Spekulatius

What makes the economics of JD so compelling? To me BABA‘s economics look much more compelling and they have stronger growth and more scale.

It’s one thing that he shirts don’t work in a bull market, but it’s quite another that his longs are uncannily mistimed and in a lot of value trap situations.

i don’t know about the Czech Republik lumber land prices, but it seems that Forst Land in Getmany trades at prices that can’t be justified by expected cash flows from lumber harvesting. They seem to be more trophy properties for “fun”. Most of the land (80%+) where I used to live was owned by towns and cities and scarcity of private land may increase its value. Redeveloping forest land is almost impossible, since it is almost considered sacred in Germany. Redevelopment in residential or commercial is mostly from farm or meadowlands.

I'm not sure BABA/Tencent are dropping because JD is dropping. I am not even sure JD is dropping because of the CEO/rape (although it could be part of the reason). A lot of US tech stocks are dropping for whatever reasons. And a lot (?) of China shares are dropping because of tariffs (?), EM crisis (?), game approval stoppage, etc. You do your DD and you make your choices. Did you sell your JD position or still holding? I sold my Jd at a small profit, dipped my toes into YY, it didn’t like the water and sold. I looked at BABA, but the hodgepodge balance sheet concerns me, so I am out of the Chinese growth stocks for now. FWIW, I don’t think the rape allegations to JD’s CEO are the only reason for the Chinese Internet socks falling, it I think they contribute to souring the sentiment.

I’d rather own CMCSA. it’s a bit more expensive, but much better business, better management and better balance sheet. No contest for me really.

In my opinion, it’s better to buy the “collateral damage“ in stocks like BABA or Tencent etc rather than JD, if interested in a trade. Much less risk and they probably will recover faster.

In addition, since R Lui holds 80% of the vot8ng rights and seems firmly in control, you own an IOU on an ownership stake in a leaderless company.

It's not the first time I've heard Charlie say something scientifically questionable. I think science is his weak spot despite his efforts to be a generalist. It’s very likely the other way around - the Chinese kids got better parents. Adopting kids from China isn’t cheap, so the parents very likely have financial resources. there are also significant background checks. There is a significant selection bias going on on the parent side.

I agree wholeheartedly with Cigarbutt here. DooDilugence- DVA couldn’t dump the patients because they still would get paid the prevailing Medicaid rates. DVA accepts these rates( which barely cover costs) right now for the majority of patients, so they can’t refuse service on existing patients either, imo. If DVA would refuse service to existing patients, and patients die because of this, the ensuring lawsuits would probably do the company in.

So you think you can make almost 20% being in US stocks 100% consistently? Emerging markets have their issues, but if you get the timing right, you can make outsized returns. Some stocks in Argentina went up 10x in a couple of years, only to lose 80% again.

This reminds me of the advertising ban on cigarettes. It essentially wipes out competition from small players. Of course I don't live in China so I have no idea what enforcement will be like. When you look at the underlying root cause that the Chinese want to address (gaming addiction, especially with kids) I think we can guess that other measures are coming. The current hang up in game approvals is probably an aspect of the same issue.

This would take years to work out. DVA can’t really dump existing patients. They can close down centers that are now unprofitable, but that would also hurt their LT earnings power.

Overall, I am surprised that people post about small names at all. Posting nanocap on any somewhat widely followed blog and definitely on CoBF will lead to price spike, which is bad for author if author is buying and is somewhat pump-and-dump if author uses the spike to sell. OTOH most of these names are not forever holds, so expecting the author not to sell on the spike is rather silly too. IMO, people should not post about stocks that are less than XX market cap and YY daily volume at all. But of course it's their choice and sometime I benefit from it, so KEEP POSTING. ;D From my experience , it depends on who post and about what. I have seen posts on absolute microcaps that dont trade every week and there was no discernible effect. This was true especially when the shares of said company were expensive ($1000 or more). I am guessing that no one noticed or it wasn’t interesting due to lack of trading. It also depends on who post, I am guessing that some people have alerts set for some bloggers and buy almost anything they is posted about in the hope that most stocks will gather than traction. One example was that a mixrocap bloggers posted about BSND (Boston Sand and Gravel ) on Twitter and thenstock started to move. Given that there are no financials out there, I can only assume, that some people bought this blind, without knowing what they bought. I posted on another board about some microcaps and there was absolutely no movement. I”ll run a test now and post it here : $QUCT FWIW, I think it is Ok to post a about microcaps. If they move up, don’t buy it or wait until they come back down. It’s just a piece of information, nobody forces anyone to act on it.

