Jurgis

It's not that harebrained. I know people who do the "medicinal" snake wine ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_wine ) and it is very profitable ... for them. TCM and other folk medicine crap is usually very profitable for sellers. ::)

Let's hope California and a bunch of other states won't.

I guess a question about ODET is whether it's a PFIC. That would complicate any buying in US non-tax-deferred accounts. BOL is likely not a PFIC since it has a bunch of operating businesses.

Just opened Amex Blue Cash Whatever card for $150 sign up bonus and $200 as 10%-cash-back-from-Amazon.com-purchases (which is really only $100 gain over Chase Amazon Visa which gives 5% back forever). Gonna get the bonus, but not sure gonna use it much. It gives 3% back on groceries, the rest is blah compared to 2% back Fidelity Visa. A family member got one of their $500-in-points sign up bonus offers.

I'm not sure why you think that.

This question is asked on this thread every couple of months. Search the thread, Luke?

Good thread to mention "The Founder" movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4276820/ Haven't watched it. I guess "Supersize Me" was already mentioned.

IMO don't use raise.com Most of the cards are people reselling gift cards bought via stolen CCs or to scam you or cleaning up drug money. Yeah, raise.com "guarantees" the cards for 100 days. But look at BBB reviews - the guarantee means that you gonna fight with raise customer service. Pretty much all TJ Maxx gift cards on raise are for $999.99 If that's not stolen/fraud/scam, I don't know what is. Yeah, sure, this is a grandpa selling a gift card they got from their kids. NOT. Caveat emptor.

That RE stub is a bit hard to value now with all the purchases, share issuances, etc. Do you have a valuation for it or just guessing that it's less than 10kr? I'll just keep what I have in it, which is very little.

You sold it for 20-30kr?

I think the anecdotal evidence here is not very useful, but I'll chime in for fun. Japanese car owner pretty much here. Had ~1980 Corolla (was stolen, then recovered, sold), ~1979 Datsun (before Nissan, sold), then ~1995 VW Jetta (electrical problems, crappy paint job, sold), 1992 Accord (wife totalled), 1997 Camry (no problems, traded in), 2003 Accord (still own, no problems), 2011 Camry (still own, no problems). We don't drive much so even 1997 trade in only had over 100K miles, 2003 Accord is still at 75K or so. IMO fleet sales can be positive. I really liked Nissan Altima I got to rent, so I wanted to buy it afterwards. Even went to Nissan dealer. So that's a plus. On the other hand, I had some US car as rental couple years ago and I did not like it at all, so that's a turnoff. Re patriotism (?) - when I drove across US coast to coast, it was pretty evident how coasts have way more non-US cars compared to interior US. East coast has a bit more European cars... but I think there's not much Euro cars overall in US, so it's tiny difference. 15+ years ago Hyundai was a staple for Korean community who did not like buying Japanese cars due to the WW2 history. Then Indians bought Hyundai's because it was rather "luxury" brand in India (AFAIK, was told by some Indian friends at the time). Then Hyundai just got wide distribution... Just anecdotes.

OK, thanks.

OK, this is getting confusing. Anyone understands what the currently-on-exchange traded stub contains? Doesn't it still contain their header compression business? If so, why is it trading so low? IIUC, there's yet another bunch of shares (yet another different share?) coming from the January 17 reorg. Which will contain their RE business? Is this correct? There might be an opportunity here if I only could wrap my head around this Swedish polska. 8) ??? ::)

Meta advice: for me personally, opinions of others have rather low correlation with my opinion (for books, stocks, movies, music, etc.). So pretty much try it and if you like it, continue; if you don't, move on. Yeah, unfortunately this wastes some time... but I haven't found a reliable alternative. I should +1 this though:

Morningstar? They are changing what's in free and what's in subscription, so YMMV. Gurufocus? Not sure they cover what you want.

