LC

Merger talks ended: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/philip-morris-altria-end-merger-114503689.html PM up premaket Juul CEO steps down, JUUL suspends all advertising https://finance.yahoo.com/m/438db1d7-1e3a-3525-9a9a-aea26dbbcbce/juul-labs-ceo-steps-down%3B.html Philip Morris and Altria, announcing the end of their talks, said they would instead focus on the joint launch of tobacco-heating product iQOS in the United States.

Really? I thought it had a very similar consistency to mince. Obviously the flavor lacked that animal fattyness that brings magic and warmth to the taste buds, but it got close and I thought they nailed the consistency. Nutrition wise they appear slightly superior to beef patties having no cholesterol. They have more sodium but I assume most people season their burgers prior to grilling. Probably not too of a difference to be meaningful. I think the real difference is superior production methods and shelf life. On diet, if the average american simply swapped the "grains" and "vegetable" sections of the good ole' food pyramid, it would solve many of these problems.

Another 75b https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/fed-repo-injects-another-75-billion-into-market-2019-9-1028537926?utm_source=reddit.com

I am not sure. It is a good question. My assumption is their performance mimics stock market performance i.e. where we see Small/Middle market enterprises show more volatile performance under stress. For example, compare the SP500 to the Russell2000 from 2007 to present - SP500 performed "better" in the 2008 period and rebounded more successfully. I would think this behavior translates to real estate performance, as less-capitalized tenants are unable to weather the storm, so to speak. This goes to my question of modifying terms - if your tenant mix is simply not as well capitalized, is it more successful for the REIT to modify their lease terms (lower rental income) and maintain the tenant, or not?

Thanks for the recommendations - have you been able to review the performance of these NNNs under stressed market conditions? How do you view tenant mix and location mix, particularly in terms of correlated risk? If AFFO is the main driver of returns and valuation, the question is what drives AFFO. As you mention the two methods to grow AFFO are rent increases, and acquisitions - but really this means tenant and location mix (i.e. what you acquire and where). The real question is how that tenant mix behaves under stress. In such situations, do you know if REITs typically modify lease terms to work with tenants (and maintain occupancy)? My concern is large exposure to small and middle market businesses which may perform worse in a recession - and while the tenant mix may appear diversified, will it actually behave like a hedge during a recession?

Fed cuts rates again, telegraphs possibility of one more

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/17/business/overnight-lending-rate-spike-ny-fed/index.html Some notable items: It was the NY Fed's first such rescue operation in a decade, the last occurring in late 2008. The NY Fed announced plans late Tuesday to hold another repurchase agreement operation on Wednesday that would aim to repurchase up to an additional $75 billion. The rate on overnight repurchase agreements hit 5% on Monday, according to Refinitiv data. That's up from 2.29% late last week and well above the target range set in July by the Federal Reserve, which is 2% to 2.25%. The surge continued Tuesday, with the overnight rate hitting a high of 10% before the NY Fed stepped in. The catalyst for the stress, according to Cabana, was the fact that US companies withdrew vast sums of money from banks to make quarterly tax payments to the US Treasury Department. That forced banks to draw down their reserves at the Fed.

Interesting analysis done for those invested in this area: https://growthbadger.com/traffic-study/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=k-share_entrepreneur The niche that is most reliant on Google is Health and Medical, with 87.85% of its traffic coming from search. The niche that is least reliant on Google is Crypto, with 45.74% of its traffic coming from search. Facebook delivers 65.36% of all social media traffic: more visits per month than all other social networks combined. Instagram drives very little traffic: under 1% overall across all niches. Even fashion and beauty brands that were launched by Instagram influencers (e.g. Kylie Cosmetics) receive less than 5% of their monthly visits from Instagram — while search brings in about 10 times as many. The niche that is most reliant on Facebook is Business and Marketing, which gets 13.52% of its traffic from the network. Facebook is the most important social network for every niche except two: Design and Development (for which the top network is YouTube) and Crypto (for which it is Twitter). Google drives 8 times more traffic than all social media networks combined. Search is the single largest traffic source for every niche, and in most industries it drives the majority of the web traffic. The average top blog gets 66.47% of its traffic from search, of which 99.77% is organic and only 0.23% is paid. Reddit drives over 3 times as much traffic to blogs as YouTube.

