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Jurgis

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Everything posted by Jurgis

  1. Oh wow. Tell us John how you really feel. I fully support EU decision on Google. It's high time. I also agree with Ben Thompson on some of the nuances.
  2. You are right of course, but there's a spectrum of fixed income securities. E.g. you could hold all your cash in money market that has zero volatility and zero yield. Or you can hold it in 3 month treasuries that has teeny tiny volatility and some yield. Or you can hold it in 1-3 year treasuries that has tiny volatility and more yield. You can't just dismiss the latter as negating the strategy of holding less volatile securities, since even 3 year treasuries will have way lower volatility and potential drawdown than stocks for example. You could argue that it doesn't matter much if you get 0 yield or 1.5% yield. But possibly it does. Clearly, you'd give a lot to a stock fund manager who outperforms market by 1.5%. So why not care about 1.5% difference in fixed income?
  3. I'm pretty sure that Todd and Ted both invest without supervision, at least in 'their' accounts. Right. What I was saying is that maybe Warren was involved in HCG (and maybe Store) just for the weight of his name even though it was Ted's position/idea. I have no clue if "supervision" is bigger in such case.
  4. I can't quite parse this. Are you saying that from current prices people will likely not lose money, but they will likely underperform the market? Or something else?
  5. +1. Couple more points: Someone working in structured finance does not necessarily has interest, knowledge or expected alpha to switch to value investing. They may be getting great money in the big bank while even if they demonstrated alpha in value investing, they might not get huge AUM and huge monetary rewards. They might not be interested in business fundamentals. I think it's rather simplistic to assume that someone super smart to understand complex products somehow automatically should be able to do great in value/Buffetty investing. I think it's also rather dismissive to suggest that if they don't that they are somehow inferior to value mavens. I'm sure there are other reasons why smart people in structured finance might not go out and setup value shop. 8) They may never become multibillionaires like Buffett, but then pretty much all value investors won't either. Buffett's stock picks have not been super great lately - stocks are expensive and even he can't find great investments. So even if someone tried to move to Buffetty way, they'll probably not find "golden nuggets laying on the street" (sic) and "make huge returns on". I'm sure there are exceptions. Some people may move to value investing and make great money. Maybe thelads has some stories about that. ;) Peace. 8)
  6. I don't do macro, but it feels like 1999. Buffett is making mediocre investments since market is too high and nothing else is available. Alternative explanation for this and HCG might be that it's all Ted's ideas and Warren just signs off without much supervision. That's also not very believable, but just throwing it out there. I base this on the size of the positions which are really small for Warren.
  7. So you are saying hedges were costing 4% annual return? That's not what Prem told us. 8) ::)
  8. I agree with the rest you wrote, so I cut it out. I think it's a good idea. I have to look back at Quicken and see if their per-security IRR has gotten correct. Might be a good thing to study for me sometime when I have time. Yeah, as you say, there are issues in terms of risks taken, but maybe looking at this will give some ideas how to deal with the issues. Thanks
  9. Can you truly understand 3 companies you own? I'd certainly hope so. I know nothing about you, so don't take this personally. Maybe you do understand them. Most people who think they understand the 3 companies they own, understand them at best very superficially. I'd say that some CEOs that run a single company don't understand it truly. For outside investor to truly understand multiple companies without being inside of them is IMO rather exceptional. FWIW. Good luck 8)
  10. Can you truly understand 3 companies you own?
  11. It only takes a minute to buy or sell a stock. The rest of the day can be spent on TV, @Google, @Harvard, @Columbia, @some other place... ... or just sipping Mai Tais on the yacht. Investing is ez bro. 8) I sometimes wonder if some people would have better results if they spent time sipping Mai Tais instead of working on their investments.
  12. Funny ICO idea from MIT mailing list: This is humor. Do try it at home. 8)
  13. Expert predictions: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607970/experts-predict-when-artificial-intelligence-will-exceed-human-performance/?set=607997 Link to original paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.08807.pdf Note though that the prediction for Go was 2027 and it actually happened in 2016-17. So "predictions are hard, especially the ones about the future". 8)
  14. Anecdotal reports from the trenches: was just ordering my granola and coffee from Walmart.com. Double checked Amazon. It appears that Amazon now sells granola at supermarket/Walmart prices, but only through Pantry or Fresh. Still likely not worth for me to try either of these. Amazon is now selling the coffee I buy at below supermarket/Walmart prices and it's Amazon-proper, not third parties. So clear push for groceries it seems. Also, I've started seeing products on Amazon that say "Prime customers only". Not sure if this is really just for Amazon Prime customers - did not try to logout and search for the same item. Also not sure if this is a good idea or bad idea. I'm sure Amazon gonna data mine though. 8)
  15. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-22/amazon-s-bezos-disrupts-another-frontier-with-just-one-tweet I'd say buy Whole Foods... ... oh, wait. 8)
  16. To be fair, some of these people disappear upwards (i.e. open hedge fund, whatever and don't need CoBF or can't talk here anymore). But, yeah, if you're one of the people who can do 30%+ for 5-10+ years on handful of ideas, you already know it. You won't be asking the question OP asks. If you are asking the question, you likely should diversify and/or own something like BRK which is like a diversified fund anyway. I'm one of the people who cannot tell which one is the #1 idea, which one is #33. Sometimes #33 performs way better than #1 for me. Not much else to add, I think people made some great points above.
