Dinar
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1 hour ago, Luca said:
Speak miles about what an insane bubble that area is.
Not rich with 1m a year passive income, with that you are far above the 99th percentile earner, top 0.5% and still can not retire!
Maybe 2m people in the whole US make that much or more, 8m people live in new york so yeah, there is of course a highly concentrated collection of very wealthy people and well paid managers.
Luca, I guarantee you that there a lot of people with plenty of cash flow which is not considered taxable income. Real estate is a perfect example.
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1 hour ago, Sweet said:
lol, I did smile at spending $350k a year and not thinking you’re rich comment Dinar.
I wouldn’t even know how to spend $350k a year, most of it would just be invested again I reckon.
When I was 24, single and living in Manhattan, I spent $20K per annum, and could not comprehend how senior colleagues would complain about not being able to make ends meet on $200K a year. The difference, aside from the fact that I was and am very frugal, was family. They had it, and I did not. Kids and wife tend to be very, very expensive in Manhattan.
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34 minutes ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:
Hardly rich? After tax, you're still spending 5x what the average FAMILY takes home in a year (pre-tax) while you're passively sitting around.
I think we need to redefine rich in this country. If you don't think you're rich while passively earning 350k, I think you're completely out of touch with the average person and what life is like for them.
Given that I came to this country penniless at the age of 13, and worked as a garbage man in college to pay bills, and know quite a few people who live on less than $40K a year today, I have a feeling that I am in touch with reality.
I do not know where you take your family income statistics from, but I would be shocked if they were accurate. I highly doubt that the statistics account for cash income, which for many people double or more their reported income, as well as government transfers. You cannot imagine how many nannies in NYC, Boston, DC & LA/San Fran who make $50-$80K per year in cash and report zero income. Barbers that take cash only. A guy runs a neighborhood barbershop in Staten Island, makes $5K a week cash, how much do you think he reports? A neighborhood fruit stand clears $600K in cash revenue, and roughly $300K per year in cash income, what do you think this guy reports? Dog walkers, waiters, bartenders, tradesmen - electricians, carpenters, plumbers, and the list goes on. Similarly, how do you account for welfare, Medicaid - worth 10-50K per year, Section 8 housing, food stamps, free cell phone, broadband, gas/electricity, and the list goes on.
You clearly do not take into account regional differences. In NYC, where there are plenty of unskilled jobs paying $25 per hour, a two adult household is hard pressed not to receive $100K per annum income if both adults work 40 hours per week, 50 weeks a year. A non-union doorman gets paid $55K a year in NYC, plus another $10k per year in cash. I am sure that the situation is different in rural Pennsylvania, and it is hard to find an unskilled job for $20 per hour.
Similarly, there is a difference in cost of living by region. When a rent for a 3 bedroom apartment in Manhattan in a safe neighborhood starts at $9K per month, utilities are another $600 a month (that includes gas, electric, internet, cell phones) and medical insurance for a family is call it $50K per year, and shopping bill at Costco is $2000 a month for a family of six (the wife cooks), kids clothes and shoes that have to be replaced monthly, pray tell me how $350K per year to spend in Manhattan with a family of six is rich. It is in Kansas. It is in Boca Raton. It is not in Boston, Manhattan/Brooklyn Heights, San Fran.
Passively sitting around is very hard. I did not know that making 10% per year on your investments was so easy. I wonder why the entire country just doesn't do it? Actually, it is quite difficult to do, at least for me. I have been investing since 1994, and I can tell you that I have compounded at around 18% per annum. To say that this was easy would be a complete lie. It was hard to sit in the market in 1994 invested in Mexican stocks and see a 90% drop in the Bolsa and not to sell. It was hard not to be scared in fall of 2008 and spring of 2009. Really hard not to panic in 2020. It was hard to be long Tel Aviv stock exchange on October 7th and not panic. But damn, I admire your balls of steel.
