Jurgis

Bond market indexing makes much less sense overall compared to stock market indexing.

Charlie finally started flying corporate. Or Warren visiting Charlie (hmm, I could make sad inferences... :-\ ).

IMO you are way overoptimistic. I'd bet about 2:1 that BRK will return less than 15% annual in coming 10 years. (Not an actual bet ) But hey I'll happily take that 15% if it comes. Good luck

Thanks Hielko. Edit: degiro.eu is not available for Lithuanian residents (there are long discussions how to go around the limitation, but the workaround holes are pretty much plugged by now).

So you magically get 15% annualized return even though all parts you mentioned grow way less than that. ::) With huge simplifications, BRK is trading at ~11.6x your 2018 CFFO and you expect it to trade at 35x your 2028 CFFO in 2028. ::)

Looking for Europeans who have IB account for couple questions ( @writser? ): - Assuming a person opens IB account with smallish sum of money, buys couple stocks and does not trade from there on what monthly fee IB charges in Europe (Eurozone)? (In US I believe they charge monthly $10 for any account smaller than $100K. I need Euro-side info though). - How difficult it is to fund IB account from random EU country assuming you have EU bank account? Does IB give bank info to which you transfer money and you're funded? Someone from Lithuania wants to open a brokerage account with rather small amount of money. IB was advertised on CoBF as the best solution in Europe. ;D I am trying to gather info if they are economical for small accounts (not that other brokers are economical for small accounts either... :-\ ) Any other info/gotchas? Any info appreciated. We can move to general or PM if needed though I think this thread was used for IB-related info in the past. 8)

IMO Sequoia is still not a bad choice for someone who wants to buy a mutual. Might even do better than BRK depending on how/when next crash develops. Barron's highlights some interesting mutual funds once in a while. I sometimes make a note, but since I don't buy mutuals, I'd have to dig through to find the names.

Wow he looks so old... ... ... and I'm not talking about Warren... :-\

I haven't looked at this, just a comment about retention. If retention is 95% and they need 6 years before they start earning, they lose 23% of clients in those 6 years. ::)

I think I disagree with Damodaran. I think (especially tech) companies could invest way more into new businesses especially if they had reincarnated Steve Jobs as CEO. Clearly Alphabet does a fair share of it and could do even more. Other companies like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc could also do a lot more. There are couple of issues though: - What is the expected ROI? I'm pretty sure you can throw way more money into quantum computing, VR/AR, new drug modelling, building even better AI systems for existing and new domains, self driving cars, space, etc. But expected return is possibly not that high (if positive). And shareholders would likely be even more unhappy about funding moonshots than share buybacks. - People on CoBF hate money losing unicorn startups/IPOs, but that's likely more accommodating platforms for spending tons of money on questionable ROI projects. Even there there is certain conservatism unicorns/IPOs nonwithstanding. It's much easier to get startup/VC/Masa/IPO funding for multi-billion customer facing or B2B software businesses than, for example, quantum computing or compact nuclear reactor. - At least on the tech side, there's likely labor shortage. We already know about escalating salaries. It's quite possible that if you wanted to make another A-class team or expand your A-class team size 2x-10x in any areas above, you would just not be able to hire people. Edit: also that Musk fellow; and that Bezos fellow. Give them money if you really think there are no areas to innovate or grow businesses in. If Damodaran's "reincarnated Steve Jobs the next CEO" really means "CEO who can find overlooked low hanging fruit (yeah that) that everyone else missed and develop it into high ROI trillion dollar business within couple years", then I agree that this is unlikely. Steve Jobs or no Steve Jobs paradigm shifting breakthroughs like PC, mobile phone, smart phone, electric car, self-driving car happen maybe once in a decade at best.

Yes, Ergen pretty much bet on spectrum being expensive asset to flip at huge premium. I bought that story way back but got out when there was no progress. It's not clear DISH will ever reach positive endgame.

https://glintpay.com/en_us/help/interest-implications-gold-i-buy/

BTW, even with the help of Quicken, entering RSUs, ESPPs correctly is a pain. I sometimes just eyeball it. But then I don't use Quicken for my taxes. If I did, I'm not sure the RSU/ESPP info in it would be correct. More sure about ESPP, less sure about RSUs.

Go for 50%+ drop in 2020! 8)

Assuming sellers know about the tender, then sellers selling at discount ($5.60) expect the tender to be oversubscribed and the stock to drop much lower after tender. I don't follow CCNI so I can't say if the expectation that stock will drop after tender is rational. Clearly the expectation of oversubscription was wrong.

Is it a first mover? We've been ordering cat food and cat litter from Amazon for ages... Amazon has some 1st-party availability issues, but for the things it carries the prices are a bit cheaper than Chewy and shipping is free with Prime (vs $49 spend to get free shipping with Chewy).

Man, I am moving to Pittsburgh tomorrow today. ... ... Never mind. But oddball had me there for a while. 8) ./bow

Alternatively, you can hire outside SV (if that's where you are located). But that comes with it's own set of issues, so possibly not worth discussing unless you are considering it.

