Jurgis

You are overascribing godlike qualities to Mike while doing selective reading and interpretation of his writings. He wasn't God and he isn't.

100 shares is >5% of market cap you know. Just sayin'

Still >2x book. But now might be time to start thinking how much the book is understated. I haven't bought more, but I might add.

Or pick up some Oaktree Maybe I'd buy distressed bond fund run by Marks, however, I'm not sure I'd buy OAK. Asset manager is not the same as the underlying funds and IMO people make a fallacy when they buy one when they think that the other may do well.

Might be getting to be good time to pick HY bonds.

I started writing that I'd like to see one of their shops opened somewhere close to me. And then I went to their website and they pointed to Wegman's as the closest location to me. Hah, I did not know that the tea section in Wegman's was David's Tea. I saw it there and planned to buy some tea there, but did not yet. Sometime. :) Investment wise, this is tough. I see how people want this to be next Starbucks or at least next Teavana. And I think it has a chance to be next Teavana (I don't think it's the next Starbucks). But the risks are there too. Anecdotally, I don't see that many people who care about the tea quality to buy Teavana or David's. Most people just use crappy teabags. I do too mostly - I am not a connoisseur. Even among British and Indian crowds, I see mostly teabags. British buy their British teabags, Indians buy tea in Indian stores (might be looseleaf, not teabags, but not Teavana). I've seen looseleaf tea mostly amongst Chinese. But they buy it in Chinese stores or H-mart or online. Eastern Europeans: teabags or looseleaf tea from Russian stores. If anyone cares, my tea purchases are really eclectic: some teabags from various places (Russian stores, supermarkets, online, TJ Maxx), some looseleaf tea (Chinese stores, Russian stores, Teavana, TJ Maxx, H-mart). I tried presumably quality Pu-erh that I bought through Ebay, but I did not particularly like it. My current best in teabags is http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MQTVHC , looseleaf: one of Teavana's blends. Oh, and my wife bought 2 kilos of Yerba Mate and that has displaced a lot of tea from my future. :) So anyway, the fact that David's is in Wegman's helps: more people will see it and perhaps buy it. OTOH, almost no one will know that it's David's and they won't be hand-held by staff.

I'll ask Sanjeev for forgiveness for the following, since this might sound like a bear case, but I'll invert. So here are the reasons not to buy PDH: - Unproven money losing business - Listed on crappy exchange - Penny stock with huge number of shares outstanding (131M shares) - Half of shares above issued in last year - Part of business in China - Medical business might not be big enough for current capitalization and may require additional cash investments (and dilution?) to grow. - So so investments in new businesses through the year: - Russell Breweries is a company in quite competitive market - Sequant purchase - unproven business that may suffer in major cat years - Additional Sequant investment - paid higher share prices in still unproven business - Real estate investment in overheated Vancouver market To find the reasons to invest, you might try to invert and decide where the reasons to not invest are weak or no longer apply. Let's see if Sanjeev and his team knock some of these pins down in the upcoming annual report (or in next couple of years). 8) Peace.

So. :) Anyone want to do a startup/fund (or service ala oddballstock's https://www.completebankdata.com/ ) based on superforecasting? Get Philip Tetlock as a partner, potentially get his superforecasting team(s) (or build your own - from CoBF participants haha?), make predictions, ..., PROFIT! There are some organizational and methodological questions to be resolved, so this is not commodity-trivial (i.e. you might get competition, but not immediately and possibly not very competitive if you solve some of the issues well). Of course, if you go fund route, money raising would also be interesting challenge. If you go service route, then https://www.completebankdata.com/ might be a good blueprint on how to do it... Fund would probably do much better if this really works. Service is more inline with what Tetlock does now and perhaps easier to implement / get running. In best case, you could do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies 8)

Let me say "not much right now". This will certainly elicit a response. ;)

http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/pdh-premier-diagnostic-health-services/msg247559/#msg247559 ;) Most stockholders from USA do.

0.15 based on $.138 order is overstated IMO. I see approximately $.154 based on $.15 order that filled at $.148 or so. I don't have an exact CAD price at that moment, so there might or might not be currency slippage. YMMV though. If Schwab charges only $8 and does not do any hanky panky with orders, they might be better for this than Fido.

Theoretically: milk the cash cow then return capital to shareholders. If management is great capital allocator (haha), then buy other businesses from cash flow (see Berkshire haha). If management is not a great capital allocator, then divvie-and/or-share-buybacks (not getting into religious war here). In practice, most managements diworsify or spend cash on crap (or on themselves - but then I'm repeating myself ;D ) Weren't tobacco people one of the best in this? And even they bought some overpriced crap IIRC. Buffett (Berkshire haha) and Munger (DJCO) might be best at this. But obviously Buffett had other businesses and DJCO is study in progress ( I am not so sure it will ultimately end very well ).

