Spekulatius

I like it too, but I don’t like the HK exposure. The valuation of RE there is quite rich a d I think we could see very meaningful multiple compression there , if the chinese mainlanders get their way. I think the Keswicks (founding family) are more to be trusted than most other owners in Asia. Matheson pays a higher dividend than Strategic.

Just watching “The Crown” on Netflix and it keeps getting better through the seasons. I am in the middle of season 3 and it is exceptional well made TV.

FCF before interest is not going to get them very far with their debt load.. My rule to avoid stocks where managements uses moronic metrics seems to be vindicated when I look at ATTO.

One thing to consider when looking to invest in LAACZ right now is that the self storage markets in several areas seems to be weakening. The recent CC especially from PSA and Cubesmart with weak SS and occupation Trends gave an explanation. There has been a lot of supply coming to the market, and there is more coming (likely peaking in 2020), so they put a clear damper on pricing and the stocks of PSA and CUBE have not been immune to this. I think this will limit the near term appreciation potential of LAACZ as well. I am not terribly concerned, because LAACZ core markets in southern CA are supply constraint, but Houston not so much. I would be quite concerned if holding UHAL, because they are betting the company on self storage and adding a lot of debt with 2-3 more years of heavy investing ahead, before they have build out all their acquired properties.

I wish BRK would detail the summarized earnings and balance sheet from their acquired subs if possible. That way we could judge if they have been successful or not. Wedgwood for example has stated that Lubrizol has not been a success, but how would we know. they bought it for ~12x earnings (post tax) so even with little growth, it should have been an Ok acquisition. Or if their any way to deduct at least the earnings of the acquired subs somehow?

People can speculate all they want, but only the truth is known to a handful of people. I think the flogging that Sokol received for a transgression that was relatively benign was overkill. Not dissimilar to the public banishment of Alice Schroeder after the access and public support Buffett gave her. Personally, if you don't think any purchases should overlap Berkshire's or any other employers acquisition targets...have your employees put their assets in a blind trust to avoid this conflict. Cheers! Berkshire doesn’t have good internal controls in place, it’s more build on trust than on strict rules. This is pretty clear in this case and in my opinion Sokol did a grave mistake here, imo not disclosing his conflict of interest very clearly. In my opinion, Warren should also have asked since Sokol mentioned that he owned shares in Lubrizol, but I guess at point he wasn’t interested enough to bother. Anyways, I think the level of controls when WEB success takes over. headquarter staff will dramatically increase when the CEO cannot draw on the same spider Webforum personal relations and trust build impoverished decades any more. Regarding Sokol, he hopefully learned from this and I think he is an excellent operator. ingress he never could build the mini Berkshire he wanted to build, but as a CEO of Seaspan, he seems to be doing an excellent job.

I think it’s an astute observations and I would generalize this and state when growth is slow that pricing lower becomes ever more important. It’s going to be easier with pricing power to grow revenues at let‘s say 3% annually and flat volumes than to grow volumes by 3% annually with no pricing power. It is definitely something I look at more and more these days. Broadband has shown good pricing power, DD ( a holding for both of us, I believe ) also has shown pricing power (albeit with weak volumes), liquor and tobacco as well as online advertisement rates (both GOOG and FB has shown good pricing trends digital ads), or even NFLX (subscription pricing). Then on the other side of the medal, we have streaming services offering lower prices to gain market shares (Apple, DIS) where it remains to be seen how it shakes out. We also have no pricing power with Uber, Lyft and food delivery apparently. Interesting times, but I think looking at investment through the pricing power lens will become more important than it used to be imo.

I looked into this, it seems that the right implies a ~62% probably for each drug to approved, which is lower than the estimated probably. From that perspective, it seems like a good value. What tells me to hold this odd is the Fact that the terms of this CVR (all three drugs need to be approved at a certain date) makes it so easy to avoid a payment for BMY, which amounts to $6B total, if some articles are correct. They can just push through 2/3 of the most important drugs and get them approved as quickly as possible, then delay one until after the cutoff date and presto, they just saved themselves $6B. Doesn’t take a genius to think that this will cross somebodies mind at BMY’s management. They could be quite opportunistic about this depending on which hurdles will develop with any of the 3 drugs even if it’s not the plan right now. For sure the intentional delays are a risk. But I don't think they are a deal-breaker. Some good discussion in the comments here. My own view of how management in large corporate settings works, has over the years dimmed enough that I assume that if there is a possibility to game an outcome, it will be gamed in all likelihood.

Ist this all one needed to know before moving on?

I looked into this, it seems that the right implies a ~62% probably for each drug to approved, which is lower than the estimated probably. From that perspective, it seems like a good value. What tells me to hold this odd is the Fact that the terms of this CVR (all three drugs need to be approved at a certain date) makes it so easy to avoid a payment for BMY, which amounts to $6B total, if some articles are correct. They can just push through 2/3 of the most important drugs and get them approved as quickly as possible, then delay one until after the cutoff date and presto, they just saved themselves $6B. Doesn’t take a genius to think that this will cross somebodies mind at BMY’s management. They could be quite opportunistic about this depending on which hurdles will develop with any of the 3 drugs even if it’s not the plan right now.

