What are you buying today?

[james22]

1 hour ago, Gregmal said:

One thing COVID really exposed is how much of a joke the public schooling systems are. Outside of being slaves to the scumbags at the unions, they're just plain second rate compared to other options. Record number of kids are currently being homeschooled or enrolled in private schools. There will be fortunes made with this, and not in the scummy for profit college type way. You just gotta dig a little harder to find the opportunities. 

 

+1

[hasilp89]

1 hour ago, Gregmal said:

Nursing has and always will be in demand though, so its decent. Personally I'm looking for opportunities to make private investments in schooling or education platforms for K-12. One thing COVID really exposed is how much of a joke the public schooling systems are. Outside of being slaves to the scumbags at the unions, they're just plain second rate compared to other options. Record number of kids are currently being homeschooled or enrolled in private schools. There will be fortunes made with this, and not in the scummy for profit college type way. You just gotta dig a little harder to find the opportunities. 

interesting view. know you said private but regarding education did you see the HMHC thread. was looking at the company over the weekend. business is transitioning to digital products and recurring revenue streams, they claim to be ahead of the pack. unlikely for local, state, fed gvt to cut spending on educational materials? On top of that they are being looked at for a take private. seemed like an interesting situation.  

[drzola]

SNC.to was what I added 25% more to my current holding too today folks

[Gregmal]

1 hour ago, hasilp89 said:

interesting view. know you said private but regarding education did you see the HMHC thread. was looking at the company over the weekend. business is transitioning to digital products and recurring revenue streams, they claim to be ahead of the pack. unlikely for local, state, fed gvt to cut spending on educational materials? On top of that they are being looked at for a take private. seemed like an interesting situation.  

Followed it loosely but other than buying a few at 17 AH Friday that I dumped at the open Monday morning haven't owned it and dont know enough about it to do more than stupid little swing trade. Some of the stuff Ive been hearing about and people Ive been talking to indicate that the opportunity really lies locally and in general if you can find app integrated stuff. For younger kids especially, content focused streaming service type education. It is for sure interesting but niche type stuff at the moment and would certainly be on the private market side. I am unaware of anything public that really fits this angle. 

[Castanza]

5 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Temp staffing for travel nurses? No way the demand for travel nurses stays where it is right now. I think the business is likely to shrink, post pandemic.

The whole travel nursing situation is quite the catch 22. Hospitals are required to keep certain ratios of nurses to patients. Nurses quit their jobs and take travel positions. In turn they get more pay, easier assignments and in general less forced overtime compared to hospital specific employees. 
 

My wife’s hospital has issued a “no rehire list for nurses who quit and join travel agencies.” It’s a real problem right now. My wife’s unit is 60% travel nurses and growing. It’s a trend they can’t seem to stop.  
 

My question is where does all the money come from?! How do these travel agencies afford to pay these nurses the wages they get? 
 

Average nurses are making right around $40/hr and bring home around 2k bi weekly. I know multiple travel nurses in the same state who are bringing home 6k a week. Some percentage of this is tax free. The lowest I’ve seen is 4K weekly.
 

Who the heck is paying this? Travel nursing trend was also growing pre covid.  
 

 

[Blugolds]

1 minute ago, Castanza said:

The whole travel nursing situation is quite the catch 22. Hospitals are required to keep certain ratios of nurses to patients. Nurses quit their jobs and take travel positions. In turn they get more pay, easier assignments and in general less forced overtime compared to hospital specific employees. 
 

My wife’s hospital has issued a “no rehire list for nurses who quit and join travel agencies.” It’s a real problem right now. My wife’s unit is 60% travel nurses and growing. It’s a trend they can’t seem to stop.  
 

My question is where does all the money come from?! How do these travel agencies afford to pay these nurses the wages they get? 
 

Average nurses are making right around $40/hr and bring home around 2k bi weekly. I know multiple travel nurses in the same state who are bringing home 6k a week. Some percentage of this is tax free. The lowest I’ve seen is 4K weekly.
 

Who the heck is paying this? Travel nursing trend was also growing pre covid.  
 

 

 

I can confirm this via relatives and personal friends...the only downside of travel nursing...is the travel...but the pay/per diem/bonuses for the adventurous is hard to argue with. I hadnt heard of the "no rehire list" thats interesting... those I know that travel make very good money and those that dont say that they have quite a few travelers in their units. 

