dwy000

I dont recall anyone questioning the Chinese travel ban. Anyone. And even if they did in some editorial it doesn't matter because it went into effect immediately. It wasn't delayed, it wasn't questioned, it was imposed -boom. How is that the fault of the opposition when Trump did exactly what he wanted to do??? The issue with the travel ban and the quarantining policies are not that he did it, it's that he didn't do enough and fast enough. By the time he acted the cat (or the virus) was out of the bag and the impact was magnified beyond immediate management. The incompetence was non-action (starting right from denial and claiming it was fake) and nothing the opposition did can be blamed for that. The buck stops at the top. You take the credit for the good and you take the blame for the bad. Period.

What if I care about all people but I choose to favor lives that won't come back above jobs that eventually will? I'm sure you are a complete humanitarian and a generous person. I'm not questioning that. I don't understand the scorn reserved for the President at a time of crisis. Some things are not going to go correctly, yet this is being used as the time to bring him down. Continue to have at it. It will likely work where impeachment didn't. How is the opposition party absolved of ANY responsibility here with a 3 year clusterfuck where the #1 issue was get rid of Trump and NOT GOVERN? Totally wasting everyone's time for nothing and ignoring issues critical to the country. How is the opposition party absolved of using this crisis to stuff a critical bill full of crap that has nothing to do with solving a crisis? Where were the governors that rooted on "open borders" and no immigration security and crapping on our streets? Do any of these politicians share any blame? Nope - not when you can blame it all on the President you hate. Continue to focus all your scorn on the President. You'll get you wish with wartime President Biden and associates Schiff, Pelosi and Nadler. Can't wait to see how they deal with this once they open the borders. How can the opposition be blamed when they aren't in power? It's the governing people's responsibility to govern. If Cuomo screws up in New York, he should be blamed. Regardless of your politics you have to support Truman's adage "The Buck Stops Here". That's the job of the president regardless of party.

The successful counties all have a number of things in common: robust, aggressive testing process in place. Information is communicated via their cell phone (personal freedom is secondary). Their populations are also educated and supportive of containment measures. Most everyone wears masks when they are out. Until we are able to do all these things we will need to keep everyone in lock down (very blunt instrument). Much should change in the next 8 weeks. Smart people should be able to figure this out. The sooner the better. I am least optimistic on the timing front; politicians and elected officials are often not the best and the brightest (and i say that will all due respect). Viking - why 8 weeks? Not saying that's wrong but why 8 instead of 4. Or 12. Or 3? And what happens at the end of that? Theres an article in NYT today from an Israeli who compares the lockdown to the lockdown from bombers in Jerusalem a couple of years ago. As he said, after a couple of days everyone got bored and stir crazy and started going out again. Thst was bombings and days, not unseen virus and months. There is simply no way Americans will comply for months at a time with no defined end date or measure of success while the economy melts down to irreparable. Aren't a high proportion of Americans 2 paychecks from the street? You cant just give them $1000 and say stay home for 6 months.

While I rarely agree with Bill Ackman he made a good point yesterday. You cant shut things down without giving an end date. We can argue whether 15 days is too short (probably) but you cant just lock people in their houses indefinitely and expect rational behavior or compliance. Anyone who has been stuck in a house with a couple of kids for more than a day will tell you that months is not an option. The part they need to define is what is the criteria for reopening things up. Do you wait for new cases to be zero? Do you wait until there is none globally (China still has new cases although most coming from overseas now). What is success? Hong Kong shit down, then reopened and the cases started rising again so they shut down again. I'm not clear from any of the medical professionals what success is here. And until you can frame that you cant define the economic impact to measure it against.

Just finished this one recently. For a story about (admittedly) math geeks it was interesting, an easy read and went quickly. Most interestingly, despite spending a great deal of time on how they trade and what they do, I really didn't come away with any better understanding of exactly what the secret sauce is for Renaissance. And I guess that's why they continue to be so successful. Honestly, there are dozens if not hundreds of firms trying to replicate their technical trading success. And with the ubiquity of data and the prevalence of mass computing I'm shocked nobody has cracked the code and the firm just continues to crank out ridiculous results. I think I came away with more desire to understand them than I had before reading it.

Great comment on dual class shares. If you pick the right people it can be a huge benefit as a shareholder (Diller, Malone, Google-guys, etc.). If you pick the wrong ones (Biglari, etc) it can be devastating. All comes down to character.

