Morgan

@billybobjovialdechicoutimi It really seems like you (or someone) needs to go activist or sue them for answers. I hope you can get some results. This kind of management behavior really drives me nuts.

@billybobjovialdechicoutimi Fight the good fight man. Those guys are total tools. Hopefully you prevail!

Fuzzy or hard to interpret financials and poor communication from management - seems like something to avoid. There are so many publicly traded real estate stocks. What do you like about this one? That of course doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask questions. Thank you for sharing.

I’m not a REIT expert. Occasionally things go up in value despite higher rates, but it is rare. I didn’t check your math, but it might be worth checking if management has incentive plans and what the targets are. It’s possible to boost the values a little bit here, a little there and a little over yonder and pretty soon the portfolio is worth a lot and maybe Wall Street will agree, the stock goes up and top management gets their payout. After all, who is to say a building is worth exactly “x” vs “x” plus or minus 10%? Especially over a 6-24 month period. There is also incentive misalignment with the appraisers. If they want to get hired for the next job, it is in their best interest to get close to management’s expectations lest they shop for a different appraiser. The same thing happened at the rating agencies during the GFC.

There are a fair number of people in the world with at least $100m cash (this doesn’t even include entrepreneurs raising money). This is what was spent to build the first successful rocket. None of them have come remotely close to the accomplishments of SpaceX let alone any of Elon’s other companies. Bezos is the best competitor, having spent $1b+ (10x more) and has achieved very little. The common claim that Elon is an idiot and it’s the engineering teams that do everything; obviously he has huge and incredible teams, but Elon (and his teams) are able to produce the best results by far compared to every other single organization on the planet.

This is so amazing it’s shocking it actually happened! This is a the dawn of a new age for mankind!

I pre-ordered it and am looking forward to it!

@Saluki thank you for continuing to post here. Lots of interesting stuff to review. Thank you!

When there’s a big spread on books, I just buy the cheapest one unless it’s for a gift. Sometimes I check out Wikipedia to see if there is more info on each edition.

Being up 593% is great until one bad year wipes all the previous years gains, which is what happens with most high risk funds eventually. It is a little crazy he says he's willing to invest in ponzi schemes. Surely he doesn't but this is just for marketing purposes?

Doesn’t he have any morals? How can he sleep knowing he’s taking such big risks with other people’s money? It is very reckless. It’s more unethical because he tries to hide his blowups.

I'm super excited for water on Mars! Hopefully SpaceX will achieve its Mars goals and gets crews there and start exploring and building!

IIRC, Mongolia Growth Group raised $200m to invest in Mongolian real estate with the idea that values would increase similarly to values in Hong Kong. This is such a fundamentally bad thesis. Hong Kong is very land constrained while Mongolia is just open space forever. Furthermore, the real estate portfolio, with no debt, still was losing money. This is totally crazy. Their expenses were out of control. Then he created an insurance company inside of Mongolian Growth Group which never made any money. The only reason the stock has gone up that I’m aware of is because securities inside company increased in value (I will give him some credit on that), not from anything related to operations of the company.

Welcome back muscleman.

@Spekulatius and @rkbabang - the internet remains undefeated lol

I’m not ValueArb, but I never got it. Even when I got sick it was just the flu and the Covid test was negative. Everyone in my family tested positive for Covid, but somehow I never got it. I’m not sure I’ve heard of anyone else who never had it. It’s kind of crazy.

A few days ago I bought some 12 packs of Pepsi. I used to buy them all the time before Covid. Pre-Covid 2020: four 12 packs were $12 when on sale, or $0.25 per can. 2024: three 12 packs for $20 when on sale, or $0.55 per can. CAGR of 21% per year. I guess Pepsi has tapped their pricing power and will continue to do so.

Buffett did not have computers to run screeners, so there may not have been a better way to review a lot of companies quickly other than “starting with the As”. Some of the old books of companies had lists in the back sorting the lowest P/E, P/B, various metrics etc. That was kind of a short cut, but everyone looks at that. This is not as effective in the long run perhaps, but it is easier. I have probably 20 screens set up on TIKR.com. It has financials on 64,000 companies and can sort by most of the normal metrics, plus it has a good bit of other info on each company. Koyfin also does this similarly, but has more metrics I think. Depending on the screen you can get 50 or maybe a few hundred companies to review. I usually spend 30 seconds to determine if it is a pass or not. I pass on almost everything very quickly. If it is interesting I research it further there or add it to a list. Right now I’m focusing on small caps, but found 3-7 interesting companies in the last few months. Of course over time you’ll need to review each company again. Screeners can lead you to companies that are very stable, but sometimes you find a company that is in transition to something better while hopefully having a strong balance sheet. Does anyone know how many publicly traded companies there were in the 1960s during Buffetts partnership days? I don’t think it is reasonable to go through company by company when there are 64,000 companies. 2,000-8,000 companies is manageable I suppose. No matter how you do it, you need to look at tons and tons of companies to hopefully find a few good ones.

Yes very true. I think at it's largest, they were using $10-$20b in equity plus 4-5x leverage. It's crazy to see Renaissance Technology as large shareholders in many of the nano-caps I look at, but that money has to go somewhere.

RIP. 66% per year from 1988 to 2020 according to this Forbes article. Totally insane. He probably has the best record ever. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexlazarow/2020/10/31/what-jim-simons--one-of-the-worlds-most-successful-investors--can-teach-us-about-fintech/?sh=424521912aa9#:~:text=Jim Simons is arguably the world’s best investor.,(and trading gains in excess of %24100 billion).

I am pumped for this!!

No matter happens, this will be interesting to see the outcome.

Care to share the name?

Thank you for the response!

@Longnose Thank you for sharing TBTC. I have not done any kind of deep analysis, but I just want to ask. What do you think of the declining revenues since Q12022? Revenues have had some cyclicality over the years, so maybe this is par for the course? There was a similar pattern in 2012 to 2017, then again from 2018 to 2022. Do you feel revenues are growing from more and more business or simply keeping up with inflation? Revenues have trended upwards for 10 years though. NI also is generally positive, but sometimes negative. Fortunately most of the big jumps are positive NI with small losses. A strong spot - debt is being paid down while cash increases. Care to share anymore thoughts on the company? Do you think the product from TBTC is superior to their competitors? Why do casinos pick this over their competitors? Why hasn't a competitor just acquired this? Thank you