oddballstocks

Is this another guru that just needs a few more years before they have Buffett-like returns? +100 to what writser wrote, Hussman himself is doing well but his investors have never done well. This guy proves the point that performance doesn't matter, it's the story that you tell that matters.

I routinely sell. I know some buy and hold forever investors, but that's not myself. When I enter a position I am thinking about the exit. When the position appreciates I sell. The business might be doing great and I still sell. I've been burned more times by holding when the thesis has changed from "worth 90% of BV selling at 40% to great business that should grow/compound." So I stick to what I know. I know how to buy cheap, when it becomes fairly valued I sell. In a very few rare cases I continue to hold names for years with no intent on selling.

Bit off-topic: but lol, healthcare costs in the USA... that's just ridiculous. It's highway robbery. My oldest had a upper endoscopy on his throat two years ago, the doctor charged $14,000 for the 15 minute procedure. One thousand a minute to put a tube with a camera in a throat. In the US you're expected to pay a premium of a few hundred to a thousand a month just for the privilege of having insurance then the first $x out of pocket before coverage kicks in. The $14k hit the deductible and we paid $4k out of pocket for it. We need a sane system here, this is anything but sane. I like paying out of pocket and knowing prices, but doctors need to know what they're charging as well. I'm sure there are a number of doctors on the board here. My guess is 90% have no idea what a patient is paying for a given procedure.

You really turned into a good writer... one can see the structures and all. Professional stuff. Did you take any courses or it came with writing the blog? Thanks, I appreciate the complement. Any improvement has come from practice. My only professional training if you can call it that was reading On Writing Well in 2013.

I think expectations for people on this forum are way off from what the average person has. Most middle class people will retire with SSN, maybe a few hundred dollar pension per month and less than $100k in retirement savings. Consider a typical family with a paid off modest house and both people receiving SSN. Maybe they each get $2k per month in SSN income plus $300 from a pension. That's $4300/mo in income. It's more or less the median income, and considering they're living a median life not much changes in retirement. Don't discount the fact that many retirees work part time jobs to either stay busy or supplement their income. When you make $4k a month from SSN an additional $400/mo from greeting at Wal-Mart 10 hours a week is a 10% income bump, significant for most. Also consider that for this median family their kids are probably gone. They raised kids on this income, so without kids they might even feel a bit wealthy. Where people get tripped up with this is when they earn above average and want to retire with an above average income too. To do this one needs to amass a small fortune in retirement accounts. If one desires to retire early then health care is a concern as well. For the median person they're retiring after medicare kicks in, health savings is a moot point. Regarding health. Healthy people always like to say "exercise and eat right" and you'll never have a problem. Time and chance happen to us all. I've experienced fluke health events that are both serious and supposedly impossible for a healthy person who runs daily, is thin, and eats right. My wife claims that if I wasn't so in shape what I'd experienced probably would have killed me, maybe that's true as well. In life there is no A/B testing. I can't imagine retiring early due to health costs. With a healthy family they're still high. I get to deal with things like ER visits for kids jumping off the top of bunk beds. The random things boys get themselves into is crazy. This summer my middle son stood on some toy, fell, hit the wall and needed staples in his head. That's $1500 at a minimum. There is always the path of never getting married, never having kids, living in a tiny apartment or RV and living on a small pile of assets. This is the most mathematically sound and feasible strategy if that's the life you desire. It's not what I desire, nor most, but I think that's also why very few quit working early as well. When I had a job I hated I wanted to retire early. With some soul searching I realized I just wanted out. I now do something I enjoy in an environment that's flexible and I haven't thought about retirement. Why would I quit doing this? What would I do then golf? I can golf anytime I want now as it is, so what would I gain? I also understand not everyone can find this arrangement either. For some early retirement is the only way off the hamster wheel.

Maybe you have your answer. Is there a college library that's open late? Spend the day doing what you want, then go to the library and steal the comfy chairs at night for a few hours. Another option is a co-working space. In Pittsburgh you can get a private office at one of these places for $350/mo.