  17. Blue Horseshoe loves Home Capital Group. 8)
  18. Below may sound like nitpicking, so please skip if you're not interested. Right. Although even for "gross" or "approximate" one, it's probably harder than you said. I thought about BRK and likely the curve is much flatter - less certain - than I suggested. I.e. we don't know more than we think we don't know. Also with CBI or Fannie or SHLD, you think that there's binomial distribution, but likely the curve is quite flat too. I.e. everyone who argued that SHLD is zero or huge gainer in the last ?8? years have been wrong. Same mostly with Fannie. So maybe there was a hump towards zero, but likely much flatter than people expected. It's likely SHLD hit a probability spot that people thought was something like <1% chance (sorry this is a bit inaccurate given continuous prob distribution, but you know what I mean). Sure there are steep fall-offs at certain points, e.g. there's probably almost no scenario for BRK to return 20%+ for 5 years annualized, but overall being certain of the humps is hard. I think this relates to the behavioral economics question/test where people are asked to estimate weight of the 747 or distance to the moon with 99% confidence interval and they choose way too narrow range. The illusion of certainty. I find this topic interesting, since I wonder if it's worthwhile for me as investor to try to come up with an approximately-right curve. And how much approximately-right. Anyway, thanks for article and thanks for comments.
  19. Yes, this is great. Confirms what I knew, but adds some specific insights/details on EM and Europe and their revenue on mods. You remember it correctly that they are paid differently based on product category. Thanks.
  20. Yeah, but presumably majority (?) of the business of part shops is selling parts to your repair shop. So presumably you not buying parts there does not hurt them if your repair shop buys the parts instead. However, if there's a trend for more repairs at dealers, I don't know if dealers use part shops for parts as much as independents do.
  21. Reposting annual webcast and notes link from http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/events/bam-annual-meeting-in-toronto-on-friday-june-16/ : http://boards.fool.com/annual-meeting-webcast-32748772.aspx?sort=whole#32748772 https://bam.brookfield.com/en/events-and-presentations Anyone has plans for Trisura spinoff? Hold, buy, sell?
  22. The problem is that humans and AI are judged using different standards. If human kills someone by accident it's OK'ish since you know it's human what can you do... If AI kills someone by accident, it's clearly broken, nefarious, and should be never used again. At least regulatory agencies subscribe to this fallacy less than regular people. Otherwise we would not have seen cruise control, autopilot or industrial robots at all. ::) Of course you are correct. Humans are not rational, which is just one more reason why they shouldn't be running things. When either a human or an AI makes a mistake you could say that it is in a way broken, but when a human makes a mistake (s)he might learn from that mistake, get better, and never do it again. When an AI makes a mistake, it might learn from the mistake and upload the new info to millions of other similar AIs who all learn from it and never make it again. AIs are superior in every way. Humans should never touch heavy machinery. I'm reading a fascinating book ("The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt) about how humans react emotionally to just about everything and use reason only later in an attempt to justify their emotional reaction. Reason is just a post hoc tool we use to explain what we already want to think. You could be that old blind guy with the super long soul patch on Kung Fu (.) I can only point the way, Grasshopper. You must walk the path yourself. Just jack into the cloud, feed the data into your daemon ML, and the path will appear. 8)
  23. Great posts, thelads. Considering your area and your thoughts about US and EM debt, do you have an opinion about MCO as stock? One of the bearish lines on it is that the debt issuance is toppy here (as you said, there's been debt explosion). On the other hand, the bulls say that there are still secular tailwinds in debt move from banks to market (as you mentioned too). Thoughts?
  24. I could wait more, but I think I'm gonna conclude that nobody gives a f**k about the investment outcome graphs. Which I expected. 8) OK, to raise the bar a bit, I'm gonna present an 5 year annualized return probability distribution graph for an easy stock. BRK. 8) I can't draw graphs for shit, so here's a description (someone with some math graphing package can probably draw it from description): It's not symmetrical graph. Maximum probability is at 9%. Pretty symmetrical normal distribution decline to 6.5% and 11.5%. This covers about 80% of the distribution area. Rapid decline towards zero probability as we go over 11.5%. Really close to zero above 15%. Slower decline towards 0%. A shallow hump up with a max around 1% that extends both up and down towards -5% (minus here). This mostly represents Buffett dying and/or mega cat(s). The area covers about 10% or so total probability area. Probability goes to near zero at around -9%. So there. Probably a good illustration why this is fricking hard. Have fun. 8)
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