compoundinglife
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Posts posted by compoundinglife
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I have been making some $ mining the alternative digital currencies that have come out in the bitcoin craze. I trade them for bitcoin and then trade the bitcoin for USD which then goes straight into my investment account. I try to hold the alternatives as little time as possible and then will hold the BTC for a day or so before converting to cash.
Do you have specialized hardware to mine or are these new cryptocurrencies still easy to mine with just regular cpus/gpus?
If you don't mind sharing, what kind of money have you made so far?
A good portion of the alternatives require you to do scrypt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrypt) instead of SHA-256 hashing. While supposedly there are ASICs being made to focus on this they are not wide spread. So it still makes sense to mine alot of the alternatives with a GPU. I would only do CPU if I was not paying for the power.
I have 6 GPUs that I setup last weekend and had pulling in around $25. However there is fairly popular coin at the moment which is easy to mine and I am getting around $100 a day with the 6 GPUs. A the moment it is worth while to do on Amazon. I am currently mining that on 14 EC2 GPU instances and pulling in around $350-$450 (depending on the market price when I sell for BTC) a day with an amazon bill of $223 a day. I could be making more by doing some strategic selling, for example the market price for the coin I am mining seems to go down quite a bit later in the evening. So I could avoid selling then and wait for the morning. However I almost always sell right away to ensure that I have covered my AWS spend for that time period. Also worth mentioning that my GPUs are ATI and the AWS GPUs are Nvidia. The Nvidia ones are not nearly as performant for this type of workload, I would be making much more if AWS had ATI GPUs.
I am doing it on "on demand" GPU instances which they limit to 5 per region. I am maxed out in 2 of the 4 regions that have them and have 4 in another region. I would be maxed out in all regions except there is not enough capacity available. Spot market prices for GPU instances are high enough that I don't feel there is enough margin of safety to try and get in on that.
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I have been making some $ mining the alternative digital currencies that have come out in the bitcoin craze. I trade them for bitcoin and then trade the bitcoin for USD which then goes straight into my investment account. I try to hold the alternatives as little time as possible and then will hold the BTC for a day or so before converting to cash.
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1 Yellow House; Norwegian, Water, Dunhill, Cats
2 Blue House; Dane, Tea, Blend, Horses
3 Red House; English, Milk, Pall Mall, Birds
4 Green House; German, Coffee, Fish
5 White House; Swede, Bier, Dogs
Did it in my head...but took me longer than I'd like to admit...... :-[
Jives with what I had. Not that it matters but the German smoked Prince and the Swede Blue Masters.
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I suppose the German has a fish?
I tried it in my head, but since English is not my mother tongue, but I only got halfway. I couldn't memorize all different terms sufficiently, so I needed a paper.
Is it correct?
I did it on paper and got the same answer. Not even close to doing it in my head :)
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I checked the Marmon website for information about the aquisition, and found basically the same information. [ link ]. Marmon was privately held and run out of Chicago before BRK's acquisition, so there are no BRK filings about it. So basically a European bolt on aquisition on a US BRK sub, still not fully owned by BRK. So I guess the aquisition has been agreed with the Pritzker Family Trusts.Here is the info on it. 1.1B purchase in the UK for vending machine related biz http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-16/imi-sells-dispenser-arm-to-berkshire-hathaway-for-1-1-billion.html
BRK owns 90% so I would imagine they don't need approval of the trust.
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Here is the info on it. 1.1B purchase in the UK for vending machine related biz http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-16/imi-sells-dispenser-arm-to-berkshire-hathaway-for-1-1-billion.html
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1. Swapping the shares for cash while keeping voting rights for said shares. Presumably to free up some cash in european accounts for something else?
I'm trying to stay tuned about what BRK and BRK subs are doing on this side of the Pond. I haven't seen anything material for long not already brought up and discussed on this board.
Munich Re position seems unchanged, there are no notifications of change of BRK position on Munich Re website.
But Marmon recently did some acquisition(s) in that area which is why I wondering if this was somehow a way to raise cash for that.
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Years back he launched "The Icahn Report" ( http://www.icahnreport.com/ ) website and newsletter but never really followed through with updates. I wonder if he will keep this one going.
