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cman

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Everything posted by cman

  1. oh yes, i should add that no other fund assets would be erisa assets
  2. Thanks for all the responses. Let's take another stab at it... So there are 3 issues here: 1) UBTI (smallest issue) 2) Prohibited transaction (deal breaker for the IRA) 3) ERISA trigger (deal breaker for the partnership) Here is what I am thinking, is it doable? I want to put X into the fund, of which 40% is IRA money and 60% cash. Outside investors will put in 10X. 1) Seed GP with cash. 2) Seed fund with additional capital from the IRA so as to be 100% aligned with partners. The work around would be to a) invest in the LP not GP and b) waive all fees to eliminate the appearance of a prohibited transaction where you skim fees out of the IRA (forget exactly what they term this). However, to accomplish this, must these LP units be a different class? And if they are a different class and they are 100% of that class, does that violate the 25% ERISA rules. These rules don't make a lot of sense, by the way. In the name of preventing a few tax cheats they are prohibiting legitimate capital formation and disincentivizing alignment of interest between fund managers and their partners. Back to UBTI... does anyone know if it is based on gross or net leverage in the case of a hedge fund? I've not found a single piece of info on this. Thanks
  3. Hi all, question. I know it is possible to invest IRA assets into a partnership, but there are UBTI implications. Is investing IRA assets into a partnership that you control a prohibited transaction? Does the distinction of investing the assets into the LP vs. GP units matter? Essentially i am wondering if one can invest their own IRA assets into the formation of an investment partnership/ hedge fund. thanks
  4. Moore_Capital Can you post more info on Erez Kalir of Sabretooth? We've trafficed in quite a few of the same obscure stocks so I'm curious about them... Thanks cman
  5. who cares how he spends it? he's rich. and he gives a ton to charity.
  6. can someone post the wsj article "Berkshire's New Hire Bears Shades of Buffett" it wasnt in the paper journal today, only online.
  7. Wall financial - anyone know them? Supposedly shrewd, but with condo developments to sell
  8. hello all. it is absolutely clear that there is a housing bubble in vancouver that will result in tears. so i have a few questions for the canadian's on the board: 1) which companies are making tons of money thanks to currently high prices? home goods retailers, real estate brokerages, construction firms, furniture stores/manufacturers, local high-end restaurants/retailers? 2) which companies have balance sheet exposure to real estate prices? thanks!
  9. invest here and you are likely to lose 100% of your capital. my 2c
  10. I just bought a large house at 65% of replacement cost with 30 year money at 4.625% and 3.01% after tax Here is the right way to think about it 1) is replacement cost going up or down? 2) are funding costs going up or down? 3) is demand going up or down? Over 20 years the population will grow by say 25%+ Over 20 years inflation will boost replacement cost by 50%+ (this is ultra conservative) over 20 years my funding cost will stay constant Under what scenario can I possibly do badly? For those who say one where rates go to 20% I would suggest to you that replacement cost will likely go up at 5-15% compounded in that scenario, the alternative option to build new vs buy existing will be massively unattractive from a cost and financing perspective and oh by the way most rental properties are financed at variable rates not fixed so the major alternative to home ownership will be very costly Oh yeah and I am living well for 20+ years
  11. This is nicely sums up my argument: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303491304575188352960427106.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines&mg=com-wsj synthetic cdo requires both long and short positions; the main premise of the suit is totally asinine and easily refuted by a 12 year old Obama has learned a lot from his pal chavez! Sam Zell sure is right about political risk in the US.
  12. I find this charge to be outrageous political thuggery. If you read closer, this is not a CDO but a synthetic CDO. With a synthetic CDO the underlying securities are not mortgage bonds but credit default swaps. I buy cds indexed against certain reference securities and the premiums I pay for insurance go toward paying the yield on the cdo to the investors. Therefore it is 100% impossible for the investing parties to be unaware there was a short side of the trade. The real criminals are the stupid investors stretching for an extra few pennies of yield- they deserved to lose money on the trade. Just because some young kid sends out stupid boastful emails to friends doesn't mean fraud was committed. This deal was obviously cherry picked because it looks bad and it involves GS (deutsche bank was the main player in this market and there is no doubt they've done more questionable stuff). With that said, GS and other banks did shameful things in the creditj boom, but so did the politicians running GSEs, speculators flipping houses and familiesnof modest means purchasing McMansions and investors fueling the boom with dumb money.
