Spekulatius

Not sure what you call active, professional traders. Day traders? People with 200-400% annual turnover? In any case, as much as I can call myself "active" trader, I do care much more about customer service than I do about pricing. The only reason I would consider IB at all is their access to markets Fido does not provide. And yeah IB is probably the only viable smallish SMA platform. But the fact that most SMA advisors use it, doesn't mean I should fall in love with it. IB is crap. But you are right: I was on Fido before and I will only be happier on Fido now. If I decide to have someone manage my money, I'll weigh whether I want to endure the account on IB. I have accounts with Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, and Wells Fargo Investments. I think from a Customer service perspective, I like dealing with Fidelity the most. I don't like the fact that they don't allow to buy some dark company stock any more. This is an area that I have been investing quite a bit over the years and I really hate this restriction and let them now. Wells Fargo investments does have similar restrictions. Wells Fargo investment is the cheapest, I get 100 free trades/year as a PMA (or whatever it is called now) customer, but the platform is bare bones. If they ever do away with the free, I will be gone in a NY minute. Interactive Brokers gives you access to the largest Universe of stocks, including foreign stocks. I rarely use the Pc platform any more but trade from the iPad or Android app. The PC app has become very unwieldy, imo. Their tax reporting is crap, they don't have import into Turbotax and I have found the import via different format lacking. it should really be a high priority to fix this, sind es they are behind pretty much every other broker in that regard. With Fidelity or Schwabs price cuts, IB is not really much cheaper any more for plain vanilla trading, if you trade a few hundred shares. IB is much cheaper when dealing with foreign stocks, currencies, bonds and margin. So far, not one broker meets all my requirements and that is why I have a few accounts at different brokers. I could probably whittle then down to Fidelity and IB, but my laziness prevents me from doing so.

I agree with 100%. that is what I have been doing all along :-).

If you do not understand the distinction between those terms this is likely not the discussion for you. Good luck understanding financials in general without that distinction. +1. That distinction alone likely created many millionaires back in the day with GGP. Sometimes illiquid is the same than insolvent, as far as the outcome is concerned, sometimes it is not. In most cases, if you become illiquid, the debtors decide and if they want to own the assets, They can. this is particularly true for a financial institution where the regulators are protecting the depositors and to some extend the debt, rather than worrying about the equity sliver.

I think this is a possibility and I would argue that this is in the best interest of the government to do so. The question is not, what is right or wrong, the question is what can you get away with. I would even argue that starting with a clean slate is going to make it simpler to issue new equity after changing the statues of FNM and FRE. Doing so would certainly maximize the governments profit. The capital markets don't care, as long as FRE and FNM debt is safe. Wall Street will happily sell the new and improved FRE and FNM to institutional investors and the general public. it has been 9 years since FRE and FNM was put under the government wings, which might as well be forever. Companies reorganize and wipe out equity all the time. in fact Trump can be considered an expert in these things, so what is the big deal? I don't think I have a clue what is and when something is going happen, but I do agree that after the government change, a change in FRE and FNM status is much more likely - I am just not sure which of the many possibilities is going to actually occur going forward and if there is a profit or a wipeout or something in between.

how is trump going to find new shareholders to put up serious capital if the old shareholders are screwed? Same as with any other recapitalization or bankruptcy.

I am just wondering, why do folks here think that recapitalizing FNM or FRE means that existing shareholders or preferred shareholders will get anything? I am also not sure that Mnuchin get's to decide what is going to happen with FNM/FRE. He may just get the guidelines from Trump and if that is the case, and Trump want the best deal to pay for projects, well that could mean that the current shareholders get screwed over.

Regardless, they are now in the hands of arb funds. I will not be surprised some hedge fund like paulson built up a position and force them to sell. No position though. I think there are a lot more roadblocks in Europe to do the takeover that Kraft Heinz want's to do than in the US. I don't think that a merger is likely. Quite the frankly, I think UL is better off on their own.

I moved my IRA from Scottrade to IB so I could get better access to international markets. Seems like a Fidelity thing. Yep. Interactive Brokers has no such issues.

