oddballstocks

I look for easy no-brainers that I can understand. None of those fit the bill. The only one I do understand is SHLD and what I understand about it is that it is a failed retailer on an excruciatingly painful and slow slide downhill towards eventual bankruptcy. Not exactly something I want to put money into. +1

Ben, Yes, I didn't use the correct terms, but I agree with what you said. Bankers I've talked to said that they won't hold anything over 10-15 years on their books. They originate those loans and sell them to the GSE's. I don't know how the mechanics work once they're sold, I just know that the bank gets the servicing rights and someone else buys them. The GSE's will buy anything if it fits into certain parameters, so they're the ones (or ultimately investors) taking on the interest rate risk. The rates are too low to compensate for the real risk, which is why banks won't keep these loans. While technically the government isn't buying and holding the loans on their books the infrastructure they've setup allows banks to continue to make these loans and sell them off. One party that does seem to be taking the long term credit risks here are Credit Unions. I was just talking with someone yesterday about these guys. In conversations I have with anyone in the industry Credit Unions come up repeatedly as the patsies at the table. They are paying the highest on deposits, making loans at incredibly low rates, taking on bad credits and duration risk. I think we're going to see a crisis around these things next. Ones that need to raise capital will end up converting into full fledged banks (cu -> mutual -> thrift).

Desjardings site shows "posted bank rates". They are negotiable. Use a mortgage broker if you hate haggling. Bank rates vs. broker rates http://www.mortgagebrokers.ca/mortgage-rates/ Is this common in Canada? Mortgages in the US isn't like buying a car where the sticker price is 6% but if you're good you can talk them down to 3.5%. From my experience rates tend to reflect credit worthiness. If you have perfect credit you can get the best rates, if you have bad credit, or things the bank doesn't like then they won't offer the best rate. I have a friend who was a mortgage broker about 10 years ago, I should ask him if he was haggling for the best rates for his clients. This is fascinating. Regarding shorter term loans. In the US it's difficult to get a loan in an unusual length. I've done it twice, a 20 year loan and a 12 year loan. Rates fell on a curve, so the 13 year was slightly more than a 12 etc, but when doing this I limited who I could work with. Most places just want to push through conforming volume.

Found this: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/vebitda.html

Thanks Packer. I guess I was more interested in looking how multiples have shifted over time than how to use them or come up with them for valuations. I wanted to understand how investor psychology has shifted over time so I can (hopefully) better understand where different industries are at now in terms of that psychology. For example, I don't know, but I have strong feeling that telecom ratios were very high in the late 90s and early 2000s. And since then they've only drifted down? It would be interesting to see, say, if we're at a nadir, or anywhere close, for telecom/cable multiples. I think the best way to find this is to get the historic M&A multiples per industry over the years. Industry P/E's trend towards M&A multiples. I have no idea where to get this data.

They have this brand here in Pittsburgh, Berkshire Hathaway Real Estate, seems like they bought out another company to move into the area. Not sure who's in charge of their branding, but they have an issue on their hands. They use such elegant paint colors and fancy text that the For Sale signs are unreadable in a passing car. They should re-do their signs with bigger text and stop using the burgundy/creme color combination. The company they replaced used white backgrounds with giant red/white/blue text.

Banks aren't making these loans, they're originating them then selling them to the US government. Based on a cursory glance at a number of banks they aren't holding anything on their balance sheet past 10-15 years at the most. Almost everything is dumped on the US Gov. The government is the real patsy here, they're subsidizing the housing market, but they have been all along.

Just went into my Fidelity account and can confirm I get these reports on all Japanese stocks too. I didn't even know this existed, very cool!

That will be interesting for sure, if it's a low expense ratio it's worth considering for a 401k or a hands off IRA. I'll be curious to see how performance lines up with what's in the book. I'm still waiting for someone to take the research in the book on F-scores and build something around it. In QV there is a line saying if you take all below BV stocks and sort them by F-Score and buy ones with the highest F-score and short the ones with the lowest F-score you'd outperform by 23% a year. It was disappointing that they didn't discuss this further, they brushed it off saying that below book value stocks are often too small and hard to buy.

That would have been quite the wedding to attend. A drunk Bill Gross, fluffy hair and all dancing away with his wife to Stayin Alive. Maybe he knew he was on his way out at PIMCO and finally felt he had nothing to lose.

