Jurgis

I don't think "inshoring" is something that will magically happen now. There's a certain amount of it going all the time. And then there's a large amount of Hollywood, Silly Valley, NYC, Boston that will never be inshored. Yeah, RE prices suck in CA and NYC. Yeah, taxes may suck too. But try to whatever-shore the Silly Valley companies. Not happening. Try to tell people who want to live in NYC to go to Boston or Cleveland or Detroit and see what happens. ;) So, yeah, there's some amount, but there's also a huge unmovable amount. I don't know if there is much investable from this. Apart possibly buying cheap RE in Midwest and hoping for better trends that've been around in the past. But then you have to talk about the migration to sunnier places, the land availability, etc. (Yeah, Chicago is cheap. Some good jobs too. I tried to tell a cheap friend of mine to move there and buy a nice house. He looked at me as if I'm crazy. So there...)

Don't you need to have like multi-million (billion?) accounts to go for distressed sovereign debt? I was just reading the Elon Musk book where he suggested some Canadian bank buy LatAm distressed at .25 on dollar (guaranteed by US, so .50 recovery was "certain"). But he was talking multimillions... Anyway, I don't think I have insight into this apart that find sure opportunity like Musk did. Though this was in 1990's so possibly it was way easier to find sure things... 8)

Regarding EM debt, I've looked at EMB and EMLC and the drawdowns are high. :-\ EMB is about 10% drawdown - maybe covered by yield, but you still end up at zero. EMLC went 30% down and has not recovered - I think this is currency effect, but still. Maybe it's possible to speculate that they are cheap now, but I would not be able to make that decision. Anyone has input/insight? To repeat, I'm looking at two areas: cash substitute that I could withdraw immediately at market crash (currently in ISTB) and just fixed income that has higher yield and may be "locked" (i.e. not sellable due to downdraft) during market downturn (currently a bit in BACPRL and PONDX). EMB/EMLC are clearly not a match for the cash sub. I am not sure they are match for second either. I'd probably prefer SRLN (which I sold due to some concerns) vs EMB/EMLC. I might be totally wrong on this though. I am not looking at equities for yield. Of course, you guys are free to discuss equities too. It's just not what I'm looking for. 8) Thanks

Life expectancy isn't increasing anywhere near the levels that most people think it is. Cyborgs would be the nail in the coffin Wouldn't it be nice if you actually posted some thoughtful comments from time to time as opposed to knee-jerk rambling nonsense? The post with which Doo started this thread was not good enough for you? ???

Doo, Like you said on TRUP thread: two words: pet funerals. This could be barking yuge. 8)

With insurance one of the parties (usually) gets screwed. In catastrophic, it's usually the customer, but they usually don't care, since the probability of cat is very low and overpaying probability-wise even X00% is still cheaper than if cat strikes. For non-cat insurance, especially self-paid customers may care if they get screwed (if someone else pays - e.g. your employer and you cannot get that money in cash instead, that changes things). So - pet insurance. Either insurer is screwing you via exclusions and prices - in which case it's not a great business for customer. Or possibly insurer is giving you great deal and either A) they gonna lose money like heck B) they are pyramid scheme where the growth masks the A. You guys can try to figure out which of the three possibilities TRUP is. I don't have pet insurance and I won't get one. Anecdotally friends think it's too expensive for things covered and/or the insurer tries to screw you when they have to cover something expensive (like DooDiligence said "pre-existing conditions"). But that might be anecdotal. It's possible that TRUP is really giving great prices and A or B. BTW, I heard someone sold pet wine idea on Shark Tank. I have at least 20 more pet crap ideas for anyone interested. 8) Have fun. 8)

Screw pet insurance. But you guys already knew that. 8)

GRVY for a long time. Pershing Square. For search, one of the tax explanation links used to have a list, but possibly old and definitely incomplete. May I ask what is a goal of this? I don't think you gonna get any non-anecdotal outcome from looking at PFICs. Especially since they come in at least three different flavors: investment funds (Pershing), tons of cash net-nets (GRVY) and resource/gold holders (Sprott something?). The investment funds are most hairy for me to determine if they are PFIC or not. E.g. Investor Holdings. Or Exor. Or Bollore. I think it depends if their wholly owned subs are consolidated into and more than ??% owned, but IANATaxAccountant and all that. I guess cash rich net nets can be hairy too if they dance close to the limit.

chesko182, thanks for your ideas. I'm traveling now. I'll take a look at FLOT when I return and get back if I have any thoughts.