Perhaps we have a different definition of rich. For me, it is not just being able to put food on the table, provide a roof, and medical insurance. It includes being able to live in a nice apartment where every kid has his/her own bedroom, pay for enrichment classes for kids, being able to take kids on vacation twice year and fly business class, being able to keep a car in Manhattan, being able to go to nice restaurants once a week, being able to go to opera/ballet/Carnegie hall/jazz club once a week, to send kids to private school in Manhattan, being able to gift a nephew a trip to African Safari for his 18th birthday, being able to help friends/relatives in their hour of need. You can NOT do this on $350K per annum in Manhattan. This lifestyle is $700K+ after-tax per annum in Manhattan.
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@bargainman, actually the math is worse than you say. Say you have a $10MM portfolio, say you make a million a year. You can NOT spend a million a year. First, assuming that you live in CA/NY/NJ where most of these people live, you only have $500K post tax. Even if all income is long term capital gains, tax burden is 35% (assuming no job) and hence $650K post tax. $300K needs to be redeployed into the portfolio to keep up with inflation. So you can spend $350K per annum. Not bad, but hardly rich, and if you have a family in say NYC, you cannot afford luxuries once you spend $50K on health insurance (since neither of the parents work) and housing is another $150-$200K per annum. So yes, a retired couple in Pennsylvania is rich with a $10MM portfolio, but a young family cannot retire in NYC or even suburbs on a $10MM portfolio assuming a 10% return. (A house in a nice suburb of NYC can easily run you 1.5MM with a $35-50K annual property tax.)
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3 hours ago, Luca said:
At todays valuations, for a 30 year period, id be relatively comfortable to put my money into these stocks at equal weights:
1. Berkshire
2. Fairfax
3. Prosus/Tencent
4. Nintendo
5. LVMH
Not sure if you will beat the index with that because over 30 years many things can change but those would be my best long term horses
9
I agree with 2,4, and 5. I would add the following: JOE, L'Oreal, Safran & Airbus, Ashtead, MSGE(ticker) , NEN (ticker), Tel-Aviv stock exchange. Also, Hermes which I do NOT own.
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33 minutes ago, ValueArb said:
I just quit an app developer job where base pay was $170k in the US, + stock options, + up to 20% annual cash bonuses based on employee/company performance, with great benefits (all jobs remote, paid healthclub memberships, free biometric sleep trackers, lunches every fridays, counseling, dental, medical, vision, quarterly onsite parties, etc).
The point is there are a huge number of great paying jobs we aren't even aware of that have been created by, or increased in numbers, because of outsourcing. And the increasing wages for the average worker are very clear in our ever rising median real income levels.
You don't get it do you? China is thriving, US in going down the flames according to Luca! He looks at everything through that prism! Inconvenient facts like millions trying to immigrate to the US from China do not distract him from his vision!
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@Luca, when you make statements that the US has only shitty service jobs, the only thing you show is your ignorance. Do you know that there is a massive shortage of plumbers, electricians, carpenters & other construction workers in the US? Massive shortage of doctors, nurses, et all? (In NYC today, there is a four month wait to see a dermatologist for instance.) Do you know how much these people, including skilled tradesmen make?
Why is working a service job shitty? Just because you do not like it does not mean it is shitty. I do not know what you do for a living, but I am sure I can find plenty of people who will not like what you do. Does this mean that your job is shitty? You remind me of good old Karl...
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I do not know what will happen to inflation, macro, etc... I do know that
a) there are millions of people in corporate America, and even more in the public sector who sit around all day and either do nothing, or actively hinder output. So if either the government or large companies or universities start firing deadwood, productivity will soar. At Harvard for instance number of administrators & other bureaucrats has doubled on a per student/professor basis in the past several decades I believe.
b) The welfare state is becoming bigger and bigger and destroying any incentive to work for unskilled and low skilled labor. If it ever gets cut back, watch millions re-enter the labor force, with huge upside to GDP, and downside to inflation. In NYC today, it is more profitable to develop homeless shelters in Manhattan on UWS (home of $4000 per sq foot condos) than to turn an existing building into luxury housing.
