Jurgis

I use our PS4 for steaming - I like the UI for Netflix. I have the PS4 connected to my receiver and stereophile speakers and a subwoofer and the sound is awesome. My wife “complimented” me just last night when I watched “Black 47” that she though someone fired a shot in our house. That was when the protagonist fired a musket. The scene towards the end in Rambo 2008 when he turns the .5 “ machine gun on those hapless Burmese army guys sounds pretty good too. None of the above has anything remotely to do with Roku or investing I am sorry. Well, my everything is connected to receiver and 7+1 speakers: Roku, Xbox, BluRay player, computer. So 7+1 surround is there independent of the source HW. Assuming source content provides it. I should periodically rerun the receiver surround auto adjust, but I haven't since we bought it. So likely some of the speakers got bumped and sounds are no longer perfectly balanced.

You could watch a bunch of these on current Xbox. Not sure about new Xbox, but current Xbox UI is crappy as heck for non-gaming. I use it only as a last resort for anything. Though TBH Roku UI is not great either (and depends on app/channel - some apps/channels are way worse than others). I don't think I've seen a video/entertainment UI that is above B-... ::)

I guess he has not heard of Putin, Erdogan, Venezuela, Hungary, and Poland. ::) .... and now this thread can be moved to Politics section, kkthxok.

CoBF comes to mind. ::)

The only way Shopify goes from 112B to 1T (or even likely 500B) is if they do AMZN and start capturing adjacent and not-so-adjacent markets. This is not so easy to do without diworsifying. They are doing this somewhat with logistics, delivery-by-Shopify, etc. They could provide tools for merchants that grow out of their base product and continue to capture successful large® businesses. There might be other things that I don't see right now. Seeing them is not easy, so we'll see whether Tobi is Bezos or not. 8)

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/millions-are-hounded-for-debt-they-don-t-owe-one-victim-fought-back-with-a-vengeance?utm_source=pocket-newtab

So basically you want teachers to die for the privilege of teaching your kid?

Since this thread is active again... Another anecdote. A friend had to call ambulance for health emergency. They had big 3 insurance, so what can go wrong, right? Well, they get $2100 bill for ambulance service... Insurance paid the ambulance company their rate of $700. Ambulance company though claims it's not in network and not accepting insurer's rates, and their total is $2800 (for 10 minute drive KK OK!), so please pay $2100 from your pocket. This an intentional scam where ambulance organizations intentionally do not go "in network" with the insurers so that they can milk the unwary. But hey, the victim should just roll over, show the great moral character and pay up to the extortionists, right? They entered the contract knowingly ... they called 911... nobody forced them... ::) (The insurer is trying to work this out with the extortionist ambulance company, but results are not guaranteed). There was a similar story in the news where a Covid patient had to be airlifted and is stuck with $57000 bill since airlift company does not accept insurer's rate either. Sounds like a pattern? Oh, the great moral US medical system. It builds character in all of us.

Bah, I did that on two of my Win7 computers last year. Coulda told you about it. ::)

./shrug. It's just that if you search for "US person investing in Canadian companies / hedge funds" (or some variation thereof), you get a bunch of posts/threads talking about issues of US-Canadian person having RRSP. I think it's because US tax lawyers writing about US persons investing abroad also write about a (common?) situation of US-Canadian person having to deal with RRSP and US taxation. To be clear: I am not US-Canadian person. I don't have RRSP and I don't know anything about it. I have looked into investing into startups abroad (there's a bunch of landmines) and into hedge funds abroad (there are way more landmines, but the first one is that they are likely PFIC so don't). None of this is aimed at rb who probably can recite relevant tax issues while drunk racing me in his Ferrari. Just at random people reading CoBF. ::)

Yes. Among other things I had a position with a company in the US while also not being in the US. And yes, I am well aware of how complicated the international tax stuff gets. Right now I file taxes in 3 damn jurisdictions. I was just slightly concerned about this 401k rollover as I've never been in this position before and I'm not as familiar as the locals for which I assume this is a fairly basic subject. We just don't have the 401k vs IRA distinction in Canada. So I thought it prudent to reach out to my CoBF brethren. Got it. I believe you got correct information from this thread. You are possibly at higher risk of audit and therefore backdoor Roth conversion - though legal - might be another risk factor. Also, as currently-not-in-US-person, you most likely cannot rollover work 401(k) into individual (self-employed) 401(k) that has advantages in certain situations (including backdoor Roth). So forget last sentence. And good luck. OT: I was looking at investing abroad (outside US) into startups and hedge funds. During that I ran into the long threads about taxation and in particular US and Canadian RRSP entanglements. Not for faint hearted apparently.

If only I had fat-fingered and bought NOW instead of DNOW when DNOW was spun off ... and then forgot about it... ::) 8)

rb, pardon too personal question: IIRC you're outside US. How the heck you have 401(k)? Were/are you working in US position while being outside US? Or are you asking for a client/friend? I'm asking not just out of curiosity but also since this may affect your conversions into Roth/etc. IIRC US accounts and non-US accounts and taxes can get way complicated really fast. Feel free not to answer though. 8)

I don't shop at Costco or Walmart.

