Jurgis

As much as I hate to advertise this piece of crap, buggy, we-add-useless-features-but-our-UI-continues-to-suck, ransomware: Quicken (For US only AFAIK. Canadian version is even more ransomware.)

Yeah, oddball. After I asked you the question, I thought about it for myself a bit and yeah, I see how sales/marketing knowledge would be useful evaluating companies. Maybe more for small cos, but yeah. You can try to figure out TAM, you can try to see if company is good at capturing it, what they are missing, are the things they missing important or not. I guess PCLN way ago (although maybe even now) could be positive example. For harder (?) examples, maybe NKE and UA and LULU. GMCR maybe. On negative side OUTR maybe. But yeah, I see it.

Originally: Lithuania Currently: Boston area

I have a friend that does that. I was amaze at the spread. Wouldn't that mean Amazon is being out priced? Yes....but no one seems to care. I pointed out in the AMZN thread a bit ago that I was surprised at how much cheaper some items from Walmart.com were. Was shocked because that didn't use to be the case, but Walmart was dramatically less expensive on a number of items. Have been considering getting rid of my prime account in response. Thinking about it Amazon can most likely get away with being more expensive because of the added features of prime. As well as if Amazon has the ability to sell items for more than competitors while at the same time growing revenue high percentage clip you think they would have the ability to post some profits. This is part of the reason I can't seem to understand Amazon, I can find businesses who are far more transparent in their financials as well. Nobody reads shit on CoBF. 8) To recap again: 1. Granola and coffee: was hugely expensive on Amazon. 3rd party prices. 2x Walmart. Was buying on Walmart. No longer true. Now Amazon prices are below Walmart and are true Amazon prices. Good bye 3rd parties. 2. Nikon B700. 3rd parties $100 cheaper than Amazon official. Walmart too. Walmart is using 3rd parties though. And all 3rd parties selling grey market/international version of the product that may or may not be same quality as US version. So bought from official Amazon. No official store has price lower than Amazon. YMMV and all that.

OT. I sold my read books and used computer games on Amazon in the past. Nowadays it's really peanuts mostly. Once it a while there might be price worth going to post office, but mostly not. For most books I can't even donate them, used bookstores don't want them... :(

Right now it almost certainly does. The bullish case is that the costs will come down over time (i.e. computing, electricity, storage) while the benefits will increase over time as more applications for this are found and become widely used. If either of those assumptions doesn't turn out to be true then there is nothing to see here but a big tulip bubble. I'm stepping way out of my knowledge zone here, but isn't the security of blockchain based on high cost? I.e. isn't it by design based on hard (and also useless - which makes this doubly waste) problems to solve? Maybe there are solutions for blockchain that don't require the above while it still remains blockchain. My suspicion is that solutions just make it not-blockchain-that-is-still-called-blockchain-for-sales/marketing-easy-money. But I might be totally wrong. 8)

I think we are risking to derail this thread but I'll post a bit more and if we get into long discussion perhaps we should split thread. OK, I agree with this claim (somewhat 8) ). E.g. I agree that Google was not a slam dunk because they had best search engine - although they did - but because someone was genius enough to create AdWords and integrate that into the whole system. But I have somewhat of an issue with your claim above. IMO sales and marketing - and their effectiveness - and you most likely mean more than just superficial sales/marketing but also brand promotion/support/etc. - seems to be very hard to evaluate from outside the company. E.g. let's go with Google - or Coke - or Amex - or whatever company/brand you prefer to choose. Assume I learn a lot about sales/marketing. How will that help me to decide if KO or AXP is a buy or not? Do you really see specific issues with these companies in terms of sales/marketing that yell "buy" or "avoid" or "sell"? I guess it's easy to bash Sears or JCP Ackman/Ron Johnson restructuring as not paying enough attention to sales/marketing. But these are obvious targets (perhaps). Can you really get deeper insight for not so obvious companies? Maybe you can give some examples... Take care

Thanks! I wonder how triple entry will affect companies like Robert Half which provides temp & ad hoc accounting & audit personnel? My skepticism for cryptocurrencies has blinded me to the opportunities in blockchain. I've frequently been blinded a by knee jerk, distaste for ideas based upon their most visible characteristics (unable to see the forest 4 one big ugly tree) (Blackberry & AIG come to mind...) And why do you think that your skepticism blinded you? I agree more with zkorman guy that the Bitcoin and blockchain is a solution in search of a problem. Or to rephrase it, the cost of a blockchain likely outweighs the benefits. There are a lot of smart people working on blockchain and there will be likely be useful products based on it. But 90%+ of bloggers are just fanboys looking at the world through blockchain-colored glasses and claiming it to be a solution for everything. It's like VR/AR people. If you listen to them, VR/AR is solution for everything. And it might be for some things, but not as much as they claim. And if I had to bet on long term impact, I'd bet on VR/AR much more than on blockchain. But then Bitcoin/Ethereum are all going 10x up, while VR/AR... oh well. (Likely my last post on this thread, since I expect a huge pushback from crypto fanboys and I'm not looking to slug it out) Peace ... can only be achieved via blockchain

Oddball, I agree with you. :) What you say still does not contradict the fact that there are people who don't want to do marketing/sales. And I've already said that they might suffer for it. But possibly they suffer while knowing why they suffer. ;)

