Spekulatius

DOW looks cheap based on Y2018 but the way the earnings trend go, the multiple may not be that great, or at least not better than HUN or EMN any more. The AG business results look very messing, I am not sure how value it. Also keep in mind that if Roundup is really on its way out due to cancer litigation, then DWDP roundup ready seed traits will be affected too, at least they will be useless and possibly considered inferior since there is possibility that farmers still use them with Roundup, especially in foreign countries.

One thing to point out is that buying funds with a 2% + expense ration are a suckers bet, almost regardless who runs it. It certainly creates a very high hurdle to outperform after fees.

Yes, that is exactly my opinion as well. +1

cherzeca, In short, I agree on the first emphasized part of your post above, ref. my earlier original post. I'm reluctant at elaborating further here - because of fear of participating in or triggering to derail this topic about the Brexit. This also applies for the second part of your last post emphasized by me above, ... but just even more. I believe the vote for Brexit is more rooted in political disagreement than economic causes. Personally, I would prefer if this thread would be more focused on the economic and especially investment angle, as this is the focus of this message board. For one thing, I believe that the fact that the UK kept it’s own currency and hence independent central bank ist the reason why British banks earn a higher NIM and are hence more profitable. exit should perpetuate this structure, which means that British banks should be more profitable going forward too. If correct, that would be an important consideration in terms of investments.

Thanks, much appreciated. The table from the Guardian seems to indicate very slow GNP growth in Britain in 2018 and the near term future, but no crisis. Projections always need to be taken with a grain of salt and were based on soft Brexit: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/08/uk-economic-growth-slowest-europe-next-year-european-commission-forecasts-brexit

EU has been great. You can travel to a lot of countries without showing your passport, stupid border controls. You can move ,work in France , Italy, Germany as you please. A lot of countries like Spain, Portugal, Poland, Czechoslovakia have benefited tremendously. No expensive currency exchanges. The Greeks screwed up, so what. They had the choice to leave. The U.K. will leave, but at the end of the day, they will still be closely connected to the EU by trade.

I think the UK will be fine in the long run, but the short term might be ugly and probably means a lower standard of living via higher inflation. Corporate taxes aren’t really the problem in Europe, they have been substantially lowered over time, it’s the individual taxes they are too high. Germany at least could easily reduce the tax burden, there is 60B Euro Budget Surplus and interest rates are negative for short term Bund notes, what are they waiting for? The issue of blame aside, any idea what happens to the U.K. economy if we get a hard exit at default conditions? i thought it might be similar to the impact of the GFP for Britain and maybe a weak recession for the EU. The stock market especially in the U.K. doesn’t seem to think so or it would be 30% lower, or are investor there just putting their head into the sand? I am guessing they I must be wrong, I wouldn’t touch U.K. stocks (in general) with long pole right now, but clearly many think differently.

Knowing something and applying it are two different things anyways. I used to know some accountants at work that seemed constantly broke and had credit scores in the 600’s. They certainly can run the numbers and budget, they just couldn’t apply it for whatever reason. It seems like discipline and temperament are more important than knowledge and intelligence for success with investing.

Yes it’s significant. However looking at this in another way , 40% of all U.K. exports go to other EU countries, but the fraction of EU exports going to the UK is only 8%. So for the UK, trading with the EU is 4x more important than the other way around. The EU can clearly live without the UK, but the UK has a really hard time with out the EU. Anways, trading between the UK and the DU would hardly stop with a hard Brexit, the EU could simply assume standard WTO conditions and be done with it.

I don’t think it is even an option for the EU to let the UK vote for the EU parliament, when they clearly want out. This would not even remotely make sense.

I honestly think most investors are better off ignoring these macro biased reports. I think it’s correct to think about the economic cycle in broad terms (Dalio, Howard Marks early vs late cycle), possibly take this into account but don’t get obsessed with it or conclude that any of this really is going to tell us what is going to happen and perhaps even more importantly when. Again, this is just the circle for competence with stocks. If macro is your circle of competence than by all means used it for investing. I don’t think a lot of investors are good at it though, so they better stock with what they know rather than gamble with the unknown.

The Brits have the right to determine their own destiny and leave the EU, if they so desire. However, it appears to me that the political system in the UK is not able to make a positive decision on how to do it. It is also noticeable that all the pro- Brexiter (Boris Johnson) are all gone and let May deal with how to get the job done. It looks to me like the EU has done their part, but the politicians and in the UK haven’t done theirs. I think the EU should should not let it default into a hard exit make the rules as far as it pertains to EU sovereignty as they please and let the U.K. figure out things as they go. EU is much larger than UK, so the fallout will hit the UK much much harder than the EU. Sorry lads, but bad things can happen when you let idiots run your country.

For a new investor, putting money in index funds is really hard to be. I also think that putting a small percentage into BRK is a good idea. First of all, the generally consensus is that it’s relatively cheap, it’s well run very diversified and very solid. Owning this also will be a strong incentive to read up on Warren Buffet, follow what he says in the financial news and read his shareholder letters and over time understand the business side better. You can do this without owning it, but from my experience, it is much more likely that you will follow what you own. I also think that putting a small amount into a stock of your choice is a good idea, but ask yourself, what your circle of competence is. It could be a stock in and industry OP works in or local company. i strongly recommend to stay away from here say recommendation from friends etc. and trendy investments like blockchain and cannabis etc.