I'll answer this. Most of the politics discussions on CoB&F are grounded in ideology rather than reason and science, and therefore not very interesting. Take global warming. It's been settled for science for decades, but many on CoB&F pretend that it's a disputed issue. So, I treat the politics section in the same way that I'd treat anti-vax or flat-earther forums. If one's time has any value whatsoever, there's not many reasons to spend time talking to anti-vaxers or flat-earthers. On other forums I do talk about politics, but there I'm mostly trying to push left-wingers to the right. That's more interesting because the left (excluding communists) mostly believes that their positions should be grounded in evidence, reason, and science which means that those positions can be challenged on that basis. There are very few "undecideds" on any political discussion. Anyone joining a discussion on the Politics board probably has already taken a side. It is futile trying to get people to change their views based upon logic, facts or argument. It just makes them defensive and more strident in their views. There's a reason cults recruit people thru friendship, support and suggestion.

Toronto --> NYC --> London, UK --> NYC --> Sydney, Aus --> San Fran --> Portland, OR

A couple of other thoughts here (from someone who worked in leveraged debt finance for the better part of 15 years). - banks aren't really the lenders anymore. Most loans are now underwritten by banks and syndicated out to a very broad group of institutional investors and funds. Banks ususally are left holding the revolving facility because the borrowers want to know the money is there to draw down if things so south (and even that is changing); - given the extreme reach for yield by lenders, most large leveraged loans these days are "covenant lite". That means they have no covenants at all or the covenants are set so far below projections they are almost worthless. Take a look at some of the writings by Howard Marks and Oaktree on this topic (Oaktree is a huge leveraged lender). It is irrational and stupid but lenders will do just about any crazy thing to get a couple of extra basis points. - 5x makes some great points. One thing to add is to be very careful of secured loans vs. senior bonds. Technically, both are pari passu (equal in ranking) as senior obligations of the lender (along with payables, contracts, etc. etc). The difference is that the loans have security interest in some/most/all of the assets. If the value of those assets are less than the secured debt, the remainder is arm in arm with the bonds. Bonds are only subordinated to bank debt if they are expressly "subordinated debt". - as its been pointed out, covenants are rarely used to force a company into bankruptcy. In fact, loan lenders will typically give temporary waivers to keep the company out of technical default to avoid any cross default with the bonds. The real intention of covenants is to allow the secured lenders to force the company to raise additional equity, provide additional security or in some other way make sure the bank debt is "money good". If it's bad enough they can also provide the time needed to get the house in order to file for bankruptcy (bankruptcy is almost always filed voluntarily by the company and not forced upon them by the lenders) - most bank loans these days (at least big ones) are fairly liquid and when the company gets into trouble the debt will trade down and generally into the hands of distressed buyers (many primary buyers cannot buy debt under 90 cents on the dollar because it's deemed "distressed"). These buyers can sometimes, but rarely, be "loan-to-own" buyers who want to own the company (see Liberty's offer for IHeartRadio) but usually it's just distressed investors looking to buy high yielding assets they deem have sufficient security coverage (they play the price of the debt not the ownership of the company). - what is rarely discussed but hugely important these days is the credit derivative market. This is hedge funds and others buying and selling credit derivatives on a company that are usually referenced against the bank debt. In some circumstances the credit default volume can be 10x the size of the underlying loan. There have been bank loans trading at 50 right before bankruptcy that have traded up well above 100 upon filing for bankruptcy because the credit default market needed to buy the reference asset to deliver. that may be more detail than you were looking for. But wanted to give some background and perspetive. Hope it helps.

Not to turn this into a pension discussion but there are other issues contributing to underfunding that are not "greed" related. Start with the fact that the average retirement has extended consider considerably since most of those plans were created and the actuarial requirements have led to increased funding need. Then add the perverse requirements that if you overfund you cant get the money back but if you inderfund you're still on the hook. Why would anyone overpay into that kind of reality. It's the primary reason we have switched nationwide from defined benefit to defined contribution. It will take a long time to work thru.

Any way you spin it, it's really an impressive story. To start out with nothing and end up with billions is admirable (almost) any way you got there. For me it piqued a number of questions and I suspect the writer was painting with a very broad brush to make the story more reader friendly. For example, if he bought Apple at it's IPO he must have held it through the near bankruptcy years, which would have contradicted his rule to sell when down 25%. My favorite part (assuming its not exaggerated) is that even with literally billions to invest, he invests through Fidelity and Schwab. Do you think he qualifies as a Gold customer and gets free trading software?

