Spekulatius

haha....don't know why this guy is shirtless. :o anyone actually try this? The comments look positive. I am running an experiment, using the same blade for 2 month now and can confirm thwt it works. I sharpen the Mach3’s every 2 weeks using about 10 strokes on my jeans. While they are not quite as sharp as new, they are plenty sharp to get the job done. Thanks for posting.

I think these sanction issues could sting a bit more. Could the ADR get delisted from US stock exchanges? Many institutional investors may not be able to hold stocks from Russia any more, others don’t want to.

HVAC contractors are asset-lite(maybe they own a truck). Only proprietary value is customer list and relationships. It's generally a relationship business. How long does that value last once old owner moves on? So you're not buying reproducible revenues and profits, necessarily. It’s price competitive, since the service is fairly standardized . Most of the work falls within just a few month, so they work long hours in peak time. Price and lead time are the primary factors. The long hours favor owner operators over those that just have employees, imo.

I expect nothing to happen, everything remains as it is. as I mentioned before, I don’t see a pressing problem. Kicking the can down the road, is common in politics , even more so, if there is no issue with the can. The chances of a lawsuit driving a change are already very slim after 10 years and so many losses.

The Deal was a disaster for LUK, not for Jeffries. Jeffries had a near death experience during the European bond crisis and needed additional backup capital, which LUK provided to calm the concerns. I am skeptical on the new JEF, the investment banking business model is broken imho, and being just a second Tier investment bank makes it even I worse.

1) Once data is out there and shared, you can’t put it back into a “storage locker” 2) It would be nice to have a “data protection “ law that governs thr use of data by corporations and the government government 3) The first thing thwt needs to go is the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act was one of the biggest landgraps for individual data ever and is similar to what many totalitarian regimes have available. If people accept a Patriot Act, I doubt they care about sharing data on FB.

Depending on how you view investing. I think the biggest fallacy for the Graham and Buffet group is that people believe when they do their home work, their investment is a sure success. In fact it is essentially a probability game. You can do the research and improve your odds of winning but it is never a sure thing unless you trade like Steve Cohen. You can have a simple business and a great operator and you buy at a cheap price and you can still lose. This Fannie/Freddie bet is no different from this view. I think it is more like a bet in a poker game than value investing. Sure there are bets with good risk/ reward and those with bad ones, but I think it is much harder to determine the probability of a those bets, than determine what an investment is worth and purchasing at a discount from that value, which is the idea of value investing. It seems to me that most investors have a way too optimistic view of the probably of a positive outcome with these binary bets.

What is not simple about this? Goal: create a secondary liquid market for mortgages to stimulate housing. 1. borrow at the lowest possible low rate (from Fed). 2. buy quality mortgages (95%+ of which are single home risk-weighted at 50%). 3. pool them to securitize. 5. issue securities (mbs) backed by the pool. 6. guarantee payments of principal and interest on the mbs in exchange for a fee. 7. sell the securities to institutional investors. 8. hedge interest rate. 9. make coin. risks: interest rates (hedged), bad mortgages (qualified). If the fee does not cover borrowing costs CFO needs 3rd grade math tutoring. The not so simple part is who owns this? The government think that they own this and you own toilet paper. Thes speculators who buy the “toilet paper” think otherwise. So far it looks, smells and feels like toilet paper for the last 10 years and especially since the government is on the other side of the table, I think chances are fairly high that this in fact is toilet paper. That’s my simple way of looking at this.

Anyone is concerned about the volume shrink and the high debt load? This could quickly become a cigar but stock. I am wondering about the sustainability of the 3 G business model. After all, when you cut the expenses to the none, you may end up owning a skeleton. They apparently are not able to reinvest the cost savings in growth, but it does just seem they they can or want to do so. They need to acquire another company to repeat their playbook, but with their town stock in the tank, their increased size and high debt load, I am not sure they can pull off something that is noteworthy accredited. This become highly reflexive as an investment and unpredictable. Buffet left the board, I know there is a good reason, he need to slow down, but I can’t help but think that he knows that the next few years won’t be as much fun as the last couple.

I probably would tell them just to avoid anything with complexity and /or high fees. That alone more or less should steer them in the right direction.

Ya I dont know. Obviously that price should shift the prior to a lower valuation. But I dont think you can often buy a 20 story office building in a second tier city for 17 million. The question is whether Newark will end up as a second tier city or a deserted wasteland. It’s too close to Manhattan and it has an airport, which makes it unlikely to become a wasteland, IMO.

