Spekulatius

SYF has shown less growth in transactions or receivables than their competitors. I don’t know if this is by design, or they are just not as competitive. Share buybacks are a poor surrogate for organic growth and that is why the share price is lagging IMO. I also noted that their loan losses are slightly up, despite the economy on the roll, what happens when the economy weakens? http://investors.synchronyfinancial.com/~/media/Files/S/Synchrony-Financial-IR-V3/documents/syf-1q18-investor-presentation.pdf

I think there is a misconception here that intelligent and smart is the same thing, but in fact both are only loosely related. I have seen quite a few people that probably are only of average intelligence, but are very smart on how they are running their business. I also have not even seen one business owner proper, who wasn’t smart and most weren’t lazy either. Some people may not be intelligent , but they now one field very well, others network really well. Others are just very perceistent and determined. I have met people who made a lot of money just sitting on stuff. I knew one guy who bought just stocks in the 1950’s when almost no one was doing so in Germany and sat on them when I met him in the early 90’s and he has done quite well. A farmer that I knew off was buying then almost worthless meadowlands until they became real estate parcels 20-30 years later. Some of it is luck, but certainly there was some foresight either. Yosemite are smart folks, my hat is of to them.

I don’t think that GE is operating that inefficiently. The main thing seems to be the large corporate cost, of which there is less and less justification, now that many divisions are sold off and the whole conglomerate is shrinking.

You can join the teachers CU as well. There are back doors ( very low foot hurdles, join an affiliate nonprofit for a small one time fee etc.) for just about any CU.

Market isn’t very impressed with the results from the board meeting apparently- shares are down 3%. This is Italy after all. I added a few more shares to my starter position.

^ Great Data - thank you bbarberayr. Also , an alternative to BHF is the recently IPo’d EQH, which also owns a majority stake in AB (asset manager). I think it may come with less baggage, but also has a lower discount to book value.

Which Santander subs are you looking at?

I used to love the cafe mocha and noticed it was way too sweet and I usually don't mind sweet. When my wife gets Starbucks she'll ask for a half sweet mocha (or pump) and it's much better. When I order I always forget........ Agreed on sweetness. and the worse thing is that it isn’t consistent, even within the same location. if there was one thing to fix with their coffee blends, that would be it.

The DFAST 2018 for WFC was actually what I was most curious about under my reading of FED DFAST 2018 report yesterday. Personally, I think WFC passed the stress test in fine style. Somehow a bit odd, considering how hard FED has come down on WFC recently with that order not to expand business volume for WFC. I'm speculating here, that FED has been on a mission to get WFC to get its act together. If that is true, based on the stress test result for WFC, the order now seems like some kind of overreaction. I agree that WFC does did well, as did the Subs of the European banks by the way. I found it surprising how much of a hit the investman banks took (G, MS, even JPM and CS to some extend) and then STT, which I don’t understand at all. MS appears to be very much in risk on mode.

In my opinion, BRK>WFC>BAC/C/JPM right now. I am not even sure that WFC is thr best deal amongst the banks right now. I do think they did decently in the stress test. The banks with investment banking or thr banks that are investment banks did show substantial losses. The biggest surprise was how badly STT did - this is mainly a custody bank! They must hold some real dog$hit paper.

We pickyback on my wife’s family Costco card. It’s worth it for some things, but not for other. The service discounts are so so. We once had a carpet layed down, which ended to be crappy work. I also had an AC unit install quoted, but found cheaper quotes (much cheaper quotes even ) elsewhere. Their prices for tires can be good. For cars, I could negotiate a better price elsewhere, without trying hard. do for me, most services from Costco affiliates are not worth it. We do use Costco for meats, craft beers, some cloth and several other food items they I can’t recall. We also found them to be very good for OTC meds. They also have good deals on consumer electronics especially considering the return policy.

The question is if the rating agency’s know BHF really that well. The problem is not just weaker stock market, it is the issue that in a typical down market stock markets are weak and volatility goes up. Higher volatily can really hurt because it makes it more expensive to hedge. They also cause interest rates to go down, which doesn’t help either.

