oddballstocks

Advice above is solid. Content doesn't matter as much as "cultural fit" to use a SV term. I've tried and been denied. The best idea I submitted doubled a month or two later. It was a special situation but too small. What value are you looking to get out of VIC? I know a few contributors who just dump junk on there to stay active. There are a lot of hedge fund hotels posted too.

Maybe you're overthinking this. What's the end goal here? To do well for yourself correct? And you do that primarily by building a business and harvesting fees from clients. Unless you have some giant pot of money that dwarfs your fund, and in that case why do you have a fund... clients and the fund come first. Say you have $300k in personal wealth and $10m in the fund with a 2/20. You do 10% on the year, and personally earn $30k on your funds, and $200k in management fees, and another $200k in performance fees. You earned $400k vs $30k. Why are you even worried about your own account? Dump 10% of your fees into your fund and you suddenly "outperformed" the market. Obviously the math has a tipping point the lower your AUM, but from what I understand $10m is where you need to start these days. If the case is you have a few million then spend the extra money and get your cash in the fund with investors.

Exchanges are fascinating. The open outcry stuff is just a remnant from the past. The actual exchange is in a colo in New Jersey. I believe what you see are market makers who are physically located on the floor. As to what's in the building? Think of all the admin staff to support an exchange. The accounting, the legal, the sales. I find exchanegs and exchange mechanics really interesting. Think of the millions of orders streaming in each second that are matched and processed. A cool factoid. We have the T-3 because in the 1970s paperwork had grown so exponentially that there was a backlog in processing a trade. It took up to three days to handle the volume of paperwork to settle.

Do many Europeans or Americans immigrate to Canada? I have known a small handful of people who moved, but have met a TON of Canadians who moved to the US. My guess is cost is the biggest reason. We were just in Canada last week for a short vacation. We spent some time driving the countryside in S Ontario. My wife was blown away by how expensive houses were "nowhere". With current house prices Canada reminded me of California. A great place to live and raise a family if you were able to move there 30 years ago. Right now the economics don't seem to make sense. Jobs pay the same or less, and houses cost 2-3x more than here. Maybe it's cheaper in Manitoba or something? I don't know. It's an awesome country, but if it were a stock it seems slightly overvalued. If you're looking to move you probably need to wait for a correction. Or if they've changed immigration to only allow professionals then this might be how it is forever, and in that case build up a lot of wealth in the US and then retire in Canada when you can afford it.

Blogging about small stocks is difficult. I remember writing a post about a stock, and the whole thrust of the post was reasons why it was a bad investment. It was illiquid, and people saw the ticker and bid it up 50% on the day without reading. That was a light bulb for me. I wrote about something that was “bad” and people still bid it up. That was some of my motivation to move the illiquid discussions to a newsletter a few years ago. I also changed how I wrote. I integrated the names into the post like an article vs a stock recommendation or research piece. Unfortunately if you write about small names (even on here!) people will eventually accuse you of pumping, or trading into volume or taking advantage of others. I became so sensitive about this eventually that I wrote and posted publicly before buying a position. That way there wasn’t even a way to assume I was taking advantage. And then of course people would email and say “how can I trust you? You wrote about names you don’t even own!”

Can echo this. My wife will talk about how someone posted a question like "Are there any parks without slides?" and other women will just lay into them as if the question is a life or death decision and how they're terrible parents for even asking. Absolutely brutal. We had a neighbor up the street, extremely nice in person, she was a former teacher. They've since moved, but my wife said she's extremely active on these groups slaying people for whatever choices and decisions they've made. It's weird because on Facebook your name is attached to your posts. In person she was great, online..watch out.

It's interesting/strange/fascinating how genders group in certain roles. I worked at some large companies where people would say "Can you believe they hired a man for x department? He's the only guy on the floor!" I worked with a group that did some deep analytics, almost all female. At one company most tech support was female, at another mostly male. I have a close friend who worked with a female exec who only hired women unless forced to hire a man out of absolute necessity. I'm not sure there's much rocket science to this. Cultures develop at companies and amongst people. People are all just different. My wife was a teacher and now prefers to raise our kids, not all that different from teaching. She wouldn't take what I do for all the money in the world. She has good friends who wouldn't take all the money in the world to stay home with their kids, they prefer to work. To each their own, I don't think there is a universal woman/man thing. There's a guy down our street who is a stay at home day, props to him, that's not my gig at all. It's really personality above all else. One of the best CEO's I've ever worked for was female, some of the worst? All male. As to message boards? My wife is on facebook groups, which from what I've seen is just like this with a different focus, and much more active. She'll be on there debating the merits of some local thing (store opening, local issue, school thing) that I think is utterly pointless, and that's the same as what she thinks about this...

