gg

Does anyone know of a crpyto brokerage where you can open accounts for minors? Not looking for the minors to have access and trade - looking for a custodial, where I can gift cash to a child and purchase crypto on their behalf with it

I actually think that your logic is one of the reasons that US investors, to their detriment, will be later to the game than many others around the world. If you live in Argentina, Venezuela, South Africa, Iran, etc... then monetary debasement is not a philosophical issue, and you are probably certainly willing to take small positions in any assets that potentially have the ability to hedge that risk. On this point, there is nothing that says you need to buy 1 bitcoin at a minimum. You can buy very tiny fractions worth of one bitcoin. And I think while that's already been happening, the introduction of bitcoin purchases on highly mainstream financial companies like Paypal and Square will only make this more common place. So I would agree that if a young person only had 15,400 of dsicretionary spending this year, they'd be better off learning to code than they would be buying a bitcoin. But they might be best off spending 15,000 learning to code and buying 400 in bitcoin.

Always wondered how his investors have fared. His positions seem to have drastic winners and losers, so difficult to know how it all nets out. Could you share his actual investor returns if you have them?

This is a pretty odd comment on many levels -- but let's just say that I'm of the view that if you choose to rely on a negative personal attack in a debate on the merits of a financial investment, then it says more about the lack of noteworthy reasons to purchase the stock than it does about anything else. Regardless, I'm happy to engage on Root. Car insurance companies like Root are pretty simple. They're a combination of 3 lines of business that put capital at risk: indemnity, marketing, and investing. Indemnity is the underwriting risks that they choose to take. Are they selling insurance policies at a price-point where they will not pay out more in claims than what they've billed and collected their customers for? Marketing is like any other business, "can they acquire and retain their customers at a cost basis that is competitive and that leaves them with a meaningful margin after the direct expenses of the unit economics?" Investing - will the aggregated funds from prepaid policies -- or float -- enable the insurance company's equity owners to accrue a meaningful financial benefit via this interest-free loan? The primary bull case that gets used to advocate for Root is that their technology allows them to compete on indemnity. In Root's case that would be the suggestion that: (1) they can price driver risk more accurately (meaning they'll ensure that they're customers pay enough to more than cover the cost to insure them), and (2) that they can use technology and automation to process claims efficiently to drive down operational expenses and be able to offer their product more cheaply in scale than competitors. I don't think any reasonable person would suggest that Root has a moat - nor a potential moat - when it comes to the investing portion of running an insurance company. And when it comes to the marketing, I am not under the impression that they are doing anything particularly unique there -- the competition for share of voice amongst car insurance companies is about as high as brand competition gets (see any football game's commercials, or google car insurance to understand how deeply competitive that world is. Not just among the brands themselves, but also throw in lead aggregators!). So the question boils down to: do they have a better solution than other insurance companies in terms of cracking the "indemnity code"? And if they do have the better pricing model than all of their competitors, does that improvement enable them to carve a meaningful and profitable position in the industry? (maybe the savings via improved indemnity are so large that they can put up a formidable fight against their competition by being able to spend more than competition on marketing?) So without getting into that discussion too much, I would wonder if the state departments of insurance that regulate insurance pricing allow them to use this alleged phenomenal pricing model (worthwhile review on some of this - https://www.casact.org/pubs/white-papers/Insurance_rating_variables_white_paper.pdf)? Is the pricing model proprietary? Typically, the variables must be filed publicly with insurance departments, for all competitors to see. Is the total difference between a good pricing model and a great pricing model enough of the cost-structure that it makes all the difference? If all of the benefit is related to telematics, do they lose money on the first contract (priced before telematics has data on the driver), and then make up for it all on the renewal? Ultimately, my fundamental view on insurance is that pricing models are not truly part of a car insurance company's proprietary and competitive moat. Ajit Jain can have an edge in being willing to take indemnity risk with things that other won't, and that, among other things, allows him to charge a real premium versus the risks he's taking. But with car insurance, it's much more of a commodity - the agreements are short term so the financial viability of your counter-party isn't too important / switching costs are low and you can change your policy to a different insurer in 15 minutes or less! / most shoppers simply try to minimize price versus any qualitative distinction. What I think has happened here is that many venture capitalists and retail investors that have seen tech used to disrupt other industries think that that's what is going on to the car insurance industry from Root. I think Root has seized on that opportunity to sell a story of having found a better mousetrap. So VCs (pre-IPO) and public investors (post-IPO) are subsidizing the sale of a commodity product, and all this is what's playing out with the insurance losses and the larger and larger losses as they've grown. Meanwhile, the investors are excited about growth! But again, they're selling a commodity -- if you're willing to sell a commodity for a loss, your sales will obviously grow.

How they can scale?? The old "lose money on every sale" and then make it up on volume. Their metrics are horrific, but the tech koolaid spigots contonue to flow and investors will eventually be surprised to find out that writing insurance at a negative gross margin is not difficult to do!

Resigned after decades at the company, without any notice or transition....definitely seems less than ideal

I don't own the stock because it's not my sort of thing. But there is no doubt -- literally zero -- that their revenues will increase by way, way more than 100% yoy. No doubt It's not even an expensive product, like $15-20 per account. I personally know of dozens of companies that have signed on in the past few weeks. The real question is what % of those customers will be around in 12 months

Anyone know the background behind this?

Have you found any specific munis that are particularly attractive from your perspective? If you can't short them, there are some insurance companies that insure these sort of debt securities against default. Could be a play with that of enough bad minis are concentrated in an entity like that.

On Friday, October 5, 2018, the Board of Directors of the Company, acting unanimously, appointed Director, Steven L. Kiel as Chairman of the Board of the Board of Directors of the Company. As Chairman of the Board, Mr. Kiel replaces Jeffrey I. Moore, whose service on the Board of Directors continues in the capacity as a regular Director. This is from early October. Says Jeff moved from Chairman to Director. Nothing in the November release says whether he's a director still or not.

I wasn't clear on the 8-k .... is Jeff no longer on the board of ENDI? My reading was that he was no longer an officer of Mt Melrose, but wasn't clear on his position with ENDI.

What industry is the company in and what are they selling?

Thank you! The issue was that arrow in the top right corner!

Apologies if this has been discussed elsewhere already, but is anyone else's search function on COBF no longer showing up? At some point, the search box just seems to have disappeared from the page.

@rist.tom -- I don't have a Seeking Alpha account, so can't see the whole article -- what's the valuation that you're putting on the West Loop building? @DTEJD -- The area that the property is in (Chicago's West Loop) has seen property values go up enormously over the past few years. Sort of similar to NYC's meatpacking district, where a bunch of food industry warehouse buildings have now been rehabbed and getting tenants like Google and McDonalds (HQ, not restaurant). Tons of expensive condos in the area now too. So even if the building was known to be part of the balance sheet since the 90s, it would not have had the insane appreciation during that time frame... Here's the sale of the Google building in 2016, and things have only continued for the better in that neighborhood http://www.chicagobusiness.com/realestate/20160628/CRED03/160629825/googles-fulton-market-offices-selling-for-305-million