Pabrai q2 letter

[randomep]

I guess here is the proof:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/hbs-competitiveness-study-politics-polarization-trust-michael-porter-104219596.html

 

Also - here is the median wealth by country. The median Canadian is far wealthier than the median American with better education facilities, better job opportunities and better benefits. Heck, even Greece's median wealth (which is highlighted as the basket case in US) is higher than that of US.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult

 

 

 

 

Woah, never trust these type of wealth statistics, they are heavily skewed by exchange rates. It is from 2013 and at that time the CDN was at parity to USD.  Now Canadians are a lot poorer because it CDN = 0.75 USD

 

 

[RichardGibbons]

Woah, never trust these type of wealth statistics, they are heavily skewed by exchange rates. It is from 2013 and at that time the CDN was at parity to USD.  Now Canadians are a lot poorer because it CDN = 0.75 USD

 

I suspect this isn't true because the average house price in bubbilicious Canada is up 28% during that time, and real estate is frequently leveraged.  So, I'd guess the gap has increased.

 

That said, I think now is a really bad time to measure average wealth in Canada because of the housing bubble.

[randomep]

Woah, never trust these type of wealth statistics, they are heavily skewed by exchange rates. It is from 2013 and at that time the CDN was at parity to USD.  Now Canadians are a lot poorer because it CDN = 0.75 USD

 

I suspect this isn't true because the average house price in bubbilicious Canada is up 28% during that time, and real estate is frequently leveraged.  So, I'd guess the gap has increased.

 

That said, I think now is a really bad time to measure average wealth in Canada because of the housing bubble.

 

 

You know the table compared wealth in different countries in USD. So the CDN dropped 33% but property values gained 28%.  If someone borrowed money to buy a house the borrower may gain alot but the lender loses a lot on the exchange, and I can assume that the lender is canadian.  Most importantly financial assets dropped 33% over that period, and the canadian stock market isn't that hot either.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[benjamin1978]

Elon Musk strikes me as somebody who always doubles up. Keep doing this often enough and he will go broke. That is what I think will happen to Tesla as well.

 

Somebody else may pick up the pieces and make it work in financial terms. I do give it to him that he did come pretty far.

 

I would not be afraid to invest in a car company because of Tesla. I think the bigger risk is that more and more know how is going to be in the software (self driving car ) and companies like Google and perhaps Apple may make the hay and the exisiting car makes may deal with low margin hardware, just like with smartphones.

 

It already is and always has been low margin hardware, particularly on the passenger vehicle side, don't think anyone is making respectful margins

 

BMW, Daimler, Porsche, Audi, Ferrari have pretty good margins, however the value lies either in the brand and proprietary hardware know how. The latter is going to be less important going forward, which I think could hurt the margins of luxury car makers. Who cares about having a sporty car, if they don't drive any more. Maybe not an issue for the super luxury cars  like Ferrari, but certainly for the likes of Mercedes, BMW or Lexus.

 

But which one of these you listed is a fair comp to FCA / GM / Ford? That said, Jeep is good.