Agree with whoever said to buy an economics book. At a minimum read up on some basic econ on Wikipedia or something. If you ignore the basics you'll be posting "I found a steel company at all time highs, and their P/E is only 8, it's a deal right?"

You change tires for the winter? :o Yeah, I know my relatives do this in Lithuania where it is required. I think you're the first person I've heard to do this in US. I live in W. Canada, where this is pretty much a requirement for anyone who drives in the winter. I would have thought lots of places in the US would be similar (Colorado, Montana, Minnesota, Vermont, etc). In November and December there is a premium to trucks on Craigslist with studded tires. I guess it's just easier to buy a new truck with the tires then buy the tires? My last set of truck tires had spots for studs. It's snowy and hilly here, and they don't clear well. I've been in a few situations where I wish I had studs.

I am guessing that software toolkit’s will be sold enabling to build a website that is compliant. could be a great business at least in the short run and probably sticky in the long run. Or more likely..blocks to entire continent's IP ranges. We have a company that manages our firewall, they wanted to block everyone but the US. I protested and they asked how many clients I have in Europe/China/Russia...none. They said most attacks and issues are stopped if you limit the site to the US if you do business in the US. In the end I blocked Russia and China...and amazingly, or not surprisingly garbage traffic dropped like a rock. Unless you're a multi-national with a compliance department I think this is the route most US companies will take. Just block off Europe and call it a day. If someone from Europe wanted to be a client we'd probably refuse them. The hassle isn't worth it. It stinks this is the way things are going, but it's too costly to comply if you aren't a large company.

Talked to IB today. Anything considered "grey market" is forbidden. I tried to place a few test trades, no dice. But other otc stocks (CCRK) without financials they're ok with. I believe grey market, and eventually otc stocks are a dead market. The SEC is working fast to kill it.

No idea about this story. But have a close friend who’s daughter is friends with a woman who went through something like this. She was kidnapped, trafficked etc. She escaped and started a support organization for other women with those experiences. It’s an out of sight, out of mind thing for me. But my friend said that this woman’s group is very active in Pittsburgh. And this sort of thing happens here.

The calculator is interesting. Life expectancy of 99 75% change of living to 90 25% chance I'll live to 105 That is a long time...

So what? Is this a "Canada is better because..." type thing? You have a very nice country, beautiful scenery, very nice people, clean cities, vast natural resources, no enemies. I've never lived there, but the quality of life seems great. I only know of a handful of Americans who've moved to Canada. I looked at it, and according to immigration I don't quality in any capacity to be there. Even if I go through the questionnaire and say I'd relocate my company and employed 50+ people I wouldn't qualify. So I'm not sure what it takes to get into Canada. I messed with the little thing for a while and couldn't trigger any conditions where it would work outside being a student or married to a Canadian. At the same time I know a ton of Canadians who have moved south and don't intend on going back. I've never tried to get into the US (since I was born here), but it must be easier. Is part of the allure of Canada that it's like Switzerland? It's exclusive to a selected group? Is that why the average is higher?

Wait, what? McDonald's offers a size of fries bigger than 'large'? How much does it cost? How many fries compared to one large fry? In PA they had baskets. It was cheap, a few dollars. Imagine the 20 piece nugget box, it was like that but with higher walls filled to the brim with fries. You could get that with two burgers for $5 OTD. We'd get two of those, plus something for my wife and I and it'd be $14 for a family of six.

Random story time. I worked with a guy who's dad was an exec for Yum Foods for a while. He was an exec at McD too I believe. Anyways... He said they had this tasting room. It was a restaurant for employees where they had new creations to sample. The idea was to get feedback, so if you ate this you had to rate it. If something was rated highly from employees they'd move it forward. He said they'd have a shelf full of variations of items. Ranging from total nasty flops, to hits that they couldn't figure out how to mass produce. Items in this cafeteria might only appear for a day or two. It was a cool idea. I remember around the same time reading an article about McD and their challenges with menu selections. They debated making a shrimp item, but if they were to do it they'd deplete the world's stock of shrimp in less than a year. That was mind-blowing. So the challenging is sourcing so much and making it scalable.