Good question, though possibly not much investing related in near future. Let me take a stab. Cutting Grass - I think there's a commercial product available now. However, I think that it is very limited. I think the positives of this is area is that it's not life threatening, and possibly the market of lawn mowers is large. The negatives are that people are cheap and problem is complex (i.e. don't run over things, flowers, but cut dandelions, handle any kind of areas, etc.). I think in near future products will only handle regular areas, which won't displace 50% jobs. 10+ years, I'd say. Pickup trucks plowing out parking lots and driveways Municipal level snow plowing - Both of these assume self-driving cars + plowing (yeah, you need both, even if you don't think you do). So this is behind self-driving cars. Also limited market, so not much effort until self-driving is perfected. 15+ years. Forklift driving - in enclosed area/warehouse? 7+ years. Definitely disruptable. The only question is market size, which means how much effort startups are gonna give this. But with Amazon in this area, I'd say there definitely gonna be work on this and possibly fast. Airline pilot - Tech wise, airplanes already could fly with 1 pilot instead of 2 with autopilot doing pretty much all work. So 50% reduction immediately. But policy wise it's not gonna be accepted by humans. There's irrational fear of flying already, so there's not gonna be change until somehow humans accept 1 pilot+auto. Maybe 7+ years. Truck driver Taxi/uber driver - TAS Fedex/UPS driver USPS delivery person - I think these are all the same really: self-driving is the key. 15+ years. My self-driving schedule: Level 4/5 self driving available (but possibly not legalized): 5 years. (BTW, one could argue that Alphabet/Waymo already has level 4/5 self driving. I won't argue this strongly.) + 5 years for legalization / working out kinks + 5 years for replacing professions above. I'd like to see some non-self-driving professions: - Radiologists - Other medical personnel who perform diagnosis - Primary Care Physician - House painting inside / outside - Hedge / Mutual fund manager - Supermarket checkout (btw already 30-40% are gone due to self-checkout) - Hairdresser - Programmer - Auto mechanic - Cattle herder - Oil&gas rig worker - Online investing forum participant Feel free to add. 8)

Well, you guys coulda have had my shares at 1.59 today. No takers. ::) Monday... who knows... I may leave the GTC sell order or not. If I do, it's gonna be AoN, so look at whatever service shows these since they don't show up on bid/ask/etc. 8) This public service is provided... by me. 8) Traveling next week, so no order/price tracking minute-by-minute.

Haha, I have to admit to the same (limit sell). Oh well, somebody could have triggered those orders couple days ago, so ... ::) This was a great idea overall Schwab711. 8)

Yeah, you guys are correct. I was slow to buy and too cheap. Now the spread is lowish (trading around 1.50). Congrats.

Assuming 37 / 22.7 outstanding or even 37 - 4.5 / 22.7 outstanding, the spread is still attractive to hold (well the price is moving fast, so let's say attractive at 1.20 or below). 22.7 outstanding is from Marketwatch. Company fillings say 19.X outstanding: http://www.precisiontune.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Quarterly-report-033117.pdf So... buy here up to 1.20 or 1.30? Or am I missing something?

Two questions in fixed income space: 1. Almost-cash with some yield. Should be not more than 1-2% annual fluctuation max. Something that could be liquidated in severe market drop without more than 5% loss under most scenarios. I hold ISTB. Any other suggestions with >1% yield? 2. Bond fund. Somewhere in 3-4% yield range, good past performance (preferably not a large 2008-2009 drawdown - yeah, this is way backward looking), good management, somewhat OK bond holdings and durations. Not stretching for yield. I'm looking at PONDX. Any other suggestions?

