Jurgis

IIRC (maybe Musk said that), despite of "reuse" shuttles had huge "repreparation" cost between flights pretty much negating the reuse argument. I don't have specifics. Someone can Bing it I'm sure.

Sorry, general question: is there a way for US investors to buy Canadian prefs and avoid taxation of divvies? Fido only allows international securities in non-retirement accounts and then you have to pay taxes on divvies. And if you get them in retirement accounts (through IB?), wouldn't Canada charge taxes on divvies then?

You know that you can access Barron's articles (as well as WSJ) through Google backdoor, yes?

I know the series. (IMO, his Landover series are much better though - Shannara starts like a total Tolkien ripoff, gets better a bit later...) I wonder though if this is based on real info about Mike or if Hollywood threw this in as another nerd cliche... ::)

Circular reference. ???

Can you explain what that page is trying to say? Sorry, but I don't understand what their point is. Edit: the way I read the last paragraph of the post is that even if Picanol benefits a bit vs. Tessenderlo, it's really marginal.

Half year report today: http://hsprod.investis.com/servlet/HsPublic?context=ir.access&ir_option=RNS_NEWS&item=2301477552914432&ir_client_id=319 Positive: they are still profitable Negative: both sales and margins dropping. OCF 2M, Capex/acquisitions 11M 2016/2017 outlook negative. Question: what exactly did they spend 3.5M of cash for "intangible assets" on? There's no explanation except for "intangible assets were increased by £3,500,000". ??? Stock down 10% today. I have not added.

Hmm, I see a number of ways this could blow up. Disclaimer: I don't short.

BTW, it seems that Tetlock thinks that even superforecasters can't outperform indexes in highly liquid (efficient?) markets: Footnote 10 in chapter 8: "... even superforecasters won't be able to beat deep liquid markets in which many very smart and well-capitalized traders are relentlessly second-guessing each other". He does say though "That proposition has never been tested, but (sic) superforecasters can outperform shallower and less liquid markets".

Where's the free beer? "Free beer tomorrow!" 8)

Theoretically any mutual fund can "have to shut down". If there is a run on it, they cannot do anything else except return money. Of course, for majority funds, significant number of holders don't sell even if fund underperforms/drops a lot. Now, Focused Credit had large illiquid positions. This exacerbates any run on the fund, since you can't sell these positions at any reasonable price to cover withdrawals. Think what happens if they buy distressed bond and it goes into default - liquidity may dry up until recap and prices offered may be 2-3x below purchase price even though eventual work out might be positive. I think Marty's funds played with this in the past too. They never got burned on it until now though. Like someone said on another thread, Focused Credit should have been a CEF or limited-withdrawal hedge fund. In case of panic, this does not work as a mutual fund. It's also possible that their investments were simply bad and the run was justified. We may not know in the end.

I've heard about this pub that had an ad in the window saying "Free beer tomorrow!" Same thing?

Happens a lot pre/post-market especially on illiquid stocks. Usually not 100X though lol.

Considering that >50% of the drivers (myself included) would not be able to change the tire even on regular car (and like Picasso said it's harder on Tesla), what's the issue?

Browsed through Fido's corporate bond list at least B3/B-, yield >15%. It's all the usual suspects: CHK, X, some other energy, coal, steel, mining names. Nothing very interesting. Maybe ATW - I did not realize they have levered themselves so much at the top of the cycle.

Lolz. I have to schedule a non-emergency physical month in advance. And it will be 15 minutes max with the doc (blood tests are the same day though). So let's not start bragging about US healthcare. Your NH doctor is sitting in the office twiddling his thumbs waiting for you to show up?

No, but it's a gas! 8) ;D :D

I decided that I will make a Brier-scorable shorter than 1 year forecast related to the stock every time I buy or sell a stock. Will figure out how to score adjusted forecasts. Will evaluate Brier score results in 2-3 years. This is not very scientific, since Brier scores are interesting mostly across forecasters. I.e. you may think that you have a great Brier score if you score softball questions. But if you compared it against other people you might discover that it's actually crappy. This is not something that I can solve if I'm the only one making forecast. But perhaps some info is better than no info. Will keep posted on the thread once in a while.

Thanks. SA article for future review and thinking: http://seekingalpha.com/article/3753506-high-yield-carnage-and-closed-end-funds Tickers for search: DHF, PHK (still trading at premium? :o ), PHT.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. 8)

Jurgis, I'd be grateful and interested to hear more of your thoughts on MCB and specifically, your main criticisms of him. Thanks in advance. G. I don't have any direct criticisms about Mike's investments offhand. He did great in the past and I wish him well in the future (though obviously he could just sit happily on the pile of money he made and do nothing). I just object his deification. In particular, commodity pricing could be explained by cyclical (or supercyclical for hyperbole inclined) nature: China growth drove up demand, demand drove up pricing, a lot of projects to increase production are/were multiyear, then they come online when China is slowing, etc. Sure, there is also some fiscal, monetary, currency effects too, but that doesn't mean that a paragraph from Burry predicted yet another 100 year flood or something. I have some objections towards some thoughts and sentiments he expressed post crash. But he is entitled to his opinions - and he paid dearly for them - so I don't see a point to return to them. :) Finally, my direct interactions with Mike are now more than 10 years ago. He was nice and smart guy, though I'd say CoBF has people who seem as smart as him or smarter. And if he'd be on CoBF, he'd probably wouldn't be treated as a prophet (if we exclude hindsight bias). ;) In the end though it's the investment results that matter and not our posts on SI or CoBF. 8) Take care.

And you think BRK is at $130 why? Newsflash: BRK is at $130 exactly because its investments and its businesses are not doing so well lately. Is all the negative information already reflected in the price? Maybe, maybe not. You'll never know. What is exactly the point of ? Of course there is. BRK went to $125 this year, so within 4% of $120. Does this mean that we should sell BRK and wait to rebuy at $120? Just hold cash until it gets to $120? Buy something else? I don't find such prognostications helpful. At least if you do it, do it the superforecaster way and give the time frame + probabilities. Otherwise, it's like talking heads on TV - they are always right, since they never specify probabilities or timeframes. Take care

8)

WSJ article is a piece of crap. However, somehow this thread never complains about crappy pro-hedgie articles like the NYT piece. The definition of "fair and balanced" reporting is the reporting that supports your stock positions. I knew that.

Perhaps we should start another topic for this, but for now here it goes. I own some distressed oil bonds. I am looking for more opportunities in this space, but clearly the cheapest ones are quite risky and the better quality ones are mostly expensive. I hold some CHK, DNR, X. Looked briefly at FCX, AAUKY. Probably I should spend some time on a screener to see if something interesting pops up. I'd be interested to buy a good distressed bond fund, but that's the irony: Third Avenue Focused Credit fund was supposed to be such a fund. So now the risk is that the fund you buy won't survive the "volatility" of the high yield market, even though it could have come out with good return two-three years down the road. This seems to call for a set-duration special purpose hedge-like fund - which is probably what Howard Marks will run. I doubt I can get into these and the investment sizes are probably a bit too high for me. Individual distressed bonds also may have issuer recap risk. Even though the issuer might be fine to pay the interest and pay them off at par at maturity in couple of years, they can look at current distressed prices and decide opportunistically to recap them here and now without paying par. Anyway, I am interested in ideas, thoughts about both bonds and HY/distressed bond funds. Either on this thread or elsewhere.