Maybe we overthink this and this stock is simply a Weschler/ Combs momentum play which may be dumped already at this point. Is there any indication that this is a Buffett buy?

So Tesla Mad Max Truck isn’t bulletproof after all: Is this thing with a post apocalyptic design a joke or do they really want to sell this?

I don’t think the comparison of WDAY and NOW with CSCO is fair as they are totally different business. a better comparison would be with another software company like ORCL and MSFT. the latter trades at ~8.5x sales now. I bought NOW a while ago (for a bounce after a CEO change) and it was trading at ~13 sales, but given the fact that the year is almost over and they have good visibility, the relevant number was ~10x forward sales. While it is true that NOW isn’t GAAP profitable (due to stock option expense), when you exclude this expense, it is quite nicely profitable. My own take is that it can’t be ignored, but when I solely look at revenue growth rates/share and hence incorporate the roughly 5% dilution from stock based comp and their convertible raises, that it compounds intrinsic value quite nicely (~30% annually) and at that point was a better deal than MSFT. Just a different point of view. I missed the run up in SAAS stocks totally and yet, I think there is a lot of folly in this sector, however, some products are quite sticky and the stocks deserve a high valuation. I think NOW and to a lesser extend WDAY belong in this group, while TEAM doesn’t.

I also added some DD at $65 and change today. Had bought a 2nd lot a few days ago, but sold it immediately flat when the tape turned soft. It looks like this stock is going to see $63 again in short order, but you never know. Added a bit more DD today. I also added for the umpteenth time MEGACPO.MX. Starting to get towards my max. Position size here.

I am guessing this is the full interview posted on YouTube (sign of the times ): Edit: It’s great way to get a feel for the lay of the land for media and especially the Malone companies Discovery, but also Netflix, Disney, CBS/ Viacom.

Interesting clinical candidate with an unmet need. It looks to me like they will need to raise cash with a secondary very soon though. Word of advice...this is a highly promoted stock at tier 4 brokerage houses and to date, the company has been very eager to use any sort of share price bump to raise capital. Note, that's what they all do, some just more regularly than others. Thanks for the color. I have no idea what a Tier 4 brokerage is, but I suspect that these are the dinky outfits that recommend and pump microcaps? Anyways, the way I see it CR P has maybe 2-3 quarter of cash left, which means that they probably raise in the next 3 month or 6 month at the very latest. Typically buying ahead of a secondary is not a winning proposition.

Interesting clinical candidate with an unmet need. It looks to me like they will need to raise cash with a secondary very soon though.

Pretty interesting insight and I think in this case, a new CEO can make quite a bit of difference. The former CEO Melissa Mayer came from the marketing and seemed to lack the skill to really run the business with predicable results. I do think we might see major reset (these marketing folks always see the world with rose colored glasses) but once that is done, we could look at an interesting situation here.

I understand the issue when you manage OPM, but I just manage my own. The less competition there is for these securities, the better for a private investor who doesn’t care 8).

I also added some DD at $65 and change today. Had bought a 2nd lot a few days ago, but sold it immediately flat when the tape turned soft. It looks like this stock is going to see $63 again in short order, but you never know.

Sold some FOX, just in case we get another round trip to $30.

I own this also in. Fidelity account. I never had issues selling something, but sometimes have issues buying OTC stocks. Fidelity had me sign an online form, before I could buy in the pink sheets. Fidelity also doesn’t let you buy dark stocks at this point (they changed their rules a couple of years back), but you can sell the,. LAACZ is not a dark stock, so it can be bought in Fidelity accounts without issues (I bought some a couple of month ago and have open orders currently). The new SEC rule regarding non filets will create a big problem for money managers dabbling into those, because without visible bids, there will be no objective value for them any more. I am not sure how one would even trade these outside of private negotiated transactions. So there could well be a lot of forced selling when this rule goes into effect.

^ kitchens have become the equivalent of an Altar in a Catholic Church. An acquaintance of us is looking into a kitchen remodel with a now estimated cost of ~120k , which seems to keep going up. I recommended to him to find a house in the same area with a kitchen he likes and buy it and sell his, which should come out cheaper all things considered.

Shipping from China to USA is VERY heavily subsidized. A lot of USA retailers & businesses bitterly complain about this as it is cheaper to ship from China to USA than it is to ship from CA to NY. USA postal system should phase this out quickly. Yep. Seems like an easy thing to fix. With some much bravado about the trade war, changing this should be a no brainer. I do recall they my wife got a couple of small items shipped from a retailer from HK a couple of years ago for about 50c.

Amazing - $6.5 shipping for that ugly chandelier from China. How do they do this?