With the window at your back you'll have a lot of glare on the monitor. Place your computer facing out at the window. If you mainly read here's what I'd do: Buy an iPad Pro and get a keyboard. With this you can create presentations if you need, and you can surf the web. But you can also pull down annual reports and filings. This is your entire library. Buy a cheap desk from Ikea and a chair for when you need to type substantial amounts. Do this on a desk with correct posture. Otherwise buy a comfy chair or couch to sit on. Hang relaxing artwork. You should easily be able to get work done via an iPad if you're just the reading type value investor. If you need a Bloomberg or CapIQ buy a Surface Pro instead of an iPad and proceed the same way. What's the issue with home? Is it too loud? Is it that you're home? I work from home, here's what I've found. If I'm struggling to remain focused there is a reason. Either the work is boring or intimidating, or I'm not sure where to start. So I take a break and go do something that helps me think, run, walk, rake leaves, something. I think about my problem and develop a strategy, then go and work. When I was in offices I did the forced work thing. I would feel bad for not having my butt in a seat for a prescribed amount of hours so I'd force myself to do something. This means I was a master of taking two hours to do a 15m task. Now without that barrier I can spend 45m thinking about the task and doing it in 15m and then working the next hour. Obviously if your home is loud you need some place quiet. I've learned to deal with loudness, I have three boys (fourth on the way) at home and they're rarely quiet. I tune it out, it's just white noise. My boys know if my office door is open they're welcome to come in and talk. If it's closed I'm on a call or need it to be quiet. They are good with this. Here and there one will come busting up the stairs excited to tell me something and blast through a closed door, but it's extremely rare. The other thing is kids are in school most of the day. Our house went from being loud to almost silent on school days. I've never been in an office building as quiet as my house during a school day. I think the biggest determinant to working from home is personality. I am the type of person who will get things done if no one tells me, I have a very strong internal motivator. If there is work it won't finish itself, so I will work on it. Not everyone is like this. I've also found that setting a hard stop time is important. At a specified time I walk away for the day, work is over. The office is four steps from the bedroom, but I consider my work done. Sometimes I'll work once the family is asleep again, but I've been trying to cut that back/out. Regarding deep thinking. I don't think you can do this in an office. You need to get out and walk. It seems to me that the best thinking is done when your body is engaged in an activity that requires little thought. Your motor center is distracted, and your thinking center is free to think. This is why people have great ideas in the shower or on walks. I'd recommend taking walks or something similar. One last though: if you need noise cancelling headphones you're at the wrong spot. I've worked in open offices, and semi-open offices where I was wearing headphones hours on end. Eventually the headphones hurt my ears, or my ears would get hot and sweaty. Other times I'd get bored with the same music or same radio. It was a drag. Now I can listen to music if I want, or keep it silent if I want. Headphones are not a good long term strategy.