So they are doing a 3:1 capital raise via subscription rights for 105 DKK/ share. Just based on the numbers, they probably could do without a capital raise. I suspect that this outfit is more t really run for the benefit of shareholders. Sparkassen in Germany are banks owned by city, county or states and operate to support the local economy and provide affordable banking services , not to maximize profits. This is similar to credit unions in the US. This outfit, even though it’s trades as a shareholder company, feels a bit the same way. Subscription rights are in most cases impossible to excercisd when held in a foreign account. If you are lucky, your brokerage can sell them, but they often can’t or dont, so you will get screwed.

A bit off topic, but I always liked the Swedish chef in the muppet show:

Here is an attempt to determine the value based on a regression with the number or users. Makes sense to me and may or may not be better than SD’s chicken bones. The valuation approach in this article indicates a substantial overvaluation , but not by 10x or more. https://quantpedia.com/Blog/Details/what-is-bitcoins-fair-value

If they sell treasuries, they need to buy something else from the proceeds. It would push prices up for whatever they decided to buy. re selling treasuries or stop buying them. Chinese probably know this will not work as the 2008 crisis has proven the Federal Reserve will buy whatever there is to buy in lieu of China, Russia, Japan or whoever. The US can finance itself, it appears, although at great risk to the dollar. Unknown territory, if you ask me. Remember too central banks require extremely liquid markets. What else is out there besides treasuries? Spekulatius, one of the CEOs a while back stated his company (either Fannie or Freddie) is unwilling to extend credit (probably as in buying lower quality mortgages but still acceptable) because they would not put taxpayers capital at risk. This was a clear complaint on how the company had to operate day in day out. Meaning they were overly conservative with the credit box. Watt made a mention in this regard as well. You speak as in from 30,000 feet. Of course the banks will extend credit to the rich, well-to-do and the lucky ones scoring above 700 in their credit profile. Or you also think there are no issues in the lower percentile of the mortgage market where credit scores rank low, those mortgages Fannie and Freddie may not be willing to securitize given the risk in relation to a taxpayers' credit line? Is it possible that your definition of "credit worthy borrowers" may be leaving a good amount of people in the cold, those who could still buy a home if credit standards loosen up a bit? Fannie and Freddie could -for lack of better words- relax standards so long as they put at risk their own capital. I don’t know the answer, but wasn’t it FNMA/FRE job to create a vehicle for conforming and standardized mortgages with 20% downpayments a certain minimum credit rating and income/debt service ratios? As long as these entities stayed with these parameters, they did OK, but when they moved downmarket starting in thr early 2000’, together with other subprime lenders, the mortgage market for really distorted. Nobody prevents private capital to jump in and fill gaps left by FNMA/FRE which should and are run like utilities. I dont think they should be everything for all people. FWIW, credit frothiness in the mortgage markets is already occurring as we speak right now.The evidence is clear when you look at the real estate markets in many urban centers. I don’t think now is the time to light the second stage of this rocket, because I think we know how this will end. At least FNMA/FRE should not be part of it, when market participants decide to do stupid things again.

I think the risk that FB is replaced by a bigger mousetrap is higher than with GOOG to name one example. I do think that a lot of people underestimate the IP and know how within FB and how easy it would be to replicate. I think this is another part of the moat, beyond just the net work effects. Just like with GOOG, I think their real edge is Adsense and monetization rather than be the best search engine, I think FB is best in class how they grow social networks and monetize them. FB may be getting in the mature phase in the US, but it is still growing in terms of monetization elsewhere like weed, and then there is Instagram and Whatsup, which barely scratch the surface in terms of monetization or have not started at all. I also feel that Zuckerberg is a very strong CEO with a long term view on the business and will be regarded on par with Bill Gates and Bezos down the road. Yes, he does poorly in the media right now with the scandal, but I think he will learn to do this better or hire someone who does, because FB right now is more important for the public than TV networks have been in their hey days.

Call me a convert since I never owned FB until recently. If you believe that thr FB thesis is intact (I don’t see a reason why not), FB stock from a fundamental analysis POV is actually cheaper than it has ever been and relatively cheap compared to the market, if you consider growth potential and fundamentals. It feels surprising to write this, as I found the stock ridiculously valued at the IPO, but they have proven themselves and churned out numbers that make the current price look cheap.

I like Ennismore. They run a mutual fund that does some shorting too. They discuss one of their long positions every month and they seem to be doing quite well. http://www.ennismorefunds.com/oeic.html

If they sell treasuries, they need to buy something else from the proceeds. It would push prices up for whatever they decided to buy.