Very few people in Wegman's store Saturday morning. No lines to get in, not many people in store, and very short lines at registers. Last time we went to Wegman's (I think in June/July) there were lines to get in, store was crowded, and huge line at registers. Saturday nobody was hoarding at all. Huge selection of toilet paper, paper towels, etc. We bought some since hey Spekulatius told us to hoard 8), but we were the only ones buying. Some guy even made fun of our paper towels pack on the cart. ::)

FSD beta is really impressive: Yeah, there are kinks, but a lot of things are working great. And the kinks are mostly about car being too slow to turn or accelerate, which may be annoying for people behind you, but not really risking an accident. FSD of course is misnomer: as it is, you have to expect disengagement once per ride or more. Still very impressive. I'm back in the "I'm gonna buy a Tesla" camp especially if/when they release FSD to everyone.

I noticed that they are still on track to make 20B annual FCF as they were before. ./shrug I continue to hold a position.

OXY bonds are not trading in 50 cent range. The cheapest are 2039s or so at 67 cent range+. The prices on OXY bonds were way lower earlier in the year when I bought (and since sold). Not picking on you, just a note to myself, since I thought maybe I could buy again. ::)

I still cannot wrap my head around how someone can buy a used car without test drive first. At least at regular dealers, I've been given obvious lemons - cars that do not start !!! ::) ::) ::) - to test drive. What would you do if you bought such car without test drive? Yeah, you can return it, but that's a huge hassle time/money/documentation-wise even if the return is free.

You're saying it's par for the course for Howard Marks. ;D

Personally, I am with mostly with thepupil although I would not try to predict RE pricing based on my thoughts. We are in somewhat-close suburbs of Boston. We talked about moving to exurbs for bigger-or-nicer house/more land/more forest or water/etc. The problem is that infra does not move. So we'd lose (or be forced to drive way longer to): - Tai Chi studio we go to, meditation place we go to - PCP and medical specialists we go to - restaurants - other Boston culture, shopping, etc. - friends Ultimately, I don't think losing all of these are worth what we'd gain. OT: why do American builders continue to build the 1930s/1950s esthetics SFHs? Unlike Europe there are no look restrictions and yet everything except multi-million custom houses look like they were plopped from a 1960s sitcom. ::) Lithuanians build nicer looking new houses than Americans... :-\

Someone has said that Africa is the continent of the future and always will be. ::) It's possible to play on geographical trends. Go SE for South East Asia. MELI (maybe) for LatAm. There were some stocks mentioned for Africa too. Or maybe PROSY for all of the above? Maybe we should resurrect Naspers/PROSY thread and see if anyone has opinions about their capital allocation post-Tencent. It seems that majority of their value is Tencent. I wonder if anyone has done deep dive on the capital allocation/growth of their pieces and not just the SoTP valuation.

That's a great question. Tencent had seven mega trend tailwinds in 200Xs: - Mobility / mobile device proliferation - Data / especially mobile data proliferation - Software / software proliferation - Games / game proliferation - Social media proliferation - Cashless payment growth - China growth I could potentially add - Ad-based monetization growth If you look at world right now, people are looking for next Apple/Google/Tencent. There are couple of issues: - there are almost no new mega trends. One could argue that AI is one. OK, let's say it is. That's still just one trend. There is also no company that owns AI space or likely will own AI space in coming ten years+. - one could argue that past mega trends still have legs. This is true. But any company relying on the old trends either has to compete with incumbents supported by the same trends or to look for niches that incumbents missed. Both make life harder for newcomers. In fact, I'd argue that Alphabet/Google are (still) very strong in the - Mobility / mobile device proliferation - Data / especially mobile data proliferation - Software / software proliferation - Ad-based monetization growth - AI growth trends. They are weaker in others I mentioned. And Tencent is still very strong in the trends I mentioned for them. But both Alphabet/Google and Tencent will have lower growth in next 10-20 years because of their size. You still might do (relatively) well holding them. Now, you could find a small(er) company that conquers just one or couple trends going forward, possibly in a large niche. But that's more difficult to predict IMO. Or find a newly emerging supertrend and company that will ride it + using some of the existing trends perhaps. There are couple trends that people (for long time) argue could supertrend, but so far they haven't really: - Internet-of-things - Personalized/genomic medicine - Widespread nano machining Anyway, you wanted market dislocations. These would be it. Good luck. 8)

Although there were a number of people who exploited this, including Bill Bowder in his first foray to Russia, this was not as simple as it sounds on paper. The competition for certificates of ordinary citizens from various shady "investors" was huge and so was the competition to siphon assets from the privatized companies. Add to this that management of some of the enterprises was crap, you could end up with hugely negative return from "can't lose" situations. My relatives in Lithuania invested in privatized super-prime retail location that was subsequently pretty much run into the ground. Other relatives invested with shady investors who absconded with their investment certificate money. But, yeah, sure there were people who became multibillionaire (in Russia, multimillionaire in Lithuania) oligarchs. Mostly from being deep insiders and grabbing control and assets through legal and shady ways. Individual investor would have done way better with higher longer term return and less risk buying something like Tencent anytime in 200Xs and holding. ::)

Kindle version is available for $9.99: https://smile.amazon.com/Limping-Water-outstanding-communications-companies-ebook/dp/B01993UGIY/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=limping+on+water&qid=1602274867&sr=8-1 I have not read this book.