WOW......I wish you would have registered and posted this three years ago.. This is an excellent resource, looks like most statements go back to 2009. Very cool! Thanks

Doesn't Horizon Kinetics offer an ETF of this? http://www.ise.com/media/98506/ETF_WEALTH_RCH_0714.pdf

I've interacted with Brandt via this board, but also offline via email a number of times. He's intelligent, savvy, and well spoken, I'd recommend him for a job. Heck, if I had the ability to hire him I would try, unfortunately I'm not hiring right now. I read the Japanese strategies paper a few months back and shifted my approach as a result. I am investing in more low P/B with growth companies rather than just cheap bottom of the barrel net-nets.

Let's say there are two companies, the first one puts in $100 and generates $10 in earnings, a 10% return on capital. The second one puts in $30 in cash and $70 in debt and makes the same $10. You're saying that second business is 'better' because it's earning 30% on equity. I disagree with this statement. You need to include the full capital structure.

Thanks for the responses, I guess the book I was reading used a more Damodaran approach. On leases, they're off balance sheet, but they are still capital invested that's required to run the business. Think of it this way, if you owned a donut shop and leased space I'm sure you'd calculate your return after your rent payment. Ignoring the rent provides artificially inflated numbers. Without the location you have no business. The next question then becomes what's the correct discount rate for the leases.

west, how are you calculating ROIC? I used to use FCF/Invested Capital, with invested capital being equity plus debt plus leases minus cash. This essentially gives cash return on cash outlays.

Are you saying you spent seven years just reading about stocks and haven't invested yet? I'd say maybe put some real money to work. There's a learning curve, but once you get over the hump I'd say books on investing provide diminishing returns. The real gains are through experience.

Yep, pretty much! As far as storage goes, I think we're also close to the point of being good enough for most people. People can (A) switch from hard drives to SSDs and (B) backup their data via the cloud because the demand for storage hasn't grown that much relative to advances in technology. In the past, something new would always show up and drive demand for better CPUs, more storage, more RAM, more bandwidth, etc. But I think this is happening less and less nowadays. I'm sure a lot of offices are still running Windows XP. Here are some 10-Ks that talk about Windows XP or2000: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/708818/000070881814000008/qsii-10k_33114.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/945384/000135448814001527/cicn_10k.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1185348/000118534814000002/praa-20131231x10k.htm - PRAA - "Our desktop PCs run the Windows XP or Windows 7 operating system." (No Vista.) 2- Adding 3-D to video might require 10-30% additional bandwidth. (Don't take that number too seriously.) Increasing the frame rate also doesn't require a lot of additional bandwidth due to the magic of video compression. I'm not sure what you can do beyond that. There's no killer consumer app that is driving demand for bandwidth other than video-related applications. Conventional storage yes, you can buy a 4TB drive at Costco for sub $100, and that includes an external enclosure. But SSD is a different story, I'm really looking forward to price drops with that. Computers are going to really speed up when SSD is standard. The largest limiter to performance is hitting the disk right now. Taking an old computer from a conventional drive to SSD breathes new life into the machine. This needs to happen across the board.

Wow..incredible email, I love it. I remember reading an interview years ago that detailed Gross' strategy. It was brilliant. People dissed his usage of derivatives for the risk it introduced. But if I remember correctly he ran his fund in a similar way to a bank. He sold insurance contracts on his underlying bonds in a way that he created a net interest spread that almost guaranteed he'd outperform. The fact that the guy was able to grow a fund to support such asset size alone is incredible.

Looks like a fantastic cargo cult analysis.

They're trying to win back Canada...Gretzky came out wearing his Canadian tuxedo (full denim) with a hockey stick, light beer, and Blackberry. What self respecting Canadian wouldn't buy the phone after that eh?

The other nice thing about the 'passport' sized format is it'll fit nicely in a fanny pack...

Us Blackberry users have a holster, thank you very much. It sits nicely on our sides, out of the way not like those tween girls shove them in their back pocket with the sparkly cover. Much like the pocket protectors from days gone by................. 8) Oh yeah, holsters, that's right. It is nice when your pager goes off you can grab your blackberry out of its holster and return the call right then and there without needing to go find a pay phone. I heard they're teaming up with Sears on this, Chen was quoted as saying "We think two failures will make a success when we work together." They'll be offering a Blackberry app that makes ordering from the Sears catalog a lot easier. Users have also been asking for a CB Radio app so they can keep in touch with the ever changing traffic conditions reported real-time by truckers...

Decisions, decisions, decisions..between this, the new Palm Pilot, and the new Nokia models I really don't know what smartphone to get...so many choices..

I like dividends because I don't need to pay a commission to sell any shares. Some of my holdings are very illiquid and a dividend puts real cash in my pocket rather than sitting on the ask for months. Some of my holdings are in IRA's so dividends are tax-free for me in there as well, not that I let the tax-tail wag the dog..