oddballstocks

I don't think they'll be raised anytime soon. Bernanke said he doubts they'll normalize in his lifetime. The guy is in his 60s, so for another 20 years??

Nate, Do you know how the second step shares are priced? Thanks Yes, almost universally at $10 a share. Occasionally at $8 a share. I have no idea why, this is the standard.

Interesting proposals. These are sane. Instead of these here's what we'll get with "reform" -Businesses in Iowa that have less than 35 employees get a special tax credit. -Companies that employ specialty iron workers who only use hand tools will get a tax break -Taxes will increase on large companies but they'll find a way to outsource their work to a tiny tax-free island in the Pacific to avoid the new taxes -Somehow spending for a new highway will be included -One category of taxes will drop by 5%, another increase by 5% and net to no difference. Yet one side will tout the 5% reduction and success while the other will claim it's a 5% increase in our taxes.

Farbelow: I think the confusing is coming from thinking in percentages, I prefer to avoid that. Think of it like this. Bank has issued 1,000 shares, 40% public and 60% to the MHC. The market tends to value these things on the full shares, even though only 40% are public. The problem is these are strange structures that most of the market doesn't understand. What you have is a bit of a bonus because if the bank conducts a second step they'll IPO the 60% and raise additional capital. As a shareholder you'll be able to participate in the IPO and add at usually attractive prices. If you don't add to your stake you still benefit, post-transaction you own 40% of an institution with more capital. The ownership percentage doesn't change. So 40% of 100 in capital before, and 40% of 160 in capital after the transaction. Second steps don't tend to do as well as full conversions. These are strange hybrids that regulators are trying to extinguish. I'd be surprised if there are any more MHC's created. All mutuals are being encouraged to fully convert at this point.

Do these stocks have a SEDOL number? Was on the phone with Fidelity about some small European companies. I could pull a ticker and quote from the exchange and Bloomberg, but Fidelity couldn't find it. Turns out they didn't have SEDOL numbers. I've come to learn this is the key to being able to trade a stock electronically. A SEDOL is a unique identifier for each security. For stocks that don't have a SEDOL you can still trade, you just have to go through a broker who sits on the exchange and manually handles the order for you. Trading in London shouldn't be too bad, they speak English and you can call them early in the morning. I'd place a call to a few brokers over there and see what the deal is with the stocks.

I've always liked consumption taxes. If I want a giant boat or sports car I pay a lot of taxes for it, but if I just want to live simply I'm not paying as much in taxes. A theory of mine has been a tax system where capital gains and dividends are taxed at 0%, but incomes are taxed progressively. In theory it would create the incentive for company managers to own stock and pay dividends vs just pigging out on a fat salary. At least with dividends shareholders would benefit as well. You could probably set the threshold fairly high and it would only catch executives, lawyers, orthopedic and plastic surgeons.

An index fund

They both use Morningstar as their datasource. I've seen a few demos from "bloomberg killers" and they are nothing special. Bloomberg excels in harvesting very unique data sources.

The first time I went to the site I thought it was fake. I couldn't believe Canada had such a backwards looking regulatory page. A 17 year old with Wordpress could make something nicer looking and more functional.

I've seen people make investment mistakes because they have bad data. Easy to make a bad decision if you don't have the whole story. I am obviously biased as I sell data. I would say the value is in unique data and tools. We are all re-packaging regulatory data, Bloomberg and CapIQ are doing the same, repackaging public data. The value is in the insights and tools built on the data. Finding datasets beyond regulatory is key, as well as the tools. For some investors they would rather manually input numbers into Excel so they get a feel for financials. That's free, but takes time. Others are more interested in speed, and a fully populated model has value.

Yes, the $100 tool reference was Morningstar. For a while they had a deal where it was. $100 a year if you subscribed through a Fidelity link. Their database is excellent. For a different application I talked with them regarding licensing data. Licensing is not cheap, hundreds a month per user for a handful of fields. The fact that they let individuals subscribe for $100 or so is incredible. Their international coverage is impressive. The only issue I had was international names weren't a default, you had to do something specific to search for them. I also found their screeners close to useless. But if you know what you're looking for excellent data. 10 year financials on almost anything that trades.

Out of curiosity, what data service(s) do you subscribe to, Nate? Bloomberg Terminal, had Morningstar for years prior to Bloomberg. I found for pink sheets that standard tools didn't work well and cancelled my subscriptions at the time. Same with bank data, built my own. In terms of what I've paid for that...don't ask.. I have a policy that if a tool helps our business or my research and the benefits outweigh the cost I will happily pay. I have purchased numerous tools for development. I've paid for reports etc. most recently have paid close to $5k for a set of very specific data on banks, had no qualms opening the wallet.

