ERICOPOLY

You're welcome Planet Earth.

I need some help here on how to explain away Q2 GDP if it comes in at 4%. Shall we just say it's due to the weather? This year is warmer than average.

Do you mind posting the list? Unfortunately I'm not at liberty to post the list publicly, but Wrister's screener works as well. To Ericopoly, yes you can easily screen out companies that return their capital to shareholders and generate these high returns. Screener.co can do most of this stuff and they're fairly inexpensive and international. Their data is pulled via CapIQ. Thanks for the screener.co tip. I believe what I'm thinking about is a function that would serve the purpose of giving us the proper mix of variables to screen on. Okay, so it works like this: You tell it that you like companies with 20% ROE, a 15x P/E, and a 20% payout ratio. So you have it graph that across all combinations of ROE, P/E and Payout Ratio. It would be essentially a three dimensional function. It would find you, for example, the right combination of P/E and Payout Ratio to screen for if you wanted to know the equivalents given a 10% ROE. Therefore, you could generate a bigger list of candidates to pick over. Theoretically, you may improve your returns if the lower ROE companies are out of favor amongst stock screeners. Call it a three-dimensional "equivalency" function.

Stated differently, do you make more money from company A or company B? A: 10% ROE with 100% payout ratio B: 20% ROE with 100% payout ratio Given that you purchase either at identical P/E. Okay, then change payout ratio to 0%. It makes a world of difference.

I am seeing 213 companies with >20% ROE & <20 PE with US traded stock. A few large caps that fit the bill: AAPL MSFT WMT IBM ORCL UTX MCD BA MO DEO LMT ACN I am using CapitalIq The screen is less meaningful when a large percentage of earnings are returned to shareholders. For example, if 99% of earnings are returned, then only 1% are retained and theoretically compounded at the 20% ROE rate. So I should think the screen could be tweaked to filter for this.

Sure. A "high" minimum wage would be wrong. Rather, a "living wage" as the minimum. That is the absolute lowest value wage possible to keep the person healthy, rested, and cleanly dressed -- coming in to work each day to fullfil the basic needs of the corporation (cleaning toilets, mopping floors, stocking shelves).

Perhaps that is 100% accurate. I take it the Republicans think that a continuation of this corporate welfare state is the best path forward? You can't have small businesses without corporate welfare. They cannot survive in the free market, thus you have to make payroll for them. Plain and simple. That's their position? Stated differently, the Democrats' social programs for the working poor are keeping small business afloat -- that's the Republican party line?

So my main point is that: A) First, Walmart figured out how much government assistance is available for "working poor". B) Second, they pay the bare minimum to "bump up" that assistance to the level where their workers can afford the bare minimum combination of food/housing/clothing/medicine This is a recipe for bubble profits! It relies entirely on government aid to help them make payroll. The way to fix it would be either: 1) remove all government subsidies and wait for Walmart workers to begin dropping dead. The free market will then begin to work once Walmart realizes that they need to pay their workers enough to keep them alive. So that's obviously a very ugly path from a humanitarian standpoint. ... or instead ... 2) raise the Federal minimum wage and phase out all of the subsidies for the "working poor". It's called a "living wage", so live on it! And yes, that includes getting rid of progressive taxation, because that's yet one more way that corporations are able to pay lower wages to the lower income strata of society. In fact, the steeper the progressive taxation, the more income disparity you should expect. The government subsidies consist of: progressive tax rates tax credits low income housing programs food stamps etc... All of those programs (combined with a low Federal minimum wage) lead to excessive profits at Walmart. It's a bubble if the profits rely on government largess, and not on free market economics.

There would be less "income inequality", but that's because cash wages are regarded as "income" but not the value of food stamps. So if you remove food stamps, tax subsidies, rent subsidies, etc.... and replace dollar-for-dollar with cash income (aka "living wage")... then they cannot afford more stuff. They just get by exactly as they are doing now in terms of what they can consume... The only change therefore is that instead of it being tacked onto the government deficit, it gets expensed by Walmart as payroll expense. The wealthy would shop less at Tiffany -- or would they??? Perhaps we keep the government deficit the same, and instead cut taxes a bit. Who pays most of the taxes? The wealthy.

I was reading this on my phone, and thought it was a very asute analogy. Was really wondering who posted it, now it all makes sense. .... Good to hear from you Myth.

