Jurgis

20% over book is pretty clearly because of the people who run this. And this can persist long time. Compare to BOMN. I wonder how successful they gonna be in acquiring good business(es). So far the track of such companies is not very good. Partially because prices of good businesses are high. (See BOMN again). I'd probably buy a tracking position, but this is a PFIC now and I don't have tax deferred account with direct access to London. Anyone knows if EVREF is a ticker for this co or old ticker for some other company called this name? BTW, racemize is the best at running these experiments, but here's something I did on a napkin: Assume 10 years investment. Assume you either buy this at 1.2 book or a Buffett partnership fee structure (0%, 25% >6%) at 1 book. Assume 10%/15%/20% annual ROE/returns with P/B going to 1 at the 10th year. This underperforms at 10%, ties at 15%, outperforms at 20%. Since I'd say it's unlikely to return >15%, investor is better off buying a Buffett partnership fee structure investment. ;) However, if this acquires a good business, the P/B is unlikely to go to 1, so there's that. 8)

OT: I think Wait-But-Why had an interesting post about calculating maximums of things you can do before you die. Even assuming pretty generous numbers, the total number of books you can read before you die is not that high. Seriously crimps bookworm aspirations... I am sure I currently have more books than I'll be able to read before I die. Unless immortality happens on schedule. Go singularity!

AAPL might not be cheap on the absolute level anymore, especially if you assume steady or declining sales/profits. If sales/profits grow, then it might do OK from current price. For tax deferred accounts, I am not sure if it's worth selling although I can see the reason why people would sell. For taxable accounts - and for BRK - IMO selling creates a huge tax headwind for performance. If we talk about taxable accounts, I totally understand Buffett's suggestion to never sell, since taxes are gonna handicap you a lot making it so much harder to outperform. So BRK should definitely not sell AAPL (oh wait Todd or Ted sold already, so too late 8) ). (BTW, similar headwind applies to people who invest into funds with Buffett-partnership fee model. Actually it's like paying tax every year...)

Once all these guys remove their content from Netflix we gonna be back to the balkanized cable channel universe where you have to sub to 5+ services to see everything you want. :'( I guess the only positive is that you can sub for couple months, binge watch, then unsub, then repeat.

An interesting exercise might be: assume you get RenTech return but not compounded. Assume you then invest it 60/40 index/bonds or whatever. Are you better off than investing in BRK 10/20 years ago? What if 100/0 index? Not sure if there's enough data to model this.

Sell the appt, buy a house next to Buffett in Omaha. Problem solved. 8) Although you might have complaints about McDs food wrappers being tossed on the sidewalk. And crowds of starry eyed fans once a year. ::)

Saudis should have paid $420. Might have been better investment than the Vision Fund. ;)

I sold half of my supertiny position of warrants on the meltup. Beer money. I think making beer in space is a way to go (up). Maybe SPCE should buy TAP. Someone tap Sir Richard?

Cigarbutt, Thanks for your elaboration and comments on epidural product.

Berkshire. ;)

I have no clue why I was mentioned in this. ::) I agree that Caesarean (sic) section probably should be used less often. But I'm not a woman, so it's mostly not for me to say. I'm all for uterine replicators (cf. Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan universe: https://adanewmedia.org/2013/11/issue3-baker/ - MAJOR SPOILERS for people who haven't read the books; disclosure: I have not read through that article to the end ::) ). In related area, I've recently looked at https://www.lumoptik.com/ as an angel investment. All the usual disclaimers: not a solicitation to buy/sell securities, I am not invested and currently have no financial interest in the company.

For US based investors, there are two questions: 1. Is foreign dividend qualified? 2. Is foreign tax withheld? Based on the answers to these questions, the best you can do: 1. No 2. No. - hold in tax deferred account. Holding in regular account will result in US marginal tax rate. 1. Yes 2. No. - hold in tax deferred account. Holding in regular account will result in US qualified dividend tax rate. 1. No 2. Yes. - hold in taxable account if withholding rate is > marginal tax rate (unlikely?); you pay (lose) marginal tax rate. Otherwise hold in tax deferred account; you pay (lose) withholding rate. 1. Yes 2. Yes. - hold in taxable account if withholding rate is > qualified dividend tax rate (likely); you pay qualified dividend tax rate. Otherwise hold in tax deferred account; you pay (lose) withholding rate. However, since OP is not based in US, this does not help them. It will depend on the laws of their country, which can have all kind of special situations/treatments. In general, you just account for the tax you have to pay and invest accordingly. Also like Writser says unless you are relying on income from divvies, the tax slippage might not be large to be concerned about. Yeah, I have held securities with 1. Yes 2. Yes in tax deferred accounts and lost >20% withholding tax to foreign withholding. However, let's say you have a stock that you might sell at 50% realized gain that also pays 6% divvie. So even at long term realized gain tax rate, you will lose more by holding this in taxable account and paying tax on realized gain than what you lose by foreign country withholding 20% of the divvie. So... 8) Yeah, I know, things get complicated if you hold long, you lose divvie withholding every year, but would not sell the stock for 20 years, etc. Honestly, though the bigger loss might be from holding losing stock in tax deferred account and not being able to take tax loss on its sale... but then you should not buy stocks that go down... 8)

