rohitc99
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Posts posted by rohitc99
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2 minutes ago, BG2008 said:
Okay, I hope this would be interesting. It was buying the Peter Lynch Book One Up on Wall Street
I don't consider myself that bright. I'm a hard asset guy. People who met me in person know that I'm kind of a burly guy who's better at REITs and physical stuff.
The book was $7 or $10
But Peter Lynch talked about how rock pits are good businesses, it just kind of stood out. It was a very simple concept. Cost $10 a ton, cost $10 to truck it 30 miles etc.
In 2015, Patriot spins off the RE business which became FRP Holdings. I bought the stock at $30. Made it a 26% position and a huge position in my PA and told my family to buy it. Blackstone buys the warehouse for $359mm. The EV that I paid was $340mm but they still owned the MF and the rock pits and other cats and dogs. We made a double.
I also raised outside capital because of this idea.
Fast forward to 2020, Covid hits and FRP Holdings was trading at $40 but The Maren leased 45% of their units during Q2 of 2020. Holy Shit! They leased 45% when people were not allowed to view it? WTF? Made it an 18% position and raised some more capital.
In total, realized gains for my family and investors are likely closer to $2mm. Unrealized gains from the second investment in 2020 is around $4mm. These are gains from my own accounts and capital that I manage for others. The gains alone are double digit % of my current asset that I manage.
All of this from a book that Peter Lynch wrote about containing some little nuggets about rock pits.
Investing is funny like that. You get an insight that is timeless, i.e. rock pits are good business.
You get to know the assets, the management, the capital allocation, and the business. You can recycle the idea and come back.
+1
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1 hour ago, bizaro86 said:
Right. Rig count is down and production growth is down.
Rig count 2023 is 57% of Rig count 2018.
Production growth 2023 is 57% of production growth 2018.
Seems like productivity is similar to me.
You're correct that there is natural depletion of the existing production base, but that's very difficult to determine. I'd suggest that it's probably a very comparable number between the two years - production is higher now but the % decline is probably slightly lower as the production base is more mature than it was in 2018 so has lower decline.
thanks
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1 hour ago, bizaro86 said:
I understand what you're trying to do, but I think you're looking at the wrong data. In 2018 US oil production was 10.951 MMbbl/d. That was up from 9.357 MMbbl/d in 2017. So production increased ~1.6MM bbl/d in 2018.
By comparison, Sept 2023 production was 13.236 mmbbl/d compared to 12.325 mmbbl/d in Sept 2022. So production increased 0.9 MM bbl/d in the last year.
So production increased ~57% as much and the rig count was ~57% as high (using your numbers of 500 and 877). That doesn't seem like much of an argument in favor of increased efficiency to me.
two comments - 877 was the rig count in 2018 and 500 is now, so the rig count is down. so not sure if i am following your point
also will you not account for the well depletion which i think is 8% per annum?
again, not arguing against your point, but trying to understand if i am missing something
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14 hours ago, bizaro86 said:
You can't really compare rigs to overall production. If the rig count went to zero production would stay the same initially and then start declining at the rate of natural decline (varies by reservoir/pressure/stage of a well's life)
Rig count is better compared to growth/decline of production.
Fair point, but i am looking at the trend. Over a 5 year period, the number of rigs is reducing with production still growing. With shale wells, where the drop is high after year 1, wouldnt this number move proportionally at the same productivity level ?
point i am making is that the industry seems to be getting more efficient and may that explains why lower investments are still supporting the same or higher production
again this is just my guess and i dont have any special insight
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US oil production 2018 - 10951 thousand barrels/day
Rig count 2018 ~ 877
US oil production 2023 - 11,911 thousand barrels/day
Rig count 2023 ~ 500
oil production up by 9% while rig count is down 43% which means US shale is getting more and more efficient. my guess is that the assumption that we need the same $ for incremental production, where as the stats show that the industry continues to grow production at lower cost (for now). maybe this explains it ?
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Will dearly miss him. This quote from him got me through some of the toughest times in life
" You should never, when facing some unbelievable tragedy, let one tragedy increase into two or three through your failure of will.
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1 minute ago, ValueArb said:
I'm just saying it looks like a glut of space for both commercial and residential property leasing. I'm looking in Arizona, so your mileage may vary.
I've also noticed that used car pricing seems to have dropped significantly in the last couple months, I'm looking at some cars that are down 20% since they were put on the market and have been on the lots over 2 months. Not sure if that's just seasonal for cars and whether pricing will recover when tax refunds arrive.
thanks. i understand the commerical property glut. is this the case for residential in Arizona or do you think this is happening in other places too
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7 minutes ago, ValueArb said:
I'm looking at rental properties and it seems like they are all being discounted over rents they were asking just a couple months ago. Gonna be a tough couple years for the entire industry from commercial to residential.
if you dont mind, can you elaborate more ?
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8 hours ago, mattee2264 said:
https://futurism.com/economist-ai-doomed-bubble
Article above pours a bit of cold water on some of the hype. Basic criticism is that LLMs learned to write before they learned how to think and while they can string words together in convincing ways they have no idea what the words mean and are unable to use common sense, wisdom or logical reasoning to distinguish truth from falsehood. And as a result they are unreliable. And dangerously so because they are programmed to sound so confident and convincing.
