Jurgis

Someone wrote a crappy program that does not support more than four figures in the price...

You should visit California sometime... 8)

I sold GILD last time when they were "dumb and did a deal". That cost me a 5 bagger. I guess it was also beyond my depth. 8)

I'll mostly +1 globalfinancepartners. Go classic 60/40 or even 50/50, total US market + some intl on stock side, some good bond fund on fixed income and forget all the fancy options/vol/convexity/blahblah. And yeah, even at these yields, good bond fund will outperform cash.

Thanks. On very high level this seems like mini-SoftBank with Tencent instead of BABA and fewer wholly/majority owned big businesses like Sprint/ARM. Similar to recent Softbank emerging market ecommerce investments, the risk is that they pay hiked up valuations and won't have good returns in the future. Like you say, past results might be due to favorable environment and we don't really know what the future will bring. And similar to Softbank, if one does not hedge out Tencent (BABA), one is buying highly valued Tencent (BABA). I think I got the general picture.

How good is Naspers itself? Is it one trick pony with Tencent investment ages ago? Assuming I did not want to do a pair trade and would be fine owning Tencent at negative spread, is the remainder of Naspers attractive? (I guess I could ask the same question even if I did pair trade).

Yeah, oddball complains about coastal elites and then tells us that there's Tesla dealer < 1 mile from him. I live in one of these coastal cities and my closest Tesla dealer is 20 miles away. Repair center too. :'( You guys have it good in the Tesla Heartland. 8) :P

Positive article on the Boring Company and NY-DC tunnel tweet that was made fun of on the Internetz: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-24/elon-musk-s-tunnel-plan-isn-t-as-crazy-as-spacex-or-tesla

Why are you buying shares in a company in terrible industry heading towards cyclical bottom? Just kidding and teasing oddball. 8)

Yeah, I agree that long road trips and especially towing is not for ecars yet. Some people do long trips, but I'd hate to sit hour or even 40 minutes on a long trip to charge the car. If I get Model 3, I'm still gonna do long trips either with second gas car (if I have it) or a gas rental. For someone like you who does long trips often, it's probably not a match. 8)

Not the most crappy. You forgot boats. 8)

Yeah, that's the picture I got too. Understood. I think these make most sense if you can sell back to grid at markup, which is only available in some states (and probably not for long).

Since Musk has more kids than oddball, he thought about oddball's issues. 8)

Oddball, do you guys have SolarCity or some other "install their panels for cheaper electricity but don't pay upfront" option in your area? Would that work for you? I haven't looked at residential solar much, since I don't like panels on the roof. I think Tesla tiles on the roof are gonna be gamechanger if/when I get to roof replacement. Unfortunately, I changed the roof about 9 years ago, so it's gonna be long time.

oddball, meet Model X ... 8) On the original topic, as I have said to friend, I'd rather buy gas car with autopilot than ecar without one. So ./shrug I'll +1 everyone who said "buy used and don't worry".

We buy some kind of no-name detergent that costs 50% of what Tide costs and washes as well as Tide from what I see. But clearly a lot of people believe in what rb wrote and (continue to) buy Tide. 8)

Right. Similar issue with working with friends and family on startup. For some people it works great. For others... not so much. You have to be pretty clear of how that's likely to work with your friend/family. Someone in friend's (wink wink) family is putting a lot of work on a startup run by another member of the family. For free. As in "they won't get anything for their work". And it's fine (so far). OTOH I'm probably a capitalist asshole and wouldn't be able to give tons of my work free to someone who will reap the benefit. Even if they were in family. So... 8)

The positive side of crowdfunding is that you insta get customers. The negative side is that your product can be insta China-stolen if there's interest/traction. And of course it doesn't resolve the question of splitting the company between people involved. 8)

I think valuing the company without sales, which becomes really valuing the sweat equity is hard. There might be startup people who can suggest you some insights how to do it. But it might become tension between you and the inventor. Because who's to decide whether you get 10% or 5% or 25%? I guess family and friends can look at it as a game and put in $X at valuation Y. But if you looked at it dispassionately and not as a family game/fun, would you really value the company at Y and would you put $X to get X/Y fraction of the company? Or would you work as an advisor/director for some fraction x/Y of the company?

My love has been fairly consistent, actually. Possibly too consistent. Yes, part of the cycle is that lovers (predominantly) post. Then haters predominantly post. Repeat. The other part of the cycle are company specific events (or non-events). 8)

I just love how this board goes through love hate cycles of companies. Love cycle on for Fairfax. For now. 8)

One thing I thought about while reading TRIP pitches is how Yelp did not do well. Somehow it seems the review sites are very good at attracting traffic, but quite bad at monetizing it. Perhaps people associate them with reviews, but not with services. So the OTAs are in better spot, since people go there for services and perhaps leave reviews too (like they do on Amazon, etc.). Anyway, this might be superficial insight for people who did deep DD on this. Disclosure: I have very tiny sliver of LTRPA, small position in LEXEA (both from spinoffs), and tiny position in PCLN.

I thought there was a newer thread about this... anyway, I thought this article fits the topic although it shows a different angle on how a player could win against casinos: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/the-man-who-broke-atlantic-city/308900/

If we are talking seriously, then all paths to become x-llionaire are listed and discussed in https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Roads-Riches-Wealthy-There/dp/0470481552 Not a great book, but it covers the ways to become billionaire as well as the classic CoBF way of saving-and-investing that won't get you past a (multi)millionaire. No, nobody here is Buffett. 8)

I'll just repost: