Jurgis

The call that he was talking about is so deep in the money that it wasn't selling at a premium. Ah. Thanks. I'm still lost on this one. Even if there is no premium and the call's price is exactly equal to the price of the stock minus the call's strike price why bother exercising the call. Commission fees alone would make this a worse strategy than just buying stock, correct? Even still, it seems most extremely deep ITM calls will usually have a slight premium to them. I think the thought process here is: yes, the deep ITM call has slight premium, yes, you will have to outlay more cash for stock, yes, you will lose on commissions. BUT. You can now lend the stock at 30% interest, so you are better off converting to stock than holding ITM call. You may ask then: why did that person buy the call in the first place instead of buying stock? Well, it likely was not deep ITM when they bought it, so the above equation was not as attractive.

You realize that what you wrote is self contradictory? Assume stock is rising. Then buying client positions first is better, but selling them first is worse. Assume stock is falling. Then buying client positions first is worse, but selling them first is better. You are assuming at least one of two things: 1. That your purchases/sales influence market price more than the overall trend does. Which might be true for microcaps, but it's not true in general. 2. That you will be buying on uptrend and selling on downtrend, which would be very lucky but not achievable in real life. I think you are wrong with your assumptions. Your implicit assumption is that you can predict tomorrow's prices based on today's move. What is a 'rising stock'? A stock that goes up next week? If so, why would you sell it at all? Same for buying a 'falling stock'. Better to think of stock prices as opportunities. If you think it's too cheap / too expensive it is an opportunity and it seems unethical to act on that opportunity for yourself before you act on it for your LP's. What happens afterwards is anyone's guess. And if you think an opportunity will be even better tomorrow than today (because of a perceived uptrend / downtrend) why would you act on it today for yourself or for your LP's? I am not saying I can predict tomorrow's prices. But I am saying that assumption that buying/selling for clients first is best is not necessarily correct. In fact, depending on your style of investing, it could be wrong more than right. Edit: I'm somewhat just referring to the old value investing trope that value stock continues falling after you buy it and continues rising after you sell it. But since I've been told that there are rules and regulations, I'm just gonna say that OP should follow them.

I think that stress tests are good enough and break up is not needed. I don't think that's a good area to spend time for Sanders or Democratic Party. There are other more important things. But I'm sure there are people who think differently. BTW, someone can remind me why AIG/etc are subject to stress tests and BRK is not. Isn't BRK (re)insurance arm bigger than these companies?

What Hielko said. Same issue with selling: sell yours first or clients' first? Both could lead to better/worse results for clients. Ultimately it's an issue of trust: either your clients trust you or they don't. If they don't, doing the right things may help but may not. If a client wants to distrust you, they can always find a reason. The industry standard is that clients accounts are traded first. This is enshrined in regulations and in things like the CFA rules. It doesn't matter whether the client gets a better price or not: you can't control that. All you can do is trade for them first and avoid front-running. Well if it's industry standard and is in regulations, that's another story. 8) Have to do what regulations and rules say. 8)

You realize that what you wrote is self contradictory? Assume stock is rising. Then buying client positions first is better, but selling them first is worse. Assume stock is falling. Then buying client positions first is worse, but selling them first is better. You are assuming at least one of two things: 1. That your purchases/sales influence market price more than the overall trend does. Which might be true for microcaps, but it's not true in general. 2. That you will be buying on uptrend and selling on downtrend, which would be very lucky but not achievable in real life.

What Hielko said. Same issue with selling: sell yours first or clients' first? Both could lead to better/worse results for clients. Ultimately it's an issue of trust: either your clients trust you or they don't. If they don't, doing the right things may help but may not. If a client wants to distrust you, they can always find a reason.

Do you have an opinion about ISTB and FLOT vs your choices?

It's not bad article, though it simplifies things a lot (for popular consumption). You might be better off with the actual source https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.00631.pdf that this article summarizes (it goes from 27 pages to half page, so there's that 8)). Although even source article is IMO biased towards issues, but then that's the goal of the author. 8)

Great decision. Full support for California. Boards do very little work rubberstamping management party line and collect big bucks for it. Qualifications? Qualifications for board is a joke. There are maybe handful of companies that take qualifications for board seriously (see Constellation Software). Let's spread the free big bucks that were collected by golf circuit white males to women and minorities. It won't be worse than it is.