In another essay Smith and Funk recall the "Eliza effect" a 1960s computer program that caricatured a psychiatrist and convinced many users that the program had human-like intelligence and emotions. And we are vulnerable to this illusion because of our inclination to anthropomorphize. So in many ways Chat GPT and the like are just another example of pseudo intelligence.
It reminds me a little of well of the way that parents have a tendency to extrapolate thinking just because their kid does something semi-intelligent he will grow up to be a genius.
In the same way the argument seems to be "Well it is 2023 and already these AI models can write college-grade essays and do high school math. So by the end of the decade AI will be capable of doing most jobs better than humans with unimaginable productivity benefits"
But the history of AI shows that what tends to happen is that a brick wall is reached and then there is an AI winter that can span decades.
And the scary thing is that because of FOMO Big Tech companies not to mention all the VC funds and so on are going to invest billions and billions with very uncertain returns.
Perhaps they will make money out of it at least in the early days because if enough consumers and companies believe in AI they will want to buy the AI products even if they aren't really that game-changing and prove to be unreliable. And the illusion is very strong. But the problem with fads is that while you might buy a fad product once, you aren't likely to be a repeat buyer, and to justify the massive investment it needs to become a recurring revenue stream.
The argument being made is for general intelligence ? or AGI and i think no one thinks we are there yet. However even with the current capabilities, there are a few emerging use cases which can improve productivity for sure
for example, my kids use ChatGpt as a tutor and they are finding it very useful often better than TA in college.
so even if these models are not disruptive, they are definitely useful in a narrow use case as they stand today. Add multi modal capabilties and ongoing enhancements, and its quite possible it help in improving productivity
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20 minutes ago, rkbabang said:
There won't ever be an "end of work". There might be an "end of the need to work", but that is a very different thing. People will work at things they want to work at, even when they don't have to. There are million things I wish I had time for that I don't do because I have a job.
Sure some people will just lock themselves in a dark room and play video games all day, others will spend the day nodding off with a needle in their arm, but many people will remain busy, will build things, will invent things, etc....
+ 1
so true and it describes so many of the millionaires and billionaires today
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A lot of current debate also assumes current set of needs, but we have seen humans have unlimited wants. i am sure we will find something new. also the level of global proverty is still quite high. just taking billions of people out of it with lesser resources should be a net positive
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7 minutes ago, Gregmal said:
I just have a hard time finding an actual metric that really portrays this though because the definition of “better off” is varying. Do you own a house. If yes, the answer will likely be vastly different than if you don’t. How old are you? Older, you’re probably way better off than if you’re younger. Over 3 years though, for most people, it just seems incredibly hard NOT to be substantially better off considering 1) more years of wages accumulating(even if not exactly the same in real terms), 2) mortgage and debt pay down, 3) closer to the retirement finish line and subsequent 401ks/pensions/whatever most have building up with tax advantage contribution and company match.
From the ages 20-50 or so it should actually be incredibly difficult not to achieve positive annual net worth growth mainly because of the low base starting point, forced savings, company match, and then kicker if the investment vehicles do well. By this measure one would be way better off, especially after 3 years.
We actually just had this sort of thing at an HOA meeting and the whiny residents complained about a 4% due increase. I then pointed out the dues are rising for the same reasons your home is, and asked if anyone thinks 4% due increase is a fair trade for (just an example) 4% home appreciation….lot of those grumps then felt stupid because obviously the home value is six figures and the monthly dues are 3. Which leads back to the “better off” thing. Are we really not better off just because the same brand of chips is $2 a bag more and our insurance went up $500 annually? Or say the home went up 30% in 2021, went down 5% in 2022, and is flat in 23 but the $350 monthly dues in 2020 are now $500? Maybe taxes went up 15% too…We really getting pinched there? Like come on.
but then where's the fun if you can't complain and whine
even if you are better off by objective measure ?
I think morgen housel's recent podcast covers some of this paradox. we can be better off ourselves, but dont feel good if the elon musks or jeff bezos of the world have 100s of billions
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if this works, it would be great. ofcourse fusion has always been 40 years away
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3 hours ago, Viking said:
Balanced summary of how messed up Canadian / Indian relationship is.
well laid out. If an indian citizen, is agitating for something, atleast that has some reasoning behind it. If a non citizen supports a movement in some other country based on his faith, funds violence and uses its domestic leverage, what do you call him ? we know what the US calls them
Its easy to see this through a western lens as this article is also, but you have to know the history of the past 50 years to understand the context. There have been regular bombings and shooting by islamic terrorist and ofcourse this. All the representation etc was of no use because India had no economic weight and could be ignored
Now some of these governments are being forced to face up to it because they cannot ignore it as the article says so
There is a lot of good will between the citizens of the two countries. Hope it doesn't go down the drain in the future
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39 minutes ago, ICUMD said:
Fascinating accusations. Let's see how the drama teacher does in this game of chess. First play: publically accuse a foreign country of crimes with no evidence and show unequivocal public support for a militant separatist movement.
