Spekulatius

BAC stock has underperformed and the timing to switch into the bullish camp seems rather good - what is there to laugh about?

Let me guess, ole Warren will pick the blonde.

Typically, when the price is right for me to buy, these wonderful companies don't seem to be that wonderful any more.

Maybe the man and women with a 130+ IQ do something more useful than investing (building his own business, research, cure cancer) and invest in index funds ;)

The pipeline business, as far as the larger backbone and especially FERC regulated pipelines are concerned are similar to real estate assets. They throw of predictable amounts of cash (that are indexed to inflation with a little bonus on top if FERC regulated) for a long period of time, measured in decades. Now other assets like processing plants and interconnects are less predictable and also require more Capex to keep them current. Overall, since the business is somewhat similar, I think the leverage should be a bit less than what a real estate asset should be valued at. I think you get a very good deal, if you can buy it for 10x EBITDA. In fact, for FERC regulated pipeline, I think it would be a fantastic deal in the current low interest environment.

Picasso, CBL's valuation seems to be more or less on par with WPG's. Maybe WPG's assets are of better quality, but it does not show much in terms of sales/sqft. CBL and WPG pretty much trade in lockstep, so it does not seem to me like WPG is singled out, it is the category of owning lower quality malls that is currently not being liked by Mr Market ( and has not been liked for years). I agree on improving the asset quality and driving customers to their malls being the first priority. I am not all that impressed by the return that WPG is getting (and those are assumptions to begin with), but maybe it is still the right thing to do because doing nothing would cause those malls to slide into the dreaded C category otherwise. However, this also means that some of the capital spent is maintenance spending. I do think that if a REIT trades far below NAV, they should prune their portfolio and use the proceeds to reduce leverage and buy back stock. Doing it this way does not really impact the ability to use FCF to improve the quality of their portfolio. CBL seems to go down that route but WPG so far not. Also, the sales/sqft number of a mall should increase with the rate of inflation over time, which means that the threshold between C and B mall should go higher as well. Years ago, this was around $300/sqft but my guess is that this should be higher now.

Brad Thomas likes them all. He has been spectacularly wrong with some of his pics. While I agree that WPG is cheap, it is most likely cheap for a reason. The assets and management are mediocre. And those that shorted RSE and went long WPG didn't do too well either. It should also be noted that b-class mall REITs overall don't do to well, it's not just WPG. CBL is in the same boat and trades at an even lower valuation. What I see however, is that CBL seems to recognize this and starts to sell assets and buy back stock, WPG so far does neither.

Amex seems desperate to me. Raising fees, while they are already at the very high end in terms of fees, high hurdles of return that makes them to shed business (as another poster noted) and drastic expense cuts. I think Amex needs to have a drastic reset of earnings expectations. All the above is just milking to get strong return numbers and they reached the end of the rope, imo.

And what? Go back to 9 million a year? GM was profitable all the way from 13 million to 18 million. It's funny that the carmakers mentioned tHer break even car volumes, but doesn't that imply that the pricing does no change either. I have seen low break even numbers for GM and the like for the 90's, the 2002 recession endless times before, but hey never see, to have been correct. I also assume that pricing goes to hell togehter with the volumes as well, which makes the downturn considerably worse.

The presentation on 1/8 was very unimpressive and they seem to have guided down their FFO. Also the returns on their mall upgrades seem low - around 8-9% (unlevered, I assume). CBL stock is doing even worse, so I assume it is a sector problem. I think CBL and WPG are very much alike, maybe WPG's assets are a bit better in quality,due to ~21% of NOI coming from Community centers. CBL seems to have a plan of assets monetization and using the proceeds to reduce debt and buy back stocks. This makes a lot of sense, when your stock is far below NAV. I have this on my watch list,but I think that lower quality mall assets are going to be a terrible place to be going forward. I'd rather own something like UE (which has high quality assets) at a fair price (<$18) than a pot. "Cigar But" like WPG or CBL.

I assume the ~$460M in energy investments (Juneau, Vitesse ) are probably zeros. National beef seems permanently impaired and Jefferies profitability has been subpar for years. I know we had this discussion before, but why is owning this stock better than GS? GS tangible book is about $162/share, so you can buy this stock for tangible book. Wee know that GS marks tend to be conservative and they own a huge wealth management business that is certainly worth more than tangible book. Buying GS right now is buying a dollar for 80c or better - and they do have a reasonable overall return on equity (~10%) which LUK does not, due to so much dead weight. I would so argue that being a TBTF bank has it perks, as your customers won't be running from you if there is a hiccup in the financial markets. I am not so sure about how Jefferies will be viewed in such a case.

+ 1 I hate being bombarded with ads in high frequency, it's so disruptive to the viewing experience. That's why I watch my shows with the DVR exclusively. It's also the reason why I like Netflix that much

I own some WMB and also a lot of ETP. I think the cash component has to be changed too all stock, the credit markets are not accomodating for MLPs right now. If the cash component gets eliminated, I am pretty sure that the exchange ratio needs to be improved for WMB shareholders. If the credit markets and equity markets remain effectively closed, I would take all the growth projections with a large grain of salt.

A lot of groceries are expensive on Amazon. They don't have a good supply chain for these and a lot of third party merchants jack up the prices. I had to buy Quaker Oats granola online - nothing special though our supermarket does not carry it anymore. Walmart and Jet had OK - supermarket level - prices, Amazon had crappy prices 2x-4x the grocery stores. Amazon has regular prices for some groceries that they carry. But even those are usually just par for the course. A lot of items are expensive at AMZN, not just groceries.I was spruced by the prices that I saw for some items -same with EBay where some items sell used higher the same item new elsewhere. I think some websites have dedicated shoppers that only buy at one website exclusively, regardless of prices.