This is such a great point and something SO MANY minor league hedge fund managers simply don't understand! Which is quite amusing, when you consider that they analyze opportunity cost for a living. It's not that people don't understand it. It's that people don't want to do it. It's likely a lost opportunity, but you can't force people to do it. To pick on oddball ;), he doesn't do it either... where is his $10B fund? 8) ;D

1) No. 8) But if I was in a different situation at a different point in my life, I would take this offer with pretty much the curriculum of me picking an investment and discussing it with them - how they would value it, what kind of info they'd gather, what questions would they ask management (if any), etc. - in essence learn process. Also letting them shred the investment - and vice versa - them picking an investment and me shredding it and getting a feedback. In longer term, assuming they agree to meet week-on-couple-weeks-off, discuss buy/sell decisions perhaps and ongoing portfolio management. As aside, I would probably want this in my professional area. I also feel it's as unrealistic there as it is in investment area. ::)

Cause they feel for American investors? 8) ::) ;D

Not unrealized gains though. And not realized gains in tax advantaged accounts. These would make overwhelming majority of my investment "income".

Completely gross pre-tax pre-everything?

That's super cheap. In terms of bogeymen, I think auto is the biggest risk for me. E.g. you accidentally plow 2 cars with 4 people each. That's immediate >$5M possibly. I'd probably go with $2M auto if Geico offered it. I agree with most of the rest you wrote. No pool at house, no parties with fireworks. There's a slight risk that some idiot ;) friend ;) might sue for something I said about stocks haha and they took as an "advice". But I'm not losing sleep about it. Just to be sure: nothing I say about stocks is an advice. ;) oddball probably has 10x of that risk anyway and I guess he sleeps fine too. ;)

Profiled in Barron's this week: http://www.barrons.com/articles/heico-a-niche-business-with-extraordinary-returns-1498884070

When you talk about "primary layer", do you mean auto and house? Or something else? From what I see online Geico does not give you a primary over $1M and only for certain situations. So if you want to get $2M primary for any auto situations, I don't see how you do it. Perhaps go to some specialized "rich-guys-only" insurance cos that will screw you through the nose? I haven't checked if the house insurance can have high primary (not for the building itself, but for accidents in it). Also even if you can get high primary auto and house, it still leaves you exposed to non-auto-non-house. Where would you get primary for that? Perhaps I just don't know enough about insurance for rich folks. 8) And yeah, I see an answer by KJP which indicates that I don't know about that. 8)

From the last sentence, I assume you are talking about assets being >$1M. IMO if assets are $1M-$10M or so, it makes sense to get umbrella equal to your assets. Might depend on price of course. Or less than assets if you are OK losing the "over-umbrella" part in a really bad situation. Edit2: Actually, scratch the above. Umbrella does not guarantee that you will keep any of your assets. It's only a buffer. So the question is really for how much you can be sued in really bad situation. E.g. you drive over 10 schoolchildren. Probably $10M+. So... you might need umbrella even higher than your assets if you think that's a possible risk. If assets are >$10M, you probably can "self-insure" and assume that you'd be able to fight off or settle any litigation without losing more than $10M... perhaps. I don't really know. Might depend on how rich/exposed you are. Although I still don't have umbrella at all (mostly for reasons that don't apply to others, though price is a bit crappy too), so ./shrug ::) Edit: redhots USAA quote seems close to what I was quoted in MA. A bit higher actually, but it's possible you can get better deal that USAA quote depending on state and your car/house insurance and who's insuring all that.

Yeah, man, go to Vegas, put it all on zero. YOLO! 8) I really liked the "those of us that urged you to take on more risk will feel awful, but in a limited internet way"

I'm not really interested in this topic, but everyone harping about 2 days should change that to 2 hours for Prime Now. 8)

Damodaran? He has likers and haters. His models are a bit more complex than simplistic DCF. This has pros and cons (that reader/user should internalize). I'm probably a bit more liker than hater though I don't use his framework and models.

I don't think the plan is to have QVC, Inc. become a vehicle for future investments. It already has significant leverage. Instead, as Malone has said, the game plan appears to be to continue to use free cash flow to buy back shares. So, if you don't want to own QVC/zulily/HSN, I would sell. Maybe you are right. But that's the impression I got. Not that Malone&Co telegraph their moves. If QVCA is not the future investment vehicle, then what is? Other parts have the same issue(s) of leverage and already holding significant businesses that you noted. It might be possible to re-cash something like LBRDA if CHTR buys back the shares it holds (not very likely) or CHTR gets sold (also not very likely). Anyway, thanks for your thoughts, I'll continue to monitor where things are going.

It's actually a Turbo Tax online issue. With the purchased turbo tax I can upload my IB trades. It is not Turbo Tax Online issue. It is IB issue. They refuse to provide TT API to access their data. The purchased TT uses IB crappy CSV export for their import. IB is the only company out of big banks and brokerages that refuse to provide TT API access. Nobody else does that. IB sucks.

MSFT AI work and plans: https://www.wired.com/story/inside-microsofts-ai-comeback/ Canadian connection for our northern friends too.

After they announced full split of LVNTA with some cash (notes? prefs?) going to QVCA, my thinking was that QVCA will become cash-rich part for future investments. This now becomes complicated by the HSN merger and then "spin off its cable-TV operations into an independent company that will be called QVC Group". I'm not very interested in QVC/HSN, but I'm interested in the future-investment-cash-rich part. We'll gonna see what that will be. Disclosure: I own a bunch of Liberties. I was planning to shift some/most LVNTA to QVCA, but not sure for now.