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scorpioncapital

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Posts posted by scorpioncapital

  1. On 7/13/2023 at 11:50 AM, HubbadaPow said:

     Great points.  I remember Bruce Greenwald saying that if you have a lot of asset value and small or negative cash flow, immediately go to the proxy statement to see how you can replace management.  If you can't, just move on to something else.  That seems about right to me.

     

    I'm glad you mentioned Bruce Greenwald. I've watched his youtube interviews and he is quite astute. I remember him saying over and over - that advantages get competed away. He said this happened in agricultural stocks and now is happening in manufacturing stocks (the 'hard asset' stuff). He gives a warning that in the years and decades ahead it can happen to software stocks too but he still thinks this is a fruitful place to be so far. Another guy I like is Viktor Shvets at Macquire who believes the same thing from the angle of the marginal cost of capital approaching zero with technological advancement. I am not sure if or when we get to some pure communist phase but he says the banks are toast if there will be no cost to capital and a cbdc. I also like The Death of Money, a fascinating book I am sure Gates and Buffett have read as it talks of farmland as an inflation hedge and seems to mesh with Buffett's ideas on inflation. He even predicted UBI in 1973 but like Gates has said that we are not yet there, lots of work still to be done. The cost of capital being zero is probably premature but abundance or commoditization in some industries may make investing challenging.

  2. just cut out the word 'value' and the key is to avoid traps , in all investing. The traps that I find most challenging are the slowly deflating kind. They waste your time and just show up as 'sub-benchmark' return over time...How to spot them? it's an art and a science. Don't forget the art part. That comes from synthesizing 1. past experiences 2. past patterns where you saw this before 3. thinking outside the box and 4. reverse engineering this and other situations. I can't say there is an algorithm but generally watch out for egregious management actions, the nature of a business (recently hard asset stocks tend to have done worse than asset-light or software/tech stocks, but this trend could continue indefinitely), and perhaps even sometimes just bad luck. You sometimes need scuttlebutt to know if a company is doing worse than another and why.

  3. "+1.  With foreign stocks, your biggest asset is that you don't live there; hence, you can temporarily see what locals cannot."

     

    I take the opposite view. It is the biggest disadvantage. I assume the locals know much better than the foreigners their culture and weakness or strengths. Buffett has always said he stays away from foreign countries because he does not know the system and is not comfortable taking such risks. Keep in mind that besides the USA, most countries have not had capital markets that have succeeded to such a degree, or have been reset - from scratch! every few decades due to communism or hyperinflation, among other types of capital controls. It's a real risk.

  4. I like the article. Most countries have free education, or near free. Also, let's ask how many of these ultra-rich would make these donations without a tax deduction at all. Why should there be any deduction at all to induce ultra rich to make donations? Try an experiment - have 0% deduction and see if donations plummet.

     

  5. Yet Swiss has one of the most inflation protected currency on Earth? Can you imagine the uproar when less than Swiss low inflation currency games occurs? Or is it a question of just taking a long time for the currency debasement to occur? The crypto-coins have made people very rich. Ethereum from 10-20 to 1800. It makes you wonder if the bubble is not even started to pop or if regular stocks could really boom in such an environment. They both do something useful, make money and are trading far less than these crypto coins!

  6. I almost went bankrupt once investing concentrated in a black box. I vowed to myself I will never ever invest in a black box. The company has to do 1 thing I can keep my eye on. And if it is a conglomerate it better have a leader I can really keep my eye on it, and even then their strategy should not be too complex.  This is why I now find investing in banks, investment managers, insurance cos (except maybe Berkshire) is not for me. Too much black box.

  7. buy & hold requires a very strict criteria combined with a very good insight into what businesses do well and which flounder. The reason isn't always clear. I watch some very expensive stocks and see them do well. Even longer term. Figure out why. Also keep in mind that markets tend to revert in cycles so that the market timer may get in and out but even one big mistake on timing can make it perform no better than buying and holding through the drawdowns.

  8. 21 hours ago, UK said:

     

    Put at least 1/2 portfolio into growth or value tomorow or long duration companies such as AMZN, GOOGL, META, UMG and even JOE, which went down from 30 to 70 per cent last year. Keep other 1/2 in BRK, FFH and other (financials, energy etc) short duration or value names in case your thesis on deflation is incorrect:)

     

     

    Or just own BRK - 1 stock as it contains all of the elements mentioned inside it, in a balanced way 😉

     

    Regarding that axis chart, seems oil and maybe short term tips fits all 3 quadrants except bottom left, and that seems politically impossible in any country seeking an inflation rate at 2%..even Japan tries to prevent deflationary bust. 

  9. 5 hours ago, SharperDingaan said:

     

    Does it really matter?

     

    Assume a 100K investment (CDIC insured at Canada's credit rating).

    Yesterday I could buy a 5yr Canada for 3.00%, a 5yr GIC for 5.00%, and current Canadian inflation was 6.9%. If I buy the Canada, I am assuming a negative real return of 3.9% (3.0-6.9). Whereas if I buy the GIC, I am assuming a negative real return of 1.9% (5.0-6.9).

     

    Put another way, the real world (main street), expects inflation to fall 200bp (-1.9-3.9 real) in the near term, and another 190bp (-1.9 real) over the longer term; or Canadian inflation falling to 4.9% in the next few months, and 3.0% over the next year. In relative terms, if that is better than the US/EU; CAD strengthens.

     

    Quite a bit different to what the media/Bay street would like you to believe 😇

     

    SD

     

     

     

    This does not make sense to me. In 1980, the 30 year rate was 20%. Was the bond market right in assuming 20% rate for 30 years? No it was wrong. It was in fact 0% 30 years later. Therefore I do not think this fashionable idea that bond market predicts things has any validity.

  10. Is growth rate dependent on human or physical capital for all companies?

    cost of capital only usually applies to physical capital.

    related to this, growth rate may not be held back hence the elevated pricing (although has come down still somewhat). perhaps the future will be a mix. Say 40 years ago, growth rate is 90% correlated with cost of capital and today maybe it is 50-50, leading to perpetually higher multiiples even if they compress 50%? Btw, high cost of capital businesses have always traded at lower valuation. Even today oil stocks are sub 10x p/e.

  11. where does money come from? if everyone buys the same stocks, are we all supposed to get rich together *in proportion* to how much savings we can afford to put in the market versus consume for day to day life? Doesn't this imply that the CBs of the world have to sort of make life difficult and not allow too much savings to form by restricting money and credit with higher rates and recessions? Or are we supposed to believe we can all be equally rich by investing in stocks vs work? Why does one person get richer than another? IPO pre-shares? more shares owned somehow? seems early birds will tend to get more capital formation by nature of the system. Then there is the limited number of companies to own at all relative to the sea of all potentially investable alternative and private assets. I wonder if getting wealthy only in public markets is so common. 

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