Is there a reason I should take the higher American taxes just because I should help the country out?

That's a good plan. I do that too, although.. When I'm in a debt position I do DCA but only when I sell equal dollar amount of stock. That way I force myself to add new funds only if I've deleveraged somewhat. If market tanks, I never add for a few months or get back to a previous market value.

why not both? steady DCA plus a sprinkle of lump sum during a downturn. Watching Berkshire he seems to be doing this too, regular small buying plus major buying at pivotal moments.

I use the training wheels model. I was at like 80% brk for equity portfolio, now down to 40%. The 40% that went down was put into other high quality companies at what hopefully was a decent price that didn't overlap with anything held inside brk equity portfolio. I don't see BRk doubling quite as fast as other potential opportunities. No fault to berkshire! But what can one do? it's a good but difficult problem.

Depends who you are...Are you the median? If you are trying to do better there are more headwinds due to confiscation via taxation compared to other countries. An investor in Netherlands pays 1.35% of their total capital a year. You will see this comes out to far less than Canada's top 20 to 24% capital gains tax on 1/2 capital gains. In Belgium, there is no capital gains tax. In UK or Ireland, a foreigner can for 7-12 years pay 20% of their domestic living expenses (like a HST tax) instead of any tax at all. So depends who you are. If you are naturally high income earner or investor and not the median, it is not so hot. If you are median or below it sure beats say Iraq or Ukraine as the transfers are more generous and corruption less. Red tape is middle of the road but not the lowest. I think part of the gains you mention are due to a closed system, partially protectionist. However like China's 50k capital controls, you cannot always control around the edges, especially if there is discontent that can go in reverse. Personally I think the stats will change by a devaluation of the currency. I don't see any other way given the highest public and private debt in the developed world. Who will take on more debt? And if there is deleveraging, while other nations can still leverage or grow, that would also impact the currency. Some have argued for deflation but I don't see that except as a temporary situation.

I'm not sure this is quite so strict globally. Canada will suffer, what company wants to do business here with such deterrents?

Probably because tourists tend to not come back to the same place , at least immediately. Then it can be awkward to WhatsApp back after a long time. But I'm thinking of a different market, more medium to long term rentals where relationship is formed. Very unlikely I'd use Airbnb for future reference booking in that case... however the place may not be available which is a risk without long term rentals. For competition with Expedia or booking it is quite good although I note the other two are showing full condos too now, and sometimes at the same price.

Dumb investing doesn't work. Sometimes value investing is dumb investing, so yes give that up. I guarantee you, value is not all about price. Cheap price maybe very not value and high price very much value. Growth is always part of value. The split by most pundits is ridiculous. So educate yourself. I guarantee you if you have to give up on value investing, as it is deeply understood, you're doing something wrong. So don't give up !

I am not so excited. I love Airbnb and use it for travel and even medium term and long term rentals..but it is very easy to just get the hosts phone number or book a few days and extend privately the remainder. Not always but I bet there is huge leakage. Still..there is no business as useful as Airbnb. It really is amazing.

Why are people upset the Fed is making a mistake and offering a great opportunity to make money? Drukenmiller in the interview said he made alot of money when the Fed was wrong and generated volatility.

If you are a conspiracy theorist, the Fed is counteracting Trump's policies of creating inflation by increasing rates equal to the newly created inflation. Generally, inflation only really works if the interest rate is chronically below the rate of inflation, otherwise you by definition don't get any inflation. The conspiracy part is in who is this FED and why are they pouring cold water on Trump's government? Like Greece when the ECB threatened to cut them off and Greece blinked. Are Central Banks the new, unelected authoritarian leaders that are pulling the strings behind the scenes, toppling or endorsing puppet governments?

"The FOMC trimmed their median GDP growth forecast for 2019 (to 2.3% from 2.5% previously) due in part to recent tightening in financial conditions. Core inflation is expected to be steady at 2%, even with unemployment remaining well below its longer run rate (which was revised down slightly). " That means real growth is 0.3%, or effectively Zero. Zero growth at the level of deficits and debt of G20? Where is the lift-off velocity?

That's if you're a smart indexer ;) I see many 'quality stocks' in various sectors down double that and then quite a bit more last 2 weeks.

These things take time to play out. I mean there is nothing crazy that PE 25+ stocks are treading water or going down back to 15 or 20x PE as rates rise. If rates pause or decelerate in their increase, then yeah, even 20x will still look reasonable. But how do we know where it will stop? When the economy starts tanking I guess. Do you think they want to tank the economy to see where the limit is?