  13. before celebrating, dig into the financials a bit deeper and examine the accruals and working capital reductions used to generate a profit and free cash flow. looks like it ain't sustainable.
  14. twacowfca, cookie jar reserving is accounting fraud. if your goal is to show ever increasing progress then in an abnormally good quarter you skim off some of the gains and save them for the future when you need them to sustain the momentum. the reason you do this is to keep the hype and the story going in the event a secondary offering is needed so execs can sump their shares on the public or to add some cash to the balance sheet buying more time for the business to prove itself. people on this board are ignoring obvious warning signs. ostk is at a minimum a sketchy company that is a highly speculative investmetn that doesnt provide a margin of safety. it is a short seller's target because the business model is bad (generates no income, cash or book value growth) and the management team is nutty. don't compare ostk to ffh just because they were both targeted by shorts at one point. ffh is a real business that makes money and grows book value. ostk has never turned a profit and instead has a growing accumulated deficit of $268mm. and i don't buy the argument that when the time is right they will make money. good companies are profitable or cash flowing even as they are in their early growth stages (e.g. google).
  15. i am surprised people on this site are so devoted to byrne. his own father quit his board. who knows what the truth is but time will tell and i think the facts indicate that it is more likely than not that ostk has committed accounting fraud. this is not short seller manipulation, this is accounting manipulation. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1130713/000110465909066580/a09-34089_2ex16d1.htm
  16. hmmm... missed the window... can someone try to post the highlights of the notes since they are no longer posted? thanks
  17. cost basis in wfc up 277m since q2
  18. another interesting situation is pnc. its in between usb and wfc in terms of risk, but as cheap as wfc on earnings a few years out. the deposit franchise is lower quality than wfc (but still good), but they have much better fee businesses and a large stake in blackrock. once the credit cycle goes back to normal they will be able to earn 8 or 9 and wfc will earn 4 or 5. assuming the low end and a 14x multiple and pnc is a $112 stock and wfc is a $56 stock.
  19. ALGT is an interesting airline. airlines are bad businesses because its a commodity product, there are low barriers to entry and high barriers to exit. ALGT is intersting because they focus on small towns where they have no competition.
  20. Does anyone on this board have any experience here? Say I want to form a partnership with outside LPs, can I invest my existing cash from an IRA into the GP? Is this legal? Are there any specific brokerages that either do or do not allow this? Are there special custodial fees etc? Also, does anyone have a rough estimate for the legal fees involved in getting a small time partnership up and running? Thanks!
  21. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Bank-of-America-Announces-prnews-15368817.html?.v=1 any other holders of the BAC series E tempted to just sell rather than wait for that extra $1 of arb spread
  22. i am sorry guys but ostk was (is) a good short and a bad long. its not a good business and the ceo is nuts.
  23. An update. Many of the preferreds discussed on this board have proven to be very profitable investments thus far. In particular, I have been a fan of the WFC L, PNC L, USB L and BAC E. Those are all up a lot, but I will continue to hold to avoid taxes and because the weighted average yield on my preferred portfolio is still ~10% vs. the 1% in my Schwab checking account. As for the BAC, I believe that the best thing that could happen is that the government forces BAC to convert preferreds to common in the manor required of C. The C's are trading at 70 cents with an arb spread of an additional 18 cents (although there is an ongoing C short squeeze) vs. the BAC E at 38 cents. I have been adding to another holding recently: the USB H. This is a fixed/floating issue that has just started moving up a bit. It trades at $13.44 with a paltry 6.5% yield (I bought around $11.25 and would not add to the position unless it fell back to that range). However, if you believe that rates will be materially higher in the future, this is a nice hedge as the floating yield is max 3.5%, L + 60. USB will never call the security because of the low spread. At 54 cents on the liquidation preference dollar with USB being a strong issuer, there is a hefty margin of safety here.
  24. Interesting to hear Chanos say he has been buying up financial preferred stocks on cnbc today.
  25. so seriously... how can the l series preferred still trade at just 56 cents when the j series trades at 70 cents and the citi's preferreds trade at 70 cents??? the l has a 1.9% greater yield.
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