TwoCitiesCapital

Last I heard from him was years ago before the Trump administration screwed us over again. Not sure what his hopes are for a recapitalization, how he is handicapping it, or what his proposed path forward would be to continue justifying the common. I have always viewed the play on common as incredibly speculative and entirely reliant on the kindness of strangers and the courts. It always seemed obvious to me the path of least resistance would be for the common to be diluted into oblivion once the courts made it clear that they weren't going to evaluate the legitimacy of the "bail outs" or the motivations behind them. The commons were the junior claim at that point and the only way they were going to make money was if some other group voluntarily parted with it. Even the preferred are a suspect trade at this point - but the hopium runs strong.

Ackman is hoping CBO is wrong.

About to spend some of it to buy a 2016 Boxster Spyder now that my 2003 Carrera is falling apart

'Interesting' is one way to describe another 4-years of chaos

I don't think it's surprising to most of us to hear it was structured as some form of fixed rate financing arrangement. But consider where the 10-year treasury was in mid-2021 - like 1.5%. Corporate bonds wouldn't have been much higher. So this was still a very attractive deal for OMERS in terms of fixed return options. They got a 4-years bonds paying 4+% instead of 2+%.

I was buying. Some selected quotes I made in the Fairfax 2020 and the Q1 2020 threads at the time:

Lol. It might be a bottom for value investing. Not convinced it's a top for Bitcoin. As someone who casually observed the prior bull markets, and actually lived/invested through the 2017 and 2021 bull markets - it's currently much different. Back in 2018 and 2021, it was hard to find people NOT talking about Bitcoin (2018) or shitcoins (2021). Every holiday party/social gathering I went to, someone was talking about tripling their money in an absurd amount of time. This time around? Bitcoin hovered around $60-70k (prior ATHs and 4x off the lows) for months and the only real chatter was in financial circles around the ETF approvals. It has only been post election that I've started to hear stories from non-financial types catching wind of the move. The move to $100k will grab attention and then the FOMO may start. There's still months left IMO. Zoom out. Bitcoin crashed from mid-2021 while stocks ripped. Bitcoin bottomed mid-2022 while stocks continued to drop. Bitcoin rallied on the bank failures in March 2023 while stocks temporarily tanked. Just because both have been in a general uptrend recently doesn't mean they're correlated just like stocks and bonds traditionally go up together, but are often negatively correlated where it matters. The longer term correlation to equities was approaching multi-year lows pre-election. The day to day fluctuations in BTC are often very different from equities. But both have been generally rising (as have bonds and just about every other asset class).

Perhaps they're forced to consolidate the ownership since they have the controlling interest in Anchorage as well and thus 'control' 74% w/o the matching economic ownership? Similar to financial results where they have to disclose the full look through P&L and then adjust for minority interests in a separate line item?

Ackman went on CNBC in 2020 crying about how COVID was going to be "hell on earth" as his traders were actively unloading his credit hedges for billions in profits and loading up on hotel stocks. Fear-mongering may, or may not have, played into pricing of overall assets and credit spreads. It's impossible to say what his impact was other than the narrative he was selling was entirely different from the actions he was taking. Illegal? Probably not. Tasteless? Absolutely. And while not quite a pump/dump scheme, the whole Allergan/Valeant acquisition scandal shows he's not uncomfortable toeing the line of right/wrong.

Just out of curiosity - now that I've seen you say both UBS and Bitcoin are viewed as cash equivalents - are there any investments in the portfolio that AREN'T viewed as cash equivalents? How do they differ from UBS and BTC in characteristics?

Crypto is anonymous as long as you don't disclose which addresses you own. But EVERY transaction is stored on the blockchain FOREVER meaning the moment someone knows your address, they can piece together your history. This is why I've long said it's a TERRIBLE means of payments for criminals. While you may never discloser your Bitcoin address, sending anything from Coinbase where your account/address was KYC'd means they know YOU sent the money. The only question that has to be answered then is to whom was it sent which may, or may not, also be known by whomever is doing the snooping. Lightning Network/Strike are the best for micropayments. How to do so anonymously may, or may not, be easier than BTC blockchain. I have never attempted to stay anonymous myself to be able to provide advice there.

