Spekulatius

Added to NG Mlp SEP today. This is essentially an equity bond. I also like BWP in the same space for around. $13, since they do in excess of $2 per unit in DCF. This is owned by L and I can’t for the life of me figure out, why they haven’t taken out their limited partners.

I for one am thankful for the discussions regarding bitcoin and block chain. I am not buying into the bitcoin bull market, but there is certainly an investment opportunity here. It seems to me that block chain based protocols have a place where counter party or third party trust cannot be obtained or is not desired. I think the underground economy is one, but I could also see an institution like the United Nations using it to transfer funds, Why shouldn’t they create their own block chain based currency currency to facilitize funds movements acros nations borders without interference from anyone? Gaming is another advantage where it could be used to exchange goods between gamers. I am sure there are many others.

+1 to this comment. In my opinion acquisitions are the last thing LILA should be thinking about right now. I also think it's important not to gloss over the tragic situation that Puerto Rico currently finds itself in. Pre-hurricane, PR was in the midst of a decade-long recession. Post-hurricane, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans, many of them of prime working age, have already left the island for the mainland US. Many of them may never come back. I agree with above. PR may never come back fully. Also, when your stock is trading at 7x EBITDA doing acquisitions at 10x EBITDA does not make any sense. That is what LILA did with the CW acquisition a while ago and a big reason why the stock is in the doghouse.

Folks should lighten up a bit -maybe this will help ’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house Every person was trading, including my spouse; The mining rigs hummed in the cellar with care, In hopes that some new bitcoins soon would be there; The children were buying tokens from their beds, While visions of Porsche Turbos danced in their heads; And Mama on her laptop, and I on PC Searched for the next big buying opportunity But then from my desk there arose such a clatter, I answered the phone to see what was the matter. I squinted to see by the light of the taper, As a teenager walked me through his white paper. When, what to my wondering eyes should appear But a bearded millennial drinking craft beer He pulled out his phone, checked his what-do-you-call-it Where one keeps one’s tokens- his digital wallet. More rapid than lightning, the rallies they came And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name: "Now Bitcoin! Now Litecoin! Now Ether and Ripple! If Monero can double, then you can all triple! To the top of the chart! Break the resistance wall! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!" And then with a wink, to my office he flew While lugging a case and swigging his brew As he prepped his ICO pitch to help me gain, I confirmed a few transactions on the blockchain. His slide deck was thick; his paper, full of detail About how he’d attract bids from Asian retail. His eyes--how they twinkled! So this was no hobby He clearly knew how to pitch the Watanabes When I asked if he’d come from the North he said "No. The coin-mining rigs have all melted the snow. I leave for the coast on my sleigh in an hour. My wind-farm provides me with super-cheap power." What about the Fed? Do you see any trouble? He laughed, "You know central banks can’t spot a bubble. The worst they can do is say ’buyer beware.’ It’s like the Wild West... pretty much laissez-faire." Is there intrinsic value? I mean, what can I buy? He looked at me sadly and let out a sigh. Then shaking his head, tapped the side of his nose. "You mean that you can’t see the Emperor’s new clothes? You’re not a believer, I can feel in my loins. C’mon! A chap once bought some pizza with coins. You know that the ledger, it needs proof of work. You’re not only a doubter, you’re some kind of jerk. Your insistence on value is pretty quaint, Gramps. Stick to trading stocks or maybe collect stamps. My coin’s not for you, I’ve seen more than enough." Then he packed up his things and he left in a huff. But I heard him exclaim as he left, sight unseen: Happy holidays all, and good luck in ’18

This one comment really made me think? Are we really in a great phase of innovation? Hard to tell while we are in the middle of it..... Smartphones are probably more a drag on productivity than a benefit. Imagine the time people spent on nonproductive uses during work hours on their smartphone. The gains being accessible and look up information on the spot pale in comparison, IMO. We certainly are. Things like wide adoption of wireless communication, carrying a powerful computer anywhere you go, google translate is incredibly good, available to everybody on demand for free, advances in genetic engineering, even horizontal drilling and fracking, all happening more or less at the same time, iPhone is only 10 years old! Nothing short of miraculous.