After years of not eating McDonalds I find myself there more now. A few reasons: 1) For a family of six on the road it's cheap. Most places have a basket of fries, or some bulk purchasing option. Kids eat a LOT 2) Quality is consistent, it's a LOT better than it was in the past. 3) Facilities are clean, service is fast 4) There is something for everyone on the menu When on road trips we used to stop at Wendy's and Burger King, but I can't begin to count how many nasty BK's we've been to, or Wendy's in disrepair. Maybe the franchisees have more control, I don't know, but the quality has dropped. The coffee at McD is fine, better than Dunkin. I don't get the obsession with Dunkin, they serve extremely hot tasteless coffee. Maybe that's it? People don't like their coffee to have flavor? If I want a good burger I'll go to a local place. But when traveling McD usually gets a visit.

Correct, including cash.

Never in my life have I owned 30 stocks [*edit* at any one time]. But, then what do I know? SJ For a while I owned 30+ small banks alone. I've since trimmed it down. Just counted, just shy of 40 positions. To each their own...if you can beat the market to your satisfaction with a few positions then more power to you. I'll add a caveat, I own a business, and the value of the business dwarfs my investments. So in a sense I'm very concentrated in a single illiquid position, but I can control this position whereas in the public markets I don't control anything I own shares of.

I agree with Scott, I don't know how many stocks I own, maybe 30-40, (50?). I haven't counted. I looked at performance. Across all accounts up about 7.5% YTD, one account up 14% YTD. I'm at about 40% cash overall. So these are decent numbers. You never know what's going to have a good year. I disagree about the 27th best idea, total straw man. Unless you're sitting down with a pile of cash and have to invest 100% of it today. I have a fluid portfolio, I'm ALWAYS investing in my 1st best idea. My aim is to sell about 10-20% of my portfolio a year and find replacement ideas. I recently invested in a name that I've watched and finally became cheap. The only investment in the past few months, so it's my best idea, does that mean the other 30-40 ideas are bad? Nope, they were the best at the time as well, and now I'm waiting on them to be realized. Here's a bad realization for the forum. In the past ~2 years as I've focused more on my business and less on investing my performance has improved. I'm looking for fish in a barrel, when I see it I shoot, otherwise I sit on cash or current ideas. Having this filter has helped me greatly. There's value everywhere, you just need to know the market. I've been trawling ebay recently and have developed a sense of 'value' for a number of items. I have picked up about $50k in list price items for roughly $10k. This isn't an anomaly, my brother does the exact same thing with a different market on eBay, you just need to have a sense of what things go for. Then be opportunistic when things open up. I've done the same with Craigslist in the past, study a market, discover what others will pay, then buy for less and resell. It isn't rocket science, you just need discipline. No deal is better than a bad deal. I think too many investors complicate investing too much. Probably because investing attracts smart people. There are a lot of stupid simple situations that people avoid because they're too simple. Regarding risk, this is an interesting discussion. I look at risk in terms of probabilities. Is it likely that I make more or less? If something is 50/50 it's not worth it. If something is 80/20 I'm interested. Sometimes in the market (a net-net, low P/B stock) you can have a 100/0 situation where if you're simply patient it's almost impossible to lose money. You do have opportunity cost, but as noted above if you diversify you eliminate that. Most things work out in 3-5 years, if they don't cut your losses and move on. If there aren't deals you just sit. Deals seem to come in flows, so nothing for a while, then suddenly a bunch. What I've noticed from friends is too much analysis paralysis is what prevents people from buying cheap. They want to know why, or how, or what might happen. I'm reckless, I don't care, if a deal is a deal I buy. Sure, I've been burned a few times (diversification), but overall it works out 95% of the time in my benefit. Maybe I'm lucky? I don't care, I'm happy with the results.