 

If you can get a nursing degree from a technical college and then travel and make 6k a week thats a pretty good ROI on the education...

 

My old roommate's wife is a nurse...works in ICU and flight...during the height of the pandemic she took a gig out in CA...with bonuses and all expenses it was ~$10k...and the real kicker? She (and her cohorts) got out there and they never used them, they never actually went to the hospital, they were essentially just "on call" so they spent the days at the beach...she basically got a week paid vacation...I dont know if the hospitals spent that money or it was some federal allowance from Uncle Sam, but it was a great deal for her. 

 

I suppose for a super eager/hungry travel nurse they could bounce location to location but the ones I know usually have some down time in between gigs, also probably depends on specialty.

[Spekulatius]

5 hours ago, BG2008 said:

 

Will definitely shrink after Covid.  That's why I think the $3 EPS goes to $2.  Figure a 1.2 bn of revenue at 8% EBITDA  margin instead of $1.6bn of revenue.  Gets to you to roughly 10x P/FCF normalized in 22.  Good management team gets you some optionality in growth and this company becoming AMN in the future.   

Yes, these numbers make sense.
 

Travel nurses were always there, but back then it was that some areas had an oversupply of nurses and others and under supply and travel nurses were one way to even this out.

 

My wife had trouble to get a job in CA when she got her degree ~10 years ago because that area had a lot of nursing schools. Some of her class  mates joined the traveling circus and went to Texas or even the Dakotas.

 

Now with COVID-19, the epidemic waves creates moving hotspots throughout the country and the burnout has reduced the labor pool on nurses so when COVID-1 hits a certain area, the travel nurses are needed to relieve the temporary shortage.

 

The experience that @Castanza describes is unusual though. My wife sees the travel nurses too and they usually get into the COVID-19 wards, Its sort of like a clean room where you run around with thick plastic protective gear and faceshields. My wife sometimes can’t even take breaks because it takes to long to get dressed down and up again for the treatment she is running in this area so it’s sometimes 10h straight with barely any time even for a bathroom break.

 

The travel nurses typically get jobs that other don’t want to do (COVID-19 wings etc) so it is generally not easy cruising, they have to work for the money.

Edited January 19, 2022 by Spekulatius

[Castanza]

13 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

Yes, these numbers make sense.
 

Travel nurses were always there, but back then it was that some areas had an oversupply of nurses and others and under supply and travel nurses were one way to even this out.

 

My wife had trouble to get a job in CA when she got her degree ~10 years ago because that area had a lot of nursing schools. Some of her class  mates joined the traveling circus and went to Texas or even the Dakotas.

 

Now with COVID-19, the epidemic waves creates moving hotspots throughout the country and the burnout has reduced the labor pool on nurses so when COVID-1 hits a certain area, the travel nurses are needed to relieve the temporary shortage.

 

The experience that @Castanza describes is unusual though. My wife sees the travel nurses too and they usually get into the COVID-19 wards, Its sort of like a clean room where you run around with thick plastic protective gear and faceshields. My wife sometimes can’t even take breaks because it takes to long to get dressed down and up again for the treatment she is running in this area so it’s sometimes 10h straight with barely any time even for a bathroom break.

 

The travel nurses typically get jobs that other don’t want to do (COVID-19 wings etc) so it is generally not easy cruising, they have to work for the money.

It must just depend where you are because my wife has worked at three hospitals in two different states over the last four years and every single one of them has had gobs of travel nurses. She works in the NICU and travel nurses are definitely not just sent to Covid wards. 

 

Just off hand I know two who work at CHOP in Philly (pediatrics unit), 2 who work at UPMC Pitt in standard adult care, two who work at Hershey in NICU, and One who works at University Maryland NICU. The girl at Maryland is headed to San Diego next month and will be getting 6k "crisis pay" even though she is going to be in a NICU. I can only speak to assignments in the NICU, but my wife said at all three places she has been the last few years, Travel nurses are excluded from mandatory overtime and typically get the "feeder" assignments in the NICU. basically a baby almost ready to go home. Probably has to do with liability, not sure about skillset and the hospital reputation for care quality. 

 

There are shortages everywhere and it seems like it's accelerating. If you're young and single and like to travel a bit, why would you not quit and take a travel position? This is why her hospital implemented a no-rehire policy because people were quitting, traveling just far enough to get "travel status", staying in hotels and cashing in on the big payments. They have also been upping their contracts with nurses they do hire. Incentive is 25-35k forgivable loan with a 3.5 year (was 2 year) commit. 

