Spekulatius

About the writer: Enough said.... That's how you refute his arguments? He is a she. I doubt you read that nonsense she wrote, you just googled it and threw it out here. I at least read enough to conclude that she has an agenda and no qualification. She complains about FB taking her page down, because as you know, the conspiracy runs deep.

The fat lady hasn’t sung yet, imo. When she does, many EM banks will look very very cheap and SBRCY will be one of them.

About the writer: Enough said....

Stock was probably overextended after a significant rise and there is a trend for brokerages to reduce or even eliminate fees (Fidelity, JPM) increasing the competition for IBKR. FWIW, rest in piece, IBRK iPad app. Your clean GUI will be sorely missed.

The fact that it’s dangerous shorting Momo stocks is nothing new - people got killed shorting yahoo and other internet stocks in 1999, even though the valuations were ridiculous. any short seller worth it’s salt knows that shorting just based on valuation is dangerous and really not recommended. In the case of Einhorn, I would say that hs shorts were ill chosen and even worse his longs too. timing was bad and in many cases, he clearly didn’t understand the circumstances - one example his recent buy of Bayer (BAYN.DE) where he didn’t really understand the merger implications, (had no clue about the lawsuits), ignored that Bayer overpaid and didn’t understand that gene manipulated foods are considered toxic in Europe and the investor base may not like the merger especially either. This to me is just shoddy research.

I think it is important to note that BAM makes their money working with other peoples money. From memory, they paid a pretty rich 13x EBITDA multiple for ENB Canadian gas distribution assets sold this year. I am guessing that as long as they meet their investors return targets, finance them solidly and run them well, they don’t really need to buy them cheap. I don’t think that their GGP buy will work out at a 6.5-7% cap rate, if the 30 year treasury goes to 5% for example, maybe for them, but probably not for the folks supplying the capital.

You can't sign up today, so that must mean it won't ever happen, right? Read much? Anything happening in the next 12 months I would consider to be meaningful news: "Verizon execs have said they expect to launch four fixed 5G markets by the end of 2018. At least 50 residential markets are expected to follow in 2019." Verizon alone expects to be in 50+ markets inside of 18 months, directly competing against traditional cable internet companies - that would be notable to a company like Charter that carries $60B+ in debt with cable TV already in decline. Who is going to buy any cable stock when the internet revenue numbers start going backwards? Generally owning a 'regular' company that becomes a 'runoff' stock isn't profitable between point A and point B. https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/indy-is-verizons-4th-fixed-5g-city/d/d-id/745402 It’s a trend worth watching, but I recall the same was said about 4g, that it would be good enough so people would forgo broadband internet. Again, the cable cos can add 5G too and then some people may forgo their wireless plans for an add on to broadband. My own opinion is that the US telecom market is clubby and prices will remain high.

Flatt stated it himself that they are working opunder the assumption that interest rates stay reasonably low, so I would take it from the horses mouth that it is necessary condition for them to do well. Certainly rising interest rates or even worse rising spreads can’t be good for an asset management business that needs access to debt and equity markets for new deals.

It’s not just his shorts, his longs are bad too. Delta Lloyd, BAYN.DE, BHF etc. while the jury on BHF is still out, his entry was quite bad and it’s clear that he depth in research stocks appears to be quite shallow.

ENB is a C-Corp and does not issue a K-1. Neither does EEQ. EEP and SEP are MLPs and do issue K-1’s. Tax wise, ENB is treated like any other Canadian stock. For US shareholders, there is a 15% withholding tax in a taxable account, but nothing in an IRA account. That’s why I like holding it in IRA’s.

Probably because PSA understands Europe and GM didn’t. Also, PSA won more scale in Europe that Opel never had. Opel bled a lot of market share over the years and decades to rivals VW and others. It’s a very valid question though. Ford has the same issue.

I'd be curious to see how many more years it'll take before he admits that his strategy is totally flawed and he initially performed well only by luck. :) I don’t think his early performance was all luck, but maybe it played a role. I think he has changed, he doesn’t have the same drive or thoroughness or intellectual honesty any more that he used to have 15 years ago or so, when he got started.

Pretty amazing talk. To extend on what Flatt has talked about, I think ENB fits many of the same narratives (durable/ irreplaceable assets with a cash yield, NG revolution). Its one of my major positions in my “yield” bucket. It’s also worthwhile to note that their investment thesis hinges upon bond yields staying comparatively low. I think this is important to keep in mind.

There is also the question if 5G will be unlimited (or quasi unlimited like your current home internet) or you just get a couple of GIGS for $50/ month. At least in the past, the wirelsss companies have not been in the business of giving away stuff for free.

I had the experience that it was difficult to extract a clear price for a vehicle using email quotes. Some dealership just wouldn’t do it, so I dropped them. They wanted me to come in personally, which I refused to do, because I consider it a waste of time. Then after getting a satisfactory price, I had the experience that a dealer was adding back extra costs (advertisement fees, a fee for paperwork) to the cost, which I rejected and actually was starting to walk out on them. So they relented and dropped this stuff after some back and forth. Depending on the area where you live, you can run out of dealerships fairly quickly, when you start to walk on them.

A credit market meltdown in combination with a downturn in the economy will hit BAM disproportionally harder than let say BRK or GOOG etc. BAM is an asset manager and if assets values don’t do well, neither will BAM. BAM assets and vehicles also have a lot of leverage (BPY) to both credit markets and the economy. They have shown to manage astutely in the last, but that’s no guarantee for the future, esepicalky since they grow so much in size.

Valueandopportunity is my favorite blog: https://valueandopportunity.com

ING is down 4% today to $12.8 - any idea what the cause might be. There was news about a fine for money laundering (~780M€), but that was a coupe of days ago. LYG trades at 58p now with tangible book at 53p. That’s a stock I set my eye on, since it’s a good franchise, IMO. I do think that a hard Brexit is now quite likely and Gb will probably go into a recession after that. Bank stocks are basically macro bets, so I am not sure we are “there” yet.

They also got rid of their money losing European operations (Opel/ Vauxhall), which were a sinkhole for money and a huge distraction.

Yep. Since one Peso ~1/19 USD, the market cap is $5.4B. Salud!

Many US companies are in the dumpster too, example CNX( which I am looking into but do not own). CNX actually does sell assets and uses the proceeds to buy back stock, yet the stock is still trading very cheaply and close to lows. Some sectors are just abandoned and small and mid cap E&P’s is just one of them.

My personal threshold to buy more is around $500 USD. My recent adds in the insurance sector were RE (at ~1.05 x tangible book) and BRK.B at $185

The bigger news is that Tesla chief accounting officer left. The guys counting the beans are often the first to leave a sinking ship.

My recents adds were BLX, CUERVO.MX, TI A and FB.

They have bought quite a few shares back (7% of outstanding), while keeping the balance sheet steady. The multiples have come down in the whole space, including car suppliers. The German car companies are even cheaper than GM at this point. FCAU has performed better, but it is the exception not the rule.