Put it all on red SPY same month calls. YOLO! 8) Seriously, IRL I'd probably do nothing. Even with special situations, there is no guarantee they'd work out in a month and they likely won't be big enough to put in $1B. The best trade would be one where you are likely make a little, but have a tail risk of losing a lot. I think this can be structured by selling out of the money calls and puts simultaneously (forgot how this is called). The thinking is that even make a little percentagewise with a high likelihood is worth quite a bit with this huge sum and blowing up with $1B is somebody else’s problem.

Hello, thanks for the data. I guess I didn’t compare the right spread data and thought that the spreads during the GFC were much higher. I know I bought some investment grade bonds for ~15% yield, but that may have been an outlier. I do understand that the extremely adverse scenario is designed to mimic the GFC, so It can!t be a walk in the park. I still think that no model can account for the reflexivity or reverse lollapaloza effects of a real crisis.

LOL, that exactly what one should do. It takes less time to push the buy button than to make 20 posts and then do nothing.

I am surprised how poorly GS, MS and STT did in the adverse scenario. The adverse scenario looked pretty bad, but the assumption were for a fairly swift recovery recovery and a spreads increase much less than during the financial crisis in 2008/2009. I believe that if such a scenario would occur, the reflexivity would mean that banks would do worse than what is actually modeled. The US subs of the crappy European banks DB and BCS looked actually pretty good in comparison.

There was a blowout rise in most bank stocks that topped in January 2018, that wasn’t really justified by any fundamentals that I can see. If you discount that, the bear market argument looks quite weak.

Maybe Xinghua is not that great after all. After a deadly accident, the port was closed by authorities and has yet to be reopened. Ian guessing there will be some permanent impairment. I wonder which competing port will now be used to handle Xinghuas volume. http://www.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2018/0608/LTN20180608850.pdf

With the recent downturn and possibly more bad news to come, this stocks merits to be revisited. My personal buy target would be around 20x earnings or $47. SBUX is a very well run Company. I say this based on my experience as a customer as well as looking at it through the investors lens. I would specifically point out the card, which is designed to drive traffic during low traffic hours. I don’t like their plan to lever up for stock buybacks. The stock currently is not really cheap,and levering up does little to revive a growth business, but limits the strategic options.

Eludes me too. I could see another truck manufacturer using Tesla‘s batteries perhaps, but that’s about it.

Some car dealers are actually easy to deal with. the first thing I did was test driving different vehicles to find out which one I liked. I went to the closest dealers with no intention to buy, the gold was just to find out which car I liked. once the decision was made, I looked at TruCar prices, took a round number in the 20%tile for the car I wanted and shopped online for quotes. I looked at dealers specifically, that had higher than average Ratings in yelp or google, but sometimes they are not easy to find. Then I named my fixed price for the specific model and asking for online quotes. quite a few answered that they don’t have that specific model in my desired colors (but of course they had more expensive ones) to which I replied that I can wait until they have one. I took the offer from the first dealer that offered me the car for the price I wanted. Some dealers want to screw you with extra fees (advertising etc), which one should not accept. Be ready to walk, if they keep dragging out the process to wear you down. If you walk, don’t come back to the same dealer, or at least make it a point to talk to a different salesperson (if you can’t avoid the dealership) as a deterrent tomolay the same game over. Other dealers are straightforward and you get exactly washable you ask for. A really good negotiator can do better and possibly get free extras, but a fair deal is good enough for me.

Geico‘s quote for $1M Umbrella went to ~$370 annually. Too much for me - I got a quote from my insurance broker for less than half that from a mutual insurer I have my house insured with. The differences for exactly the same thing are striking. I know that I had quotes from Geico for <$200 a few years ago. A lot of the mutual insurance companies in New England are very competitive.

Could you explain the dirt cheap part? I see 17x earnings, 4.5% FCF yield, mid single digit growth. it trades about where it should be, IMO.

I like the idea in general terms, but I am not convinced about the business model. I think the existing venues to transact a bike work better than described. I also doubt that the company really has an advantage in buying without having any boots on the ground to vet the bikes. This is essential, just like with cars, since the condition can vary significantly and I don’t think bikes are simple items either. I also doubt that they can resell bikes at a profit to dealers. if they can, it should show in the numbers. I think ebaymotors is a very viable competitor with scale advantages and a better business model too.

Yep, nibbled a bit on Ti/A today.