There is a very long history behind this movement. Have family members from that part of India and it was horrible when this movement was at its peak. A lot of people were killed in the violence during the 80s on both sides. People have very dark memories of that era and any sign of it getting revived is going to create a lot of angst
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Add to the fact that general elections are around the corner in India and overall history of being looked down upon by the west in the past. Even if accusations are true, there is no reason to do this discreetly unless you are pandering to some vote bank
Cant see an easy out for both parties now
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26 minutes ago, cwericb said:
So when a natural disaster strikes effecting millions of people and evacuation orders are in place....? If that happens to me, my car is in my driveway with a tank full of gas. While you are trying to call an Uber, but the cell towers are down and poles and trees block or partially blocking many roads and the power is out. Good luck...
thats why i said that instead of 3 cars, people keep 1 or 2 cars for such eventuality. anyway outside of north america, a lot of people already follow this model. have 1 or 2 cars and use public transport which is being replaced by uber and other ride sharing
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But it can always be incremental ? instead of 3 cars, maybe have 1 or 2 cars/ family. also with EV + Autonomous, number of driven miles on owned car comes down which means owners have the same cars longer.
Car then becomes like an insurance or high end cars for pleasure
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48 minutes ago, Gregmal said:
If the recession doesn’t unfold, what’s the backdrop? An environment where the consumer is healthy, prices still steadily declining, employment strong and wages moving up, along with rate cuts probably 6-12 months out. That seems bullish to potentially wildly bullish.
Rates went up to “fight inflation” and as inflation is done you better believe the Fed will acknowledge the harm it’s doing to the average citizen as far as housing goes so you won’t need “something really, really bad” to occur for rate cuts, which is what the academics are preaching…frankly I think they start cutting q1/2 2024 which will tank mortgage rates.
Many of the negatives and naysayers are wayyy too academically oriented and relying on first level logic such as “every time this has happened, such and such has happened”(which totally ignores what is happening in the real world in favor of the textbooks) but this is plainly poor logic simply because markets do evolve and especially in todays era of information, much more quickly than folks think. Like everyone was and has been prepared for higher rates since what? 12-18 months ago? Corporations already wisely termed out debt. We were assured inflation would cripple profits and instead they are now expending margins. Think we just need to be flexible mentality and eb and flow with how things unfold.
+1
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17 minutes ago, LC said:
What tools do you use to review the indian markets? Both at a high level (screeners) and for individual company financials/filings?
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1 hour ago, Gregmal said:
Anyone got a good stick a fork in it meme? This was only June. Wait til July and August prints come in. Once we start seeing the moderation in housing which started last August...still wondering why we rallied?
you are proving to be right on inflation
and before that covid's impact on the market. thats 2 for 2 , please keep going
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The funny thing is i get to hear about their views of US from my family in India and they assume that there are shootings all the time, everywhere. There is a fire or hurricane or some craziness in Washington all the time
Ofcourse the amazing amount of innovation and work never gets reported. and most people have normal lives and go about their day
Same for india - only the drama gets reported. the conflict with pakistan is more like a proxy fight between india and china now and hardly impacts the economy or the day to day life
The key change most indians have yearned for is access to better quality of life which is now improving very rapidly at the ground level. for years, nothing happened and now whenever i visit, i can see change. In the past, emigrating to the west was a ticket to a better life. That started changing 10 yrs back and i know a lot of bright people feel staying put and doing a startup is a better option
that said, tolerance in the society is down for sure
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The amount of infrastructure build out happening in india is enormous. Metros in 70+ cities, highways, bridges, airports, railways, electrification. Water for all. There is a lot which is happening which is not reported in the media in the west which is still backward looking
you can check some of the infrastructure companies in the country to see how they are doing to get a feel
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5 hours ago, RetroRanger said:
I still dont understand why India seems to be the solution to everything. Despite beeing democratic, there are a lot of conflicts in the country ( religious, fraud and corrupt politicans and institutions, murdered politicans) . They have their own unresolved Taiwan with Pakistan. That is still unresolved and in the 70s their was some atomic testing to provoce each other.
Also the country has big problems with labor. Because of their huge population they need many talent by their own, but the skilled once migrate elsewhere or are used for foreigner treatment ( good doctors prefer international people ).
I currently read many books on India and this is a country that never has been very stable ( partly thanks to UK .... ) ! Perhaps i am underestimating the potential, but there is still a lot to proof and a lot to happen to make India work ( as a country and therefore stable partner ).
Why does India have to be a solution for anything. Like all other countries, they are doing what is best for them (finally !!)
They have done ok in the past inspite of all kinds of bad policies and all no existent infrastructure.
I am from India, grew up there and moved to the US 20 yrs back. Still have my roots there and visit quite often. Not sure what the country not being stable means ? 70+ years of democracy, no coups, people get to vote. freedom of speech and action (maybe not as much as some countries in the west)
Somehow the view from far appears more chaotic than the reality.
Aswath Damodaran's investment picks and returns?
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by rohitc99
Why do his returns matter ? he is teaching and not managing money. we can learn whatever makes sense to us and discard the rest