No need to nationalize if you control the pricing. The current system where private insurance pays 3x what Medicare/ Medicaid pays makes no sense, but sane is true for many parts of the US health care system.

I owned this and sold out a bit above $40, because the company is just a mess and other seemingly better managed insurers were trading at small premiums (RE, AXS), so I swapped into those instead.

Bought a bit of BLX ( Pan American trade finance bank) below tangible book and with a nice!7% dividend yield. Bank suffers somewhat from spread contraction and negative perception on EM’s.Asset side looks quite safe though and is mostly US$ based. I also bought some shares in PHH2.DE based on ValueandOpportunity blog post. Well managed and family run German health care company.

Yep, he knows his audience :

I buy in chunks ( usually thirds) and fully expect to average down - it’s part of the process. I don’t size positions very large either ( rarely go above 10%), so a decline isn’t that big of a deal. I understand this is different from what many are doing, but it certainly limits emotional response.

What went wrong: 1) CFX dependent on volatile end markets for growth. Those markets (Foremost O&G turned down and the direct and indirect impacted CFX) 2) CFX is a rollup. Once the stock price turns down, acquisition aren’t accreditive any more and hence stop. Same problem that KHC is facing.

I was thinking about that. There are some similarities. However Anglo was a bunch of crazy speculators who didn’t mind underwriting 100% LTV loans. OZK is obviously much more cautious. Interestingly, Anglo management made a decision to reduce it’s participation in the developer loans in 2004. They knew it was too risky. The problem was that they didn’t have the guts to actually implement it. Just one last loan, just one last fat paycheck. So if OZK is ready to walk the walk I would expect them to shrink its CRE book considerably in the next couple of years. Otherwise it means that they bow to the pressure in the top of cycle market and hence the bank is priced way too optimistically. Has anyone ever seen a bank that stopped writing risky loans by by themselves without pressure from the outside (regulators etc)? I don’t recall any, either banks have good underwriting or bad one, but rarely ever a bank changes from being a bad underwriter to a good one without undergoing some “transformation”.

I think what might tip this in BMW’s favor is that a lot of their plants and possibly equipment is depreciated. Some of their plants are properties that they owned since and probably before WW2. but I think this is only part of thr equation. The fact is that Tesla operates terribly inefficient. That’s the issue with building the Gigafactory and producing many components by themselves as well as an inefficient manufacturing plant.

I think comparison to Penn Square may be misleading. Penn Square never really bothered with collateral and it used an origination model. OZK claims that they have LTC of 50% and LTV of 43% (in 2016 for example) and they keep their own loans on their book as far as I understand. What I dont understand is how do they manage to find those loans in a pretty competitive commodity industry. Did they invent some better mousetrap or something? I would understand why it may have been the case in 2009-2012 as they were the only Bubba Gump Shrimp company in town. However speaking of 2018 - i don't get it. I wonder how the LTV is calculated. OZK provides loans to developers and typically they don’t have they much equity. The original bear case for OZK is that they provide reckless financing to developers in boom/bust cities like NYC and Miami. I am hearing that residential RE in Manhattan has slowed down a lot. That’s not the reason why the stock has been weak recently - the reason is pressure on the NIM. I believe OZK funding model makes it more vulnerable to rises in interest rates, because their funding cost rise instantaneously, unlike a ban with a lot of commercial or retail deposits. USB also reported on more competition in construction loans and they are known to be a very responsible lender. Anyways, I had a small put position and sold for about double. I am inclined to renew my bet with longer dating puts, because I think RE has slowed and the coastal markets that OZK lends to are affected the most.

They need a new manager for their product design team.

What do people here make of BABA’s accounting. the article below, while biased, raised some valid point regarding BABA’s accounting. having a $1.2B company like Wazmu disappear from BABA’s annual report and balance sheet without a trace is done discomforting: https://deep-throat-ipo.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-baba-20-ffinancial-comedy-gold.html

You change tires for the winter? :o Yeah, I know my relatives do this in Lithuania where it is required. I think you're the first person I've heard to do this in US. As you know, I live pretty much in the countryside. Quite a few people got winter tires even in LI. I had trouble the first year in my Hyundai to get even up the slightest hills in my “all weather” tires, when the road wasn’t serviced. Our Subaru doesn’t have that problem.