Jurgis

I listened to the TED talk and I read the study she references: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3374921/ IMO the study does not show that your beliefs about stress cause the health issues. Much simpler explanation is that people who see that they have health issues and see that they have stress then believe that stress causes health issues. And voila these people have worse mortality than people who do not have health issues and therefore do not believe that stress causes health issues. This leaves the question of whether stress causes health issues or not open. It's possible that some specific stress does. It's possible that stress doesn't. It's also possible that her claim is true and beliefs are what cause health issues. But at least from this study it's impossible to say. FWIW.

Good posts WayWardCloud and rb

Is ORCL going through this transition and is it hugely undervalued and misunderstood then? I don't know. I've had this question pop up every time I look at ORCL, but I am not sure I can answer it.

Dilution is expected -- I guess I wasn't expecting a 20% dilution :( And this only gains $750,000. Yeah, I know it's $750,000, not $75,000. But still - will it make (a/any/much) difference?

Yes, but is it really misunderstood? 8) Just kidding. Carry on. 8)

I think you are conflating a bunch of unrelated things in regards to WWE. You seem to be claiming that you understand the company/industry while Wall Street doesn't. Yet your memories (understanding) are 20 years old. Lots of things have changed since then, so investing based on 20 year old memories may be dangerous. Also it seems that your more recent evaluation of the company is negative (perhaps correctly). Compare that with the fact that the stock went nowhere for years and then exploded upwards a year ago. So I'd question whether you have a better understanding of the company than Wall Street does (did). What you did with WWE in your post is what most of people do: you built a story. Now, it's a nice story, but IMO that's pretty much what it is. Hope you don't take above negatively. 8) To generalize: 1. There are thousands of people evaluating various companies every day. Some of them "don't understand" the company, some of them do. 2. Genuine variant perception is extremely rare. Almost nonexistent. 3. What you are asking is not really genuine variant perception. I think what you are looking for is more of a "at this point in time company is valued differently than me and a bunch of folks on CoBF would value it (also known as "The Real Intrinsic Value" ).". 4. The point 3 approach is not a bad way to invest. However, note that I kinda added the "valued at" part (although you do imply it in some places of your post). If we change this to "at this point I and a bunch of folks think X about company, while Wall Street (who?) thinks Y" without attaching "valued at", then it's less interesting. 5. Corollary of 1,3,4: there are always people both on CoBF and Wall Street and media that think about company X and value it at $XX; there are always people on CoBF and Wall Street and media that think about the same company Y and value it at $YY. 6. It is very hard to evaluate percentages of people who think/value X/$XX vs. Y/$YY (which you need to do if you want to call it misunderstood without referring to current market price). You can compare $XX and $YY to current market price $ZZ to call it misunderstood in regards to market price. But you don't know whether market thinks X, Y or some Z. 7. The fact that you and some people think X does not necessarily mean that X is indeed what is happening/will happen. tl;dr: what you are trying to do might be good, but not simple. I could argue why I think CACC, CMPR, cable cos, etc. are not "misunderstood", but I doubt these arguments are interesting. BTW, another wrinkle is that as Howard Marks said "More things can happen than will happen". So even post factum evaluation of whether something was/was not understood is fraught with biases. Good luck, have fun 8)

Just wondering: (maybe this was already posted) does anyone on the thread have this on their car? If so why and how well you like it? Also has anyone considered it seriously and decided not to do it?

Netflix hitting DISCA content: https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/our-planet?link=vid&utm_campaign=our-planet&utm_medium=email&utm_source=engagement&utm_content=190204-ed

Pre-cancer detection: https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2019-01-10/ai-beats-humans-at-detecting-cervical-precancers

Here goes (part of) Starcraft II: https://www.pcmag.com/news/366177/ai-dominates-human-professional-players-in-starcraft-ii?amp=1

Didn't this also happen with LILA/CWC? Most people on CoBF claim that Malone screwed LILA shareholders by selling CWC at inflated price. But he took LILA shares in the merger and those are down hugely since then (possibly at least partially because of inflated CWC price).

I think rb is too pessimistic. I completely agree that it might be best for kids to have loving, kind, attentive, and yet strict parents who are great in raising them. However, I think that current generation over lionizes past parents and their parenting. Maybe (parts of) 20th century were golden times of parenting, but overall the past parents were not as ideal as current generation imagines. If you look longer time back, the whole notion of loving, kind, attentive parents who spend time raising their kids is pretty much a fairy tale. On the side of aristocracy and richer parents, kids were raised by nannies and hired teachers. On the side of poor, kids were afterthought and free servants who did the chores and went to (grueling) work once grown a bit. If you read biographies from the past, see how many people grew up in families that you'd call (close to) ideal. Even the ones that are written as good possibly are made more positive than they were in reality. IMO the good thing about current time is that the pressure to have kids has gone down. (The same as the pressure to marry). Which means that only people who really want kids ideally should have them. Yeah, I know there's still too many unwanted pregnancies, pressured children, and even parents who-think-that-they-want-kids-but-really-have-no-clue-or-no-clue-how-to-raise-them. But possibly fewer than in the past. Other than that, I think generalizations are very hard. I've known kids who were spoiled rotten as kids and grew up great people. I know some modern examples of nannies raising kids that IMO worked better than if parents did it. I've known kids from the same family where one kid was great/easy/perfect and another one was total disaster. With unlimited analysis, you might figure out what exactly went right(wrong), but making the best decisions as life unfolds is very hard. BTW, CoBF members complain a lot about lack of financial education. IMO lack of parenting education is even more prevalent. And it is likely even tougher job than managing your finances. 8) (Obligatory Buffett jab: so Warren should have spent more time with the kids? Screw Berkshire? 8) )