I write the Oddball Stocks blog (http://www.oddballstocks.com). The short answer is there are no economics of blogging, you are putting your writing and thoughts out on the Internet for free. The advertising route isn't worth the effort. You need 50k hits per month before advertising networks will work with you. These guys pay $300-500/mo. Below 50k hits you're looking at adsense, which might be $200/mo or so. Maybe if you write clickbaity headlines people will click on the money making robot ads. There are many ways to skin a cat. I can't speak for why others have quit. As NeverLoseMoney pointed out for a lot (I'd venture more than 50%) a blog was a way to get a job. I still think this is the best route to a job in investments. You will create visibility and build a brand for yourself. This is invaluable. If you're looking for a job then a value blog is one of the best routes. I've had numerous job offers and offers to manage money as a result of my writing. It was eye-opening that if I wanted to get into investment management I could either go to school, interview, work my way up a ladder. Or.. write for a few years and skip those steps straight to managing money. If you don't enjoy writing then don't start a blog. A lot of people think they'd enjoy blogging, but they aren't writers. I've always enjoyed writing. I was the kid in college who when assigned a 15 page paper due Friday thought "that's an easy assignment." Anything writing related has always come easy to me. This isn't true for everyone, I know some people struggle to put their thoughts in words. If that's true maybe a podcast is better, or some other media. I can't do videos, I have no idea how, and the process of creating them isn't fascinating. But there are investors who do really well with self-videos, it's different for each person. The natural place to start writing is with ideas. This is really the only thing you can write about for a while. There are problems with ideas. The first is only a small percentage of your readers will ever act. Most will read and either bash the idea or disregard it. You have to be writing a LOT to keep people interested. If you're always writing about ideas that percentage of readers that don't like those ideas will drop off and maybe never come back. There's also the risk someone takes the idea and "sells" it on SeekingAlpha. This might feel like betrayal, but I have no issues with it. No ideas are truly unique, there are always other investors in every company. I used to think I was the first to find some weird European or small companies until I wrote about them and invariably that day I'd get an email from someone saying "this is my biggest holding I've held it a decade.." I took a different tract with my blog. I created a premium newsletter where the actual ideas are shared, and on the public blog I write more about general investment concepts. This might seem like a strange approach, but I think it's the best approach. Here's what I've learned. The investing public at large doesn't want individual ideas. Some percentage of people do, and those are the ones you want to cater to. In my situation I have a newsletter where I freely share these little gems with a smaller and more focused group. The larger public wants information that is thoughtful and considerate, but that they don't need to act on. In other words most blog readers just want to be entertained. If you can entertain with words you will find success. When I switched from each post being an actionable idea to being more evergreen "how to think" my traffic skyrocketed with less posts. This is desirable because I don't have the bandwidth to write as frequently as I used to. Another consideration is it's really hard to continually find things to write about week after week month after month.

Agreed on Nike. In kids leagues it's UA everywhere, not much Nike anymore. My brother-in-law is the same age as you, exact same Nike loyalty. A few years back he was wearing this awful shirt, just hideous. We were making fun of him and he said "You can't make fun of this, it's Nike!" He'd literally buy anything they made. He's still big on Nike, but not at the same level. UA is filling the gap.

Two thoughts on this: 1) I've purchased online successfully. A lot of websites have sizing guides. I will buy shirts and coats online, never pants. I have athletic legs from working out, they don't usually fit in the modern pants that presumes all men are walking around on muscle-less twigs. The more important point.. 2) Clothing is TOUGH. I owned AE for years and followed it about 10 years ago. I had friends in the industry and tried to keep up with things, it's really hard. Brands go in and out of style very quickly, too quickly for me. Success is spotty and isn't long-lived. You might have a great year or two when designs match with what's popular, but then the year after that a big swing and miss by designers. I enjoy going to Marshalls and looking at what brands are filling the shelves. For years Nike and UA stuff was absent, now it's filled. Same with other "popular" brands. By the time it hits Marshalls I feel like the wave of popularity has passed. After following clothes for a few years I reached the conclusion it's far outside my circle of competence. If anything I'd prefer to invest in the retailer verses the brand at this point. I feel like clothes are similar to restaurants. Popularity moves in waves. Outback and Applebees were hot in the 90s, now they're second run. They fill tables, but there is no excitement. The same applies for Abercrombie etc. On the other hand if you know extremely trendy consumerist type people this might be good. My sister-in-law is always buying whatever is about to be popular or popular. Right now she's buying from little boutiques with brands I've never heard of. It's the whole "hand crafted" thing in small batches. Not sure there's a way to capitalize on that.

It's REALLY hard to move to Canada. You have to be sponsored by a Canadian company and there's a high hurdle for the company to show that no Canadians can do the job. My sense is Canada is afraid of Americans coming in and taking jobs. I've been drilled about doing business in Canada anytime I've come to visit. I guess one thing you could do is come in on the 6mo tourist visa then overstay and hope you can work things out. It's a really easy place to visit for a few days/weeks/months, but much harder to move there for good. I think the easiest way to move is to marry someone from Canada. Interesting. I've never had to move to Canada, as I was randomly born here, but I know that the country has a fair amount of net immigration coming in, so I assumed it wasn't that difficult. I've had the same perspective/experience in the US. There are a ton of immigrants here and I've always figured it was easy. Then I started to work with them professionally and asked about the process. Turns out it's extremely hard and they were very lucky to get through.