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1 hour ago, lnofeisone said:
It took a hot minute, but I made a few calls to IRS-savvy individuals.
1) They were equally perplexed at not running into this situation. Our current hypothesis is that none of us have encountered this because we have never had a material interest rate increase + investment in munis at the same time.
2) Onto more interesting tidbit. Original Issue Discount (that's the language IRS calls this) is not included in income if the bond is a tax-exempt obligation. That means that de minmus rule generally does not apply to tax-exempt obligations. Page 6 of the https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1212.pdf section on "including OID in income" and "De minimis rule" sections provide two very explicit rules on excluding this income.
So the opportunity is - buy munis that re below de minimus and, if you hold to maturity, all the gains are tax free.
@Dinar - I appreciate your skepticism and would love if you took a look.
I bought a bunch of zero munis that are below this de minimus and will wait to see if TD Ameritrade will send the 1099-OID this year.
https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/beware-taxes-on-discounted-munis
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3 hours ago, Ulti said:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/11/10-from-harvard-named-rhodes-scholars/
Asmer Asrar Safi, who is from Pakistan, studies social studies and ethnicity, migration and human rights at Harvard College. His senior thesis is focused on Maulana Abdul Rahim Popalzai, a Muslim cleric known for leading peasant and labor movements in the Frontier Province of British India. Safi co-founded the South Asians for Forward-Thinking Advocacy and Research Initiative, and is particularly interested in bringing conversations from Pakistan to the global stage. At Oxford, he will study progressive political messaging in South Asia.
Its nice to have context... I am curious about what is progressive political messaging is and how does this relate to S Asia..Hopefully Oxford throws in some Democracy and democracy in the coursework
What context do you need to justify supporting Hamas? This individual supports Hamas and extolled the October 7th terrorist attack on Israel.
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@Viking, take a look at this article, claims that reinsurance rates are up 50%. I am trying to find out if that is true, have people heard anything?
https://nypost.com/2024/01/06/real-estate/america-is-running-out-of-home-owners-insurance/
I spoke with a friend who buys catastrophe bonds, and he informed me that premiums are unchanged from the high levels achieved last year. This is despite last year being a very profitable year.
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2 hours ago, Sweet said:
Execution is less important than what DEI means to people. Execution is downstream of whatever your DEI belief happens to be.
If you believe DEI means fairness, equal opportunities and celebrating a diverse workforce the it’s hard to execute that and mess it up.
If on the other hand you believe DEI means deciding there aren’t enough x,y,z identities, ethnicities and racial groups, and that needs to be corrected by ‘positive discrimination’ then there is no way to execute that fairly.
And the problem is that many of these institutions believe in the later but package it in ways that give it a positive spin.
On Rhodes, the student body tried to get his statue pulled down.
oh, and let's not forget, the current receipients of Rhodes' scholarships are not scholars but activists. Look at the Harvard winner this year - a supporter of Hamas if I am not mistaken and will be majoring in progressive activism!
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@Spekulatius, you are a snob! I remember going to my house of my aunt's father in law in a city of two million people in the USSR in the 1980s (the guy was very well respected doctor, and a crippled veteran of World War II), and he did not have a normal bathroom. As in there was no toilet period. So yes, every time I visited him, I had to use an outhouse. Man, you Germans are spoiled!
By the way, there is an old Russian joke that there are just two problems in Russia - fools and roads, and just two Russian generals that are any good - General Moroz (freeze) and General Bezdoroszhie (no roads.)
