Jurgis

Of course.

If you want "won't go BK" picks, NOV, DNOW are possible choices. GDWN.GB might fit the bill, though it's not only oil-affected, but also industry/steel affected AFAIK. Disclosure: I hold NOV and GDWN.GB

Exactly.

OK, fine, I give up. Chalk the bottom. I'm not gonna buy any oil related stocks anymore. I swear, cross my heart. :P .... I said "stocks" didn't I... that doesn't include options, bonds, prefs, nosir... 8)

You believe being early is the same thing as being wrong, Jurgis? Well if timeframe for prediction is not specified, it is just invalid prediction. It wouldn't be if he provided the time frame for his argument. And yet he - as most pundits - hides behind "it will happen at some point". So if I tell you that KO will disappear as a company, you'll consider me a prophet even though I'll have to repeat (probably for couple decades) that "oh shucks, I'm early, but I'm not wrong"?

LOL, no. It's always the guys (and gals, let's spread blame evenly) with cash who waste everyone's time in a line. Swype the card is way so much faster. I hate cash payers in line. Mobile phone payers can be pain too though. Technology is new, rather crap and doesn't work often. Same with mobile phone boarding passes in airport - they try to scan the damn thing, touch the screen, phone goes to some other app, 10 minutes later... :'(

Oh boy. Lots of great people. Would be great to be there, but I'll just buy some more BRK with my flight/hotel/etc. money instead. Have fun! ;D

Sure, and Peter Schiff has been performing terribly. But Dalio has generally performed in the pure Alpha funds no matter what the market environment is so it's probably worth listening to him, no? The man has been wrong before, but he didn't build a $160B hedge fund by being wrong often and letting it impair returns. Hah, in a rare occasion I'll agree with TwoCitiesCapital: Dalio knows what he does. The only risk to listening to him is that he runs a huge huge predictive operation and what he says is (a) oversimplification of what his team and machines churn out; (b) data & results might change and he won't tell you when it does. ;)

I don't think there's important difference between the two. Do you think there is? If they're creating the content it would imply to me that they have a superior creative team and a wider moat. I'd also think proprietary content would be cheaper and the returns higher on average than something acquired in a competitive bidding process. If they're able to leverage their distribution network to pay more than others that's still good, but with an increasing number of OTT apps, Amazon, HBO, etc that feels tougher to really achieve the margins that people expect. Same reason I'd pay more for Marvel, Disney / Pixar, etc than I would for a generic studio. No, I don't think they have inside-dedicated team. AFAIK, this is not how it works in movie business overall. Pixar and animation might be different, but for movies (and series I think) you pretty much hire people per movie (although there are some parts of teams that are insourced or chunk-outsourced to known entities). You might do contracts for multiple movies with star director or writer, but in general even Disney does it per movie for live action. Even if Disney owns "Star Wars" franchise, it doesn't mean that they have a dedicated team that will work on every "Star Wars" movie (and nothing else). It wouldn't work. Of course, there's even more complications with movie business organization and accounting, but that's likely irrelevant here. Netflix does try to snap up "superior creative teams" for their content. But they are per contract. How well this will work long term is unclear to me.

The article is mostly OK, but it's still MF click bait. Thanks for your honesty. I understand you guys have to do this. Doesn't mean I like it. ;) Take care.

I think the lesson in all of this is pretty clear: listen to your wives. "Happy wife, happy life!" 8)

Yeah, but is it losing that cash on current production? I'd guess it is - though I have not looked. It's likely it won't recover unless oil goes up (a lot?). Anyway, IMO there are tons of cheapish companies right now. But I don't think there's a lot of superbombed out companies ala 2009 yet. We'll see what others suggest.

I don't think there's important difference between the two. Do you think there is?

I thought that way too, until i watched the stuff. I can see a lot of potential for series with Marvel and DC comics content. Nearly every cinema title these studio have created were blockbusters, so its not some noname company creating some films. You have to be careful that this is not top of the wave. I remember time when Marvel the company was bankrupt (well, for a bunch of reasons) and then suddenly Marvel & DC is the golden calf of content and is being milked like there's no tomorrow. I don't know. Maybe you have another 10 years of this. IMO the superhero genre has jumped the shark at least couple years ago. I'd say getting 3rd rate superhero movies and series is sign of the top. "Superman vs. Batman", "Iron man vs. Captain America" also - remember "Alien vs Predator" and all that? But then I don't like superhero movies in general, so that's probably contrary opinion and you should go long all superhero companies available. ;)

???

A sign that market is down 10%+ and there's a panic in the streets: we are getting "cash is king" and "everyone should hold silver and gold" threads again. :-X

The problem with doing such is that some shoes aren't popular until later in their existence. The actors of Breaking Bad thought the show could potentially be canceled after the second season - it wasn't until season 3 that it really hit its stride and picked up a massive fan base and became a crowd favorite. OK. But this then becomes unsolvable problem of content companies: is the series XYZ just crap and should be cancelled or is it a diamond in the rough and should be nourished and polished? (BTW, I did not like or watch BB, but as I said my taste is not mainstream. I also don't know if your claim that they hit success in season 3 is right - I think shows don't get to season 3 without success.) I believe this is just an anecdote. HP books were huge success from book 1: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/820885.stm

The article is mostly OK, but it's still MF click bait.

