Jurgis

Peregrino, ok, understood. :)

This sounds good in theory, but in practice it's not that easy. You either don't buy Sequoia at all or you inherit its BRK/etc. very low basis. They would say that they will never sell, but VRX situation shows differently. So you are faced with rather difficult choice. :) OTOH, if you buy a fund that trades more and doesn't have long term positions with low basis how do you know that they can outperform? Most high turnover funds don't.

I would argue that very likely it isn't. :)

The issue is that you have to have pretty gigantic changes in the rate for the price to differ substantially with payment staying the same. E.g. it took about 20 years to go from 15% to 5%. So I think your scenarios are too abstract and also too unlikely to discuss. Sorry. Have fun. :) You can see from your example that rate change would have to be huge for relatively small change in prices. So if we are talking about genuinely overpriced RE, the prices can drop a lot without much change in rates. You are more likely to end up with 500K/5% going to to 400K/6% than your scenario 1->2. If you are talking about genuinely undervalued RE, it's the opposite: you'll likely get 200K/10% -> 300K/9% or something like that. In yet other words, RE prices do not depend just on rates. They depend on a lot of other factors and rate dependency is not direct and linear as in your scenarios.

14% difference (500K/437K) suddenly makes RE from expensive to cheap? Sorry, no. The answer really is buying cheap RE with cheap debt. Or at least with refinansable debt in dropping rate environment. Like Florida in 2010 or so. You can make or lose money in both scenarios you mentioned, but it will depend on context. Just don't delude yourself that 14% difference makes RE cheap.

The topic showed up on my browser shortened as "Choosing the right univers" and I thought "wow, I did not know I could choose the universe to live in". :o ;D I'm sure someone will post more useful reply. Peace. :) Edit: IMO better university is almost always the way to go. But ratings may not be accurate, so it would be good to get opinion from someone who really knows universities involved. E.g. I did my degree in the university that was rated #2 by some criteria and otoh was not considered great by other criteria. I don't think it was #2 but it was way better than "common" view.

Here you go, I've got a market cap fever and the only prescription is... 8) ::)

I did not follow SCTY much, but wasn't it going down without Tesla? Isn't Musk pretty much trying to save the company? Not that I like the deal.

Jurgis - how were you able to get a mortgage with no fees? Appraisal, underwriting, title insurance, legal fees - all mandatory as far as I know. Would love to know your secret. In reality they eat the fees so it’s effectively lowering the interest rate slightly. Exactly. Mortgage guy just pays these fees from his pocket. Which means that he likely gave me a bit higher rate which made his commission higher and then he paid fees from his commission. If you don't plan to refi and plan to hold mortgage very long, you are likely better with fees (and maybe with points too) to get a lower rate now. If you expect to refi, you are better off with no fees/no points, since the fees you paid are pure loss and the bit higher rate you get now will be refi'd anyway. In the past 10 years or so it was better to go no-fees/no-points since you refi'd frequently. Now it's harder to say - we might be at the bottom - or not. ;)

We need more cowbell.

Personally I wouldn't buy shares in Eastern European company managed by majority shareholders who can pretty much do what they want. Even more so when the company is in Ukraine. You could be looking at 100% loss before you even manage to say "da" (or "net"). ;D IMO if you don't have boots on the ground, these things are not investable. That being said, it's possible that the company is legit, and won't go BK or sell out assets from underneath you, etc. And maybe the price is too negative because of the concerns as above. I'm just expressing general opinion and I have pretty much zero interest in looking at the details. Good luck and have fun. :)

No. It has to be glasses or embedded in retina. The watch has the same problem as the phone: if you are walking and looking at it, you are not looking at the world. Pokemon Go shows that clearly: you are much more likely to run into people and trees and whatever because you are looking at the phone while walking and not looking where you are going. It's a very very crappy substitute for augmented reality. We will get there though. Hopefully 5-10 years.

Somewhat OT: I agree that augmented reality will be huge at some point. I think Google was stupid to abandon Glass (even though I won a prediction I made couple years ago that Glass won't be a huge replacement for mobile phones - Glass bulls just piled on me when I made it). I think Microsoft is making the same mistake by (mostly) abandoning Kinect. They should have tried to improve it and push it much more instead of just rolling over. I think Pokemon Go is a fad, but it will depend a lot on the company. They might be able to make it Warcraft level success if they make it fun and attractive long term. Right now I think it's somewhat bleh, though I might be wrong demographics: e.g. I start it when I go for a walk, but I won't go out of my way to get to a Pokegym (and it told me that I am too low level anyway... :'( ). The fact that some Pokemons show spawned on private property kinda concerns me: is this invitation to get on my lawn? :o Also if this becomes hugely pay to win, that could make it crash too (although it will make bunch of money in the meantime).

https://lorenshapiro.villagemtg.com/ - this is the guy I got my mortgages from. No clue if he does non-MA.

