Spekulatius

That was a good bet. I agree the pendulum has swung too far for a lot of stocks. That’s true for good or bad business. Even ROST went to $76 at the low and is now back to $90. The consumer economy is very strong in the US due to full employment and, tax cuts etc, which is helping retail plays, secular challenged or not. I think next years comps will be tougher.

If there is value, it’s with the debt. I personally wouldn’t play the debt either, since it’s not clear if the bankruptcy judge won’t screw over outside debt holders with Eddy getting first dips.

You haven’t seen their stores, that’s why....It feels like it’s dying and Toys r Us 10 years ago. I haven’t been to their stores in years, it’s totally redundant with Target and AMZN if you have prime. They were very popular in the 90’s and early 2000’s, but then slowly lost their touch.

In my experience with lightly traded stocks, a limit order at the ask will only fill 100 shares and then the bid will move to one penny over your limit order which is of course why market orders are good to use when filling the order is more important than scalping a couple pennies. Buth then, a market order can really stick you with some bad fills, hence the allure of the adaptive algo, but alas it has its problems too. Ain't no such thing as a free lunch... Free trades at Merrill Edge are nice because you can split your order into multiple orders for free (assuming you are within your monthly allotment of free trades). But then Merrill won't trade many low price/volume stocks anymore. Years ago, I absolutely never used market orders, but over the past 10 years, I find sometimes they are just the only way to get a fill. Yep, but the most annoying trades are those where your bid never gets a fill, but then you see a trade for 0.01 penny higher a microsecond later. While you can only trade in 1 penny increments some HF trade can do smaller increments and suck up all the liquidity. At least that’s my take of it.

It's a pretty simple and boring business, so I don't expect any big surprises. I suppose Mike might setup the company for a new CEO, and if they've gotten too fat at HQ and some positions aren't worth the cost I'm all for it. Hard to read too much into. Generally I just don't like too much exec rotation and I think it looks bad in him that they don't have an internal candidate ready to take over. I am betting that most positions will be replaced. There is going to be a head of HR and a CTO in the future and probably someone overseeing real estate (the latter could be replaced lower level executive), so these departures are only a small part of the $50M in savings. Besides that $50M hardly move the needle for a company with $21B in revenue and $3.3B in gross profits. It’s more likely that there is some change in direction or some issues and I am guessing we will find out soon. Disclosure: no position

Sounds like more bad news is coming. Chopping so many execs ( or do they want to leave?) is rarely a good sign.

You can buy MS for book value today :-)

Mine looks like this: Business evaluation 1) Is this a good business? 2) Is the stock cheap? 3) Is management capable and honest? 4) Is the stock safe (balance sheet, business resilience) 5) Are there more head winds or tail winds going forward?

Depends why. A US recession wouldn't do most of these economies much good. CHTR, CMCSA > LBTYA > LILA For LILA, growth and FCF is lower, Leverage and borrowing costs are higher (the latter is due to hedging costs for currency risk) and the business is just to disparaged. I would rather buy LBTYA where you have the pot. Catalyst of a sale of a good chunk of their business. If Latin and central American economies and start to do great, so should do the local currencies and then it is possible that LILA stock appreciates on the grounds of currency improvements and better business performance.

Never invested in this company or followed it, but just by reading the last couple of pages it seemed they tried to time the market like some macro tourists. (read: they are not value-investors.) Is my understanding correct? Yes, they made a bet going long garbage and short the general market, which didn’t work out. They also had a deflationary macro view and did lose money on inflation bets. The latter are gone or worthless , as are the shorts on the general markets, but they are still long garbage and even adding to it (Seaspan). The latter may work out due to better protection and management (Sokol), but you know what they say when good management runs a bad business...

Every broker is different. I believe Interactive Brokers is concerned about dealing with UBTI, so they prevent this by prohibiting ownership in LP in IRA’s. I do know that Fidelity let’s you own LP’s in IRA’s.

I can live with terrible Communication when the execution is good. Terrible execution with terrible communicsti9n however is a real problem. FWIW, I own several insurance co. with decent underwriting, and they can do high single digit ROE currently with zero equity exposure. FFH has ~$4.6B in equity exposure (this has been flat over the years with ~$12.5B in equity (numbers are from memeory, so may be a bit off), that’s roughly 37% of their equity. I am guessing they can’t go higher, unless their stocks actually start to appreciate so the addition mal equity exposure becomes “House money”, and not necessary to support the insurance business statutory capital, like is the case with BRK.

