Jurgis

That's not true. I do not have a facebook account, but they know who I am, who my friends are, what my phone number is, my email, etc. If any person has me as a contact and shares their contacts with Facebook to "find people they know", they hoover up my data and build a profile on me. Where can I opt out of that? http://theconversation.com/shadow-profiles-facebook-knows-about-you-even-if-youre-not-on-facebook-94804 If any person has you as a contact, they can disclose this information to whole world in any way and you cannot do anything about it. They can share it to any site/service that asks for it. They can post it on their blog, webpage, etc. They can print 100000 business cards and drop them into NYC metro station at peak hour. Well, maybe if you're famous you can sue. Good luck. This is not a Facebook issue. It's an issue that info you gave to someone is not controlable.

So for the 10b5-1 plan, they have to set an absolute price (what you call "cap") at or below which to buy and the size? And they cannot do anything fancy like relative price? And they cannot change the size either?

I think that BRK is buying. But I would say that they are buying more other stocks than its own. In other words, I am willing to bet that repurchases are less than 50% of money spent on all purchases this quarter.

https://www.wired.com/story/googles-ai-guru-computers-think-more-like-brains/ Short and somewhat info-lite article. But has couple interesting thoughts that are important (and I agree with ;)) Two thumbs up. BTW, what he said about people making up a story is also applicable to investing ... and investment forum discussions. ;)

I wonder if Buffett is buying more AAPL / banks or if he's buying back stock. Or neither. Or both. Stay tuned. 8)

Male solidarity trumps these pesky details!

So the thesis is pretty much Elliott bid going through or someone else acquiring the company? And that the stock won't fall much if acquisition does not happen because it was trading in range close to current price? If I look at financials without considering buyout, I don't see much margin of safety. Valuation is high IMO and seems to assume high growth and great results going forward...

http://www.stumbles.org.uk/John/rec/buddha.html

Maybe you all would want to make predictions here and then you can check who's right at the end of 2019: https://www.gjopen.com/questions/1040-between-1-october-2018-and-31-december-2019-how-many-model-3-cars-will-tesla-deliver-to-customers# I think that currently buying non-Tesla EV is somewhat chicken-and-egg problem: based on non-Tesla EV history, you don't know how much the manufacturer will support their niche product. The history so far is not encouraging: major car manufacturers basically abandon their EVs after minuscule sales. We'll see if some brand/manufacturer will be able to make their EV mainstream enough and support it long term.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/global-u-s-growth-in-smartphone-growth-starts-to-decline.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/18/technology/artificial-intelligence-language.html

You see we all can share good prices on the market. 8)

Exhibit 1: Microsoft. MSFT has been a whipping boy of all talented nerds for over 20 years now. Did not make much difference for their hiring or results. Anecdotally, I think caring about social issues is way lower for most employees than it is projected in the media. So the narrative of talented people not joining "evil" FB is mostly a story. The other issue of talented people not joining FB because its share price going down and their options being underwater is somewhat more true, but I'd say Microsoft again. And it's really IMO not that big. And they can give out RSUs if they don't do it yet. Also see third issue. The third issue is people leaving FB because it's huge company and they'd rather make their millions in startups is also somewhat true, but really true for any big Silly Valley company and has been going for ages. Did not kill Google or any other big company really. And assuming we get a recession and startup funding drop, this will reverse. Overall though, I can't claim I have the hand directly on the pulse of Silly Valley. I know some people who left X and went to FB or are thinking of leaving Y and going to FB. I know some people who sang praises about ZZZ and then left for QQQ after a month. It's all a circle of life. So FWIW.

Anecdotally, I haven't used Groupon for years. I'm not on any of their email lists anymore. But even when I used it, it was mostly random purchases that I would not have made otherwise. Not that I complain. E.g. we went to see a hawk show ( http://newenglandfalconry.com/ ) that was fun. Some of the restaurant groupons were OKish. Now that I think about it, it might be fun to look at it again. Though I'm just too busy to wade through the email flow. ::)

This is really funny read. I highly recommend it. 8)

I LOVE CANADA! ... oh wait. You said CARNAGE. Never mind.

When a guy has to buy, a guy has to buy. 8) Honestly, a stint of good humor in this carnage does not harm anyone. -Which also brings me to the point: What have you been buying today, Jurgis? [The answer for my own part to that particular question is: Nothing]. Sorry, but I don't post day-to-day purchases and sales. I'll post my monthly activity as always on SI and my blog. IMO nobody should follow what I buy or sell or base any decisions on that. 8) Everything I posted to rb is true. To some degree. 8)

When a guy has to buy, a guy has to buy. 8)

Or you gonna be multibillionaire instantly (but then the divorce will suck). YOLO! 8) In 2008, I have seen people whose house was bought at 300k (bought decades ago), and took out a couple millions of home equity loans. A couple years later the house is foreclosured. Maybe that guy used that money to buy stock. I also had a ex-coworker who got a loan using his house and bought AIG in 2008 Nah, if it works out, your wife will think you're a genius. ;) Bought a house in 2006. MA did not decline horribly though. Got severance in 2007-2008. It was great time to get cash. I did really well with that. No divorce. Not multibillionaire. Yet. 8)

That was me. JK I think.

Or you gonna be multibillionaire instantly (but then the divorce will suck). YOLO! 8)

I disagree with Cigarbutt: the topic was (is) dead, so I'd rather post and discuss related material here than create a new thread.

Mr. Tepper's book has been on the to-buy list but was under the impression that it may have been based on an idea (ideology?) looking for facts. Perhaps. Though I think he's not the only one remarking about elevated corporate margins, oligopolies and monopolies. It's possible though that even with apparent monopolization of various industries the present is not (much) worse than the past. Perhaps even better in some ways. E.g. taking the airline example, the competition in Europe (and somewhat US) from budget airlines is way higher and the prices are way lower than what was there during the time of flag carriers (AFAIK). Not sure what you expect "a Great Reset" to be, so I can't answer. IMO it's very hard to predict the future. Edit: Just in case some people missed it, here's the link to part 2 of the article: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-26/tech-monopolies-strangle-economic-growth The author does provide some numbers substantiating his thesis of monopolization trend. He does jump around a lot and some of his examples are anecdotal and self-contradictory, but perhaps that's because he tried to condense the book into two articles.

Capitalism is dead, long live monopolies (and investors?): https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-25/the-myth-of-capitalism-exposed

I prefer a banana over a banana explanation. 8)