 

What incentive is there to be a normal nurse in a specific location? I'd be willing to bet the turnover is higher than software engineering. People just accept signing bonus after signing bonus and follow the money. 

 

https://www.travelnursing.org/the-truth-about-travel-nursing-do-travel-nurses-get-the-worst-assignments/

 

 

 

[JRM]

1 hour ago, Castanza said:

What incentive is there to be a normal nurse in a specific location? I'd be willing to bet the turnover is higher than software engineering. People just accept signing bonus after signing bonus and follow the money. 

 

I talked to a traveling nurse about this over new year's.  There are local hospitals short staffed and hiring traveling nurses to fill in.  She could easily get a job at any of them...or she can commute the minimum required 90 miles and be a traveling nurse and make twice as much.  So it sounds like a lot of nurses are just commuting unnecessarily to make a lot more money.

[Spekulatius]

I would just be careful with generalizations. The typical travel nurse job is not to be on call and hang out on the beach.

 

As for the incentive as a ruse to have a regular job, it depends on where you are in your professional and personal live. A senior nurse will earn more than $40/ hour and she might get bonuses too.

 

However, if you are single and just starting out in your twenties, then traveling nurse might be a decent jog. If you are in your forties or fifties married with kids, probably not so much.

 

These sort of travel long jobs exiting in every profession. In my former job (which was a bit of a traveling job too) I met and worked with engineers that did service and fix machines (sort of semiconductor equipment) all over the world. Paid by the hour with travel times etc. Lots of opportunities to make overtime, but it’s quite stressfulL, I can guarantee you that. You can do this in your twenties but if you do this long enough and as you get older, it’s not that much fun any more.

Edited January 20, 2022 by Spekulatius

[yesman182]

My wife is a nurse and we live in a town with 3 hospitals close by. I want her to become a travel nurse but only accept jobs in out town. I am not sure if that is possible but since each of the hospitals has hundreds of vacant positions, I don't see why that isn't possible. 

 

 

[lnofeisone]

4 hours ago, Castanza said:

My question is where does all the money come from?! How do these travel agencies afford to pay these nurses the wages they get? 

 

 

This is a fairly comprehensive report - https://www.nsinursingsolutions.com/Documents/Library/NSI_National_Health_Care_Retention_Report.pdf 

 

with some general stats pulled out here - https://njsna.org/the-cost-of-nurse-turnover/

 

I also recall seeing somewhere that average revenue/nurse (lots of caveats here such as NP vs. RN, type of nurse, geography, practice etc.) is ~200k. So figure 40k turnover+30k bonus + 100k salary + hospital overhead + extra pay ->  hospitals are probably breaking even now but things aren't great for P/L. 

 

Also bought more CVE warrants.

[formthirteen]

Adding to Semler Scientific (growth + roiic = ). Tracker position in Whole Earth Brands. 1 x and .

Edited January 20, 2022 by formthirteen

[JRM]

11 hours ago, yesman182 said:

My wife is a nurse and we live in a town with 3 hospitals close by. I want her to become a travel nurse but only accept jobs in out town. I am not sure if that is possible but since each of the hospitals has hundreds of vacant positions, I don't see why that isn't possible. 

 

Where I live a nurse is required to travel at least 90 miles to be considered a travel nurse.  Maybe buy a rental 90 miles away?

[Spekulatius]

12 hours ago, yesman182 said:

My wife is a nurse and we live in a town with 3 hospitals close by. I want her to become a travel nurse but only accept jobs in out town. I am not sure if that is possible but since each of the hospitals has hundreds of vacant positions, I don't see why that isn't possible. 

 

 

It is possible but it would be a temporary position. Your wife would have to move around a lot.

[Red Lion]

Bought back ATVI April 57.50 puts I wrote in late December. 

[CafeB]

CULP

[fareastwarriors]

JBGS and AIV

[WFF]

FRPH， AIV calls

[KPO]

7 hours ago, CafeB said:

CULP

At initial glance this looks like an income producing value play with aligned management in a decently boring business. Any catalysts? Do you mind sharing more? Thanks for the idea. 

[lnofeisone]

DIS starter. 

[Gregmal]

Added DIS and shorted some CLF puts 

[ERICOPOLY]

wrote BROS puts.

 

[Dave86ch]

Added to 9988hk(Alibaba) and DIS

[formthirteen]

ROST