Yes it would - a lot of platforms are shares and I think GM us uses some engines from Opel and such. separating Opel would not be easy and there are no natural buyers either - maybe Fiat? I think they would have to hand over Opel for free with some dowry added in to get rid of it.

Ben is correct, my statement was not specific to CTL/LVLT. In general, I believe that if management overemphasizes a point, especially something sensitive to many investors like the holy sacred dividend, often the opposite of what they state is about to happen.

So what prevents the government from just selling the warrants and getting cash for their stake rather than forfeiting them without compensation? That wouldn't prevent a recap of Fannie/Freddie, but just dilute the shareholders of common and preferred.

Everytime, I hear this message, I tend to run for the exit.

Moderation and truce has to start to start with each of us, before we are asking it from somebody else. The board members here by large should be reasonable, non-violent people, so it should not be hard to have a civil discourse. If not, these threads should be locked.

Watching politics now is like watching a Coen brothers movie: Everbody has a dumb plan, nothing works and at the end there are a lot of dead bodies.

SHLD going into Chapter 7 does not necessarily mean that all stores will close.

This is interesting, why do you think this will be a great investment? Germany historically has had low ownership rates and stable prices. So number one there is a large rental market. 2. RE is quite cheap in German cities. 3. Due to the interest rate situation ownership rates and prices have started to tick up in recent years. I think situation will continue. 4. Cap rates are pretty good by themselves so you don't need a lot of price appreciation. 5. There are some reits that are trading around book. Also they don't take a chunk of money out for their private "administration company" which is nice. WExboy wrote a couple of blog posts on German real estate ideas https://wexboy.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/german-residential-property-an-update/ I bought Sedlmayr back a few years ago and had my Mom do the same. I recently sold as it doubled. I think the time to get inot German RE plays was couple of years ago, now commercial RE looks fairly priced and residential RE becomes overvalued. I actually think there are better opportunities in the US now. ( German transplant here, don't claim to be expert in either German nor US real estate.)

I am a very recent shareholder (5% position) and I just sold my shares today. Rarely ever had an investment left me as befuddled as Fairfax in such a short time after I bought.

Let us know what your are drinking or inhaling, I want to get some of the same stuff too.

I understand your rationale and I agree that this deal makes Fairfax a more difficult stock to hold. I just recently entered a position on the price weakness and intend to hold a bit. I also think the recent price weakness in Fairfax shares was due to Mr Market "knowing" something about this deal coming. This is a pretty large acquisition, meaning that a lot of investment bankers must have known about this, plus there was a debt offering that made no sense unless there was an acquisition being planned.

I don't think that owning real estate or a house outright is a rational capital allocation decision right now, with interest rates as low as they are right now, interest being tax deductible and the mortgage being non-recourse. The way I look at it, owning a house with a mortgage is safer than owning a house outright, because you can put the house back to the lender, if the price goes down a lot and you are protected against rising interest rates, which would probably depress real estate prices, but would depress the intrinsic value of the fixed rate mortgage loan even more. So while you could go underwater with a large mortgage on your house, your loan payment would stay the same, and if the rising interest rates are accompanied by higher inflation, your cash flow situs on would actually improve.

With respect to the home, it seems that the better approach would be to load up the house up to the roof with debt, and if an adverse event occurs that lowers the value of your home, you just put it back to the lender. You keep a cash pile on the side and invest a good part of it conservatively. The investment return should beat the interest cost of the mortgage. At least in the US, where mortgage interest cost is deductible and mortgages are non-recourse, that seems to be a better approach.

Seems odd. I know that there are a few OTC stocks that IB does not let you trade in (typically ones that don't trade in month) You can also trade in securities without even having market data (in contradiction to above statement) - you will get a warning message that you need to confirm, but they will let you make a trade. For OTC stocks, E*TRADE is quite good.

During the heydays of the financial crisis in Oct 2008, several ETF's were trading at significant discounts to their NAV. For example, the fairly liquid AGG bond fund traded at a discount >5% for a couple of days. Those were efficient markets working at their finest.

Merkel is not going to survive another selection as a chancellor - the refuge disaster in Germany alone is enough reason for that.