Morgan
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Posts posted by Morgan
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if you think about it, we spend so much more time and money on science, in a much more efficient way now then 50 years ago. There are almost 3x as much people on the planet now. And with internet and improved communication it is much easier for smart people to find each other and work together. So technological breakthroughs should happen at a much accelerated pace then in the 50's . Im pretty optimistic for the next 10-20 years.
In the past you also had geniuses writing some paper on something and then having it burried. Only to be found like 30 years later and cause breakthroughs (wasn't this the case with information theory?). with improved efficiency in information exchange, that should happen much less now.
Now 200 IQ genius in mongolia can find a library and internet connection and teach himself anything. And then easily connect with scientists around the world. That was much harder 50-100 years ago.
I'm optimistic about the future too.
Ray Kurzweil has talked a lot about the accelerating pace of intelligence and technology that had occurred in past and the next 20-30 years is when we should start hiting the exponential part of the growth curve, which will of course bring dramatic changes to just about every aspect of life. Cheap energy is just one area to be changed.
See: here:http://www.singularity.com/images/charts/ExponentialGrowthofComputing.jpg
If you're interested in thinking about the future I would recommend reading Kurzweils work. He's got many interesting ideas.
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The first thing that comes to my mind is Peir 1 in March of 2009. It traded for $0.11/share at the low I believe. The high was ~$25/share. About a ~225x return. Not bad lol
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Here is a transcript of an interview Tom Murphy did, where he describes his career at Cap Cities. I wish there was a lot more out there, but I haven't found much.
Great share! Thank you coc.
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Oddball,
Your post's are well written and insightful. Easily, one of the top six posters on the board. Regarding the last paragraph. Being unusual is good in business! Case study:
Busted downtown building with 30 commercial office units available. 17 units are rented and 13 units need to be remodeled and are currently non-operational. The building is priced via the cap rate method. You do due diligence and talk to contractors you get a rough estimate of the total budget to fix the building. Details so far:
- Central downtown property in gas producing state. Long trend economics of the state look solid
- Building is priced below replacement cost. Building is at fair price according to the current cap rate
- Current office rents slightly below market rent.
Deal looks good right? There is pricing power once the building gets completely remodeled. Also unit growth via turning the non-operational units into operational units. These type of "distressed" properties are commonly priced below replacement cost. The reason most people wouldn't do this deal is :
- To remodel the property will have to take cash from other business to finance this project.
- Start to finish this process will take 6 months-2 years.
- The unwillingness to not make a return from day 1.
Quality comes at a fair price. I can either buy my high quality green juice smoothie via jamba juice or invest in a blender. The case study above is like investing in a blender. More work, more vision, and more fun. Its a beautiful thing to see garbage turned into something respectable. Vision is needed.
This is exactly what we do in our residential real estate business. We buy cheap buildings that need work, renovate, raise the rents and fill the units up. We've gone from 8 units to 50 units in two years or so. Always looking to add more and take the skills learned there and apply them to building other larger projects. It's a lot of work, but good fun. From my position, real estate is something more or less anyone can get involved with and grow to be quite large if desired.
PS - Oddball you've always got good posts for us. ;D
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I think the multiverse argument is reasonable, but I don't think you need it to posit life. If the universe has been around for an infinite period of time and there's a close to infinite or infinite number of stars and planets, a one in a trillion chance is going to happen eventually.
A second way of refuting your argument is to take a million numbers. Randomly select 50 of those numbers. What's the odds that those numbers came up in that particular order? Well, it's incredibly small, much smaller than your 1 in a trillion.
So is that a miracle? I don't think so. The problem is that you can't argue some outcome like that after it's happened, and say, "because that outcome has a low probability, something special must have happened".
Basically, outcomes are constantly happening. Each one always has an almost infinitely small chance of it happening, yet it does because some outcome has to happen.
An interesting book about the subject is Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos. It's a short and easy read. He talks about this pervasive error in judgement in the book as well as other errors.
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Try AOL Reader. I know it's weird to think of AOL as having anything good, but it's very simple and clean and works the best for me. You can use a google account to sign in so there's no need to create an AOL account. One less account to deal with.
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Hey all:
I would suggest is that the problem is not so much income inequality...it is about the lack of earnings & ability to "move up".