What I hate is that AMZN has started showing trailers of their movies/shows before the actual show you start. Maybe this is only for "free" Prime views, but still sucks. I was super ready to cancel Netflix, but this is step back for AMZN. If they gonna start annoying viewers with essentially ads on their service, that's not a good thing. Also AMZN Roku UI sucks. Not that Netflix Roku UI is great either, but maybe a bit better. Somebody program a good fricking UI FTW. It's like 10 years and nobody cares... >:(

Sorry to ask, but after Fido closed access to Korean stocks aren't Korean stocks pretty much inaccessible to US investors? Apart from opening account in Korea? (I haven't followed the situation diligently, I may be wrong.)

He's probably not friendless, but he likely does not listen to friends. How this ends, who knows. It could end up well or not. My best wishes and support to Elon and everyone in his companies. "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very very brightly, Elon."

I completely support Elon Musk and Tesla and wish them all the best.

The essay has some nice aspirational goals. Couple thoughts though: Maybe I should talk to Peter about what he meant, but IMO this is quite bad way to approach relationships with people. Nobody in the world is a saint who is all the time. So if your attitude is to probe and probe and probe, you will hit a bad day or bad spot or whatever and become upset and disillusioned with the person. Instead, if you see that a person embodies a lot of qualities you are looking for, then you should accept that sometimes they won't. And ideally you'll be able to be with them at these times and perhaps help them to become a better person. And not just abandon them and go looking for some ideal that does not exist. Just be aware that (commonly?) a lot of people are already hanging onto the givers. Can you support the giver? Another note is that the taker/matcher/giver categorization is incredibly simplified. There are people who are great givers within certain area of their life but not in other(s). There are people who are givers for some people but are indiferent-sers for others. And there's the perception issue too: what someone regards as giving another person may regard as nothing (I find the whole taker/matcher/giver categorization extremely limiting 8)) Peace.

I still haven't tried (bought) any of their tea. I should do it before they close/disappear. I think some store(s) that I saw before already closed. :-\ I just have way too much tea already... ::) Just brought back some tea that I bought in Lithuania that was made (packaged?) in UK that was grown in ??? Good stuff too. The joys of globalism. 8) I won't buy popcorn flavor though. OT: Retail wins: TJX, wife's URBN (though I freely admit I have no clue when to sell this, so it could round-trip; we also did not buy at bottom even though we talked about it.)

On the other hand, the wages and costs in China have been rising for some time and some companies have already moved or planned to move some production to cheaper countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, etc. So some of moves will accelerate, but also some of moves are not trivial. Depends on whether you're talking about zippers or steel or iPhones. ;) Also unlike previous moves based on cost, there are few places of the size that can replace all China production. This is not insurmountable, but would need planning, cost analysis, etc. Another two factors: some things are fungible and China production will just go to other consumers rather than US; some products are multipart and possibly the answer is to make parts in China assemble in ??? and then ship to US. TL;DR: Situation is complex, some things will move or have moved, some things won't. That's why companies presumably have good sourcing depts. ;)

Not to hijack the thread: if Chinese currency drops comparatively to tariffs, why would anyone move manufacturing? The price remains the same.

The call that he was talking about is so deep in the money that it wasn't selling at a premium. Ah. Thanks.

Is the stock puffing up 1000% in a day? I suggest renaming PDH to PCH ("Premier Cannabis Holdings") pronto. And selling ZED product over the telemedicine line. This could be yuge. Sorry Sanjeev and all that

I suspect the call buyer would exercise the call immediately, so you wouldn't get the chance to lend your stock. This is indeed what happened. Looks like my shares were called. For general education purpose can someone explain to me: why would someone buy a call at premium and then immediately exercise it? Why didn't they buy stock which would have yielded the same result without paying call premium?

Is the stock puffing up 1000% in a day?

Chinese government response would depend a lot on where Liu stands in respect to them at given time. But this really is a risk with any Chinese company not just JD. Alleged crime in US may or may not influence local response. (Hey, look at what's happening with video game approvals in China - huge businesses can be just nuked by govt decisions.) I agree though that most likely outcome is: nothing happens. I was just reading an unrelated article about incident of rape and how things went. And it talked about how some grand jury refused to indict even clear cut cases. So likely we won't get to #2 or #3 even if there was a crime committed.

Not sure if this was intentional, but it was funny. ;D

You guys should not interrupt the iPhone love fest going on in this thread. You may hurt my stock holdings. 8) ;D ::) :P

Joel Greenblatt "The Little Book that Beats the Market"