Monopolies are not so great if they are regulated , where there are not above average growth opportunities. On the other hand, a monopoly that is not regulated, that is in fact not a monopoly except for say network efffect is far more lucrative.

Which goes to show the power of buying the index. Even Buffett recommends it. It saves you from choosing a basket of the exact stocks that do go down 30% versus say 10% for the index. I would think it has something to do with diversification.

Thank you. I'm also looking at reinsurance stocks, and alternative transactions like reinsurance to close. I wonder if reinsurance has the same dynamics. Usually they are longer tail. But Buffett seems to have explained it pretty beautifully - bonds or bond like instruments don't keep pace with your costs. He mentions a mistake of 10 year bonds he held in the insurance company. Compared to that, it seems even 5 years is a little better. And 2 year might be the sweet spot.

I'm thinking specifically long tail versus short tail insurance. Long tail can be anything from run-off to reinsurance , short say yearly contracts or auto etc.. I am not so worried about short-term as they match their assets and liabilities with short-term debt so not much risk. Long tail however usually go out to 5 years maybe more. They sometimes have corporate bonds, real estate etc.. It seems that banks and investment banks make money from interest rate differentials. Insurance companies make money by leveraging and holding debt. If the speed of interest rate rises increases faster than the cost of servicing their liabilities or even just faster than what the market will eventually offer, there is a potential profit gap. This seems to depress prices in short term unless the insurance co is very short so they can roll over bonds quickly. I think even 5 years could be risky as rates are rising quite rapidly though steadly and inflation seems to be a little ahead of rates - which is the master game plan apparently to burn up national debt in high debt nations. Basically I have seen quite poor results in insurance stocks but quite good results in bank stocks, investment banks, even some REITs. I'm not sure if this is company specific or insurance stocks take time to reset to the new rates that will be available when they have to turn over their debt portfolios thus causing a large increase in potential profits (assuming inflation also doesn't inflate their liabilities to policyholders). Has Buffett ever wrote about insurance stocks in periods of rising rates or inflation since it is his bread and butter?

So I've observed many of my insurance stocks are not responding upward as I thought as rates rise . Bank stocks do seem to be going up. Why? These insurance stocks are medium to long tail reinsurance & insurance stocks with large bond portfolio with duration of 5 years~. Is the market reducing their BV (unrealized loss position)? Is it in fact weighing whether in 5 years the insurance co will have forfeited income or not (depending what their average 5 year yield is). On the other hand insurance co's have very low cost funding liability if they run a good operation. Basically is the market only temporarily discounting the stock prices now and later will come to their senses? Or is it something else? Likewise with REITS I imagine same dynamic. Pricing the debt cost now and not the future asset value to come. Banks for some reason react much faster to higher rates, probably as they don't pass it on to their clients or because it is 'short term', similar to short-term insurance (like auto insurance). Since nobody knows 5 years from now what these insurance bonds will do or if they misjudged their duration risk, the market is cautious now. Is this a correct interpretation?

My mentors get more impressive over time. Why? Well, I'll give you an example and I hope I'm not the only one. I read voraciously on value investing, moats etc...I nodded my head - yup, True, Amen! But then I go to implement this and perhaps temperament or other foolish blind spots lead me to lose almost all my capital. The experience teaches me alot. I go back to the mentors...who predicatbly are saying the same thing as before since I'm reading the same thing again. But this time, with experience and a deeper visceral insight, I can read the words and see their genius while before it was just a superficial understanding. I can give you many more examples. There is a wide difference between reading some aspect of a game and actually understanding it deeply. I think mentors understood it deeply so I'm always in awe when I go back and am humbled by something I should have understood more clearly and with all my mind and spirit.

MLM is a great, legit business model. Some are shady, just like some stocks or companies. Shady and/or bad deals. Like buying $5k of anything I can already tell you that is definitely not a good MLM. Others are pretty good. I've owned an MLM stock and has done very well for 20 years and I like and use the products. I've seen good results but of course be careful about the details. I like to study an MLM like a stock and do scuttlebutt and compare.

160k a year? you're already talking about the 1%. Canada is not a wealthy place, not more than other spots anyway.

The main problem I have with healthcare investing is dependence on government or insurance payments for revenue & profits. Almost like industrial companies that depend on government contracts. There are tangential areas such as recurring revenue streams, or areas that are not regulated in the same way. You have to think carefully about competitive advantages, nature of the particular area of investment.

Top 2 brk and dhr - 42% and 12% of capital respectively.