Jurgis

vinod1 and KCLarkin

Maybe just read the context of the tweet... ::) Jurgis, I don't know what I would do without your sage advice.... If you'd done any actual work on this name then you'd know that per vehicle ASP has been dropping quarter after quarter. If you had read the two tweets before the one you quoted, maybe you would not conceive imaginary reasons for the tweet. But hey at least you do actual work on this name. Carry on.

Maybe just read the context of the tweet... ::)

One really interesting thing is: what's gonna happen when Earth's population levels off and starts declining? A lot of economic theories are based on growth and a lot of growth is based on population growth. Overcoming population drop drag is not going to be easy. Perpetual recession might be bearish exaggeration - we'll have to see. Unfortunately, we might see other drastic changes first, so we might not get to witness pure population crest without other confounding factors.

Since we are using poetic language: When driving, everyone driving faster than you (and cutting you off) is an a-hole. And everyone driving slower than you (and who you cut off) is a moron.

I think that the two sides are talking past each other mostly based on the put position sizing (which acts like leverage). If you position size so that put+cash ~= stock position if put-to, you have lowish risk but also lowish return on total amount. IMO that's where pro-this-strategy-people's "low risk" comes from - but they forget "low return". If you position size that put(s) are >> cash if put-to, then you have high risk and high return (before you blow up). IMO that's where pro-this-strategy-people's "high return" and against-this-strategy-people's "high risk" comes from. If you're expert like boilermaker75, you might be able to position somewhere in the middle of two without burning and by adding some return to your portfolio. But likely it's not as trivial as pro-this-strategy-people make it out to be.

IMO Mohnish's investment approach constantly changes. A lot of what he says/said it not necessarily what you see in his holdings/investments. You can take this as positive or negative (<-- there have been enough threads about Mohnish on CoBF and there's likely no need to rehash them).

You said "credit cards" twice now. Please tell what non-big-bank CCs have any penetration. That Goldman Sachs Apple card does not count really. 8) Discover, Amex are non- bank offerings. To be fair, this one went more towards the banks, because CC vendors benefit from cheap and stable funding. Whether this remains this way, is another question. Actually, they are both bank offerings ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discover_Financial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Express#Individual_banking ). But I've answered similar comment above.

I'm successfully battling the onset of dementia by applying my brain to figure out what Spekulatius' speech-to-text errors really meant. Suggested mental exercise for everyone. AA+++ 8)

I'm not gonna spend time on this, so feel free to ignore. Aren't there circular holdings between ODET and BOL, so that ODET holds BOL and then (some sub of) BOL holds ODET in turn? I seem to remember this. Are you guys accounting for this and how? It seemed that this made valuation not so trivial as some posts above imply. Maybe this was unwound at some point, not sure. Disclosure: no position and no interest in position.

https://www.wired.com/story/why-are-rich-people-so-mean/?itm_campaign=BottomRelatedStories_Sections_2 A bit muddled article, but IMO with some food for thought and relevance to CoBF. 8)

You said "credit cards" twice now. Please tell what non-big-bank CCs have any penetration. That Goldman Sachs Apple card does not count really. 8) These all are "big banks" for me. Edit: but you are right, this thread is not very well defined. Spek starts with talking about both big banks and small banks. He also talks about brokers taking bank business, but some of the banks own brokers and some of the brokers are banks more or less. So it's not clear if the claims are that just big banks will lose market X (mortgages, CCs, whatever) or whether both big and small banks will lose it, or whether "lose it" is overall applicable if business goes from a bank to a bank-like company like Cap One or AmEx or DFS or Schwab or E-Trade or ???. Is it about "classic" banks losing to really-not-bank-fintech companies? Or Spek's "mortgage broker" example - that example is mostly broken, since "mortgage broker" mostly sells the mortgages to big - or not so big - banks. My mortgages were sold to Chase, BAC, Webster, but also the "not-very-bank-but-also-not-new-fintech" companies like Nationstar. So overall, I think claims in the thread are pretty washed out and not consistent. 8) If the thread is just about the SuperBig (JPM, BAC, C and WFC) losing to any-other-companies (smaller banks, broker-banks, non-banks, techs, etc), then I don't see that either. I can argue that SuperBig won't grow very fast, but that's kinda tautology because they are so big and their growth is mostly limited by size and regulations. I don't think they are melting ice cubes though. So unlikely to be value traps based on that. Unless you'd call anything that returns a single digit return a value trap. 8)

You said "credit cards" twice now. Please tell what non-big-bank CCs have any penetration. That Goldman Sachs Apple card does not count really. 8)

Morgan must be familiar with Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns (https://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns). I'd be curious why he doesn't recognize accelerating technological change (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change) as the *single* most important force? Thanks. Do you believe in accelerating technological change / singularity? I think there are significant criticisms including but not limited to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change#Criticisms (Additional ones are slowdown/end of Moore's law which may in turn lead to slowdown/limited AI progress; very little progress with space exploration; very little progress with longevity/disease eradication; very little progress with air transportation. Though there are counter counter arguments too 8) )

Somehow I did not see any of that value flow when I owned LGF. Or while I still own DISCA. ::)

Had to call Gekko today to resolve a question about billing. Pretty good experience once I got past the automated "you can use website and mobile app to solve the issue which is not solvable on website or mobile app" system. Gekko tried to upsell me on homeowner's insurance, but it sucks since they don't write that and they are just selling 3rd party insurance. I'd buy it if it was Gekko directly, but 3rd party just introduces additional unneeded layer, so no. Write your own homeowners insurance guys. 8)

Bing has a reward program. I use it (both reward program and Bing). It's not $200M.

My data is worth ... 200M dollars! ... and that's excluding d!ck pics ... so theoretically speaking Sanjeev could sell CoBF data and become $$$ RICH! 8)

Great observations. 8)

Quite deep and insightful post. Thanks. 8)

I still welcome our new robot overlords: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/18/boston-dynamics-latest-video-shows-herd-robotic-dogs-hauling-massive-truck-with-ease/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/25/three-years-ago-he-could-barely-walk-now-atlas-humanoid-robot-is-doing-gymnastics/ (Perhaps Masa should replace Neumann with Atlas ::) )

I have no clue about CAOX, but referring back to water situation in 1969 in California is like referring to LA metro RE prices in 1969. 8) Water situation has gotten radically worse since then with lakes/rivers pretty much disappearing. A bunch of that stuff has been covered in CoBF threads on various CA agri/land/water cos. If I was invested in this name, I'd probably try to get more info than referring to 1969 and 100 year history. 8) Edit: on your side though Salinas River might be small enough be only directly impacted by climate vs other rivers/lakes that are also hugely impacted by upstream water drawing. But I don't know more than that. 8)

I think this one could go from $35B in valuation to bankruptcy in record speed. Someone twittered that with equity market closed, the bonds now start to get into trouble. Then there will be a cascade down to owners of RE too. You have got to admire Neumann here. He made hundred of millions with a total unviable business that didn’t even make it to the IPO. Almost made even more. Sometimes big balls can carry you far. 8)

Out of these three companies, I'd think running Visa would be the best job. But hey it's his life choices. 8)

ValueAct acquired 5.2% position (highlighted in this week's Barron's). Stock jumped a bit. I took a look at Morningstar numbers. The 10 year growth is impressive. The current FCF (including acquisitions) / EV is not that great. Since it seems from this thread that growth was acquisition driven, I'll probably pass. Just wanted to bump the thread anyway. 8)