I like Kiva.org Microloans to people in developing countries running small businesses. While not technically a donation, I vote the money as donated and roll all loans and will not be taking the money out. My strategy has been to lend only to women-owned business. No other due diligence done. The statistics bear out that more of that benefit gets reinvested into the community than men-owned business. And in doing so, my default rate are dramatically lower than the average lender on the platform and my biggest form of "loss" is currency fluctuations

I believe the fiscal year starts in September. So the 44 is from September - October or only 1 month suggesting an annual total of ~500

Professional athletes only need coaches because they're not disciplined enough Monetary waste at its highest form

As if getting a trainer and showing up regularly isn't a form of a discipline....

The value of the "experts" largely helping people stick to this plan. And to know when enough is enough. I view financial advisors as more behavioral therapists - you're not hiring them to pick the best stocks anymore. You're hiring them to talk you off the ledge in March 2020 and prevent you from mortgaging your home to go all in on PLTR in the summer of 2021.

There are methodologies for modeling price, and predicting it, that aren't DCF. It's so tiring that most value investors approaches every investment with the same model. It's not appropriate for commodities - just because they can't be DCF'd doesn't mean that they're worthless and any non-zero price is speculative.

Most of the information I see suggests it still comes from China in the US - though those sources are from 2020 and 2021. There is an article regarding super sites in Canada from 2023, but says there is little evidence to suggest it's flowing south to the US so I don't really know either way other than to know that regulating drugs has never really been successful and I don't expect tariffs to be more successful than threats jail time, ruining your life, and OD'ing or other methods attempted in the past - so they're probably here to stay regardless of where the drugs are coming from.

Mexico was going to pay for the wall, right? The tossing out of NAFTA and renegotiation was supposed to correct trade imbalances, right? China is going to pay the tariffs, right? And now we'll drop tariffs against Canada after whatever drugs flowing into the country from Canada stop, right? What drugs are even an issue from Canada? More horse sh*t straight for the mouth of a serial liar - but people continue to believe him.

The history of Bitcoin thus far is those who've simply held, even through bear markets, have eventually outperformed basically every alternative. Sounds like Bitcoin holders are the house? You'd be hard pressed to find anything with a better 3-, 5-, or 10- year return profile or a better sharpe ratio. Seems pretty useful and safe to me as long as you have a sufficiently long time horizon....which is true of any "safe" stock as well.

How does that happen? When was the last time a president ran a budget the same as 4-years prior? All money from gov are essentially "transfer payments". And those monies are transferred to people who spend them. So if you remove them, doesn't that also remote spending? GDP is just a measure of spending so would absolutely be impacted. I have no debate about the inefficiency of government spending, but sounds like you're focusing on the pennies and Trump needs dollars. But I suppose we have to start somewhere.

I have my trim targets @ $250k and $350k. I'm not certain those will hit or not. But, some of the guys that I've followed that have been WAY more accurate than me in the past have $300-500k as the eventual top so ... we'll see

EV does include debt - so backing out the debt gives you the equity valuation less cash. But what's confusing is that shouldn't this be equity accounted since they own more than 50%? That would be purchase price less dividends?

Late to the convo I knew the analyst that used to work for Semper - or one of them (not sure how many are employed). I pitched both Fairfax and Fairfax India to him. His response makes me think that they don't trust the management. Perhaps that was from a surface level review in response to the equity/deflation hedges that ended poorly? But they were uninterested in discing further and already had some familiarity with the company. Can't recall exactly when the conversation was had - but was at some point between 2019 - 2021

If you think they're worth $0.50, I'll sell you some for $0.25?