At the legal project I am working at...the woman sitting in the cubicle next to me is well dressed, articulate, etc. She is in her late 20's? She claims she was #4 in her graduating law skewl class. This is the first job she has been able to get. She has sent out just over 100 resumes and applied to dozens of jobs. She had two other interviews before taking on this job, which is temporary in nature.
She has WELL over $100k in student loan debt.
You have people who are educated, intelligent, hard working and wanting to work in the field for which they studied & trained, but there are few jobs available. They are also hopelessly buried in debt.
This isn't limited to the law field.
I would say the problem is that a huge amount of people are not employed, are underemployed, have huge amounts of debt, AND NO CLEAR PATH FOR ADVANCEMENT.
Agreed that it is harder to move up in society now than it used to be. If I remember correctly, social mobility is now less frequent in the US than in Britain.
From what I have read, the legal profession is the worst for the type of situation. High education costs and limited jobs. I'm sure other industries have similar issues, but just not as extreme. I had a similar issue with finance when I graduated in 2011. Applied to 70 job openings and didn't get anything. I was fortunate to have my little company which has grown nicely since then, but other friends have been less fortunate.
If the higher ed system could pump out well educated people but with way, way less debt it'd be easier for graduates to take risks and be entrepreneurs. With 100k debt load and zero hope of debt relief from bankruptcy people can't do anything. It's a tough situation. I don't know how to change it really. Even if the answers were obvious, I'm skeptical the political system would actually make meaningful changes.
So who knows.
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This is so cool. Musk and his team are absolutely changing the world.
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That's a pretty cool calculator. Thanks for sharing!
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The Beats acquisition by Apple has gotten me thinking about "celebrity hires". Celebrity's or near celebrity's that are hired by companies for various reasons.
With Dre and Iovine coming to Apple and Angela Ahrendts (Burberry) already there it makes me wonder what kind of value can they add? Obviously they are a brand name that can be useful in the correct context, but Apple needs basically no help branding. What benefit do these people provide to Apple that Apple isn't not capable of doing itself? Is Cook trying to surround himself with "cool" people?
What can Ahrendts do to Apple retail locations to make them better? If I remember correctly Apple stores have some of the highest sales per square foot anywhere. What can she do to improve this?
Dre and Iovine. Presumably they were acquhired to lead up the streaming service. People say Iovine will be able to use his connections and sway to put together deals with record labels for the service. What can Dre bring? A younger image? He's not particularly young. Wouldn't it have been better (and probably cheaper) to build a streaming service themselves and hire them to promote it? Why is Apple making these changes? This combined with a the departure of a number of long-time execs, I think, will change Apple.
Will these three new celebrity hires be able to function well at Apple? Presumably they all have huge egos are very used to calling the shots. Apple seems to have a strong leader, but Cook is not as strong and all powerful as Jobs was. Can Cook control them? Or will different camps emerge and slow the company over the coming years as infighting potentially increases? Apple hasn't put out a significant new product since the iPad in 2010. Just upgrades on the same stuff. Will the iWatch or iTV be as big as previous products? Maybe, but I'm sort of skeptical.
I am a huge Apple fanboy, but some of the actions the company has taken in the last few years have made me wonder if the company is going to do much significant innovation. I hope they do because I love my Apple products.
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On first glance this seems like an odd acquisition. I'd be very surprised if Apple bought them for the headphone technology as it is frequently mocked for being quite low quality for the money paid. Not to mention Apple has more than sufficient capabilities to create marvelous products. So then why does Apple want their streaming service? From the news the service isn't doing too well. Low six-digit numbers for paying subscribers. I think I read that iTunes purchases are declining slightly so getting into the streaming arena could help. But is this really the best way? And for $3.2 billion?? That's a lot of cashola (I know Apple has ~$150bn). Couldn't they build their own for less?
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This post defeats the purpose of having individual book reviews...it goes on the "General Discussion" area! Cheers!
Sorry Sanjev! We were talking about a list of industry primers in another thread and thought this might be a good place to create the list.
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Wow thank you for the great response Valueguy134 and for the OCC info Oddball. I'll check out the OCC stuff first, but add the book you recommended to my list. Some day I will get it!
I'm interested in the list. It doesn't need to be anything special. In this thread is fine I would assume.