Really? - Please elaborate a bit, Jurgis. I don't believe I add value through my investing decisions. And it probably would be more useful to society if I spent more time on projects in my primary occupation rather than trying to get extra return by actively investing. This is probably correct for 95% of the population and probably 80% of the posters in investment forums as well. I know I underperformed this year and only matched the index last year. I don't think I had much alpha during the last 5 years, so at that jars stick, I think one is better off taking a step back and check if things that one had been doing still make sense. I do think that index investing can be bad advice too, if the whole world goes nuts, like what happened in 1999/2000. During 2000 and he following years, I was able to outperform. That has proven to be more of a challenge lately. I don't think that going passive investing is a balaclava and white thing, you can attach yourself to some great minds and just own what they are owning. BRK comes to my mind. Best idea that Inhave regarding active investing is to look more how to avoid mistakes, that finding home runs. The oil disaster was knew that probably was avoidable, although I got sucked into that one as well to some extend. I was trying to go this way this year already, but got sucked in into oil morass and some other interesting "opportunities". 8) Most likely I'll just dump most money into BRK/Fairfax/Malone and couple more "forever" holds. I've been going in this direction already. (And before we have religious argument that this is also "active" investing - yes, I know, next question 8) ). The counterargument to this is that putting money in BRK/Fairfax this year would have been even worse than my oil-dragged portfolio. :o But this is for 2015 results thread. 8) Peace.

I bought OKE bonds ( the 2022,2023 maturities), WMB and added a bit to SE and WCC the last 2 days. The MLP midstream sector looks way oversold and is due for a bounce, imo.

I think it is an untimely investment, as I see headwinds in the aircraft business for a couple of years. This is similar to buying ISCAR shortly before the Great Recession. I do think that the multiple will turn out to be a bit rich, given he near term performance. However, I think in the longer run, this is a good business, with the opportunity to bolt on more via acquisitions.

The fund got pretty big due to a good performance in 2013, so I think a lot of new investors were performance chasers that did not really know what they owned. Then came the crash in crude late 2014 that tanked many of their energy related investments. They dealt one trashiest segment of the bond market and the recent rush on junk bond debt did them in. http://seekingalpha.com/article/2904666-third-avenue-focused-credit-tackles-distressed-debt 3rd Avenue tells a good value investor story, but they seem to suck in terms of performance. Read their shareholder letters and buy what they buy 30% lower, or maybe better don't buy it at all.

We will see how the share price goes. What I can say is that one can now build your own BRK buying business like UNP , relatively cheap industrials like PH, ITT, ETN, selected utilities and possibly some other stocks and have a similLar value than just buying BRK - the recent pullback in stock prices made that possible, despite the overall indices looking fairly healthy still. What I do like about buying BRK rather than individual stocks is the discipline in capital allocation that I see with BRK, which I think alone is going to give an extra 1-2% of annual performance. We also get the deals that only Buffet seems to be able to get like the GS/BAC preferred and more recently the Heinz deals. So these special deals probably will give us another 1% of outperformance. Take this together and you hAve. Pretty sound chance of beating the index buy a couple percent each year over the long run. That is a very sound value proposition. If you can buy it really cheap at 1.2x book (or whatever price Buffet would buy back) than you can tack on another one time 10% revaluation going on this, that you likely will get. That's even better. I think Todd and Weschler are very important now and will deeply influence investment decisions. Maybe they will be more important than Buffet soon. I think this will take BRK also in a different direction, but hopefully the culture will stay intact.

Seems like BEN is an cigar butt that still generates a lot of cash for the time being. I do think it is correct that the asset management business is under siege from low cost providers offering index funds and ETF. Better performance (on average) and lower cost = no brainer from a customers perspective.

There is one store in the Roosevelt Mall in Long Island, pretty close to Teavana Store. The David's Tea store was not particularly busy, at least not as much as the Teavana. I went in, but did not know what to make of this - it certainly does not cater to tea connoisseurs imo, but also not to the average consumer. I like the Ten Rens stores in the Bay Area better. The David's Tea stores remind with of old fashioned drug stores, but with more color. I think they need to guid new consumers better (offer samples etc.) because I don't think that many consumers will know what to make of this offering. The tea connoisseurs (which I am not ) will go elsewhere anyways, Imo.

I think yo name red the question yourself. Sell the stock, if not for any other reason than harvesting a tax loss. This is not a business where you can overlook management's lack of integrity.

Bulls should note that BRK's main business aren't doing so hot lately: BNSF - declining revenues and earnings if UP is an guide Insurance earnings have been weak lately Industrial demand has been weak and the strong US$ does not help (Mormon, PCP, Tungsten tool business) Utility earnings impacted by low NG prices I think here is a reasonable chance to get BRK at $120/share.

Pipelines are not overbuild. It is correct that in order to build a FERC pipeline, there needs to be a demonstrated need,but it is true that some gathering systems in high cost areas may run below capacity, if drilling in these areas dries up.

Forced selling is what we like to see. FWIW, this is a slow growing C-Corp, best to be compared with an utility company. But it's better than an utility, because the return from FERC pipelines are typically aroun 12% (with inflation adjustments as I understand it), while utilities are typically close to 10% and often have trouble to get their rate cases through (for investment, which are regulated by the local states, not a central authority like the FERC). Also, the Ponzi scheme optionallty to grow faster via equity issuance is still out there and will come back, it's just temporarily not available because equity cost is very high right now.