I decided that Walmart is a bubble stock. It's at 15x earnings and those earnings are inflated by government welfare programs. Essentially, they pay less than a living wage, then the government buys food for their employees "the working poor", and the Walmart shareholders pocket the difference. Not sure when that market distortion is going to end. It would take a big political change to get the federal minimum wage raised up to the "living wage" level. That would be the level at which Walmart would be feeding and clothing their own workers, rather than having the government essentially make payroll for them. But I dunno... those kinds of obvious bubbles can go on for a long time.

Now, has anybody made any such claim? I continue to maintain my argument that it's a bit delusional to assert that the lunar landings were faked.

They can panic the other way. That's what people did in the late 90s. "Gotta buy now before it goes up more!" The economy has also already adjusted to their cash-hoarding ways. As you suggest, they can spend their cash on things/assets. It's a better problem than worrying about them selling things/assets in order to have cash.

Why do see this one as a positive? Gio It's not like they can hit the "sell" button in a panic. Sell my cash! Sell it all now!

Mohnish is the man! San Juan, Puerto Rico will be awesome! Much better than going to Omaha.

Not really a trick. In my example above, for instance, any being that would punish someone for not taking something on faith really is an asshole. Why would you worship such a being? The common answer is that he is all powerful, but do you really simply worship power? I don't care how powerful it is if it's an ass. rkabang, Your willingness to stand with your convictions will be what saves your soul. There is not much room in heaven, so an elaborate test has been set up to see who has true courage of conviction. You pass. Those who worship out of fear will be judged as cowards, as sycophants, and thus fail the test. It's entirely possible. Maybe, maybe not. Nobody really knows.

I do this in a portfolio margin account. I won't get a margin call if SHLD collapses and I get assigned, because the BAC position is hedged with a put. I will temporarily have a margin loan utilized to own the SHLD shares. Let's say you have religious reasons why you cannot have a margin loan. Fine, then sell the SHLD shares and replace them by writing in-the-money puts with the same strike that you started out with before you got assigned.

I take it there is a 3 day settling period and then the shares are delivered. meaning you'd sell your other holdings to finance buying the SHLD shares ? so in order for this strategy to work you are finding a cheap, cheap stock that the probability of hitting the strike is acceptably low... (?) Why would I need to sell holdings that are protected by puts?

I take it there is a 3 day settling period and then the shares are delivered.

The guy who sold you the puts could very well be sitting on a large concentrated position that he wants to hold onto for tax purposes only, but would otherwise like to diversify his downside risk. So he purchases at-the-money puts to diversify his downside risk, and he write puts on a diversified group of names that he does not otherwise have a position in. The premiums collected from the naked puts he writes are used to fund the puts he purchases as insurance. So he he moves his previously concentrated risk into a basket of other names. Don't assume he is running on a very thin line. It may be completely the opposite -- he was on a thin line before with his concentration, and now he is being very conservative.

Everything is awesome, everything is cool when you're part of a team!

Thanks. That was really good.

I've bought into the argument that the only way to force Walmart off it's government subsidies is to raise the Federal minimum wage. Their workers are not getting by on Walmart's wages alone, they also get subsidies (like foodstamps) from the government. Thus, the government is pushing Walmart's profits up by taking on part of the cost of keeping their workforce alive. So if you force them to pay a living wage, you can then take the workers off of government assistance.

Regarding a completely free market: Under such a system are the owners personally liable for the errors/debts of the corporation? So no more legal protection behind the corporate veil? I think some regulations are meant to deter the kinds of behaviors that limited liability would tend to encourage. So I'm wondering... to get rid of the regulations, you also need to get rid of the corporate legal protections. Then you have a free market. But under such a system, things like oil drilling would be too risky without the corporate legal protections. So certain things simply would no longer get done. So could such a system even exist successfully?

You also need to eliminate the "limited liability" legal protections granted to corporate owners (by government) before you can possibly have a free market. So I'm skeptical of the possibility of a free market. You would need less offshore drilling regulation, for example, if the investors were personally responsible for cleaning up every drop of oil spilled. Instead, they are only liable for the equity they have invested in the company. This invites regulation upon them -- because if their financial liability is limited, then they will cut corners if they can. That's why there are people who feel the need to heavily regulate them. Sure, regulations have costs. They pay these costs instead of paying for the full price of their mistakes. That's the present system. I guess we have this system because nobody would go out there and drill otherwise without the limited liability protection.