That's not how it works and I believe you know that that's not how it works. You have to build your network, you have to sell your vision, you and your startup should be attractive to such people. It's not a supergeeks-on-demand service, especially since we pretty much know zero about you or your startup. In the best case you should have had eye on the people who are good/great way before (co?)founding the startup and reached out to them now that you have the startup. You possibly should have participated in local tech scene (which might be small or huge depending on your location - and you probably need to be smart/selective/etc. if you're in SV where everyone's in tech haha). Is this easy? No. A lot of startup founders don't do it. But those who do it, IMO have a huge advantage. If you hire using standard big-company methods, then yes, you are at disadvantage especially in tech upturn/tight labor market. In general: don't sell salary and equity; don't sell the foosball and beer (if anyone still sells that lol); sell the vision, sell the product, sell the team. Yes, there are bunch of people who will go and work for less if the the vision/product/team is very attractive. But it's gonna be harder if you have to cold sell them through ads/hiring agencies/etc. You could post your sales/hiring pitch here. Not sure that would yield something, but it probably won't hurt. Unless you are very much into stealth mode and you don't want to do that. Then you could send it privately to whoever. Good luck.

The point is that even if Germans made the wires mouse-safe, they would still have had no gas to run the tanks... And if they had the gas, mice would not have been an issue. So focusing on minor gotcha obscures the actual big failure. Maybe the point of the story should have been: figure out the real big issue instead of focusing on a possibly minor thing that obscures the big issue. Like he says in the essay: Is that the real issue? Or is the issue that the company did not save/backup their stuff and now they have to recreate the work of last X months? If it's the latter, then focusing on water pipes is bad approach since the real issue is having full offsite backups and that's what needs to be dealt with. Edit: in other words, although “Things that have never happened before happen all the time.” and you cannot expect them, maybe you should prepare adequately for things that happen all the time. Like bad supply chains or inadequate backups. 8) Edit 2: Although "A founder had a mental breakdown" might be unexpectable ::), this belongs to a class of startup employee related problems that are very common and happen all the time: a founder is an ass and can't work with others; a founder cannot lead for crap; a founder cannot work with co-founder; a founder cannot fire his friend; a founder cannot stop hiring his friends; etc. Or even if you narrow it down: "A founder had a burn out; A founder had a health issue". Might be a better way to look at these in toto. Although I can't say that they are easily solvable even if you treat them as quite likely to happen... :-\

My impression is that wide moat companies like MSFT, as well as Big Tobacco have actually done very well after being subject to intense regulatory scrutiny. Ditto for the Ma Bell breakup. I was wondering if anyone could think of any counterexamples.... I disagree about MSFT. MSFT has done well post-Ballmer, but during/post lawsuit they did not do well and clearly were hamstrung in competing/monopolizing/growing/etc. Of course, like most things in real-world, we cannot compare what-if scenarios: would MSFT owned mobile? would it have killed Apple instead of saving it? Would it have bought or killed Google? And so on. How about the complete ban of Google/Facebook/etc in China? There were a lot of arguments how Qualcomm was hamstrung by GSM cabal - not sure if you'd count this as regulation, since this was both politics and competitors... Ah, how about Huawei? :P

Regarding your observations: yes. 8) Regarding your question: IBM? Old Ma Bell? MSFT? DVA?? with some interpretation of "regulation" - Fannie/Freddie? Asbestos? Do you include deregulation too? ;) There are probably additional examples of moaty companies hit by safety regulation, compensation/labor regulations, gambling/alcohol/etc prohibition(s)/restrictions (although Big Tobacco presumably did not suffer much).

Buuttt it reads good.... ;D I know what you mean. I did not know facts about this particular story, but I've had other situations where my reaction was similar to yours. People present causal relationships and "explanations" as if 100% proven even if they don't have all facts or the situation is more complicated and/or if all the relevant info is not known or taken into account. But hey, it's the stories that sell or make a person writing them feel good/like an expert. Thanks for your post.

I'm not sure why I post anything. Whatever I try to say, oddball says it better. 8) Another QFT.

I think that AAPL and MSFT are great examples of how their analysis can go right and can go wrong: - If AAPL/MSFT have the same products in the future and no growth (or even revenue drop), then their stocks will be rerated lower. - If AAPL/MSFT develop new products/services in the future or find ways to piggyback to existing products/services and charge more, they can grow and keep the existing valuations with growing results. If you look in the past, there were times when people argued that MSFT hit peak-PC and then MSFT created/sold additional services/products. You can argue the same about AAPL in the past. If HK are arguing about limited number of people on the Earth - or limited number of the internet users - then perhaps they should not take AAPL/MSFT as their examples. Neither of these companies are really Internet-users constrained. Perhaps they should have talked about everyone's favorite whipping boy FB. ::) In general Horizon Kinetics have been bearish for last X years. They make good sounding arguments. At some point they might be right... But you also have to think why their arguments are not as bulletproof as they think they are. IMO HK arguments are hugely skewed and sometimes downright simplistic: "there is every reason to believe that Dell or perhaps some other firm would challenge Apple with an inexpensive smartphone" - duh... you don't say... nobody has thought that someone might challenge Apple with an inexpensive smartphone... what an insight... I'm gonna go sell all my Apple stock right now... ::)