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"This is not aimed at you personally, but why waste energy trying to figure out this stuff?"
Be reassured I do not take it personally...
The reason is the same as the one we spend all a lots of time finding undervalued securities.
While micro-managing its exposure to markets is almost impossible, history teaches us that you have long cycles pushing the markets from overvaluation to undervaluation and back up again.
As I said recently, US markets are currently priced to produce max 2% real total return in the next 10 years. This won't be 2% a year but more like 1 and probably 2 40% more decline followed by rallies. Small caps are likely to produce negative 3-4% return.
Why, in this case not simply hedge the beta portion of the portfolio with futures (which are the worst kind of asset, capitalization weighted...) and a plan. A plan like when we get to fair value for the market I cut half of the hedge and the other half when the 200 days moving average slope turns up again once fair value has been reached (which might be far below fair value). This is not My plan but just a oversimplified example.
Isn't Prem Watsa doing it?
According to what Prem said at the annual meting their hedging is a safety net that is required at the moment to give them flexibility. They don't want their business to be paralyzed (or worse) if the market declines significantly. Prem also stated that he would like to get to a point where their cash cushion is large enough that they could withstand the worst of times without hedges in place like Berkshire is able to do. Something to take into consideration.
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Thanks. I am not really familiar with swaps so I would appreciate if someone could correct me on this if I am wrong. But it basically sounds to me like he is:
1. Swapping the shares for cash while keeping voting rights for said shares. Presumably to free up some cash in european accounts for something else?
2. At expiration of the swap (jan 2015) he can undo the swap and get the shares back.
I assume he is paying the counterparty to carry the shares? Or is that settled at expiration?
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Ok, so it sounds like he did a cash equity swap. Did not find the actual filing from LSE but found an post via Google that actually explains the data on the filings. He can still vote the shares AFAIK. Assuming this is related to the recent Marmon Group acquisitions in Europe.
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"Stock market filings show that Mr Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway last week cut its holding in Tesco from 4.98pc to 3.98pc by offloading derivatives that represented 80m of the voting rights in the company."
Just looked at Edgar and did not see any filings related to this. Did he have Tesco related derivatives? I thought he just had stock, so maybe he sold some calls on this position?
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at some point there will be a blow up and BRK will clean up.
Absolutely, you can back it in. I get the impression that Jain's actions are the passive aggressive version of of NI's sharpening pencils
cheers
nwoodman
I did not know about ILS before reading that article. It sounds like it has the potential to be another manifestation of what happened with MBS and related instruments. Not saying it will but something I plan to learn more about and keep an eye on. Calling it "cycle killing" kind of sounds to me like "new normal". I really need to read more trade rags, lots of good stuff in there.
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I use HSA Bank. HSA Bank acts as trustee, and you can link it to an Ameritrade account.
Fees for HSA Bank are something like $2.50 a month base + $3.00 a month for investment account add-on. Fees are Ameritrade are standard fees. You can do options in the Ameritrade account the same way an IRA can do options (no margin). Not as cheap as IB, but best option I've see for an HSA.
I'm also using HSA Bank with Ameritrade. I researched the topic a couple of years ago and HSA Bank was the only HSA account option I could find where you could manage the investments yourself. Everything else was in mutual funds.
I use HSA Bank + TD Ameritrade as well. When I researched it a few years ago I found the same thing you did, they offer the only HSA account with standard brokerage features. I was really excited when I found out my employer was using HSA bank :) 36 percent gain so far this year on my HSA investments.
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Very interesting article. Thanks for posting!
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I think rather than try to wire up the Seattle meetup to the Internet, it would probably be better to just have COBF virtual meetup that is only attended online. Trying to wrangle an in person group meeting with a bunch of online attendees is a PITA. It works great for a lecturing setup, but if the focus is more group discussion I don't think the mix of an in person group and remote attendees is ideal. Keep the in person meetups "in person" and lets do a 100% virtual meetup in addition.
Sounds like most folks are fans of google hangout? How far out in advance should we try to schedule it?