I know people (mostly younger generation) who have more than one FB account. Mostly it's "I graduated from HS/college, good bye FB account and its history, getting a new one". They mostly don't care about the history (or actively want to get rid of it) and don't care about FB "real name" protections. I only skimmed the plainsite doc, but it seems like "I knew Zuckerberg in 2004 and OMG WHAT HE WROTE IN INTERNET CHAT" collection. More than half of the doc is pre 2004 history... I liked the doc about sex orgies at Google better. 8)

I think you're duplicating yourself: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/morgan-housel-on-what-other-industries-teach-us-about-investing/msg322081/#msg322081 8)

Hold that beer! 8) AFSI prefs still trade... and now are in shithouse due to the company planning to delist them. https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/afsi.pa MHLD are in even bigger shithouse: https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/mhld Not sure there's opportunity in either: prefs are presumably non-cumulative, so you can be screwed after delisting (or even without it?); have not looked at MHLD. Just FYI. (Courtesy of Barron's). Obviously I got very lucky with my timing. Bought a few extra shares after opening this thread because I liked my write-up and nobody disputed it :P. Still only a ~3% position. Strange pricing last week. Strange pricings might have been people who were skeptical about management ... who lied about not delisting prefs ... and other things (read Barron's story). Yeah, I know, it does not matter anymore. Just some color for consideration in future opportunities. Also posting because I've been in AFSI-prefs and Maiden prefs way back when they crashed when the management numbers were questioned.

I don't think INTC being cheap is just because of "Buffett doesn't like tech". The bear narrative is: - PCs are flat to down - INTC lost mobile - Fabs possibly falling behind TSMC and Samsung - Most growth is in GPUs, not CPUs - Most of their growth/diversification initiatives were bungled - They may lose data centers (I think this the weakest claim compared to ones above.) What is the bull narrative? OK, INTC might be a valuation-based buy - I won't argue with that. But assuming a long term hold: where do bulls see INTC in 5-10 years? What will be different from the last 10+ years? INTC sales growth has been 6% annual starting from 2008, and pretty zeroish starting from 2012... Similar with OCF (I eyeballed that one though).

Amazon Kindle sale today $5.99

Yes, I know that. That's actually exactly why I asked. They got approvals for two crappy educational games. Other companies got approvals last month. And for bigger games too. Edit: Maybe it's based on the submission order as the article says. Not sure if they know that for certain.

Cautionary notice: my taste is highly idiosyncratic, so likely my recommendations will do nothing for you. Theoretically all my ratings are publicly available at: https://www.imdb.com/user/ur2779520/ratings?sort=your_rating,desc&ratingFilter=0&mode=detail&ref_=undefined&lastPosition=0 ( if this does not work, this might: https://www.imdb.com/user/ur2779520/ratings?ref_=nv_usr_rt_4 - this is chronological ). No very recent movies at 9 or 10 rating. GLOW is 9: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5770786/?ref_=rt_li_tt Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is 9 There are couple recent movies at 8 rating ( LBJ, Snowden, Rush, Dallas Buyers Club, Fury, Dirty Money, Red Sparrow ). ---------------- I'm definitely gonna watch "The Death of Stalin". 8)

Based on the recent game approvals in China, does anyone think that Tencent is being punished more than other Chinese gaming companies? Is this political? Is this power games (pun intended) in Chinese ministries where different companies try to push their approvals first and Tencent has not done good moves? I don't really know. I'm asking. Maybe someone with boots on ground or local info can chime in.

WTFF

Good summary.

I got a copy before it was taken down. I won't post it here since IIRC Sanjeev removes it from CoBF too. I don't think there's much in the letter that is not known from Klarman's interviews/articles/etc.

I thought this book was discussed and had a thread, but apparently not. Hans Rosling Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think On sale $2.99 kindle @ Amazon.com now: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0756J1LLV?pf_rd_p=c2945051-950f-485c-b4df-15aac5223b10&pf_rd_r=GEP6GR0S8CMY574BY6PZ

Because my frivolous bet against Jurgis angered the investment gods? :P No but more seriously, even BRK behaves in a strange way from time to time and those tend to create interesting trading opportunities. My favorite is when it sells off with the financial sector for no good reason just because it's a big component of XLF and other ETFs. Just to bring everyone in context I privately proposed to adjust the bet to start at 1/1/2019. I honestly swear I did not look at BRK/SP500 performance since 1/1 and did not try to tilt the bet in my favor. 8) Peace. Edit: Actually I still haven't looked, so I don't even know if I was tilting it in my favor or against me. ::)