LC

vinod, on interest rates: Interest rates are not a structural cause of change. Something causes interest rates to have a long-term level shift. The FRB sets the rates, yes. But they do so in response to economic reality. The question is, what is that reality, what are its implications, and how long will it persist. What do you think?

Altria volume declines: 2009 148.7 0 2010 140.8 -5.31% 2011 135.1 -4.05% 2012 134.9 -0.15% 2013 129.3 -4.15% 2014 125.4 -3.02% 2015 126.0 0.48% 2016 122.9 -2.46% 2017 116.6 -5.13% 2018 109.8 -5.83% 2019 101.8 -7.29% PM volume declines: 2009 864.0 0 2010 899.9 4.16% 2011 915.3 1.71% 2012 927.0 1.28% 2013 880.2 -5.05% 2014 855.9 -2.76% 2015 847.2 -1.02% 2016 812.9 -4.05% 2017 761.9 -6.27% 2018 740.3 -2.84% 2019 - -

Volume declines are very much an important metric and should be watched carefully. Eventually, $100/unit * 0 units = $0 sales MO Volumes decreased from about 148M in 2009 to 100M in 2019. That is not insignificant. For those concerns it may be smarted to also look at PM, where volume declines are much-less-drastic. My holdings are split about 50/50 between MO & PM, and I will probably shift more towards PM over the next 2-3 years if/when pricing opportunities present themselves.

I have not used Azure but I would imagine it integrates reasonably well with other MSFT products. This is an advantage over AWS, particularly when pitching large corporate or government companies.

WHO declares global emergency: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51318246

For what it's worth I left about 10% on the table with 3M. I think your thesis (which I share) is generally correct/ The guy on the scale looks fat to me. Timing was just off. Correct process, unfortunate outcome. It happens. ;D

That's a good thematic point as well. Long term impacts are difficult to foresee: Will the majority classes (either of individuals or companies) rally together and change the rules to their benefits? E.g. pro-labor/union policies, monopoly-busting regulations, etc. After all they do have the numbers advantage. Or will the Select Few Companies continue their dominance and go full-on global oligopoly? Perhaps they offer a compelling value proposition to prevent the above scenario from occurring. If we turn to art, dystopian cyber-punk science fiction (which I have a sweet spot for) paints the latter picture :D

Historically yes. And that's all we can really go on, but when that happens...who knows? FRB influencing interest rates I would argue does not fundamentally change anything. It raises the floor of asset prices but this is reactive and is a reflection of our environment. I would argue the true reduction in capital costs is not because of FRB action but because humans have become really good at obtaining and allocating resources: educating ourselves, improving technologies and efficiencies, and ultimately driving costs down for most things in life. The really big factors on the horizon that I can think of are: global politics (i.e. Russia, China, etc. and how open these regimes will be); robotization/automation of labor and the impacts this will have; overall population dynamics (increasing lifespans, how many people the earth can support); changes in how we collect and use energy; and of course other stuff that i'm not smart enough to even conceive of. But these are just guesses and I don't think anyone really knows what their effects will be. It's trying to see 5 miles down the road at the bottom of a hill through a cloudy windshield in a downpour with no wipers right after an eye exam with your kids screaming and fighting in the backseat and your mother-in-law blowing up your phone.

Agreed but I'm happy they took the write down. Ensures the calls I wrote will expire worthless, and I can pick up shares cheaper in the future.

Yes mostly covered calls on the full position in the account (e.g. if I have 950 shares I would write 10 contracts and cover the remainder with margin) Wrote on about 1/3 of my portfolio on: Altria/Philip Morris, AT&T, Visa, Iron Mtn 2-3 month expiration, was paid about 2-4%. OOM strikes by 5-7%. I plan on closing the contracts about a week prior to any ex-dividend dates where there is a high (judgmental) probability of being called. Which as of right now does not appear likely. And then I'll roll over the contracts again for another few months, unless sales & earnings really seem to be catching up with valuations. I've also been pretty lax with my documentation here. Sold MMM yesterday (ugh - industrial activity looks weak, glad to come away with more than I put in but still disappointing); Sold Waste Mgmt a few days ago; Sold ADS a few weeks ago; Sold Paypal (rolled into Visa). Proceeds went into opening a position in AT&T, paying down some margin, adding about equally to the names mentioned above; and one tiny corporate event. I'm fully invested but looking to hedge via covered calls on more of my portfolio if I can get good prices & low risk of execution. The other thing is I have relatively substantial 401k/stock grants which are invested in SPY index and a certain high-flying tech company. So I am looking to maintain about 30-50% total upside exposure from these two positions. Even there I am debating re-allocating the 401K outside of SPY and into something more defensive, but my options are limited and that has historically been a bad idea.