You can buy your way into Canada as well: http://www.cic.gc.ca/englisH/immigrate/business/investors/index.asp You need to have $1.6m in net worth and invest $800k in Canada. It's a fascinating program, the government takes the $800k and invests it into government projects that create jobs. So in essence you are paying $800k to get in, there is zero return on that money. You get your money back without interest after five years and three months. Based on the health care discussion it seems the $500k in US costs is cheaper than dumping $800k into a Canadian investment to earn health care. Although the $800k isn't lost, there is opportunity cost associated with that money.

It's REALLY hard to move to Canada. You have to be sponsored by a Canadian company and there's a high hurdle for the company to show that no Canadians can do the job. My sense is Canada is afraid of Americans coming in and taking jobs. I've been drilled about doing business in Canada anytime I've come to visit. I guess one thing you could do is come in on the 6mo tourist visa then overstay and hope you can work things out. It's a really easy place to visit for a few days/weeks/months, but much harder to move there for good. I think the easiest way to move is to marry someone from Canada.

For completeness on this. Went to healthcare.gov and entered in my family stats. I make too much to get any subsidies, although interestingly enough they recommend that I enroll my kids in the state's medicare program. Interesting way of shifting costs. Cheapest plan is $400/mo with a $14k out of pocket max. So we're talking about $1500/mo for health care. Maybe you get a few years where it's cheaper, but I'd expect to budget the full amount. It's crazy what things cost. One of my sons had a camera put down his throat to examine some vocal nodules, cost was $14k, insurance picked up everything but about $1500. The "original" cost was $60k that was knocked down to $14k due to insurance company discounts. So one procedure like that which took about an hour and you've blown your deductible. I could rant on this for a while, but this is it for now. Bottom line, it's extremely expensive to not be under employer health insurance in the US. Some can do it, they're usually young, and hit the genetic lottery and perfectly healthy. You can roll the dice and see where they land, but I've had a few encounters where if healthcare wasn't available a family member wouldn't be living right now. The costs are terrible. I'm trying to psych myself up to pay $5k for a birth in early 2017. I will probably not even look at the bill and blindly pay. Looking at these bills is infuriating. They stick an IV in you and suddenly there's a $200 drug in there you didn't know about. Or the $37 Advil pills, or how the doctor and hospital double charge you for everything. The hospital charges $200 for an xray because it took place in their building, then the doctor charges $200 for the xray because they actually did the xray. Such a scam. But there's nothing that can be done unfortunately.

Replying to myself: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/11/01/our-new-237-per-month-health-insurance-plan/ Looks like he was paying $237/mo in 2012 for a $20k family deductible plan with a max of $32k out of pocket. Given health insurance increases in the past four years it's probably closer to $500/mo for this same plan. On his forum people keep asking how they can get a plan like his, comparable plans run $700/mo back in 2014. Seems like he hasn't revisited the issue since 2012. In the post he says they skated by with his wife working part time. This is the missing link, affordable health insurance isn't really available if you're trying to retire early. I know most on this site are in Canada and Europe where it's different. But in the US it's not practical unless you have a substantial bankroll for health care alone.

This is what I've always wondered as well. Everytime I've seen it discussed there is a lot of hand waving with things like "stay healthy" and "eat right" as if those things will prevent my boys from jumping off their bunk beds and ending up in the ER. The retire early thing assumes a person who is healthy and never gets sick. It never assumes an actual family as if people with kids might want to retire one day, or that not everyone is 100% healthy all the time.

