Spekulatius

Find a good wine store. Each area has some discount stores that sell wine for fair prices and the good ones have recommended bargain wines displayed or you can ask staff. I found the advice to be quite sound. I buy mostly based on area of origin and the grape rather than brand. I lived in CA in a wine growing area so I am partial to appellations I know. Alexander Valley and Russian River are my favorites. I am also member of a wine club (for free) and have wines shipped to me from a CA vineyard when they have low cost shipping and sales. I try wine when I travel. We traveled last year though upstate NY and found the German grape varieties from the Finger lake area quite pleasing. They make a very good Rieslings, but those are not that well distributed outside the area of Origin. I typically typically have price target (~$15) and then best stuff in that range from above that I can buy. Luckily, the NH liquor stores close to where I live are wells stocked and fairly inexpensive and tax free.

Apple has already been fading (losing market share) in China for years. I think the high prices may haves something to do with it, as well as the annual refreshment cycle (Chinese companies refresh faster) and maybe the government gently favoring their national champions on China Mobile. Note that China is aggressively pushing 5G too and the newest Apple devices don’t have it. This means that the competitors have a 12 month head start.

Does anyone know any company, preferable in California, that had monetized water rights successfully? My own assessment is that the water rights are worthless. I could well be wrong here, but I think they are attached to land ownership and can’t be separated out.

I use FB to keep in touch with friend and acquaintances far away. there isn’t really anything out there with a reach similar to FB, IMO. I agree with Marketplace gaining traction relative to craigslist. I also noticed the increased political angle. I typically “mute” those that keep pointing stuff I am not interested in and it seems to help. there are also decent value investing groups on FB. I joined a few, as well as some local groups. The benefit and problem with FB and other new media is that you can post/publish anything at any time, virtually without effort. it’s not like in th old days, whet you had to pay to place and add or sent a letter to a newspaper that may or may not get published some time later. It’s instantly on and available and of course it creates problems when this is a Abused. But so can be any other communication device like cellphone, the WWW, or even the traditional media.

Well, the stock had a wonderful run up until just a few weeks ago. It might be a bit early, but it looks like Apple May have overestimated their pricing power and the plan to increase Selling prices is now back firing. This could mean that they have to lower sales prices for their phones which implies a earnings reset a lower levels. Again, this is reading tea leaves here a bit, but once an earnings reset occurs, the stock may not look that cheap any more. Buybacks don’t really help when the business is pressured and the Santa Claus rally has been cancelled apparently.

The Chinese are not missing out on much. I have never heard of Dolce and Gabbana before, but the stuff on their website looks terrible. It looks like cheap chic to me.

I assume that you already have strong answers to the questions you ask and that you look for better ones which makes it a hard undertaking. Few thoughts: -a stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit. -a challenge is how to protect the helpless from the bandit. -a bigger challenge though is how to deal with the super-stupids: "people who by their improbable actions not only cause damages to other people but in addition hurt themselves." If you allow yourself to think only under two dimensions, you may find the following interesting: http://advanced.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/The-Basic-Laws-of-Human-Stupidity.pdf Most of the people that fall for a fraud or bad investments are not stupid. They are gullible, sometimes greedy and/or financially illiterate.

"$500,000 from two separate accounts he had at Coinbase and Gemini" Yeah. I think I've said about a thousand times: don't hold your bitcoin in an exchange, it simply isn't safe. Everyone should know this by now. Part of what is great about Bitcoin is that trusted 3rd parties are no longer necessary, why are people still trusting 3rd parties? For convenience and because they don’t trust themselves to keep the key safe.

The Apple Watch Gen 3 is available at Target for $200 or $230 (Nike model). A decent deal, if you are looking for a smart watch. While not strictly a a BF deal, if you are a MA utility customer, you can get a Nest smart thermostat for $80 (or even $40 for the Nest E) via MASS Saves. I bought 2, because one Thermostat does not operate correctly any more and I don’t like the other one that was in the house I purchased a couple of month ago.

A long time ago, Rolls Royce tried to sell a car model named “Silver Mist” in Germany. It flopped big time and it took the British a bit to find out why - the name “Mist” in German means “Shit” or more precisely “dung”.

It’s hard to give up credit cards entirely, but it’s very easy to switch providers, or even totally abandon a network like Visa. Giving up FB for which there is no straightforward substitute is much more difficult, IMO. And who with a clear mind would start an account with a chinese company like Wechat if one is concerned about privacy and data retention?

Actually, the stock I hold have value , even if nobody wanted them, at least those that pay dividends.

Maybe some tax selling going on? Sometimes the benefit from realizing tax losses exceeds the current value of the shares for many investors a sale at any price or quasi zero may make sense.