I think more likely is a stagnant or slowly declining market, I've been selling calls.

I just wrapped up The Expanse. Really enjoyed it - definitely had some Battlestar Gllactica vibes

One difficult part of finding compounders in this environment is partly finding the ones which have not already leveraged themselves to the max. There are solid companies out there with defensible moats that have taken out billions in debt over the past 3-5 years (much of which has funded buybacks). And of the ones which are not incredibly leveraged, the equity is trading at very high multiples. It’s not easy.

Many times company filings or IR presentations will have comparison metrics and list the comps that management is using.

Take photos, spread the news. The world needs to know the humanitarian crisis that is developing. If this as bad as it sounds, it will need a coordinated effort to solve.

Good post. Attached is the old spreadsheet that someone (I forget who - but we all owe them a beer) put together with this formula. It's based on Eric's "Cost of leverage" posts (we all still owe this guy 2 beers). I keep a copy of this spreadsheet handy for whenever I am interested in taking a large leveraged position, to compare costs between the various leveraged strategies available. Anyone interested can check column Q for the formula, it's based on the old warrant tickers so nothing is populated but the formula should be intact. Copy_of_Options_Calculations.xlsx

I'll give another example of "bridge" loan behavior. I was harvesting tax losses a few years ago in December. And was planning to repurchase the securities in a month. So, during that month I had cash laying around, and sure enough some other opportunity presented itself. And so in mid-January I was now fully invested but also still interested in repurchasing the shares I had "harvested" in December. Margin here is useful because I was able to repurchase the shares in Feb. on margin, and then after a few weeks with more contributions to the account and other sales, was then able to reduce the leverage back to near-zero.

I have used margin off and on for years. My living situation is probably most similar to Al's post in this thread. My uses have traditionally been "bridge" financing if called on written options. Also when pursuing corporate actions or one-time events with discrete outcomes. In these cases I'll be on margin for a few weeks but ultimately try to pare it down. I have sometimes done the spread play with dividend paying stocks. I think in all cases I have never exceeded 1.2x leverage. As Greg mentioned valuation is important but so is asset quality. Some assets are more suitable to leveraging. Sanjeev made a warning earlier in this thread that with margin, one mistake can blow you up. It's important to take heed of that, probably moreso in the current environment. Mortgage I presume isn't what you're interested in but I have that as well. Thanks for reviving this thread, good to see some long forgotten names.

You and me both. What area of the island are you looking?

I think he made a pair of divining rods out of stale olive garden breadsticks and is searching dupont circle for any traces of inflation. ;D

Rumor is he lives in a tent in rock creek park. If you're particularly lucky, you can catch him rummaging through the bethesda starbucks trash at 3 am like a racoon. He still gives interviews in exchange for two day old bread and coffee creamers.

What do you want? A fast sale, or a price close to the maximum available payout? I prefer the large affiliated companies. They know how to make transactions happen even if it costs a bit more.

LC, Personally, I've never really understood your motivation for your move years ago from NYC to Denver, Colorado. I mean : All that snow shoveling in the winters. Well, I think I - at least partly - understand it now. Everything in life is about decision making among alternatives, based on judged pros & cons for the alternatives. [ : - ) ] Well the move was motivated solely by (1) cheap RE prices at the time and (2) skiing (vs. ice skating on skis). But I miss the variety of NYC. NYC is IMHO the greatest crucible for unique and interesting experiences. Millions of people crammed together, even the filthy rich cannot escape interacting with the plain old filthy...and the culture that emerges is just awesome. To me, this is what makes life worth living. It's like that old saying, "water which is too pure has no fish." Well, maybe we all need some murk and filth and perhaps a neighbor smoking a joint at midnight for life to be a little more interesting ;D

I like this thread...so many diverse methods of dealing with conflict :D BG, you've got to give us an update, this is pretty decent drama for a value investor board! I remember guys (and girls) smoking crack in the stairwells of my old brooklyn building. You never saw them, but crack is one of those things that you have no idea what it smells like, but you catch a whiff of it for the first time, and you immediately know EXACTLY what it is that you're smelling! Pretty wild. And now I'm getting nostalgia...to me, nothing screams the city like repeatedly slamming a hardcover copy of Ulysses against the shared wall at 6 AM, screaming "Shut the F#(* up!!!", because the cracked-out neighbor's grandmother (sober) is screaming at her 7 year old grandson to "be a man and get dressed!" So for a guy smoking a joint at midnight...I mean c'mon :D

Looking forward to it, thanks for sharing your excellent work!