I sometimes wonder about value investors.. We have a forum where people are managing tens of thousands to millions of dollars and yet can't spring for a $100 tool that will enable them to earn more. It's like someone trying to build a $500k house but not wanting to pay an architect, they'd rather their neighbor give them free advice and hack things together in MS Paint.

Easier said than done. I've spent the last six months trying to get information from each Fed District. Each is different, some require FOIA requests, others you just have to know the right person. Prices are all over the board, from $.10 per page at some districts to free at others. If you go this route here is my advice. Find the right person and get their direct phone number and email. Until I found the right contact at each Fed for what I'm doing it was like hitting a brick wall repeatedly.

There is no easy way to do this. 1) Some holding companies have MHC in their name, you can screen for those. 2) Screen for banks that are mutually owned, but have a holding company (probably the most reliable method). 3) Get a copy of the list from an investment bank. There are a few of these floating around, not all have the same MHC's on them, but they're a good starting point.

There are more coming up. Also if anyone has a name and contact for someone they'd like to hear on the show please get in touch.

I would put 100% of my portfolio in my own business to invest for growth. That's the only situation I can imagine, putting your wealth into something you control. This isn't that crazy of a question. Most Americans have 100% of their wealth and more in their house. Or a combination of their house and some cars.

I juggle a lot at once, and have become somewhat efficient from it. A few thoughts: 1) Exercise, exercise, exercise. Clears the mind, gets the body moving, time to think and prepare for all tasks. If I have a lot to do I run longer so I can think it through and execute. 2) Do only one thing at a time, finish to completion. Multi-tasking makes things take longer. 3) Work from home, saving 10 hours a week (1hr each way commute) was a big win. 4) Don't read the news, don't read espn, don't watch TV. This is probably the biggest time sink for most people. The natural question is what do I do? When I'm not working I play with the kids, talk to my wife, do activities at night. Once the kids are in bed my wife and I usually talk or read. Sometimes one Netflix show at night. 5) Don't check your portfolio constantly, forget about it. 6) Work to eliminate phone conversations. Reading and typing is faster than talking. I love to talk, but I can blow entire days on the phone with people. If I had those same conversations over email it'd be 30% of the time. Plus the conversations can be shoved to a different part of the day, not my prime thinking hours. 7) Don't do worthless crap. Lots of work is busy work. Do work that generates money directly, otherwise don't do it. If it's not paying the bills, or if it wasn't done and no one cared why are you doing it? Obviously this doesn't apply to hobbies. 8) Rest. I try to take weekends off completely. If I weren't married with a family I'd probably work constantly, they force me to stop in the afternoon, and on weekends. This is good. Being well rested enables me to work more efficiently.

I would like to suggest that this poll may display self-selection bias. Those who check prices once per day or less than once per day likely show too much self-control to read CoB&F on a daily basis, and are therefore less likely to have had a chance to read or respond to this poll. Those with so much self-control they check their prices less than once a month are more likely to read this tread long after it's dead and are therefore less likely to ever respond. Maybe that's a better poll? "How many times do you mindlessly refresh CoBF?" Or another: "Do you prefer topics that are entertaining and generate pages of conversation with little investment relevancy, or do you prefer topics that receive two responses before the investment idea triples?"

Once every few days. I'd say usually once a week, some busy weeks none.

Especially the digital one they plan to put up in Miami. It will show his hair digitally blowing with the sea breeze...quite a feat of technology. There was a lot of debate at the city council meeting whether to allow him to have his 3 top buttons unbuttoned, or let him go to 5.

Can we also impose some board standards on the "tl;dr" responses of some posters? If you come onto the thread and say that the thread was too long so you didn't read through it and ask for a summary, how do you expect to read through a 10-K? Or years of 10-Ks? Read the damn threads, people. Read? Who reads anymore? I'm just here for the jokes and to clone. As long as a guru likes it, or the thread is 500 pages long I'll buy...

This is why I just stash money under my mattress. Then I raid the mattress to pay cash for my chiropractor visits for a bad back. Have thought of transitioning to gold bars under the mattress, but early tests deem it too lumpy.

If you're self employed you can stick something like $45k into a 401k, plus the $53k into a SEP-IRA and whatever else through a backdoor Roth.

Exemption really depends on the state. Most states have an under five clients rule. For example if you're in Texas you can have 4 Texas clients, 5 Oklahoma clients, 5 Alabama clients etc. And a hedge fund counts as a single client. But in Pennsylvania they count clients in other states towards the five limit. So as a PA resident I can only have 5 total clients across the country before I'd need to register. I don't think registration is all that difficult or costly.