nodnub
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Posts posted by nodnub
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ads for investing in League Group projects have been following me around the web for months.
Now they are restructuring under CCAA. I wonder how this will end for all the mom and pop investors involved?
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Bill Poorvu (HBS/Baupost) has some good books. I enjoyed 'Real Estate Game' and the case study book. I believe Poorvu was the HBS professor who tapped Klarman to run Baupost.
yup, the "po" in Baupost stands for Poorvu.
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(By the way -- this article I assume is saying that the man's equity in the home is under $5k right?? If he owned the home outright, and had a tax lien for $5000 including fees, they'd sell the house and he'd get the proceeds from the sale minus $5k right??)
Wrong. The article states clearly that people with paid-off houses can lose their house to a tax lien investor over a small unpaid tax bill. Mostly cases where person is destitute and cxant pay taxes or has dementia and doesn't understand the tax lien process and tax lien sale. n It also explicitly states that in these jurisdictions in question that the lien buyer has the right to keep all sale proceeds in excess of the tax lien amount. It's a pretty exploitive situation.
It is worth reading the entire article, it's very interesting. Made me want to throw up a bit.
Read an interesting thing about the bidding process in thr related article on tax lien bid rigging. Worth reading that as well.
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I might be a tech guy, but I'm cheap. I wait until I get home and use the home phone to make most calls. My cell is very rarely used. I'd say less than 10 people have the number and they know that if they call it I most likely will not answer, because I keep the ringer off. My cell phone is for me to use when I need to, not for people to get in touch with me.
that is exactly how I use my cell phone as well. :)
For my own convenience, not for others.
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beerbaron
Here's a Canadian CC with no FX conversion charges: https://www.chase.com/online/canada/amazon-ca-foreign-transactions.htm
We will bill you in Canadian Currency if you use your account to make a transaction in foreign currency. We will
convert it into Canadian currency at the exchange rate set by Visa International in effect at the time we post the
transaction to your account. This exchange rate may be different from the rate in effect on the transaction date.
We will not charge you any additional foreign currency conversion charge.
This is from the card agreement for the Chase Amazon card.
I'm pretty sure you are going to be paying a spread here.
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edit: I guess they just mean that the posting date (usually a couple days later) is the date they choose the exchange rate on. However, I read some analysis of something like this recently, where a bank was "optimizing" something like this so that the consumer always got the worst possible rate.
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you can drag them within iTunes, but perhaps you are talking about within the file system.
Yes, that is what I am talking about. To the OS my creative Zen just looked like a portable drive which I could copy to and from. I could also connect it in Linux and copy to and from. My ipod forces me to use iTunes (which is not available for Linux). I know there are ways to get around this, but when you start hacking into it, the file names are all messed up and put in multiple subdirectories, it just isn't easy to manage. And I hate iTunes.
yup. I dislike ipods for same reason. itunes software sucks IMO.
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I respectfully disagree on the ads platform. Facebook shows the ads which will earn them the most income. Perhaps you did not bid high enough given your target demographic, or perhaps your ad copy and image was not interesting to your target audience. If the clickthrough rate is too low on the first batch of test traffic then you will not get ads impressions, because they will display other ads which will make them more money.
Look into Sheryl Sandberg's current and previous positions if you have any doubts that Facebook will do well on selling ads.
I am a 36-year-old male and do check FB a few times a day.
I have also (on a few occasions) tried placing ads on FB, and will say that their ad submission/display process is currently awful (nowhere near as horrendous as Microsoft's bing ad platform, but that's a different subject..which I posted a while back in the MSFT thread). I basically tried to give Facebook money, and they had a hard time getting people to click the ads so they would make money. I look at this 2 ways: 1. They don't seem to have a very good understanding of selling ads, and this can continue to depress the company's earnings. 2. If they take a page from Google, and make their ad platform much more effective and user friendly, it seems like they can increase earnings from this alone.
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BRK is the ultimate stock for passive investors. Buy it. Request actual share certificates. Put the certificates in a safe deposit box.
Then, many years later, your surviving children will open the box and scream, "We're rich!"
I ran into a problem with this approach recently. My grandfather had purchased shares in Cominco for my mother when she was a young girl. I recently found the original share certificate in my mother's safe deposit box when I added a copy of my will. My mother had no idea that she should be doing anything with the certificate.
I contacted Teck Cominco Investor Relations about this share certificate and received the following reply:
Thank you for your inquiry to our website. Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada became Cominco Ltd. which merged with Teck Corporation to form Teck Cominco Limited in July 2001. Unfortunately shares of Cominco needed to be submitted for exchange prior to the 6th anniversary of the merger (July 20, 2007) or the shares were deemed surrendered. Following is the excerpt from the Plan of Arrangement.