Appreciate the condescending reply - the tone immediately made me realize how everything I wrote is silly and outright stupid. Can you please send me a list of your investments so I can just clone you? Network effect is probably in the top 3 requirements for a store of value asset. Bitcoin is currently winning the network effect game. Once again, I'm not a zealot and my opinions will grow as facts change. I hold some of the smaller coins in crypto as an effective hedge on bitcoin losing its current network effect status. And great idea with the interest earning crypto-asset. Must be nice to be able to just come up with million/billion dollar ideas on the spot and not act on it. I would advise that you create this - but I hate spending time giving advice to people who don't want to follow it. In response to Jurgis, the answer is, I don't know. But I also don't know why gold? vs why silver, vs why palladium, vs why granite? vs why limestone. I don't really need to know or understand to know that they have a value in the market. The internet and tech in general have shown to be a way of the future. Internet real estate, which takes the form of domain names, has shown to be just as valuable as tangible dirt and soil real estate. Why? again I am not an expert and do not know. The only question one should be concerned with, has to do with whether it is sustainable. I have started to believe it might be. Palladium and silver are valuable as well, because they are used as a store of value (silver) and have industrial uses (Palladium is a catalysator metal). Platinum also has industrial uses and is also more expensive than Gold. All of the above are rare in the earth crust and expensive to mine. Gold is pretty to look at (shiny yellow color) is non corrosive and easily malleable,which made it the metal of choice for precious things since many thousand years ago. One can argue about the value to store wealth in it, but the above will always make it worth something. In a time of crisis, it has proven to be an enduring way for means of exchange (also in WW2 for example, cigarettes in Germany worked better). I don’t think that crypto currencies, which can easily be replaced with another crypto currency's, have the same durable aspects to it than the above. It is not even clear to me that in the time of a real crisis, you will have access to internet or a computer. What would a crypto currency be worth in such a case? I think this aspect to important for those that want to have a vehicle to store wealth. Right now, it seems to me that Crypocurrencies is just a bet that more suckers will be drawn into it in the near term future, just like buying internet stocks in Y1999 or even gold in Y1980.

I agree. I think higher inflation will be a disaster for hard asset managers like BAM. Cap rate will go up, which means that the assets that they are managing for their clients will go down in value. Capital will exit and incentive fees will go down. Eventually this will stabilize again and maybe lead to a boom in hard assets, but not before a major adjustment. I also expect a lot of bankrupticies in the financial sector due to loans going bad and asset/liability mismatches.

Just shut up and don't take my money? ::) My check is in the mail 8)

Just out of curiosity, what about DaVita makes you think its costs would double? Healthcare expenses across the world vs. the USA shows conclusively that one thing the government does much more inexpensively than private business is medicine, so I'm curious why you think DaVita's doesn't fit that model. The dialysis business is unlike the drug business and has much lower margins, high capex relative to the revenue. The employees are not particularly well paid (maybe $30-35 for nurse, and $10-20 for techs). Its based on achieving high throughput and productivity. The government would not be able to hire the necessary employees at such relatively low wages and overhead cost and productivity would be way lower. Also, the government sponsored single payer healthcare does not mean that the providers are government agencies. In Europe, most providers are not government agencies, but the rules and the framework are determined by the government . That’s a big difference. I would bet that the cost for dialysis Europe is not much different than the cost in the US (for Medicare).

That's good input. The rate has to be attractive enough for the DVA and others to keep expanding. You sure don't want the gov running this type of business. Just look at the VA Hospitals. I am fairly certain that the costs would increase and potentially double, if the government would run this business.

I am not sure who the scoring number accounts for qualitative factors like the training and the weaponery of their troupe. The Roman Army for example was much better trained than their adversaries and were expected to beat a force equal their size almost under any circumstances. I suspect that this has much more to do with Caesar’s victories than his leadership accumen in battle. I don’t see hw this qualitative measure was build in his scoring model.

A guy in a basement will create a new one a couple days later. If you think about it, mining for gold isn’t very productive either, that’s one reason why the gold standard isn’t really feasible. It makes no sense to couple wealth with the amount of gold that can be mined, or just as much sense than mining for a artificial limited number of crypto keys. It’s quite easy to create a new crypto currency, much easier than finding and building a new gold mine though.

More likely, they decided to do the intelligence via watching our TV rather than flying around in saucers. They probably decided they they get all the information they need just by watching the Saturday night show.

I would say for 1.8x book, dump MKL, especially if held in a tax free account. 1.8x book is too rich, IMO. Buy some RE, AXS, Y trading at around book from the proceeds. MKL is better than those, but it isn’t 80% better. Somewhere down the road, MKL can be had again for 1.2x book.

I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that it was never possible before. In all the history of mankind up until Satashi published his white paper, any currency created by man would have been easily inflated and would require you to trust the issuer. So no, there is no precedent. You can inflate the crypto currency by creating a new one. You can also inflate the crypto currency by dividing it into smaller and smaller fractions. Since it is a virtual transaction token with no objective value, who cares?