I am in the US.

I've not heard of any US based custodian that doesn't allow for purpose of a publicly traded partnership inside of an IRA, though I suppose it may be possible. Though other types of plans (like a 401k) can definitely restrict such investments. It isn't the distributions that cause the UBTI, as the income from the PTP isn't the same as the cash received from it (as a distribution). Instead, you have to wait until the K-1 is generated at year end to determine how much UBTI and income the PTP generated (as it depends on many factors, including your purchase price and date). Though, it does seem like some custodians treat the ordinary gain on disposal of a PTP as income subject to UBTI, which is a much bigger issue (due to how taxation works for partnerships and the operations of most PTP). Though to my knowledge, this is still a bit of a grey area due to the complexity of the tax code (though I've heard of various NFP examinations started by the IRS where they found this fact pattern and required the NFP to treat this ordinary income as UBTI and assessed tax on it). You can read a little bit more at https://content.rwbaird.com/RWB/Content/PDF/Help/Taxation-Master-Limited-Partnerships-FAQs.pdf My understanding is that Interactive Brokers does not allow LP in IRA’s any more. This is an email that I received from them in 2016:

I agree with then concept of trading volatility. If the current prices environment of instability and volatility persists and the market just swings around in crazy moves and ends up going nowhere, this could become very profitable. Note that POTUS always talks up progress in trade talks with China, when the market tanks, with no follow up. Seems like a good bet to sell these releases. The Fed talk yesterday very much reminds me on Bernanke‘s armchair talk in March 2009, which pretty much marked the bottom of the bear market. It’s a different situation now, but this talk was clearly orchestrated to calm the markets.

AMZN music is a contender in the field too. Pretty good selection and it’s included in Prime. It’s plenty good for me. I do agree that Spotify can carve out a place, but they really need scale. It’s different than video, where Netflix gained scale before the other players did.

It’s not a truck, but I absolutely love our 2015 Subaru Forester. Mileage is actually better than with my 2012 Hyundai Elantra on our suburban roads (31 mpg vs 28mpg LT average) despite being heavier and having a 4 wheel drive (which is very handy in winter). The progress in mileage in the last few years has been significant.

The shareholder friendly ones. And this one was timely - two ordinary working days into the quarterly business wheel, when it became evident internally. If a huge company like Apple starts to miss it’s numbers, a significant amount of insiders (managers, supply chain specialists, customers, suppliers etc) will know what’s going on and the news will perspire into common knowledge, giving some people an information advantage over others. This likely has already occurred over the last few weeks and it is better to get the facts out to minimize the unfair information advantage. Silicon Valley companies are famously leaky traditionally, but Apple much less so than most others. I hope they keep it that way.

Pretty good talk from Damodaran about the current equity risk premium and why he feels good about owning equities right now:

Market timing is tough, but both Howard Marks and even Graham to some extend thought about the market in a broad context. Howard Marks reminds us where we are likely within a cycle and Graham suggested to put a higher percentage of a capital into bonds when the market was high and bargains were few, as far as I remember.

I own at least one of his picks, Ming Fai (3828). They shut down an unprofitable business line the past few years, are paying out a big dividend. Market cap ~750m, ~300m in excess cash and 100m in net income last year. Decent company & very cheap. Allan international is similar company. Webb sometimes uses his stake to push a bit for sensible capital allocation so I guess he generates his own catalysts? My guess is that he's not very busy with looking for 'catalysts' and just buys reasonable companies at unreasonable valuations. Though I have to admit I don't understand all of his picks. How do you know what he owns? I don’t see it on his webb site.

A belated thank you for hosting. I had fun with the Eric & Eric gang. ;)

Might work for me on weekends. I live approx. 45min away from this location. I assume this would be a breakfast or lunch meetup?

The deferred taxes on LT gains need to be taken into account, since the cost base of their long term holdings is so low.

Other than Trump being a wildcard, I see no connection to any investing strategy.