LOL. You managed it quite well without it.

I have no position in NFLX apart 0.0001% of my portfolio that my wife bought when NFLX was 10x lower. So there ... a ten bagger that I can't even brag about and that made almost zero influence on my returns or wealth. ;) Sad story. ;) I would come to this from opposite direction. IMO there's way too many content companies and way too much content (I own shares in STRZA and DISCA plus LGF through them). IMHO, this is what NFLX can still exploit, is still exploiting and will continue exploiting until there is a massive consolidation and cuts in content companies. I.e. content companies still sell their content to NFLX for peanuts because they mostly have to: if they don't sell, competitors will; if they don't sell, they get zero for that content instead of NFLX peanuts, etc. Of course, some of them don't sell and froth from their collective mouths (see DISCA), but overall NFLX still kinda rules. There is a possibility that content consolidation and cuts won't happen: there are always rich people who want to produce content and bask in the glow, so the economics of content may be pushed down by that. I am much more skeptical about NFLX-made-content. Maybe they gonna be the golden boys of content. Looking at the history of film making, likely they won't. Studios/content companies usually drift from hits to mediocrity and back. Disney might be the only exception (some might argue that HBO are too, but I don't think so). Netflix has one weapon against other content companies - instant feedback how many viewers view something, how many stop watching, etc. - but they are not really using it so far. Most their deals (AFAIK) are old-fashioned "season" deals that make no sense for them. They could kill series mid-season based on feedback instead of being forced to make the whole season, but they don't seem to structure the deals that way. Now, going to anecdotal: we have NFLX streaming and NFLX DVD. I wanted to cut NFLX streaming, since we have Amazon Prime. I got overruled. So I guess so far NFLX is winning over Amazon. OTOH, I haven't watched (not interested pretty much) any NFLX content, but this is likely contrarian argument, since my taste is completely non-mainstream. I'd never cancel NFLX DVD(BluRay), since that's the only easy/good way to get newer and rarer content. Even with DVD(BluRay) some rare content is not there... they are not rebuying some older DVDs (bunch of anime series have holes - not available, for example). Not really an investment opinion. ;) Have fun guys.

Correct. Most trips would be round-trip, so chalk $50 of Uber/taxi fare per trip or so. 3 trips per week = $150. x 52 weeks = $7.8K per year. With cheapo $20K car lasting ~10 years (which it very likely will if you drive 3 trips per week), you are looking at car being much cheaper. Even if you put $1K per year on maintenance, $1K for insurance and account for fuel.

Another closet predictor with no record of such prediction. Nice to see you.

I'm not sure if we are in the reflexivity area with oil prices. If we are, then a V turnaround is more likely than if we are not. I have to say that current oil prices were not expected by most of the board (me included). I'll go on record predicting that WTI will go above US$50 sometime in 2016.

To be fair: investing is not a prediction. That's what Hussman tries to say, but then he fails on investing - and probably on predictions too. Or at least investing is not just a prediction. You can be wrong with your predictions (a lot) and yet position yourself so that the outcome of your predictions does not matter (much). Buffett does this when he predicts high inflation for the last 20+ years (I think), but positions himself that his prediction failure does not hurt him at all. That in a sense is the ultimate "margin of safety" or "heads I win, tails I don't lose much". Of course, people abuse these and apply them to situations which are anything but. I still think that separating the predictions out of your investment thesis is useful. And clearly predictions are key if you invest in prediction-heavy targets (such as junior oil&gas E&Ps, for example). Anyway, this is interesting thing to think about.

As one of the few who anticipated both the 2000-2002 and 2007-2009 collapses (and having shifted in 2003 to a constructive outlook in-between), what I thought the film [The Big Short] particularly got right was just how excruciating the wait was before the crisis unfolded, even for those who expected it (see, for example, my November 2007 weekly comment Critical Point). Though I don’t take leveraged positions in credit default swaps, or sell bank stocks short, even refusing to take equity market risk in the later stages of that bubble was excruciating enough. One had to suffer fools parroting things like “being early is the same thing as being wrong” until the collapse demonstrated that, actually no, it’s really not. The 2007-2009 collapse wiped out the entire total return of the S&P 500, in excess of risk-free Treasury bills, all the way back to June 1995. http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc160104.htm LOL. Yes, people rationalize their positions in a lot of ways. This is classic. Edit: Here are the returns of Mr. Great Predictor of Market Collapses: http://www.hussmanfunds.com/theFunds.html Average Annual Total Returns for periods ended 12/31/15 1 Year -8.40% 3 Year -7.84% 5 Year -7.01% 10 Year -3.67% Since Inception (07/24/00) 2.25% I will take SP500 any day of the week.