Looks like the British government is incapable to get anything done or decided. It’s looked more and more like a hard Brexit to me. Dragging it out won’t nexessarily help either . I am surprised that Britain’s economy is holding up as well as it does, but my guess is that at least a garden variety recession in Britain is very likely. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47753125

BJakes and whistlerbumps - thank you so much for your input, it’s very helpful. I can the the value of the platform increasing as more and more winemakers and customers get on it and I think the community aspect is valuable as well. I might try this out myself.

Anyone looking into this? The new Dow shares trade already on a when issued basis for around $50/ share. Since one will get 1 Dow share for 3 DWDP shares , that’s about $17 in value for each DWDP share or ( including JV EBITDA) roughly 5x EV/EBITDA based on Y2018 numbers. Company guided down significantly today at 20% lower EBITDA for the start of Y2019, so draw your own conclusion. No position yet, but looking closely.

Edit to add: When a company consistently screens as "expensive" (say trading consistently above 30x for five years), I'm always skeptical that it is "overvalued". I don't have an opinion on CRM, but there are plenty of recent examples of companies trading at 40x or 50x earnings that were actually very cheap. Aren't the CRM companies in the end valued using accrual accounting and using non- GAAP and difficult to verify metrics like customer lifetime value. I think these metrics could become severely challenged when the cost of money goes up (in a recession etc). when people start to use much higher discount rates. I am not sure I buy into this business model of cashless and profitless prosperity of AMZN, Uber, Lyft and other unicorn yet, but I wouldn’t bet on their demise either. The “too hard pile” just gets bigger and bigger nowadays....

I poked a bit around the IR website. The CEO looks a bit rough around the edges. - does he get high on its own supply? Also, they claim that the wines available are a better value than retail, but when looking at specific wines I know a bit about (Northern CA wines) , I don’t think that is necessarily the case. Their customer acquisition seems to be via $100 coupons. That might lead to cheapskates trying this out using their name, wife’s name, than kids, dogs etc.... Has anyone tried this actually out as a customer? That seems to be a good way to do some research and maybe tried it out? Seems to me that looking at this from a customer perspective can give a lot of insight. I can see the social networking aspect adding value. I think getting into “wines” can be a bit intimidating for someone who gets beyond beers into wines, as the low end is unappealing and the higher end a bit snobbish.

Hollywood 2.0 It’s a business waiting for a crackdown from big brother.

FWIW, I believe the sale will be approved with some caveats. What you are seeing is that a deal like this is more complex and all the stakeholders (employees, regulators, customers etc.) have an input and will be heard. You can call it socialism (which it isn’t) but it’s just how the sausage is made.

I personally can’t tell what is a symptom and what is the disease, but I tend to think of inverting interest rate as a symptom. Just my opinion, but every time, investors put their hope into Fed, they tend to get disappointed. I suspect the market will take a real dump, if indeed the Fed starts to lower rates. I think it can be be both right? At first it's a symptom - it's markets being concerned about future growth/inflation and predicting a rate cut; however, it can also become self-fulfilling and contribute to the slowdown because the inversion strangles credit supply further slowing the economy Reflexivity. In this case, there are definitely fundamental issues regardless of expectations. Rising rates would have a serious impact, no matter how they do it, the only question is how bad. The method the Fed uses makes things worse, because, well, they are clueless as the past few months have shown. The big unknown here is not the Fed, it's Trump. He called an emergency on the wall. He just nominated someone to the Fed that no doubt he believes will support his views. What else is he willing to do for us to get a happy dead cat bounce? That's my bet, it's not going straight down from here. We will have fun first. Agreed. It's never straight down. There are always bounces along the way until the buy-the-dip mentality is sufficiently beaten to death. It's why I didn't sell/short on the way down in December, but was selling/shorting/buying bonds after the incredible bounce in January. This was an opportunity to reduce risk after markets have confirmed the bear market. Not an opportunity to buy the dip. Late stage bull markets can be a lot of fun:

http://www.defenseworld.net/uploads//news/big/mirage-v__1476787129.jpg Note that the pilot (= Banker in our weird world) successfully ejects and presumably lands safely using his golden parachute. As for the innocent bystanders, we do not know. I may be pushing this analogy too far now.

Devils advocate: Insiders control both the equity and a significant amount of debt. So it seems that they can take this private via a recap and screw over minority shareholders any time they want. It’s not purely hypothetical, since they have tried before. Too much management ownership with microcaps isn’t necessarily a good thing.

5 Stages of a value investment in a European value stock: 1) We purchased a company in growth industry in XYZ land at a huge discount to intrinsic value and at half the multiple of a similar US company? This is the most obvious mispriced stock opportunity we have seen for a long time. Several month later: 2) While results have somewhat disappointed, the discount to intrinsic value is even greater than at the time of our first purchase.We have visited management and discussed with them a path how the valuation gap can be closed. 3) The deterioration of the regulatory environment in XYZ land was not foreseeable and has further depressed the value of our investment in the short run, however the long term outlook is unchanged and the valuation is still compelling. 4) The business of our investment has come under pressure, but the company continues to outperform its competitors. The company has a strong balance sheet and plenty of liquidity to survive the current downturn. 5) We are appalled by to the very treacherous and anti-business environment in EU and decided to sell. We think even Latin American dictators are more reasonable than the EU.

My wife told me that Prime Video now also has ads. So far, I haven’t seen any ads yet personally.