This is not related to rkbabang's comment or to him/her. My wife and I get a kick out of watching these doomsday preppers show. Man these people are nutcases. At one time we thought about finding some just in case. But then we figured it would be so terrible to live among them that we abandoned our search. Fascinating story related to this. I was friends with a guy who was in the Air Force before he started a business. While in the Air Force he trained pilots on how to survive behind enemy lines in harsh conditions and how to survive torture. The stories he had were epic. Air Force takes pilots in the desert, tells them to empty their water bottles and gives then a point some miles away that they're supposed to meet at in a few days. Anyways his stories were always really cool. He started a coffee shop, then did some telecommunications stuff. Very boring career type things. This prepper thing starts to become popular. So this guy writes a book on a whim. Basically a fictional account of someone surviving a terrorist attack in the woods. He said he just wrote about his training in a fiction form, nothing more, nothing less. The guy wasn't a great writer. Anyways the book takes off, it became a cult favorite from these guys. Suddenly he's an 'expert' and in demand. So he does the natural thing, he starts a prepping company. Sells training, sells getaway houses, the whole deal. It's grown like crazy. Now as expected his clients thought he should be a prepper as well I guess. A year or two ago he moved "off the grid" to Central PA. Now here's the irony with all this. The guy completely plays into the stereotype his clients have. But he grew up on a farm, and he's always wanted to get back to that. So going 'off grid' to live like he always wanted with his family isn't much of a stretch. This is one of those "right place right time" stories. He happened to have this experience from the military when the whole scene was becoming popular and he had the foresight to cash in big on it. Some buddies and I like to joke that we'd like to go into the woods with him and have him show us how to suck a rabbit's eyeballs out. He said this was one of the first things the Air Force made these guys do, was a rite of initiation. I guess compared to being waterboarded an eyeball isn't that bad.

I've always recommended passive for family as well. Most of the time it's a spot on recommendation, most family members don't pay attention and don't care. With my mom I recommended a European index fund, a TSM index and a small cap index. I have heard a few quips about how terrible her portfolio has done mostly because of Europe and small caps. I helped my co-founder find index funds in his 401k, although after a few years he grew started to lose hope. He kept seeing things like "Russia Double Levered Exchange Fund" grow by 200% whereas his funds went up by 7%. He chased some performance for a while, then went to Betterment this year. Now he's on autopilot, this is how it should be. If I ever have to rollout a 401k I will do Betterment or something similar. To me a plan like that is the prudent thing to do for employees.

Rebranded ING DIRECT? No re-branded ING Direct is CapitalOne 360. YOYA is one of ING's divested insurance offerings. I was an ING Direct customer and my account is now with CapitalOne360.

This is what bothers me. A big chunk of voters creating a false equivalency between both so they don't have to take a stand and can appear neutral. But sometimes in your life you just have to take a stand and out yourself as who you are. The biggest disasters in the human history had happened because of the inaction,this Laissez-faire attitude hoping that things will be ok. I don't agree with Trump supporters but their agenda is clear and I find it threatening. I am sure they feel the same way about Hillary. What did she do? Benghazi(No indictment) , emails (ditto),part of global elite to bring down the americans(exactly). I am really honest here , what is it that she did that is soooo threatening? And Trump, here is his latest: http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-10-17/poll-shows-trumps-claims-of-a-rigged-election-are-working-with-voters This is as dangerous as it gets. All for an egotist garbage excuse for a human. If this doesn't move your needle, I don't know what else would. Right, so the source of the issue is the primary system then correct? I'm an independent, so I get zero vote in the primaries. Primaries are for the hard-core politicos who live and breath this stuff. The people in the parties with the strongest ideological voice are the ones casting their vote for who will become the candidates. We're getting more and more extreme and it isn't really much of a mystery why. Polls indicate that the US is socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Moderate candidates don't fare well in primaries, yet my guess is a very moderate candidate would do well if they could skip the primary and go straight to the election.

