Spekulatius

I'll definitely read. I dont understand though, whether facebook has 1 million fake accounts or 1 billion fake accounts, ultimately advertisers are paying based on irr. Unless the irr calculations are not based on purchases and clicks data but on less obviously related (fake) account impressions, I dont think the number of fake accounts matters to advertisers. Maybe he addresses this, but curious... That’s correct. If FB indeed has that many fake account, it doesn’t matter because the FB ad $ are driven by ROE ( people who click and buy) not the amount of accounts. In a way, more fake accounts are even bullish, since it means that the addressable market may be higher than thought. Right now the thesis is that everyone has already a FB / Instagram account in NA. My bigger concern is the total addressable market. FB and GOOG have already a significant part of the ad market, which tends to have a more or less fixed percentage of the GNP. Facebook needs to expand the TAM, in ads to Europe and Asia and ultimately beyond ads, if they want to continue growing.

What’s the explanation for the seemingly hurried pace of insider sales? The CEO alone has sold ~$1.55M shares and so does everyone else. FWIW, I bought a small position early Jan and flipped it for a quick buck, so I don’t own it right now. I would be reluctant to own this with this amount if insider sales even during the YE decline.

Bankruptcy is easier for managment than dealing with an activist. I don’t think that management owns enough stocks to care if shareholders get wiped out of not. Now it’s “calvinball“ game in bankruptcy court.

No discussion of RFP is complete without discussion the pension issue - there is still a $1.088B funding gap in addition to the ~$600M in debt. I also noticed some share dilution bleed, but haven’t looked at the root cause. Personally, I don’t care for it - they are just into many crappy business at the same time. There are very reasonably priced companies in the container board /packaging business (PKG etc) or even lumber (WY) and this is where I am keep watching (don’t own anything yet).

I agree results were quite strong, which hopefully also extends to CHTR. I am surprised how well NBC Universal is doing. I think they are at $8.6B EBITDA and were purchased from GE in a two step acquisition for $31B

Yes, I love the “Expanse” and the “Man in the High castle”. Babylon Berlin is on my list to watch.

Forget what they say, just see what they do.

What damage?

^ Good ideas above. I like the idea to get other employees involved. It certainly seems like you will need some sort of a partner.

It’s is easier to sort out liabilities in a bankruptcy to some extend, so what prevents PCG from filing? I don’t think that managment owns a lot of stock, so they wouldn’t care as long as they are paid. Same with employees. Also, is it conceivable that the state would bid on PCG‘s asset in bankruptcy? It’s a state regulated business to begin with already and the state would have a lower cost of capital than any private entity, if they issue bonds to pay for this. That would solve the issue how to backstop the business in the future. I know tiring contra what most people here believe, but I believe infrastructure assets can be well run in public hands and at lower cost, due to cost of capital advantage.

The annual billionaire & celebrity alumni meetup in Davos is probably the most overrated conference of the present day.

MO should absolutely get inzo the weeds <g>. It’s a very similar product and is getting regulated at some point by the federal government instead of the states. I just don’t think they should be able to build it themselves and shouldn’t have to pay billions to acquire an organization that is small and heals together by shoestrings and duck tape figuratively speaking. E-cigs likely will replace tobacco combustible products, do I think they should get into this business as well. It’s just a matter of how and how much to pay for it. I can understand thenprice payed for JUULS better then the price payed for the weed business.

You can run deposit market share reports on the FDIC website: https://www5.fdic.gov/sod/sodMarketBank.asp?barItem=2

Yes, walkie, It certainly tells something about the size of Mr. Sloan's ego [..."I'm the best" ...], but please take a look at the whole thing from other angles, too. Ms. Warren simply plays foul play. The regulators must be really annoyed by this, too. Ms. Warren tries to affect a decision process over which she has no formal power [conditions for the asset cap]. Her behavior is to me anti-business , and thereby to me destructive. This straightjacket is really hurting for WFC now - JPM and BAC are pulling away hard from WFC now - just take a look at the loan books developments in the banks. The board decides who is to fix the bank. I suppose the WFC chairman is really annoyed also. It’s easy for her to crap on WFC, since the bank has virtually no presence in her political base in MA. She is trying to get airtime to support her political ambitions, imo.