This was a decent book but not what I've come to expect from Michael Lewis. I found I had to force myself to pick it up and keep plugging through and normally with a Michael Lewis book I have to force myself to put it down.

How funny. A 20 year old book and I just finished it this week too after picking it up a while ago in a used bookstore. The lessons are just as timely today as at any point in the company's history. I especially liked his rant about people complaining that they were killing off the small town mom and pop stores. He (rightly) claimed that they offered a better experience, better merchandising, better hours, friendlier staff and lower prices - and that's what killed off other stores. No point feeling nostalgic for operators who don't serve their customers as well.

Hmmm. Coincidence that the book is being launched in October???

Loved the book too. What I can't understand is how, as a country or a leader, you can object to the Act. Unless you are corrupt or supporting those who are corrupt, what could you possibly object to? Why would you rail against something punishing the corrupt? The very fact that they find it so restrictive and oppressive suggests guilt.

I was at a startup conference last week and the head of a new healthcare insurer was commenting on the announcement. Take the source for what you will....but he raised a couple of good points. He first questioned whether this would actually turn into anything meaningful. Apparently the average Amazon employee stays there less than 2 years. As the market shifts from fee-for-service to value-based-care that makes it a very difficult population to structure and price for long term coverage given you have 50% turnover in the underlying every year. Also tough to apply pre-emptive health services that many insurers are focusing on. The other point was that this is hugely beneficial for Amazon but he thought probably negative for everyone else. The vast majority of Amazon's employees are under 40 years old. This is the most desirable target group for insurers because they use very little healthcare and end us subsidizing the chronic care and older patients that account for over 80% of healthcare costs. By pulling it's "cheap to insure" population out of the broader insurance environment and self insuring, Amazon is both saving cost for itself and increasing cost for the rest of the insured population. I have to assume JPM and Berkshire employee bases have much broader age ranges and less turnover but it was an interesting observation.

Horrible book. There is nothing Warren Buffet about it - they suck people in with the title. They aren't even tracking real returns, everyone is tracking play-money accounts. Save your money.

It feels like more money has been spent/lost on next generation, revolutionary Carbon Capture technologies than at Vegas. Be really, really careful about backing any of these. Venture Capital will no longer touch the space.

+1

She did exactly what she set out to do tonight - not lose badly. Trump is imploding and needs a miracle win in the debates to help change trajectory. By simply holding her own and trading jabs it doesn't really help either party. Hilary doesn't need to do anything but count the days down and not screw up significantly.

I think you also have to consider the liability side of the funding shortfall. The return on assets by itself is not generally the issue, it is the returns assumption relative to the discount rate on the liabilities. Generally companies assume about a 2.5% spread between the return on plan assets and the discount rate for the liabilities - so as long as they continue to beat the discount rate by more than that differential the gap will close without any add'l contributions (and of course the opposite is true). Where it may come into play more directly for your investment analysis is that once the gap reaches certain levels, the company must pay cash into the plan (on a long term basis, not all upfront). In 2009, following the financial crisis there were so many ridiculously underfunded pension plans that the accounting standards board and the PBGC changed the funding requirements and assumptions to greatly extend the amount of time companies had to fund the gaps. 50% equities doesn't seem that aggressive if the plan has a 20+ year life. From the company's perspective it's almost a free option - if markets crash the PBGC steps in and duct tapes things together until a plan is in place; if markets soar my funding gap is gone as well as my need to cash fund the plan. I'm probably wrong on this but I can't think of any times the PBGC has forced an otherwise profitable company into bankruptcy. That would be political suicide. What would be more concerning that 50% equity allocation is if most of those equities are the company's stock itself.

Ummmmm. Okaaaaay.

Wow, you now have to go back 15 years to get a cumulative return that beats the S&P 500. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Even if the investments now pan out I don't know if it's enough to make up for the size and tenor of the declines.

I still can't figure out if this is supposed to be a joke. Highly entertaining though. In a tin-hat, kill me last kind of way.

I agree with many points you made but not the last one that I bolded. The younger generation is not supporting Trump. Look at the poll breakdowns. Trump polls poorly in the younger demographic. For example, here's the latest CNN poll http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/images/08/01/2016.post-dem.convention.pdf Under 45: Clinton 63%, Trump 30% Over 45: Clinton 44%, Trump 48% This poll is not an outlier. I've seen similar generational breakdowns in other polls. I think those numbers are just as extreme (if not more) when you look by education. People with post-secondary degrees are even more tilted away from Trump.