We have positive working capital and no debt...why would we file bankruptcy? In this mind-numbing scenario, after everything you know and understand about financial statements, how do you believe or even postulate that bankruptcy is imminent? We also have investments in one real estate project that has broken ground and should be completed in the next 12 months (half of the 22 townhouse units are already presold), a clinic business that did over $1.4M in revenue last year and a telemedicine business that is operating in all Canadian provinces. None of which we have any funding costs that we are responsible for. You also have Zed Therapeutics coming online and Purposely which launches January...again, we have zero funding costs for Zed Therapeutics and minimal for Purposely. The question shouldn't be is PDH going bankrupt, but are we going to see an acquisition soon? On that front, all I can say is that I'm working my ass off! Cheers! You probably should take this company private. I don’t even know if I could trade a stock with so many leading zeros , even if I wanted to.

GS, PRSP and BASFY

I am not sure why harping on a totally different stock that was valued at 6x earnings eons ago in a totally different economic framework (interest rates, economy, general market valuation ) makes any sense here.

I don’t know. Cutting dividend would be the companies problem, not the regulators.

I don’t think that the government / regulator cares if banks spent their excess capital on buybacks or dividends. That’s totally up to management discretion.

Well they are obviously concerned about credit risk with jumbo mortgages. It shows that they do their own thinking, for the better or the worse.

Well at least they are not in investment banking. It’s clear that the company has some issues, it still trades below book value - and indication that their capital allocation hasn’t always been the best. I also may the however, that they have consistently grown their book value and tangible book (the latter is now ~$66, which means you are buying this at 1.32x tangible book). I low believe they should be able to generate $10+/ share this year and then the stock is cheaper than almost any other bank or CC company. COF CC should be hugely profitable on a standalone. What alerted me to this opportunity is that they were able to get Walmart’s CC portfolio from SYF. This means that they ether have lower return expectation or serve their customers better. I think it is more of the latter than the former.

Cash flows scale with both home prices and the number of Second home Sales. Second home sales have fluctuated as much ss 50% peak to valley (~7M in 2005 to 3.5 M in 2010 and then you have a correlated movement in home prices. Seems like plenty of volatility to me. Older charts show similar changes in the past (1980-1982). I think higher interest rates and lower demand could take the home sales down quite a bit. That said, the business is very cash generative in good times and I suspect that’s by Berkshire is in it too. The new management team might sway my opinion as I wasn’t impressed by the former team. I don’t think they should have racked up as much debt.

Thread deserves a bump. I added to my shares today 1) cheap, based on PE ($10+ earnings were th a $88 share price ) 2) Owner operator 3) smart acquirer (ING direct etc) 4) little coverage The stock click many value boxes. Downside is perhaps risky CC exposure (although they seem very deliberate when and how much they exposure to so so credit) and perhaps being close to peak earnings when the historically low default rate starts to rise again (which is true for mot other bank# too). I own a still smallish position.

There is a deal with the EU and May‘s Team, but it appears that May has no mandate and can’t get anything ratified. Time is also running out and November was mentioned as the last possible time at which negotiations have to be concluded, which means it’s either the current draft or nothing. Looks like nothing to me. Next steps are hard Brexit, possibly Labour government and a recession. Lloyd trades at 55.4 p as we speak, just a hair above the 52p (?) tangible book value. The GBP actually has been surprisingly strong until today , so I think it may come down some more too.

This is one of those companies that had a buyback mania at what turned out to be high valuations and now needs to fix their balance sheet. The business model is certainly changing slowly and I also believe thet based on my personal experience over the years, the total transaction costs are slowly moving down. 4.3x EV/EBITDA is Ok when your cash flows are very secure, but it’s too high, if your cash flows are highly variable, IMO and your business model needs to be reinvested somewhat. I amd also looking at RDFN as a platform company and RMAX (direct RLGY competition, perhaps better managed) in this space.

I hVe no clue about British politics, but it seems like a hard Brexit is now reality and May has really no mandate to negotiate anything. This means that she veryblikely will have to step down. given the timelines and fact that there is no authority to negotiate on the British side, it seem like a hard Brexit is inevitable. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46216415 I am looking at this with an eye towards investment opportunities in British stocks, not political discourse per say. I think LYG presents a nice business, but not so much when Britain slides into a recession, which IMO is quite likely. the British banks didn’t do too well in the latest EU stress test due to sensitivity to mortgages and consumer loans, but their business model is more like that for US banks (similar NIM’s too) and more profitable than US peers. a company like BP for example, which does business worldwide, wouldn’t care much about Brexit, so that’s another angle.