Even the high estimate is under 25%. http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/ "3.79 million bitcoins are already gone for good based on a high estimate—and 2.78 million based on a low one. Those numbers imply 17% to 23% of existing bitcoins" AND: "both estimates make a critical assumption that coins belonging to bitcoin’s inventor, Satoshi, are gone for good" Take Satoshi's coins out of the estimates and you get 2.75M to 1.73M lost coins or 10% to 16% And these estimates are considering a large amount of coins which haven't moved in a while to be lost (30-50%), no one really knows which are lost and which are simply being held. Stupid question - how can bitcoins get lost, just by losing the digital keys?

RE has compounded BV at 12% since 1995. You don't think there's better stuff out there? Do you think they will compound higher in the future? Paying around book value seems good but can probably do better, no? As Jurgis stated, I don’t think they will do 12% going forward, but neither do BRK and FFH, which trades at richer multiple of P/B. If you know a compounder that is cheap, relatively low risk and can do 12% going forward, you should tell us about it.

recent buys are MLPs - BPL and SEP, which seem to have come under selling presssure (tax loss selling?) I also bought some RE - a solid up insurance company that got hit by the hurricane season (like just about anyone else in the industry) , but has a very solid history of book value growth and reserving history. I think the latter is a better buy than BRK right now.

Keep the line moving. LOL. Sounds like the Chrysler quality system from the 70’s.

Your post is hugely ironic. Seems like your wife sees the value of Nintendo IP, but it goes over your own head. Pokemon Go's execution was terrible? News to me. Even mild success in the app space will give high returns on capital, Nintendo should continue to tinker, they don't need to do anything revolutionary. Who cares if they fail a few times? They can just come out with more stuff on iOS/Android and continue tinkering. Failure in the console space is what would kill them, but the app space is all gravy. And so far in the console space, they are crushing it (thus raising the intangible value and future cash flows of their IP). The YouTube protectionism is interesting but not too surprising coming from a Co. with valuable IP, just like Disney would do. They don't really need your supposed "free advertising" anyway, Switch sales still crushing it. I think Pokémon go has been a bust. This could have been a long term franchise and became a fad, mostly due to the game being badly designed for long term players. When did you see a kid playing this on their phone the last time?

GE paid $13B for Alsthom. While it may have been a mistake, with GE’s market ca is $200+ then, it wasn’t really a major one. I do think that GE got a decent business as well, even though the power business subsequently got into a downturn. The healthcare business is generating $3.2B in pretax profits this year, so I think it is worth at least $40B and that is much more than what they paid for Alsthom for.

I agree with all the above. I think getting a better capital allocator will go a long way. They still have business that they are number #1 and #2 in Aviation (#1), Power (#1), healthcare (probably #2,ish), locomotives (#1)., Energy is #3, but has a strong balance sheet and probably could match Halliburton as a #2 as well, but it is probably a business that GE should get out of, lighting is a lost cause and needs to be sold. Power and Aviation have a lot of basic technology in common, since power plant turbines and aircraft engines are similar in technology. Healthcare is fine as is, but they is probably a business they GE should have strengthened rather than Energy. I don’t think that losing its soul is the issue, GE probably lost its solid under Welch when he created a conglomerate.

I think it is pretty clear by now that Tesla is clueless about manufacturing. just as an example, the precessorm of the Tesla Factory build up to 420k cars a year with 4700 workers in 2006, so this was about 90 cars/ employee. This wasn’t a plant as highly automated as the pics showed in Tesla articles (I visited the plant myself in 2007 or so ) Now Tesla builds roughly 100k cars with now 6000 workers in the Tesla factory with the same footprint, plus they have all these other facilities in Lathrop, Gigafactory etc., supposedly everything is highly automated now etc. Now TSLA cars are more expensive and probably more complex to assemble, than the cars that were build in the Nummi factory, but still,now 10 years later, all these robots and 25% of the productivity from way back then. Maybe they should hire some engineer and managers from Toyota and and get this place fixed.

1.4 G in acceleration for the roadster - you get pushed my pushed harder in the seat than you get pushed down by gravity. You will pretty much leave anything but a formula one car in the dust. I wonder how long the tires last on this thing.

I think this really nails it. I recall earlier in this thread somebody mentioned that it is best to hold BAM over the subs. It just seems you have the most options/flexibility with the parent. Owning BAM. Is like skimming froth from the top. If there is enough froth and there is going to be more froth in the future, it is quite obvious what is the best vehicle to own.