beerbaron

Anybody has a copy of that 1970 Essay by Soros? BeerBaron

Ha ha, I used to hitchhike home from the airport all the time! I'm so cheap that even when my employer is paying I take the cheapest thing on the menu. I'm so cheap that when I was 20 Years old. I went back home from the video store to get some change because I did not want to break a 50$ bill. I'm so cheap that when I eat lunch I can eat under 5$ most of the time. I recently found out why I don't really like to travel. Because the pain of having useless expenses is greater than the pleasure of being in vacation. The above applies to almost anything I buy. However, I'm not cheap when it comes to having friends and family over tough, good food and good booze makes people happy to come back another time. BeerBaron

It depends on how you interpret it. If the markets are overvalued by 50% that would mean a possible 33% drop, 70% would mean a 42% drop... BeerBaron

How about chocolate and insurance? Stamps and textile?

Yes, when they are parked at the airport it shows all over the air traffic controller's screeen, fillin up their screen of unecessary planes and confusion. BeerBaron

At one point I was going to write to my government representative to complain. SEDAR and SEDI are 1996 developped sites and maintained at a price for tax payers of about 5M a year. This is overpaid for something I could do in my basement in a week's work. BTW, you can buy shares of the company that manages SEDI and SEDAR. BeerBaron

The following are a bit scary: China added 5.9 billion square metres of commercial buildings between 2008 and 2012 – the equivalent of more than 50 Manhattans – in just five years! Assuming 25% of China's worker are working in an office that would mean about 10 square meter per worker that has been added. I wish I had 10 square meter for my personal office. BeerBaron

If I remember properly it was you watsa that was you that brough the SHLD call/put disparity. BeerBaron

If you buy calls and sell putts you are basically taking a long position without putting up any capital. It's a nice way to leverage at low cost and plus sometime it can be more advantageous than buying the stock. I have seen cases where you could take positions SHLD and you would get 100% the upside and 60% of the downside because the calls were so cheap relative to the puts. It usually happens when the shorts are financing themselves by selling lots of calls. Beware tough, options because illiquid as the stock moves out of the strike. Does not matter if you plan to hold until expiration but if you like to trade often you might have bad surprises. BeerBaron

What a fantastic investment, this deal will have made BRK 4-5 times it's money plus interest on the preferred. Berkshire has one major equity position that is not included in the table: We can buy 700 million shares of Bank of America at any time prior to September 2021 for $5 billion. At yearend these shares were worth $10.9 billion. We are likely to purchase the shares just before expiration of our option. In the meantime, it is important for you to realize that Bank of America is, in effect, our fifth largest equity investment and one we value highly BeerBaron

For a refresher on thermodinamics I would recommend the Carnot cycle. A simple carburettor cannot increase the mileage 10 fold. I recommend reading this simple citations from Wikipedia. Again I think I'm wasting my breath because it's impossible to argue against people that believe in conspiracies. In general terms, the larger the difference in temperature between the hot source and the cold sink, the larger is the potential thermal efficiency of the cycle. On Earth, the cold side of any heat engine is limited to being close to the ambient temperature of the environment, or not much lower than 300 Kelvin, so most efforts to improve the thermodynamic efficiencies of various heat engines focus on increasing the temperature of the source, within material limits. The maximum theoretical efficiency of a heat engine (which no engine ever attains) is equal to the temperature difference between the hot and cold ends divided by the temperature at the hot end, all expressed in absolute temperature or kelvins. The efficiency of various heat engines proposed or used today ranges from 3 percent[4] (97 percent waste heat using low quality heat) for the OTEC ocean power proposal through 25 percent for most automotive engines[citation needed], to 45 percent for a supercritical coal-fired power station, to about 60 percent for a steam-cooled combined cycle gas turbine.[5] All of these processes gain their efficiency (or lack thereof) due to the temperature drop across them.