If you are talking about US, then your statement 2 does not make sense, sorry. :) It's either qualified divvie and you pay qualified divvie tax rate or it's not qualified divvie and then you pay income marginal tax rate. Maybe you are saying that it's not a qualified divvie, but then the rate will depend on your marginal tax rate and not gonna be 30%. 30% Belgian tax is mostly irrelevant to US investors, since they can write it off at tax time. Paying 30% and writing of 15% isn't the same as paying 15%. And that's not at all what happens. Have you ever dealt with foreign qualified divvies in taxable account where foreign country taxes the divvie? To spell out: - You get divvie $D and are taxed X% by country Y. Amount of the tax $D*X% - At US tax time you do two things: - You declare $D as your divvie income and calculate US divvie tax $D*US%. - You declare $D*X% as foreign tax paid and you get credit for it from your US taxes one-for-one. (You can also reduce your income by $D*X%, but that's bad choice and nobody does it). So ultimately amount of X% is irrelevant. You get it all back. (And you pay US% which does matter). There are limitations AFAIK. I've never run into them so far. Possibly because my foreign divvies and taxes on them have not been in huge amounts.

If you are talking about US, then your statement 2 does not make sense, sorry. :) It's either qualified divvie and you pay qualified divvie tax rate or it's not qualified divvie and then you pay income marginal tax rate. Maybe you are saying that it's not a qualified divvie, but then the rate will depend on your marginal tax rate and not gonna be 30%. 30% Belgian tax is mostly irrelevant to US investors, since they can write it off at tax time.

In US, if you buy in regular account, this may go 3 ways, I guess: 1. Return of capital. Best case. You don't pay taxes, just adjust cost basis. 2. Qualified divvie - 15% tax == $22.5 from $150 (you can adjust for Euro conversion for precision). This is not that great. 3. Not qualified divvie - your income tax rate - probably bad. I'd guess it will be one or two. Two might be still marginally attractive. If Belgium charges 30%, you can write it off your taxes (there might be limitations, I don't know), so it should not be an issue. In US IRA account things might be worse, since you cannot writeoff 30% if Belgium charges it. People may not like this, since it's counterlevered: you have to put up E162 to make gains on E12 stub. OTOH, this may mean that once the stock is ex-divvie, the stub may soar 2x or whatever.

This. And not only for auto industry.

It would be interesting to compare the fallout in Alberta with fallout in places like Oulu/Salo in Finland after Nokia collapse. And maybe with Spain with their 20%+ unemployment? Maybe with more hard numbers? I have to admit that I was a peak-oiler once and even suggested someone in the family to go into well-paying (pun intended) oil engineering. They did not, so at least I don't have to feel bad for that advice.

I know that a lot of people recommend this book, but for me it felt dated and really very superficial. I did not finish it and don't plan to. IMO not worth the time.

Here you go: 8)

Did WSJ remove Google backdoor or is it just me? Going through "Private window" in Firefox that should not have tracking, but still don't get full article. Edit: Tried also Opera through their VPN and private window. Still no access. Hmm.

I was fired at the end of 2008. Got about half year salary payout - yeah, more cash to invest. 8) My 401(k) was already investable into stocks, so not much gain there... although I rolled it over to IRA at some point. Had to sell everything and buy it all back, but Fido gave me 100 free trades. Got a job at a startup in 2009. That lowered amount of new investable money. But also did Roth conversion at lower tax bracket due to some unemployment and lower salary at startup. It's good to have profession that is in demand even in downturns... 8) The big question in 2008-2009 was where to shift money. Yeah, buying quality works, but the real gains were made by buying stuff on the edges that survived and went up 10x+ I'd put WFC prefs somewhere into that area. I bought Euro prefs and energy stocks. Both were possibly a bit over the edge in terms of risk, but both did great. I'm sure I bought some crap that did not do well - ah, Chinese reverse mergers. 8) I held some WSC at the time... probably not the best choice for multibagger coming out of the bottom. Also, yeah, looking at stock forums from 2008-2009 is interesting. I don't think it gives all the picture of the time though. Hah, just found a post of someone talking about shorting stocks in January 2009... found someone talking of shorting BRK... Sounded like a good idea at the time, I'm sure. Maybe even worked for lower quality stocks. Did not work for BRK. Found this from Jan 2009: What was I thinking? ;)

Somewhat what John said, but also: This works only in rather limited money range: might work with exactly $100K, but if sum goes to $200K or higher, then X will start paying pretty high tax. Also gift amount is limited and at higher amounts might take long years to transfer gains back, which hits value of money (although money can be invested while it's waiting to be returned). Since this only works within $100-200K range, is it worth for person X to deal with all complexities to avoid paying some tax? BTW, even if it's legal, it might put person X under IRS audit flags, which might not be worth it. Also why not buy BRK (ok SP500 ;)), never sell and never pay any tax? ;)