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Thanks to everyone that attended the meetup. Thanks to GrizzlyRock for bringing some great conversation starters. We had 8 people total. I am going to shoot for another meetup in mid January. So feel free to throw out ideas for discussion topics, format, mental exercises etc...
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I'm up in the Bellingham area, but would like to attend if this is an on-going happening. I cover Industrials for our Company, but am broadly interested in almost any exchange of ideas. Seeing that I just happened upon this thread today, I surmise I am too late for tomorrow's meeting? Would love to be involved/participate in future meetings, though.
Thanks.
I was planning on doing it once a quarter. I will continue to update this thread with future dates. You are not too late for tomorrow's meeting, assuming you wanted to make the trek to Seattle. There is no cut off date. The event brite tickets are just a way for me to know how many people to expect. It might be a little crowded but I think we can figure it out.
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I'm up for the coffee and then up to your office, with perhaps bringing food up with us from the yard house or equivalent ? Don't mind having a transcript available but video of attendees I'm not fond of. Just my .02
I 2nd GVC...
Thanks for putting all of this together!
I am ok with not recording the meeting, I understand the desire of people to keep their face off the internet. I will also mention though that it is easy to avoid being on camera.
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I use one these at the office:
I love it. It is around 1k but it is the cheapest motor driven standing desk I have found. Assembly is a bit of PITA.
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Gents - I won't be able to attend this week (previously replied yes on the online invitation), but would be interested in any notes taken by attendees. Hopefully, this thread will continue with an update on the event.
I'll certainly be interested in future events.
There is a possibility I can record the video/audio if there are no privacy concerns from attendees.
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UDPATE and location details.
So we are up to 17 people total that RSVP'ed including Grizzly's +1. My employer has allowed me to host the meeting at our office. We have two conference rooms available that can be linked up via video conferencing if its too tight to fit everybody in one room. Unfortunately there is no easy way for me to buzz people into the office so I am thinking we should all meet up somewhere for a beer or coffee and then I can escort everyone into the office when we have the group.
My office is at 1520 4th Ave on the 5th floor. Its above the downtown See's Candy :) There is a place called the Yard House directly across the street that usually has ample seating for large groups. With regards to food, we could meet up have a quick dinner and go to the office or we could meet up go to the office and have something delivered. Any preference? I like the first idea because it gives us a little time to gather folks so I can let everyone in at once. Thoughts?
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Ok cool - I'm bringing another guy too so make that 11. Obv there are multiple ways to run something like this. Given its first meeting perhaps we could have everyone introduce themselves and give a brief background on what they do / how they look at things. Potentially also give a snippet of an idea they are working on and why its interesting? Little casual & little structured has worked the best for me wrt these types of things before
For the more organized discussion what do you guys want to talk about?
(1) Something straight-forward like MUSA?
(2) Something harder like shorting some organic food roll-ups?
(3) Other relatively common company that popular on this board? (EBIX or GVC?)
or (4) perhaps something topical like concentration / Kelly formula etc?
Fannie preferreds are in my "to hard" pile. Go ask Fairholme ;)
I would love to hear/talk about GVC, I have been following the thread a little but have not dug in on it. Also kelly criterion sounds good too.
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Ok cool - I'm bringing another guy too so make that 11. Obv there are multiple ways to run something like this. Given its first meeting perhaps we could have everyone introduce themselves and give a brief background on what they do / how they look at things. Potentially also give a snippet of an idea they are working on and why its interesting? Little casual & little structured has worked the best for me wrt these types of things before
For the more organized discussion what do you guys want to talk about?
(1) Something straight-forward like MUSA?
(2) Something harder like shorting some organic food roll-ups?
(3) Other relatively common company that popular on this board? (EBIX or GVC?)
or (4) perhaps something topical like concentration / Kelly formula etc?
Fannie preferreds are in my "to hard" pile. Go ask Fairholme ;)
Grizzly, sounds good to me. Something like a quick intro session where folks introduce themselves and any ideas they may have. We can keep a list of those on the whiteboard and maybe follow up with discussion on those topics after your talk.
Underperforming Portfolio -- (Friendly Contest)
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