Here is the official answer to the question: Is Bitcoin a safe store of value? [glow=red,2,300]NO[/glow]

Good luck with that: http://www.snopes.com/autos/business/carburetor.asp http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/712/has-a-200-mpg-carburetor-been-suppressed-by-the-oil-industry Guys, being in the manufacturing business I can tell you all those stories about "invention X" that was killed by a big company do not fly with what I see. It also does not fit with the game theory aspect of it. A market disruptive idea can go two way: If it's invented by a dominant player in the industry that do not want to lose it's current business. This dominant player will go the path of least resistance: work on the idea a little bit, place a few patents and try to orchestrate a rollover over time. Think of Kodak that invented the digital camera. If it's invented by a wanna be player in the industry then the company will go full speed with the idea making it their strategic advantage. Think of... well any newcomer with a superior technology that moves all the other ones. Tesla being the most recent one I can think of. All in all, there are no magical solutions. All there is is a lot of brilliant minds competing to get the best ideas and make money from it. Capitalism works quite well for doing that. BeerBaron

They delisted from the NYSE in 2009. BeerBaron

A drug that can reduce all cancers as well as increase the body' ability to fight other ones. Seems too good to be true. BeerBaron

I have to disagree with the statement that it's a good move if FB is using shares. Taking taxes out of the picture it's exactly the same as issuing 235 Millions shares in the public market and paying cash. Just like when people claim buybacks done at high valuations are a crappy way of returning money, a share is worth X dollars no matter how you look at it. BeerBaron

What is whatsapp? Nobody i know ever heard of it.

I remember looking at this thing when it was a net net. You are bringing back memories. I also remember that the process they use to remove caffeine from the beans is pretty long and could not be scaled at a low cap-ex (They put the bean in water, remove the caffeine from the water, put the beans back into water and let dry). I passed because I tough it was going to be a high cap-ex business against competitors with much lower cap-ex. BeerBaron

FFH has been a drag on my portfolio for 4 years but to tell you the truth. Their prediction of deflation and huge stock market losses were not that far off it and could have gone both ways... it's been 5 years out of the recession and the developed economies grow in aggregate below 2%. Some would argue that we are not of the woods yet. Especially if we get another recession before we get rid of the malaise from the previous one. BeerBaron

You are in good company with Ridley, I think FFH owned a big share of the company. BeerBaron

The author smokes crack. Mortgage rates and real estate prices are correlated like any other asset in this universe. BeerBaron

I disagree. I'm in the 43% marginal bracket. Dear wife is in the 35%. We get a tax deduction on the RRSP contributions. Our marginal rates on withdrawals will be lower than our current rates. The difference in the marginal rates isn't the only benefit. A few decades of tax free compounding is worth a lot. Here's another way to look at it: An RRSP is a leveraged investment where the government supplies an interest-free loan in the form of the tax deduction. Both of you are right but not for the right reasons. 1st- Taking into account your marginal tax rate will stay the same it is should be better to put money into RRSP than into a taxeable account. However, this might not true if: Your compound rate is very high You keep your positions for a long long time Put the numbers in a spreadsheet and see for yourself with different scenarios. 2nd- In Canada when you retire, if you earn below 10 000$ (not sure exactly if it's 10 000$) amount your are entitled to a full Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS). Passed the 10 000$ every 1$ of income reduces the GIS by 0.5$. So if you don't make any money your maximizing the benefits and if you earn a lot of income the benefit become irrelevant. Anything in between and your are deprived of free money from de government. I remember doing the analisys and found out that I should stop putting money into my RRSP at 42 years old if my expected return was going to be 6% per annum. BeerBaron

Even if it were possible to bribe 300+ persons, 1M per athlete is not enough. Most of these athletes earn multi millions per year, why would they risk to lose it all for a fraction of that. Having this kind of wealth discourages corruption (this is the same reason Syngapore government pays it's leaders very well). Furthermore, even if one were able to bribe everybody it would not even be sure that they could pull off the score, after all they would have to make it look like they are really trying to compete. BeerBaron

This is where Kelly's forumla comes into play. Let's say you are playing head of tail. Head you win 3x the bet, tail you lose your bet. You have 10$ seed money. How much should you play? If you bet all the time all your money you will end up one day or another with a total loss. If you bet 1% of your net worth you will be compounding very slowly. Kelly's formula tells you the sweet spot where you can't lose everything but where you'll compound your money the fastest. BeerBaron

There was a big debate about the Kelly formula regarding wealth optimization VS hapiness optimization. Basically most people's unhapiness will be so bad if they lost 75$ that they will prefer the safe route. I suggest you read Fortune's Formula and Thinking Fast and Slow, they pretty much cover the whole subject. For me I would be ready to take favorable bets any seconds of my life if it represents less than 5% of my net worth. BeerBaron