I am playing this MMO (BnS) where you have various pets floating by your shoulder: otter, fox, penguin, etc. I think that would be a great embodiment of the personal assistant, hands-free device to use. Think about the convenience and the fashion aspect. You could have a panda or a puppy floating by your ear, telling you where to go, what ingredients to put into the dish you are cooking and even playing musac. Oh, the possibilities! Apple, make it so. 8) You heard it here first

Sequant Re is an option.

Great questions. Don't know the answers. I'd think this is not easy to implement well.

Correct. It's easy to beat your competitors on price and grow if you don't need to make a profit. For now Amazon is not a business. It's a non-profit. You're looking at it wrong. For sure I am. After all a company is not supposed to make money. A company is supposed to create value. Reinvesting all your earnings internally is one way to create value. TCI didn't have any earnings either. Since reading Cable Cowboy, I see Amazon in a whole new light... I won't comment on AMZN, but it seems that companies with great capital allocation and minimal to no earnings can be quite mispriced by the market. Liberties, cough, cough. I'm sure there are other examples. 8)

I think your presentation of material behind this link does not do it justice. I almost did not click the link because of the quotes you posted. Then I clicked on it. And it's good. So let me try to entice others to click with this nugget: Click to read more. 8)

It is not illegal. Tons of hedgies do that one way or the other: either just post letters on websites without specifically promoting their fund or allow mailing lists without checking investor qualifications, etc. Pabrai just chooses not to disseminate his letter. If he wanted to disseminate it, he easily could. He cannot purposefully disseminate his letter, and neither can anyone else unless they are willingly violating securities laws. You should not assert something is "not illegal" unless you know what you are talking about. Moreover, it clearly is getting disseminated at value walk, but he cannot cause it to happen legally. There must always be a pretense that you are trying to stop it. You are possibly right with your last paragraph. But what is exactly the "illegal" line? You can post a blog. You can give talks posted on Youtube. You can mention your performance in these talks. You can mention specific trades. So why can't you post the whole shareholder letter on the blog? Or let's say the shareholder letter with performance data removed (although as above you have already mentioned it in your talks)? Or shareholder letter with mentions to your funds removed? Anyway, I think we agree that there's fuzzy line to walk and some people choose to walk closer to it or farther from it depending on situation. I don't believe Pabrai does not make his letters public because of legal considerations, but I can't prove it. 8) Have fun.

It is not illegal. Tons of hedgies do that one way or the other: either just post letters on websites without specifically promoting their fund or allow mailing lists without checking investor qualifications, etc. Pabrai just chooses not to disseminate his letter. If he wanted to disseminate it, he easily could.

OT. Why not? My relative needs to do file a form because their spouse died. They'll probably go to the SS office. It's possible to do via phone, but likely then they would need to send in docs anyway. Which is a hassle and will take ages. Not sure if it can be done over Internetz. I think not especially since spouse died abroad, so good luck getting foreign death cert into Internetz. Closer to topic: they went through this issue with BAC. It took almost a year of sending paper forms through letters. The positive side is that BAC seems to finally done everything right. I have a friend whose parent died and BAC screwed up the whole thing royally. Not that this would affect investment into BAC... other banks have similar issues regardless of size. Actually sometimes smaller banks screw up even more. Anyway, we shouldn't hog the thread. Move to general for more discussion if you want. 8)

But will you? Buying MSFT (who survived and thrived business-wise) in 2000 was very hazardous to your returns. Maybe your argument is that RBC is never overvalued (ha) or that if we look at decades buying at overvalued price does not matter (not really true, MSFT or even SP500 at 2000 top was not a good investment for decade+). Maybe the argument is that if you average over time, you'll end up OK. That's tougher to refute. But I am not sure it's true either. OTOH, yes, if a company has a great business and a long runway, then current expensive price might not matter. If it can outrun the handicap.

This is just ... bananas! 8) More ignores incoming