Jurgis

Google translate is still pretty crappy: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wertpapier-forum.de%2Ftopic%2F42436-bollore%2Fpage__st__40&edit-text=&act=url Some pieces are understandable, but some sentences make pretty much no sense. :( Considering this is one of the most researched, most data-collected and one of the easiest language pairs (English-German), the quality makes me rather sad. :( Thanks for the link anyways. 8)

In this particular case, it seems only someone with medical experience could have done DD and pushed for answers. Likely medical skeptics either did not make it into the board or were silenced. I doubt someone outside the field like Richard Kovacevich (WFC) can do much unless they are already informed by whistle blower or skeptical expert and decide to push with that evidence. Theranos was not cooking financials, Theranos was cooking test results. And their defense to any questions was that the system was proprietary so they would not disclose any results/methods/comparative studies. This may have sounded OK to non medical people on the board, especially if inside medical people perpetuated the illusion too.

I was going to say that I don't think FCAU sold diesel cars in US (since diesels are not really popular in US and Volkswagen was an exception in selling diesels here), but apparently FCAU sells diesel trucks: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/09/30/how-chryslers-diesel-ram-is-helping-it-gain-on-for.aspx

I'm gonna regret this, but... - anybody who compares USA under Obama to Soviet Union or "socialist" block, has no clue about Soviet Union or socialist block. - applying a label of "socialism" to the countries as different as Denmark, Venezuela and Soviet Union makes no sense. It might be worthwhile to define the system in more detail than just throw labels. - the standard of living of most of the former "socialist" block did rise significantly after the regimes fell. Which is no way an indiction of Denmark's socialprograms. - some of the former "socialist" block countries are more or less screwed up by corruption, oligarchy and other screw-the-masses policies that are more related to the mindset of people living there than they are to free-market or social programs. In other words, arguing that Poland/Ukraine/Lithuania are doing great or doing badly based on just their "capitalism" quotient makes very little sense. - Edit: some of these Eastern European countries have some social programs that are in some ways better than the ones in US. (So does that make them "socialist" now? I wouldn't say). OTOH, these programs are often also broken in various ways, so, no it's not a paradise. Lucky for me, this site has an ignore list.

Credit card offers 12 month @ 2% - I did that in the past, but no longer do it. I only get offers that amount to less than 1% of my investments and you have to be sure not to use that card for anything else, since payments go to the "0% cash advance" first, so you'll be paying interest on purchases if you use the card for something else. BTW, I also keep in bank (cash) way more than 1% of my investable amount. So I could "borrow" from myself more than 1% than the credit cards offer and not pay 2% at all. ;) So in short cc offers not worth it for me anymore.

Home mortgages are probably the best way to go about this. They do not care what your securities trade at. The dumbest things that I've heard are "MLPs yield 6%,let's borrow at 1% and lever it 2-3x." If you think you're sitting on companies trading at 50-60 cents on the dollar, then yeah, it makes sense to lock into 30 years fixed with no mark to market risk. The overall concept of leverage just doesn't sit well with me. So, I try to avoid it in general. Yeah, I'm not gaga about leverage either. But ... if someone offered me 10-100 year 2% with no collateral adjustments, I'd take as much as I could. :) For some reason, nobody does. ;) Mortgages: 30 year fixed at 3.5% is still an option on inflation. If we get inflation and rates adjust way higher, then it's an asset and not a liability. Now, 30 year at 3.5% is not at 2%, so I'm less interested to take as much as I could. Plus it also comes with a house attached to it, so ... FWIW and all that.

Won't we all. ;D I'd prefer to issue 99 year bonds at 0%. But that's just me. 8)

Mortgage or HELOC is the closest you can get to non-recourse (possibly not) and long term and still not 1-2%. For small percentages of portfolio, yeah, I guess IB margin.

I see. You mean coal business prospects, I assume. Since PDER is currently (much) more than coal. OK, thanks.

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Regarding class actions, you don't need to email anyone, you don't need to join the lawsuits at this point in time. The lawsuits will go ahead anyway and you will get whatever they manage to squeeze out of the company. At some point in the (distant) future, you will get a form that will tell you that settlement has been reached, you need to provide info and you'll get couple bucks back. Disclaimer: Not a ZINC holder, not a lawyer. Have had stocks with class actions and received various settlements through years.

