Jurgis

Oh, but is it? Is it? Or is that just your biased pro-Trump opinion? There are clearly questions whether Trump EO was legal. Even if pro-Trumpians want to dismiss them.

I wouldn't believe a story of some attention troll on the Internet. My guess is that most of this is fake. If not, well the guy is not learning much for his $2.5M.

Sally Yates is a hero. Well, Republicans wanted her to stand up to the president... so will they support her now? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/us/politics/donald-trump-administration.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/a-clarifying-moment-in-american-history/514868/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/trumps-immigration-ban-is-already-harming-americas-scientistsand-its-science/514859/

Executive summary in geek terms, Liberty? :) Nothing important for non-geeks. Even for geeks it's rather specific subfield.

At the very least there seems to be a misunderstanding of how Dodd-Frank-mandated shareholder advisory votes on compensation work. They are backwards looking, so last year's annual meeting had to do with 2015's compensation, not 2016's or 2017's. I'm also not sure why anyone would expect the CEO to work for free. Yes, he controls a lot of stock, but being the CEO of a public company is a lot more work than being a passive shareholder, regardless of how big the company it is. I don't think a relatively small salary is egregious. The salary is possibly not egregious. The stock deals at 20-30% market price discounts to buddies is another question.

I disagree with valcont's assessment that "The whole operation is a scam at every level.", but I agree that Trump will likely issue more idiotic orders that will likely hurt SYNT and other tech companies.

Positive writeup in Barron's: http://www.barrons.com/articles/skepticism-about-syntel-creates-an-opportunity-1485582253 OK, so they probably made a mistake with cash repatriation not expecting Trump to be elected. And there's risk with their healthcare revenues due to ACA uncertainty. And there's maybe risk with AXP revenues - not clear though. And there's risk with visa clampdown. Still, isn't it quite cheap here? Schwab711, any updates? Bears, any further criticism?

./support

We were in Burlington MA mall today. Tesla was demonstrating Model X in the mall and trying to sign up people for Model 3. Model X wing doors and curved front windshield look impressive - perhaps just a bias from knowing how much pain both created. There was a pretty lively crowd around the car with kids and dads climbing into driver's seat and taking selfies. Seems the salespeople were getting some traction signing people with "our coming $35K car" spiel.

We were in Burlington MA mall today. Sears closed one floor of their store. Now there is Primark ( www.primark.com ) store in that floor. Outside there is crappy signage for both Sears and Primark. The remaining floor of Sears looks full of merchandise. We did not look in more detail.

If you are asking about moat, there are larger competitors in the same space. Comverse / Amdocs.

Perhaps you should ask this question to couple CEOs who post on this thread. ;D Edit: Although we are all "grown ups" here, IMHO, political threads are toxic for communities like this. I've seen investment communities destroyed by political threads before. I have asked Sanjeev to consider not allowing political threads. His choice was to allow them ... and I respect it. But, yeah, political threads are mostly a sewer and your comments/questions are well given. Peace.

I'm not saying that US should pursue confrontation policy with China because of Tibet. Just wanted to QFT. Peace.

Not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_Tibet_into_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China The first China rule on Tibet is 1717–1720 if you look at it. It is probably reasonable to call it history. Are we now going to not even respect logic and make everything anachronistic? What logic? You said bolded above. This is clearly not true. So China's earlier rules on Tibet doesn't count? This logic. So past occupation justifies new re-occupation? I am sure Vladimir Putin would be happy to hear this.

Not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_Tibet_into_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China The first China rule on Tibet is 1717–1720 if you look at it. It is probably reasonable to call it history. Are we now going to not even respect logic and make everything anachronistic? What logic? You said bolded above. This is clearly not true.

Not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_Tibet_into_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

Interesting article. Covers a lot of ground.

IMHO, the biggest risk with companies like this one is a blowup. So IMHO unless you are really really really really confident in the people behind the company, it's a "don't invest". YMMV though.

LOL, so now the uberlibertarians are advocating against universal voting and promoting rich-voting only. This thread would be hilarious if it wouldn't show how screwed up apparently intelligent human beings are.

Not sure there's a bear case, but here are some devil's advocate arguments (I don't necessarily subscribe to them, so please don't expect me to argue for them): - Coming decline of bond issuance == decline in business - Losses from lawsuits, government actions, etc. - I believe they just settled, but settlement was somewhat large. - Crappy capital allocation - their main business has huge moat and tons of CF, but they may not allocate it well, may diworsify, may waste it, etc. - Crappy balance sheet - negative shareholders equity, etc. If there's another bond-like-instrument collapse, this could bite them. - Crappy past ratings - this is possibly negative from two sides: are they ethically challenged company and not investable, could they do crappy ratings again and suffer from it. None of these are strong negatives IMO, but perhaps they are weak negatives.

There's tons of his writings at http://www.edwardothorp.com/ The site was redone for the book, so no guarantee if they kept everything, added or removed stuff. E.g. old site pointed to articles he wrote to some math newsletter - not sure if these are still around.

LMCK is FWONK now. And it was never priced anywhere near $3.42.

Hmm, reading that, it seems that in good times airlines could be buying new planes and selling old ones to 3rd countries that may not buy TDG parts (or any parts for that matter). In bad times, the miles flown drop down, but new plane purchases also drop down, so TDG parts may be somewhat flattish (?depends I guess?). There might be some risk that if TDG is hugely price gauging that airlines/US gov decide to bite the bullet and somehow certify other manufacturers. Not a high probability likely. Edit: I still think that the risk of catastrophic failure with lives lost is something to consider. If this happens and TDG is shown to have skimped on QA/pushed subpar parts, this could blow it especially with the levered BS. Disclosure: I have a very tiny position and do not plan to make it major position at this time.

And I guess it's not easy to persuade FAA to accept replacement parts harvested from old planes... With that said a large reduction of miles flown would hit TDG.