$50 after all fees and taxes and that being non-promotional pricing? Who's your provider? I am paying $80 for 20MB/s non-promotional with fees/taxes. And the cheapest 12 months promotional is $39.99 which goes up to undisclosed sum after 12 months AND that's before fees/taxes. (Edit: I see there is currently one $29.99 promo offer that was not there last time I looked. That might go to $50 non-promo before taxes, who knows.)

IMO Writser is currently the best investor on CoBF. 8) - He is consistently outperforming. - He has a clear repeatable process. - He posts his ideas with clear exposition of pros/cons. - He is mostly open about his picks/buys/sells even though some of them are low liquidity. - It is possible to follow his process without missing significant parts of his portfolio. - It is clear why his process and his picks can/should outperform. - His picks are not market correlated and not momo or hedge-fund or value-investing hotels. - His portfolio is diversified and not concentrated into few picks that can blow up. If I was forced to read posts of one person only, I'd pick Writser. Even though I don't invest like him and I don't buy >90% of his picks. ::)

$100 in NYC or $50 elsewhere. I agree it’s an inevitable expense, like utilities. What really surprises me is the fact that people think they are being overcharged for high speed broadband and that it is expensive. I think this is just carryover from the days when cable was raping everyone, they are conditioned to believe that cable is always a rip-off. To me 60-80 bucks for 100-200 mbps, and all the utility that comes with it is a bargain. In my house you have at least 15-20 man hours of use on a weekday and much more than that on weekends or days off. Cable t.v was/is a rip-off (and it's mostly the content producers doing the the ripping off) but fixed broadband offers tremendous value imo. Because US broadband pricing is a rip off compared to prices in most European countries. Even if you live in high density urban area in US. Edit: this is not perfect, but in case anyone wants data: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings?itemId=33

Oh boy. People think the Politics section is bad... No kidding. Somehow I don't think "buy low, sell high" is the optimal mental model for family members... I did not realize you could sell family members. Where do I sign up? How do you determine cost basis? How do you add the ongoing expenses to the cost basis to lower realized gains? Is the person sold treated as a capital asset or as a collectible? So many questions...

Announced here: http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-teaching-manifesto-invitation-to-my.html Classes are online and free. You can also get NYU certificate by paying and doing the coursework/exams. The classes look interesting. I'm not sure if I'll have time to follow any of them. If there are people taking/following these classes, we could create threads per class for discussion.

Crash in Iran: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/world/middleeast/iran-plane-crash-boeing-ukraine.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article Articles before the crash in Iran: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/24/business/boeing-737-max-survey.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/05/business/boeing-737-max.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/business/boeing-737-max-simulator-training.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article Boeing is (was?) planning spring relaunch.

If only they were. I cannot sell or buy ASFI anymore even though I just hold 100 shares worth $1000 .. Admittedly I had a larger position in the past but even then I wasn’t close to owning 1% which would be 65k shares - a position worth a few hundred k and three weeks of trading volume .. A bunch of CoBF people have previously tried to persuade me that IB is the best thing since the sliced bread. Now I'm gonna gloat and say "I told you so". 8) No, I'm gonna say: "Sorry you guys are having these issues". :'(

Rich investor problems, pffft. :P

But this shit is shizz, while the Politics thread is just crap.

I've seen pitch for this in our angel investing group: https://www.acurxpharma.com/ As I understand, this does not really address the general antibiotic resistance. Disclosure: I have no investment in this and I am not an expert in this area at all. Above info is just FYI for this discussion. 8)

https://smile.amazon.com/Good-Economics-Times-Abhijit-Banerjee-ebook/dp/B07PCQLKSS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1RKDMPAS35SJS&keywords=good+economics+for+hard+times&qid=1578265963&smid=A1GIOTVGZB41OC&sprefix=good+eco%2Caps%2C181&sr=8-1 A book by 2019 Economics Nobel Prize winners. I read through the intro chapters and bought it. Kindle version on sale for $4.99 today.

Kindle version on sale for $3.99 today.

Kindle version on sale $5.99 today.