Always the smuggler, SD! That’s why you’re posts are so interesting, what a great perspective :D I am glad to contribute simply by making the rest of you folks look so good :D I think someone did a similar exercise a few years ago, tracking the investment ideas thread post date vs. stock performance. I think he layered the number of replies into the analysis as well. And the threads with the least replies performed on average better. Also it would be interesting to layer this information vs. self-disclosed annual performance threads.

I hear Dildo is really nice this time of year. A lot of people pushing to get in there. It's a great place to relax, sit down, and watch the world go bi

Should we not discourage predatory lending simply because some people are financially savvy enough to avoid it? How selfish can you be? It’s like someone with HIV saying “don’t bother looking for a cure, it wouldn’t be fair if you found one anyways, since I’ve been taking HIV medication for 30 years!”

I am only speaking to the digital marketing side here: Oracle is losing on the fringes. Their ODC/OMC is a substandard suite compared to Adobe's or Salesforce. Look at the share price movement between Oracle and Adobe over the past 2+ years and you can see where the value has been created. Now, I am not saying you can't make money with Oracle or can't lose money with Adobe, I am just saying the product suite for the marginal digital marketer is far superior with Adobe. Oracle's ODC/OMC is mismanaged and if you think Uncle Larry is sitting in the board room diving into detail on this, you are wrong.

GDP is only growing 1-3% year so it does drag.

So I very much agree with you, in fact particularly so on the ethical roadblock (vs the actual investment thesis). In fact I would prefer if they would give up on the vaping, or at least study it more first. By comparison cigarettes are a known quantity. People have been smoking things for, hell, thousands of years and we have been studying the effects for at least decades. With cigarettes, people are making an honest decision (akin to alcohol).

Short term you may see more pressure on PM/MO due to vaping: https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/news/20190826/as-vaping-injuries-grow-doctors-seek-answers

Interesting development. Perhaps finally feeling the pressure from cheaper phone suppliers?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-jeffrey-epstein-cameras/fbi-studies-two-broken-cameras-outside-cell-where-epstein-died-source-idUSKCN1VI2LC This would be believable if it was a ridiculous movie plot and not real life :-\

Well I mean most people already "work now get paid later" i.e. they are paid every two weeks. This is just another disguised form of a payday loan.

Average US median wage is 51k. For teachers it's 56K. I do not think a 10% premium is so extravagant.

Now in terms of the actual classroom experience: Teachers simply cannot impose discipline in their classes. This is an institutional problem and it requires a comprehensive solution. Teachers/administrators must be able to do certain things (suspend students, kick them out of classes, etc.) - but parents should also be enforcing the same. All too often this is lacking. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard stories from teachers about how the problem wasn't even the kid - it was that the parents simply did not care to enforce any work ethic or discipline at home, or would rather threaten to "sue the school" rather than teaching their child to behave himself. In short it is a societal problem with multiple factors. Casually blaming "teachers" in quotes as if they are leeches without a care for students just strikes me as a bit naive and looking for the easiest scapegoat.

According to that article 110K in NYC is "rich". Let me tell you that is simply not the case. Regardless, I simply cannot disparage teachers when the average salary for a US teacher is 58K. So no, I would say these people are riding some gravy train. Like I said, where are the yachts?

I always wonder when these types of criticism are made against a certain "rent-seeking" class: Where are the customer's yachts? These fat-cat teachers, where are their yachts? Do they keep them docked on the private island to make sure they can back the 2004 toyota corolla out of the driveway to work? Here's a pretty accurate representation of what teaching is really like (particularly in large minority urban areas): https://quillette.com/2019/02/10/public-educations-dirty-secret/

SD, the simple solution is to wait say 8 years out-of-school before being allowed to include student loan debt in bankruptcy. You have either built some life for yourself which you will be hesitant to lose in bankruptcy, or you have so few assets that this would be a “legitimate” case. Of course people can try to game this as well by spending 8 years stuffing all these assets in blind trusts or whatnot, but people play that same game with all types of other assets as well.

Drone footage of the FBI raid on Epstein's island:

If Uncle Warren really cared he'd buy me out of my portfolio ;D SNAP could be a decent acquisition. Hell, he could buy NIKE if he wanted.