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What specifically did you like about the book? It's $135. I understand there may very well be excellent information in it, but that is pretty expensive. Do you have any more details about the books you'd like to share?
I checked the index on Amazon, and it looks like it does cover a large amount of material. From analysis, to regulatory regimes, to a briefing of crises, etc. It looks quite expansive. How does it read? Is it dry like a college textbook? Or better than that?
It does look very interesting. Thank you for sharing.
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Just finished reading Sam Walton - Made in America and it was excellent. His story is incredibly inspiring. He started with some savings and loan from his folks to buy one franchised variety store and eventually turned it into WalMart. He wasn't from a wealthy family and didn't have tons of connections or advantages. He (and his team) earned it. If he was half as hard working and competitive as the book makes him out to be, he was workhound. it's very impressive.
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Another great book. I made fairly complete notes on it. See them posted here:
http://bottomupanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/06/value-investing-from-graham-to-buffett.html
As for Competition Demystified, it's sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. I only hear good things about it.
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Heard good things about the book, and I got it for only a penny on Amazon. You should also check out Oil 101 by Morgan Downey.
Thanks for the suggestion.
Another that is on my list is The Frackers by Gregory Zuckerman.
The Frackers was good. I just finished a month or so ago. The story about the original fracking guys is awesome. They are serious entrepreneurs, who took huge risks and were rewarded very, very well. The only thing that bothered me was I noticed a number or grammatical errors in the first quarter of the book (not that I never make mistakes). The author is a NYT writer I believe. Those kinds of mistakes shouldn't be in a published book.
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Very amusing book and seems pretty much accurate unfortunately. It's totally worth the read at 100 pages or so.
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No worries, I know how that is :D
If you don't mind sharing, what other books did you order? I'm always looking for ideas for the 'to read' list. Thanks.
The other books I ordered:
1. The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family - Ron Chernow
2. How to Lose $100,000,000 and Other Valuable Advice - Royal Little
3. The Art of Profitability - Adrian Slywotzky
I think all of them are recommendations from CoBF too. ;D
PS - I love Feynman's work too.
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Thanks for sharing! Just ordered it!
I hope you enjoy it. Please share your thoughts here once you've read it, I'm curious to know what you think of it.
Will do. It may take a little while though. Just ordered a few other books too. ;D
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Thanks for sharing! Just ordered it!
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Wow! What a surprise to see this on here!
It's really, a great movie. Such an awesome amount of dedication to his craft. Someday soon I hope to eat there.
You can eat at Sushi Nakazawa instead! http://www.sushinakazawa.com/
He is a disciple of Jiro. And from what I hear Nakazawa is way more livelier. Also it is cheaper. ;D
Yea I think his place is ~$150 and Jiro's is ~$300. Both pricey, but I'd give them both a go if I have the opportunity.
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Quite an interesting read. I can see how $78m could inflate to be $7.4 trillion now. I wonder if the author did the calculations for Dutch Guilders to something to dollars and then did the inflation jump or just forgot about the currency changes and did "78 million dollars in 1650 is how much now"?
Anyone know how much 1 Dutch Guilder is worth today?
I can very easily imagine the founders of the company were stupendously wealthy and powerful, but I'm rather suspicious of the size. 15x more valuable than the largest company on the planet today?
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Wow! What a surprise to see this on here!
It's really, a great movie. Such an awesome amount of dedication to his craft. Someday soon I hope to eat there.
Mongolian Growth Group
in General Discussion
Posted
I really hope that I have made a mistake in my quick overview of the financials (Condensed Interim Consolidated Financial Statements For the three and six months ended June 30, 2014 and 2013. They have $45m worth of property, but are on track to pull in only ~2m in revenue from the properties?
Based on that alone, it seems like they have way, way overpaid for the real estate. Please tell me if I'm wrong. I'd like to know what I'm missing.
Also, the "Unrealized gain on fair value adjustment on investment properties" in the Statements of Operation for about $7.9m really alters their net income (but not cash flow) to make them profitable. They readjusted the value as described in Note 7:
"During the six month period June 30, 2014, management applied its judgment to calculate the fair value of investment properties using the income approach and the sales comparable approach, which are generally accepted appraisal methodologies."
How many times can they readjust this upwards?