The version is 0.29, but that may not mean much. Versioning philosophy differs a lot in different companies. And one company's beta is sometimes ten times better than other company's gold release.

I convinced myself into buying in. Where do I turn in my value investing card? I think there's a rule against buying a stock 50% past your initial entry point. Hah, see my post on SBUX thread on the trendsetting. The big Q for you or anyone is whether Pokemon Go is a fad for a week (month) or if it can revitalize the brand, the company, etc. I would say it's a fad. Ez come, ez go. But that's just me - and I am not a good trendspotter. NTDOY might still do well even if it's a fad, but expect a huge leave of short term speculators and disappointed Peter Lynch wannabes if the popularity starts dropping.

I got my last N mortgages through a single mortgage broker guy. I pretty much always took 30y no points no fees, which gives a bit higher rate, but then you refi again at no points no fees when rate drops .5 or more. So ended up at 3.5% and sitting there. Not sure if rates ever got to 3.0% 30y no points no fees. Perhaps I should ping the guy to check. ;) Edit: I don't see rates at 3.0% right now. Should keep it in mind - maybe we'll drop there.

Hah, almost bought on Friday for da shizz. Got dissuaded by crappy app and the fact that I did not like the company number-wise much. Decided not to "speculate". ::)

I think I'll beat you on this one Picasso. ;) Nineties. Possibly 1996 or so. A friend who I knew was great trendspotter was visiting in So Cal. Said, "we should go to Starbucks, it's the place". Shoulda bought then and there. In reality, never bought it. Lessons? If you have friends who are really good at trendspotting in early stages, hang on to them for your life. Listen, buy and get rich. I'm not a trendspotter.

You have little control of who your lender ultimately is. Your mortgage can be sold at any moment to anyone. Sure, some lenders are more likely to retain mortgage, but overall there's no guarantee. My mortgage got transferred (sold?) two or three times in the last five years.

Yeah, looks like they fixed some stuff. And they added the first (?) pokemon to whatever location you start the app at.

Downloaded Pokemon Go app, it has problems getting GPS (maybe because I'm indoors) and then goes into "Our servers are experiencing issues. Please come back later..." with elevator muzak and no exit button. Great app quality control guys! (I have oldish Nexus 4, so it also might be my phone, but still...) I heard people from one of my MMO guilds talking about playing P-Go yesterday. Might be a hit, but who knows. Edit: Took a look at Google Play store. Has 100K downloads shield. Rating is 3.6 out of 5 now. Recent reviews are 1-2 stars: people can't connect, bitching about no battle mode and pay-to-win. It's bad if company misjudges the demand and pisses off people when they are on the wave of free publicity. :/

What oddball said. +1. Also, it might be harder to judge branch numbers in big suburbia, but I think in our area it's stable to going down a bit. Consistent with oddball's national numbers. Edit: I don't know why there would be huge branch growth in your small city. Some kind of local bank competitive war?

I think ratiman's scenario is what EXOSF investors have to worry about. FCAU investors might be able to sell out before the next big downturn hits. Maybe. If ducks line up. Of course there are more positive scenarios.

goldfinger may not like what I post, but anyway just to clarify: I don't own FCAU, I don't care about the short term market price movements of FCAU. I don't plan to buy it. I own some EXOSF. I don't particularly like being a part owner of FCAU through EXOSF. I like Sergio, but I think that he has tough business to work in. <Insert Buffett quote about great management and crappy business here>. I look at this at very high level. Bulls might be right and Sergio might be able to line up all the rabbits in line perfectly. But I'd rather EXOSF had a more moaty company as a huge long-term holding. Even if rabbits line up, I'm not sure the exit will be great. In some sense, my hands are more tied than FCAU bull holders: bulls can sell if market runs up FCAU on whatever reason; I will only get good returns if company does well long term or if EXOSF sells it. And, yeah, it's very unfair comparison, so sorry guys, but I hope we don't end up with SHLD-like situation long-term. And, yeah, I am aware of the track record, the plans, the product changes/focuses, the "hidden" values in parts/services, etc. Have fun