"for now" is the key word. You risk that they do something very sleazy (bad, fraudulent, etc.) and the market still dumps it. Disclosure: no position, no interest in ACAS.

So the commission is approximately 10% due to the low share price. You would obviously get more value if the shares traded for a more typical share price -- $20 per share or something. But as discovered earlier in this thread, some shareholders just don't care because it doesn't affect them. I missed my chance to invest in the offering because it was hard enough getting a mortgage as it was -- I couldn't add to my holdings of illiquid stocks. It's not 10%. Assuming you buy 10K shares (you can get more with AoN, but you have to look at prices/order book), you are paying ~$60 commissions on 10K * $.15 = $1500. $60/$1500 = 4%. And Fido may or may not get you a bit better execution than $.15. If your limit order at $.15 fills at $.148, you just saved 1/3 of the commission. ;) Anyway, I agree with your other points somewhat. But this is really not about reverse split. It's about moving to TSX that Sanjeev promised as soon as practical.

That's correct.

IMO there's no way there's gonna be a political resolution before elections. IMHO government will also try to push any lawsuit progress out until after elections. How much they can succeed is a question to a lawyer (merkhet?). Just saying that don't expect a resolution before 2017 (or late 2016).

Right. My questions would be if these are enough for current valuation. And what are expected expenditures. BTW, the company structure looks ugly from the first glance. What's the certainty that shareholders get much (most?) of earnings? Disclaimer: just glanced at imgur and 10Q. No deep DD.

Joined. 8) I wish they had more business/economics questions. I'm definitely not an expert in world affairs and I'm not sure I'd become a better investor if I try to predict political events. 8) We'll see how this works out. 8)

I sold some o&g holdings yesterday/today, so probably we are. Unfortunately, I also bought some, so... possibly not. 8) Overall, my current holdings are down 50% on the prices paid. That includes all gains/losses/divvies/interest/etc since I started buying ~Jan 2015 (one position is way older, but that's immaterial). I don't count losses on somewhat-oil-related stocks (e.g. CFX, etc.).

Also kinda sucks that depending on whether your broker manages to get you half-cent better execution that's immediate 2.5% win or potential 2.5% lost opportunity. It's even worse for US prices that are at around 14 cents. Don't say "use limit orders". I am talking about executions that are better-than-limit. Also hard to get good executions with X0000 all-or-none orders .

This is correct. Especially if you talk something less than couple years time frame.

Too hard pile: - Accounting for long term contracts and how they will work out. Possible caveats (but I did not look into them because of the "too hard"): - CEO is well regarded, but from another industry. He may not be great/cognizant the complexities of contracts in this industry. He may mess up. - Bad cost control? - Price pushes from customers? - Cyclical top?

If I did not have oil co positions, I'd be filled with hubris that my 11 month returns are better than theirs. Now, not so much. 8) Peace.

Some of them are. All of them? Not really. There are bunch of oil cos with great balance sheets. They are also not cheap though. It will all depend on oil production decline. On days like today, you'd think production decline will never come. But it will. And not only from shale. Demand is also going to grow absent global recession. Sure if USA goes into recession + China/etc continue to disappoint, then yeah, oil can go to $20. There are no guarantees.

You can look at the profile of most recent hydrocarbon discoveries and wells. Apart from expensive oil sands, most of them are nat gas rich. For all of the claims of shale oil overcapacity, we've been swimming in shale gas for years. Heck, nat gas is still being flared in some places since it's not economic to capture/transport/sell. It is very unlikely that nat gas can recover significantly without oil recovery. Even if oil recovers, nat gas likely won't. The only argument for nat gas is local inefficiencies - if you could buy a company that does shale gas in nat gas importing area (assuming no country risk, exploration risk, regulation risk), you might do well. Also nat gas might swing a lot based on winter temperatures, since a large portion is used for heating. But that wouldn't be a secular swing. LNG even if it delivers will just drive global prices to the bottom that we currently see in nat gas rich areas. E.g. Russia is not going to just roll over and stop selling nat gas if Europe gets cheaper LNG. It will just lower the price to compete. Oil is much more likely to go up when/if big projects get delayed/mothballed/cancelled. Its demand is also based on transportation and not energy/heating. So if China/India/etc. continues to drive more, the demand goes up. If China/India/etc. consumes more heating/electricity, that's split between nuclear/coal/solar with only part being nat gas. With all that said, there might be some nat gas companies that will do OKish. Caveat: I'm almost ready to throw in the towel on both oil and natgas. Sign of the bottom perhaps. ;)