I wonder what the story is with these filings. It's possible that there's a large (?) part of the fund that is in investments that don't need to be in the filing. So possibly we only see the rather irrelevant piece of the iceberg. Anyone on the inside who knows more about the fund and whether we are seeing a reasonably big part of it? Is there a large part in cash, non US securities, private assets, etc?

+1 on what glorysk87 said. I know too many programmers who are intelligent and can read code, but can't make good investment decisions for the life of them. And that's also assuming that you don't get majority that votes to funnel money into related party corps - which is very likely.

Be careful what you wish for. Of course his rants were marketing strategy. But his "principles" in general election will also be a marketing strategy. Republicans fell for the populist demagoguery marketing. Will Democrats fall for it too? News at 11. 8) Trump has no principles except for "I am Trump and I do and say whatever I want" principle. But then I'd rather Reps nominate Trump than Christian right ideologue like Cruz. So ... mission accomplished! 8) Let them eat cake!

That looks correct. Whether it's a meaningful ratio in case of LBTYA is not clear. Don't expect tons of FCF from this company. People probably value this based on EBITDA... Though I agree that with EV or IC in the ratios, this won't look cheap.

If you pay 27-42% on gains and you pay nothing on unrealized gains, then hold forever is pretty much the only way to go. There is no way you can generate enough alpha to outweigh losing 27-42% of your gains every time you sell if you sell more often that once in 3 years or so. -------------- Below is my personal US only situation. Fortunately or unfortunately, most of my money is in IRAs/401(k)s, so I get no tax hits from selling. In taxable account, I haven't sold anything for ages except for stock donations to charities which allow me to get higher bang on the buck for appreciated stock.

You might be totally right in what you wrote and I guess I never listened to the details of his secretary's example. But I always thought that the example was that he was not paying taxes because his income was cap gains (or untaxed unrealized cap gains) while the secretary's income was salary. That makes sense as an example and does raise the issue of cap gains taxes (which is another can of worms). You might be right though and maybe the example people have in mind is distorted from what he said. Peace.

Assuming Apple does not have great ideas for new products that would move the needle, perhaps they should become a VC company. Of course this would make the heads of Apple faithful explode and perhaps Tim is not the right person for it, but that would be one way to productively use the cash they have. Possibly better than let it sit on the balance sheet and possibly better than paying 30% to repatriate and buy-back-shares. Although if stock drops another 10-20%, I'd say repatriate and buy back shit ton. Disclosure: I have a large position in AAPL, which by itself means "sell, sell, sell and then short some more" 8)

Possibly OT. In the past, there have been places and times, countries and cultures that had some mix of progressive egalitarian, religious, democratic, trade/economy libertarian parts. And then usually counter-reforms came that squashed the good things into the ground. I wonder if we are living in one of these temporary times or if we have passed a point of no return and the counter-reforms have no chance. Let's hope it's the latter.

Seen that in the past. The guy is a cookoo.

Pretty good paper. Surprising there was no comments on it.

;D ;D ;D

How good are these predictions in general though? (No, I don't have a prediction of my own :) )

Copying Q1 letter from Fannie thread: http://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Pershing-Square-1Q2016-Investor-Letter_May-11-2016_PSH-1.pdf VRX screw up is still reverberating through PSH portfolio. Ackman sold a bunch of ZTS, MDLZ, CP probably at least partially to deal with losses on VRX options. If not for VRX, the quarter would have been crappy, with VRX it was horrible. Assuming previously mentioned option positions, future is probably gonna continue to be volatile (see 10% gain in April... and VRX current price). Disclosure: I still have some PSH.

I agree with Barron's stance that hiring Joe Papa under the new contract is pretty much replacing Mike Pearson with ... Mike Pearson. Instead of one CEO incentivized to squeeze profits in any conceivable way, you get another CEO incentivized the same and with past history of the same behavior. Not saying that the new Mike Pearson will necessarily do badly. But caveat investor. ;)