“Pursuant to the terms of the Arrangement, any certificates formerly representing Cominco Common Shares that are not properly deposited with the Depository together with a duly completed and executed Letter of Transmittal and any other documents the Depository reasonably requires, on or before the sixth anniversary of the Effective Date, shall cease to represent a right or claim of any kind or nature and the right of the holder of such Cominco Common Shares to receive Teck Subordinate Voting Shares or any cash consideration shall be deemed to be surrendered for no consideration to Teck, together with all dividends or distributions thereon held for such holder.”
It doesn't seem right that the company can forfeit your shares and about 30 years worth of unpaid dividends, but there you have it.
file it under: "the dangers of leaving share certificates as a gift for the financially illiterate"
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i convinced my library to buy the first edition a few years ago so I could read it without buying it. After I read it I wished I had just bought a copy.
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Here is a link for nonsubscribers:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203686204577116853073660824.html
ruppert closed the infamous google news loophole.
NOPE, you just have to actually go through google news search
If the links above don't work for you... then try this http://www.google.ca/search?q=Ready+to+Try+On+Mr.+Buffett%27s+Shoes
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I am a bit confused as what is the difference between both examples? They both returned 30% in 2010 either though capital gains or dividends. It will be significantly difficult for scenario #1 to outperform scenario #2 over the long term especially since KO is able to increase it's dividend 7-10% YoY over the long term.
Scenario #1
You have a portfolio that returned 30% in 2010
Scenario #2
I am holding KO with a dividend yield based on initial cost of 30% in 2010
In scenario 1 the 30% return is calculated relative to the previous year value (recent value).
In scenario 2 the 30% yield is based on a cost basis that is from a long time ago (maybe share prices from 15 or 20 years ago).
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TD charges 1.5% between CAD and USD. TD Waterhouse can give you a better rate (below 1%) if you call them, but that's only for larger amounts (like 50k for example).
Anyone in Canada has a good way to converted between USD and CAD for smaller amounts (a few thousands)?
I was curious what BMO charges now, so last month I checked online. BMO quoted me a one-way spread of 0.9% on 14,000 CAD->USD. If you let them settle a fx trade automatically as a consequence of your order, (e.g. buy something on NYSE, but settle in CAD) then I think the spread may be higher (because who is really checking the spot rate at the exact time of the order, unless you settle the currency yourself).
Now I just arb anything over $10,000. It takes me a few minutes but I do it because I dislike paying bank-owned brokers a fat spread on principle. I find it particularly irritating when retail level small business bankers try to tell me that FX is a "free service... no charge". They are either idiots or liars.
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from the article:
A further complication is that much of Sino-Forest’s cash, and most of its assets, are located on the Chinese mainland. Foreign bondholders do not have direct security over the onshore assets, and may therefore have difficulty in recovering much money if the company defaults.This is not like buying bonds in a US based company. Good luck! LOL
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Small point. How about a button at the bottom of each page to return to the top of the page?
cwericb,
You may find the Home key on your keyboard useful. Pressing it will immediately take you to the top of webpage. (unless you are in an text edit box (composing a message or something), in which case it moves the cursor to the beginning of the current line of writing.
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thanks BXD, very interesting.
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okay,
but has anyone here used Google+ and actually liked it?
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Thanks for the link.
There's so many things wrong with that article I don't even know where to begin. As if showing the fact that gold has outperformed during the last decade is a rebuttle to the statement that gold has no utility.
I'd say the only valid argument against Buffett & gold that I can think of wasn't made in that article. That is, Buffett won't invest in gold because it has no utility, yet he has no problem owning in whole Borsheims, which just sells products with no utility. It's human nature to value rare, shiny things, whether it being jewelry or bars of gold.
As you say, buying shiny things is human nature. There is no utility in owning gold but there is plenty of utility in owning Borsheims. It's like having a toll bridge income on expected human behavior. I don't see any conflict with WEB's logic on gold.
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looks like there are some real smart folks making pension investment decisions. hahahaha
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I'm surprised that video calling is just 50% of skype's traffic. Voice calls are a few kb/s (depending on which protocol it uses, between 3 and 10) while video is probably at least an order of magnitude more than that, and even more for high-rez video.
I agree. This suggests that only a single-digit percent of total skype calls are utilizing video at this point.
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Well, being an actor/musician isn't always associated with business brilliance. ::)
Maybe he should stay to his core competencies.
So far Murdoch is the one who has egg on his face :)
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http://www.google.com/search?q=Betting+on+Bank+of+Microsoft
click the first search result to read the full article
I am thinking about switch my broker to IB. Any risks there?
in General Discussion
Posted
Are you talking about the $10/month fee?
If you look closely at other discount brokers you will usually find that you are paying more fees in other areas.
For instance a lot of discount brokers bake in 1.5% to 2% spread in their currency exchange rates on a one-direction exchange. If you change $10,000 USD to CAD just once during the year, then you will pay about $150-$200 in spread at just about every other discount broker (here in Canada at least). And you have to dig deep to find any reference to this (or observe it yourself by comparing with the spot market) they don't put out a big warning telling you that you are getting screwed on your occasional forex conversions.