Damn it! How nobody thought of this before? Shoot, let's nationalize the entire economy and stop worrying about bankruptcies or bailouts. Problem(s) solved! You wanna run for President? I can’t run for president, because I am not US citizen and not born here anyways, but thanks for thinking of me. Also, I don’t know how you get the idea that ai suggested to nationalize the whole economy, Inusut suggesteddp the revolutionary thesis that if everything works just fine for virtually anyone, but a few speculators, the current status quo is very likely to persist, why would it not? While this maybe correct, it doesn't make it right. And, are things just working fine for virtually everyone? Are they? Do Fannie and Freddie engage in reasonable credit expansion while they have no capital of their own? I was under the impression Watt sees the companies operating with a straightjacket. "working fine" is just in the eyes of the beholder. Or the eyes of the banks. I don’t think creditworthy borrowers have trouble accessing mortgages for homes, at least not from my experience. Housing markets are doing quite well and are becoming overheated in many areas. What are the straighjackets that you are referring to? They don’t seem to have any impact on the mortgage financing.

Not to argue that merits of technical analysis, but you might want look at a BTC chart. Alternatively, build your own if you also want RSI and moving averages. SD Technical analysis on a value investing board? Mayorly undervalued is mayorly undervalued. Just mindful that the current price is below the last trough low (Feb-05) of USD 6,914. For those who belive in the voodoo science, this supposedly means that at the curent price of USD 6,611 it could drop quick a bit until it 'finds' a new level. And given that there really isn't any agreed fundamental value approach applicable to Bitcoin - tossing bones may well be as good as it gets! No opinion as to whether it is under or overvalued. ;D SD What would exactly provide a floor? Technical analysis would suggest much lower, maybe $800-900. Intrinsic is exactly what?

Newark is really dumpy, but wasn’t there some talk about Amazon moving there for their second headquarter?

What surprises me a bit is that so many value investors end up owning the same crappy stocks like Valeant, Sears’s, Resolute Forest. Seems like a lack of original research to me or some group think. all these stocks had yellow or red flags, had balance sheets etc. Chou had huge stacked in all those stocks and thwt is why he underperformed. It might have worked great in another universe, but as it played out, it wasn’t really a surprise that it didn’t. As a value investor you can’t expect to outperform consistently every year, but I think some introspective is warranted, if 1/3 of your portfolio goes bust. You can’t blame this on macro either. These weren’t really value investment with a margin of safety either. margin of safety stocks is where heads you win, tails you break even or don’t lose much. Those stocks were more like poker bets were heads you win, tails you lose and they got the odds wrong. This, IMO is not not really value investing, at least not Buffet or a Graham style.

I disagree. Let's define underperforming as being in 33 percentile (aka bottom 1/3, a good sized margin under the average) I would say that for most professions, their results aren't even being accurately measured. Imagine you are crippled in an accident and you hire a personal injury lawyer. How do you measure his effectiveness? How do you know if they did a good job for you? That you got as much as your injuries were worth? What about doctors? Hospitals probably collect statistics on surgical mistakes and complications, but what about seeing your family doctor? Do you think someone is tracking their misdiagnoses and mistakes? I don't. What about underperforming as a grocery clerk? A bit slower at their work and not as friendly. Remember that one 1/3 of your employees are underperforming! Are you going to fire them all every year? Remember that your top performing grocery clerks probably move on to find other, better paid work. You don't want staff turnover and retraining of 50% per year.. So in summary I think that Fund Management is one of the few professions where your results are accurately measured! There is underperformance in all professions - but it isn't as obvious as in fund management. In most professions, you still create value for your employees, even if you underperform. An underperforming waitress will still serve customers, an underperforming engineer will still do some engineering work for the company etc. An underperforming money manager however will be measured against the easily obtainable index standard and if he doesn’t beat that or worse underperforms by a wide margin, he does not create any value of hits customers, in fact he costs his customers money. His customers would have been better off, if they had never heard or met this persons, that’s the harsh truth. On the positive side, money mangement is one of the few professions where you can underperform and still become filthy rich. 8)

^ The above is true, it Tesla is more a religion or cult than a stock. religions and cults may last longer than you would think and who knows what can happen between now and the time they finally end recapitalizing. Shorting is so dependent, even if you are correct about the final destination, you can go broke in between. Maybe ther is a sma way to play this like shorting their bonds (where he upside is limited) or credit default swaps. I am not certain these even exist for Tesla.