LC

7.38% last year! woo I'm rich! :D

I will have to catch up on calculating my monthly returns...I used to do it religiously but have gotten lazy :D

What are some of the examples of large marketshare and no change over time where participants generate low return on capital?? I would love to know more of them and reverse engineer the rationale. I would say the cement/aggregate companies. Usually there is only enough room for 1 in any area, but they don't exactly earn a great ROC. Especially since it costs so much to build/maintain one.

Merry Xmas to all...and thanks Sanjeev for the board!

Not sure I agree...the stock market is more efficient than not. Things are usually cheap for a reason. Nobody goes to the grocery store and buys spoiled food just because it's half price.

I would find some way to measure marketing presence ($s spent as % of AUM, or perhaps some other metric) and compare that to historical returns. My guess is heavy marketers underperform, so you could use it as a tool to disqualify asset managers (rather than select).

Someone with more computing skill than I could probably figure out a way to automatically pull all sold listings from ebay...all you would need is the sale price (maybe shipping cost)/date/product ID....chart that stuff, find the items with most variable sale price above a requisite level of volume, regress the price over time, pick a certain RoC you want (i.e. 25%), and go from there. Frankly, ebay should take this idea and sell it to their power sellers, if they don't already.

In a similar vein, here is the application to basketball drafts/trades: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2016/12/how_daryl_morey_used_behavioral_economics_to_revolutionize_the_art_of_nba.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_ru We should start a compilation of instances where you have these alternative markets which are priced "differently".

Hey congrats! I suggest a hockey stick in one hand and a copy of intelligent investor in the other.

Real good posts, SD

OMG! What an evil monster! The world will have access to more energy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We're all going to die!!!!! Oil is already very cheap You ignore potential environmental externalities This will delay investment into less-invasive energy production, especially solar energy

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-putin-and-exxonmobil-team-up-to-destroy-the-planet-fb88650acfa1#.9qiegtlq9 Might want to purchase some XOM stock

What multiple of earnings was MSFT in 99-00? There's a difference between paying 25-30x earnings vs. 80-100x edit: NVM, it was trading at about 30x earnings.

I look at it two ways: 1) A diversified portfolio is one which eliminates systematic risk. I read somewhere that ~30 positions remove something like 95% of systematic risk. From that perspective I would say that anything under 30 positions is "not-diversified" 2) What is the amount of stocks to own, that if equally weighted, a permanent loss of capital in one position would have a meaningful effect on the overall portfolio. For me that is about 10 positions.

Lot of interesting factors here. Availability of capital is a big one. Also I think more venture stage companies are highly scalable and require less capital to fund, hence less reliance on public $

Let me ask this: for those who propose holding, are you also buying now?

in my 20s with <250K. So, young and poor!

Sold 1/3 of my common around $18.75. Wish I held on but grateful I didn't sell the other 2/3. I usually buy/sell in 1/3rds.

Obviously not, Richard. Does property rights protection mean it's legal to steal? Does making murder a criminal act mean it's legal to murder my neighbor? Does A equal non A? Which brings me to my third observation about this thread. It's a frustrating waste of everyone's time. It's a bit disingenuous to first chastise members for not wanting to debate underlying philosophical issues, then stomp out the conversation and call it a "waste of time" when someone steps up to the plate. I personally agree with Richard on his shades of grey comment regarding your philosophy.

Good video on how Nintendo differs from most of the large game makers:

Hershey probably could.

Pretty sure you got bitten by the "While you were typing another post was published" bug :D Nope. I am still waiting for an answer to Parsad's question. Is TBV = Intrinsic value? You have got to be kidding me. BAC is trading above TBV along with other large banks If the question is whether BAC is trading close to IV, that is a question applicable to the other large banks as well, not just BAC. People have been throwing around the $20-22 range as IV for years now based on $2/sh earnings power. Well, we're not at $2/sh yet and we're very close to $20/share.

Pretty sure you got bitten by the "While you were typing another post was published" bug :D

Sold about 1/3 of my BAC position (all commons). Would like to repurchase at some point, but we'll see what the market does.

Haha! I had to google Gyp Rossetti. I'm too "vanilla" for that! I think it's because I was raised in an Irish-Italian neighborhood. Lots of redheads roaming around after Catholic school let out when I was younger. Don't tell the nuns! :D That's fine, but....can we still talk about attractive women, or men, or sex in general, without being accused of some misogynist crap or whatever you were alluding to earlier about "shit like this"? FWIW, women like talking about sex too!