Probably because "Buffett doesn't like tech" is so ingrained. I agree it looks interesting and cheap. It’s sort of a company BRK should hold a stake in. I put it on my watch list again for the next market correction.

^ I see this different. Social media was like the Wild West in the 1900 Century You Grab the land first, no matter what and figure out the rules later, because there are none yet. Now the sheriff comes into town and the place gets cleaned up. Sure, you could say that this should have happened sooner, but the fact is that everyone tried to grab as much land than they could, nothing else really mattered, that’s why they made it to the top.

That sounds like an extremely impressive number for what I understand is a multi-billion dollar fully-hedged cigar butt flipping fund... Most of the time the returns are front loaded and when the AUM get larger due to funds flowing in, Th returns become subpar. I wonder about dollar weighted returns with these hedge funds. It's a solid record. I think it's especially solid given that he holds large amounts of cash and his risk aversion. The overall performance numbers (strictly speaking on performance) are good but not crazy good. I believe it's lower now. I know someone who had the numbers. He made the majority of his returns in 2002-2003 and in 2008. He killed it during crashes, but outside of that it's been middling. I'm not really sure they're a cigar butt fund either. I know they're heavy into debt, and heavy into private investments.

Seems like it. The biggest games of 2018 (at least for mobile ) PUPG and Fortnite are still not available in China. The revenues that these games could bring in are lost forever and a belated launch after a year of Delay brings the risk another game steals their thunder. I am not sure this is politically motivated or the regulators in China just wanted to get ahead of event, before the biggest time drain of modern time are launched in China and start to impact their 5 year plans . LOL.

In Amazon video: The man in the high castle Viking Jack Ryan Hannibal Home fires Downtown Abbey Endevour White Chapel Yes, I am a sucker for British TV Netflix: Dogs of Berlin The Vietnam War ( Ken Burns) Bodyguard House of Cards Peaky Blunders Battle star Galactica series Fargo ( both the series and the Original movie) Lock, Stock and two smocking barrels No country for old men As memorable movies, I enjoyed Wes Anderson Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel as well as most Coen Brother movies . I also enjoyed the Starwars flics Rogue One and the Last Jedi

I have got to say, these tobacco stock cigarette butts start to look interesting. I am looking specifically at BTI and MO. BTI has the mental issue to content with. I did learn from their IR presentation that the cigarette consumption is correlated to gas prices ( discretionary income ?) and was a headwind that should reverse now that gas has become much cheaper. No position yet, but stock market trainwrecks always are of interest, imo.

It seems interesting enough, as are some other stock on the quite cheap Korean markets, but with no way to buy them for most investors ( even with interactive Brokers accounts) there wont be much excitement here. Opening an account with a Korean broker and going through tax hassles to buy a few shares just doesn’t to be worth it, unless I do money management for a living.

$100/month is a lot for high speed internet. I have lived in 3 very different locations during the last few years and the cost for high speed internet was ~$50/month. In each location, there was at least one competitor offering the same.

I bought some Fraport shares as well a few days and I agree it’s cheap. Their largest source of income (66%) are from the German airports and those are wholly owned and not concessions. Peru will expire in 2041 and is important (15% earnings contribution) and Greece is just ramping up and has potential (~4%) and runs though 2057. I regard an wholly owned airport as a nice moaty piece of real estate benefiting from increases in air travel.

I think the discount for LBDRA relative to CHTR is about 10%, which is fair, but not great considering additional overhead expense at LBDRA. I don’t like GLIBA’s operating business and I think they overpaid for the Alaskan telecom business, hence I avoid this stock.

Adding back some CHTR and LBRDA