Haven't read this thread in a while, didn't realize this was a: Canada sucks vs Canada is better Canada is great, I love visiting there. It's very clean, people are nice, you guys have a great country. But I also know a ton of Canadians who moved and live in the US for whatever reason, opportunity, or some other thing. The Canadians who've stayed obviously think Canada is better, otherwise you would have moved. And the Canadians who've moved clearly think that their current situation is better, or they'd be moving back. I even know some Canadians who *gasp* became American citizens. And I know an American who became a Canadian. I don't know anyone who moved based on a list of stats. Like Liberty said as well there are so many regions you can't compare easily. Where is this homogeneous US? For someone moving from NYC to Birmingham it'd be a bigger cultural move compared to moving to Toronto. Birmingham would be like a foreign country whereas Canada wouldn't. I have a friend who moved from Ohio to Hawaii, both in the US. He couldn't stand Hawaii, had island fever, didn't adapt to the culture, so he moved back. How could someone have culture shock and cultural adjustment if places were just a clear swap? I doubt Canada is a clear swap either? Is living in Montreal or Quebec City the exact same as Oakville? I haven't chimed in on this Presidential thing yet. Bottom line, we have bad choices. We are a world-power so people outside the US become involved in our politics because our choices have impacts. For better or worse Americans are ignorant of what's going on elsewhere, even in Mexico or Canada. Why? They don't need to. The country is large enough and big enough that most don't ever need to travel. You can be in the PNW rainforest down to the desert in the Southwest to the tropics in Florida and back up East. There's a lot of variety because there is a LOT of land. I think the same could be said for most large countries. Are most Chinese up to date on Mongolian politics? We can't change who the choices are. There are just as many dissatisfied Americans as there are Canadians or Europeans. We had a party this weekend and politics came up. The unanimous opinion was our friends and family would vote for ANYONE else at this point. Unfortunately anyone else isn't a person who's running.

Ferriss is interesting. I am friends with someone who knows him well. He has noted that Tim is a complete workaholic, but he somehow has a cognitive dissonance that his 'work' isn't real work. So he feels like he's never working, yet he can't stop. It's like that with most top performers. DTEJD1997 - Didn't realize you were selling servers as well. I just picked up two servers. We're starting to rack our own equipment. Would have looked into you guys. Have some incredibly beefy servers that I purchased for ~$1k each. Purchased everything separate. I have chips, heatsinks, ram and thermal paste sitting next to my keyboard. I was thinking about this as I ran today. I think the easiest side business for anyone without a specialty is really import/export, or value-added resale. Find a cheap source of something and resell online. Or do the DTEJD1997 approach and buy servers/parts, fix up, and resell. The two servers I purchased are used. Some company purchased them off-lease from a client and then resold them to myself. This is a great business, you just need to find your source.

Don't sell your time, sell a product.

This is a good example of my point: Lazy Thinking: Stupid people pay extra for IBM, because of "brand" 2nd Level thinking: IT managers pay extra for IBM to reduce career risk 3rd Level: Why does hiring IBM reduce career risk? Is this advantage eroding? You could argue that IBM's ROTE is so high because it exploits a principal-agent problem. That is a much more insightful argument than saying that people only buy IBM because of the "brand". -- I will refrain from further comment on this thread. I'll propose a different theory. The companies that end up buying from IBM come from RFP heavy sales processes and IBM along with a few other heavyweights are the only players who are willing to play this game. Anecdotal story. Was on a car rental bus recently and a guy next to me was in enterprise software sales and decided that he wanted to share the results of his trip with the entire bus. His company (that will remain nameless, but I know) was competing against IBM for a contract at a very large oil company that everyone on here would recognize. He kept talking about how this company had no idea what they were doing and were relying on their vendor for advice. He said the other competing vendor pushed IBM products, but this guy said they were pointless and was going to push his software stack. In the end this client will purchase from IBM or this other company based on whose sales story they like more. The client was not in the drivers seat, they were being taken for a ride.

A brand isn't magical fairy dust that causes people to pay more money for bad products. Your lazy thinking obscures IBM's real strengths and challenges. You work for or worked for IBM correct? What are their strengths? Why would someone buy IBM's offerings?