In PA and OH they allow trucks to carry three trailers. I see this all the time on the turnpike. The issue with trucks is their cargo capacity is so much smaller than a train car. Look at this: http://business.tenntom.org/why-use-the-waterway/shipping-comparisons/ A truck can carry 26 tons, a train car 100 tons, so four trucks to a train. Or where a train gets an effective 200 mpg. The advantage of a truck is always short haul, and that they can navigate cities quicker. If you need to move things in bulk, and need to move them fast you put them on a train. I guess where I'm struggling on this is why is an automated chain of 20 trailers better than a train of 100 train cars (eq of 400 trucks) operated by two people? On a train the labor is so tiny compared to the cargo. On current trucks I get it, you have a single driver for a single trailer. But to out edge a train seems like a crazy high hurdle to get over, and that's if trains never improve. I mean truck companies send their trucks on trains if it's over a certain distance.

The closer and closer you get trucks to operate like trains the more they'll need dedicated lanes and roads. And then suddenly trucks aren't efficient anymore. One of the biggest advantage for a truck is they operate on public roads. They spend some in gas taxes, but that's it. There are two other factors: 1) The rolling efficiency. Stop by a rail museum sometime and examine a train wheel on a track. For how large the wheel is the contact area is about the size of a dime. And it's steel on steel. It doesn't take much to roll. Now compare that to the giant rubber tires on a truck, that travel on cement or asphalt roads full of bumps. 2) Trains are already employing diesel-electric engines, they have been for decades. The engine is a diesel powerplant (essentially a large generator) that powers electric motors that turn the wheels. The driving is done with electricity. This is much more efficient than the trucks we have. Beyond this railroads are investigating how to employ hybrid engines to further reduce energy costs. And not that long ago much of the railroad was electrified. Consider that a typical train has 100-140 cars. Imagine a truck convoy that long, it might stretch 1.5 miles unbroken. How do you exit the highway, pass, do anything?

I was on a series of emails when the accusations were flying. Yes, numbers didn't seem to add up from what we could see. NOW...he has ZERO responsibility to the public to show he isn't a fraud. I know people wanted a public declaration and proof. What I know from my emails is that he provided details and information to his investors to show them that he wasn't a fraud. I believe this was details on each trade, plus information on accounts. That's a proper response. Hiding letters? My guess is performance is down. I get letters all the time, having a consistent flow of them is rare. They are flooding in during good years, and suddenly top secret in bad years. The manager who exposes their returns and thoughts both good and bad years has a lot of integrity. I would trust them over someone who goes silent when things are bad, but is shouting from the rooftop when things are good.

A manager at Costco earns $110k per year after a few years. Nothing is static. My point is how many years do you need to slug it out before you're earning more than someone at Costco? Or what about an analyst at a fund? For someone at a fund 14 years might be a PM job, and that pays much more than $200k, plus investing on the side. My point is with small dollars you're doing it because you enjoy it, that's why I call it a hobby. I invest my money on the side, it's a hobby too, there is no shame in that. I'd argue you are probably ok at selling, but don't realize it. You called it out, your honesty, that's called building rapport. People buy from people they trust. Your honesty endears them to you. And you're also willing to walk away from a bad deal, so you can wait for good deals. My guess is if someone had $500k and they were a 'perfect' partner, you would seriously pursue them because you'd want them on board, you'd value what they bring to the relationship so you'd pursue them. That's sales in a nutshell. Your story is motivating for OP. You get out there and talk to people, and talk to friends of friends, that's simply it. This isn't rocket science, but it requires doing something. That's where OP needs to start. Figure out what's unique about you, then start talking.

Interesting discussion. It seems from your reasoning, there is a strong incentive to focus on a niche and build a story around it in order to attract capital. If you're the only small cap Somali value fund, there's probably a subset of investors that would be interested in investing in it whereas a small cap US value fund that invests alongside everyone else has a tough slog ahead in terms of selling themselves. Related question, does the comparative ease of selling a niche fund force managers into a corner where while it may be easier to attract capital, it's also more difficult to produce returns because of the constraints they've placed on their fund's scope - assuming they or their investors care about returns - some investors may just want "exposure" to a certain niche for a small allocation of their portfolio. I.e. they'd produce better returns as a vanilla value fund but wouldn't have a fund if that's what they were. The niche could be anything. Look at bigger funds, the sales point is "I went to Harvard, I know a lot of fancy people, I will use my connections that you don't have to make money." And that works. And I know someone who went from $0-$4b with that exact sales pitch. There are people on here selling their access to Buffett. Some funds sell stability, the "we won't lose your money" type mantra.