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5 hours ago, ASTA said:
Strasburg was full of military police and normal police and makes you uncomfortable compared to the others. I have been in Germany a lot so know the place well, my kids first language
and my father is Austrian so know Austria really well. For the next couple of trips I will make it investment oriented so maybe turkey South Korea Japan London and Toronto . So I can have fun but with a purposes. Then already booked Berkshire Hathaway meeting trip to bad really wanted to see Charlie once in my life dam missed it. But will bring my son to see Warren first time for both. Life threw me a curve ball but have to make the best of it. So if anyone lives in those places we can meet up and I can pay for dinner 
catching up from my youth when I travelled every single holiday from the age of 9 to 24. And my first passport is from a country that does not even exist anymore so travel here I come
Let me guess your first passport was from Czechoslovakia or was it GDR?
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In my opinion, the biggest problem Nestle, and many other consumer staples is face is essentially zero volume growth. With zero volume growth, hard to grow above inflation, and hence fair multiple is call it 16-20x free cash flow, so you want to buy say at 10? Nestle is unlikely to ever trade at a p/e of 10, unless it is a market where every is down 40%.
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@ValueArb, your numbers are off. Federal long term capital gains rate is 23.8% (you are forgetting Obamacare surtax) and qualified dividend tax rate is 23.8% for the same reason. Also, state income tax rates have generally risen in that time frame. For instance, CT went from 0% to 7%, NJ from 6% to 11%, and NY from 6.6% to 11-12%.
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Twenty five percent in USD
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MURA - Mural Oncology
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1 hour ago, lnofeisone said:
That's 100% fair but it is a muni so no taxes, if muni states matches residence? I'll see if I can TurboTax it.
I would bet a nice bottle of champagne that you are NOT correct. Call the IRS or your accountant or tax lawyer or find a relevant passage of the tax code.
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@lnofeisone, check with your accountant. From what I remember, you have to declare the accretion above the 0.25% every year, and you WILL get taxed on it.
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1 hour ago, SharperDingaan said:
This isn't going to go well.
The big and strong seem to think a few defensive surgical strikes, and that will be the end of it. Take out the launch sites, decapitate the leadership, make some examples, everyone gets the 'message', and there is no possibility that any of the fleet ships sink. The Moskva also thought it was big and strong; the underdog Ukrainians thought otherwise, and now it sails with the fishes.
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/us-weighs-whether-attack-houthi-204958449.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Moskva
Thing is, this is the land of the 'eye for an eye'; the initial 'take out' is easy, surviving the reprisal ... not so much. Russia lost in Afghanistan, the US lost in Vietnam; and Iran can close/harass BOTH the Arabian Sea AND the Gulf of Oman egresses, threatening much of the Saudi production (Iran doesn't even have to be successful). The real 'why' the coalition fleet is there.
https://en.irna.ir/news/85328464/US-to-face-Vietnam-scenario-if-Yemen-attacked-Ansarullah
It really all comes back to Gaza, and Bibi stepping aside; what Israel wouldn't do for 30 years+, and eventually proposed to do, now being imposed.
SD
What exactly are you referring to?
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@Xerxes, thank you for the post. I was only long Campari in the spirits space, and sold it after the CEO announced his retirement. I am still long Dior, but I would not be a buyer here.
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1 minute ago, Luca said:
Also dont get why you would say they live under communism there, they have as much capitalism as other developed countries like germany etc
You do not understand a very simple concept. Capitalism cannot function without rule of law. You do not have a rule of law in China. Oh, and the article is talking about tens of thousands. When I mentioned it to my friends from high school who are Chinese and live in an area with a lot of Chinese people, they stated that there has been a flood of people recently out of China in their neighborhood.
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13 minutes ago, Luca said:
Agree with me on what, the CCP is working on exactly these problems
As opposed to you, the masses have zero faith that CCP is either working or will solve these problems. Man, I wish you had spent thirteen years of your life living under communism, like I did. You'd have a different perspective on CCP.
Have We Hit The Top?
in General Discussion
Posted
You are not offending anyone. It is a very good question, and yes, 100% my fault, and nobody else's.