Jurgis

Interesting - who is the author? There is not exactly a lot of "hype" in this name - it's been a disaster for a few years. Maybe I have CoBF tunnel vision, but I disagree. There's been quite a bit of hedge fund "hype" in TRIP for last year or two. Read this thread and look at the links. Edit: although I have to say that https://www.contrariananalyst.com/tripadvisor-lolapalooza-in-motion/ "analysis" is rather lite ... ::)

Didn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Meriwether crash 3 times and reraised money every time afterwards?

Thanks. Done.

I agree with Viking. Mostly. 8) Though it's not about loyalty. It's about laziness. 8) Checking account - 18 years at Big US bank. Very unlikely to move. Like Viking said, moving would be a hassle. Resetup e-payments, etc. No thank you. I use the branch, but have no personal relationships there. Savings account - don't have one Line of credit - don't have one Credit card - some cards are long time, some over 20 years, but really no loyalty. It's all about who has best cash-back bonuses. Have Fido Visa (most used maybe 2% back on everything), Bank of America (3%/2% some cats), Chase Freedom (used for 5% back categories), Discover (5% back cats), Chase Amazon (5% on Amazon), Capital One (international no fees), Amex (used occasionally), some others used infrequently. Churn sign-up bonuses when not lazy. Nowadays has to be over $XXX or more for me not to be lazy. Mortgage - I have a mortgage broker I always use since I like him. He sells the mortgage immediately to random bank, then it gets resold. Over 10 banks over years over multiple refis. No loyalty to mortgage servicers, no consistency. Investment adviser - no adviser. Use Fido. Have small accounts at couple other places for various reasons. Very unlikely to leave Fido. Very sticky.

Looks like the name of the thread was not great. Can't find it using search function. :( Should have named AI - Artificial Intelligence. ::) I don't think I can rename right now. Anyway, today I've read pretty impressive paper on predicting index X using deep neural nets using 20XX-20XX dataset. Great results. Not sure if this is one of these situations where back testing works and currently the approach stopped working or not. I would have thought that their approach should not have worked on historical data either, since this seems should have been exploited already. They do have training set and test set and some additional checks, so unless they did something "bad", the results seem to be real. Edit: After some thinking, I have some questions/ideas/reservations/inquisitions to test if this really works or not. If anyone is familiar with DNNs and want to run some experiments, shoot me a message and we can play around. Results could be contribution to science or monetary (if you get a model that works, you can just use it to invest ;D - most likely you won't ). I might do it myself, but I need time and motivation... yeah, yuge pile of money is not motivation enough. :P ::) 8) ;D I'll point to the paper when it becomes publicly available. 8)

In IBKR SMAs client is paying the commissions for trades done by advisor. In Merrill Lynch, I don't know.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/06/elon-musk-says-tesla-will-make-a-profit-in-q3-2018/

https://www.economist.com/international/2018/06/02/can-effective-altruism-maximise-the-bang-for-each-charitable-buck

I see where Liberty is coming from. Like he said, when you haven't heard about value investing/moat/whatever, reading Buffett/Graham/etc. is like a "wow" experience. When you have heard this for 20 years, it's like "meh, moat, yeah, meh, margin of safety, yeah, meh, capital allocation, yeah, tell me something new". ;) I get it that people find some new nuggets in Buffett writing from time to time, but overall, yeah, another BRK letter/Q&A, meh. ::) ;) Edit: There's also the fact that moats erode (or is that walls that erode and moats ?? - fill up? ::) ) and the concept is not as great and easy to exploit as it was in the day. But that might be separate and more serious thread. 8)

I hate to tell this to you, but I think your renters are dead. Maybe even mummified.

The returns are great if the business is done right. Which maybe it will be, maybe it won't. I guess the argument is that with 85% still being held by original owners, they should have motivation not to screw the business.

Maybe it's a good business to start. Indian VIEs. Assuming Indian government would not put their foot on it. Though maybe it's been done or been tried. There are clearly other reasons of India vs China attractiveness that may or may not make sense. I don't own JD. I'd say something like Tencent is hold forever, though possibly way too late after 400x bagger return. I've owned Chinese gaming companies and they seemed to be more "buy cheap, sell when not", since long term returns and business trajectories have been not great. There are exceptions maybe.

Thanks. 8)

I nearly invested in this Egyptian tourism business, but then I realized it was just a pyramid scheme.

Backyard of globalfinancepartners IIRC. Maybe he'll chime in with some local taste. 8) (Yeah, that food. ::) )

Boston Omaha Corporation Announces $19 Million Equity Investment in CB&T Holding Corporation http://www.bostonomaha.com/documents/132/11822710cf900b5a6cb7e97751cbcb60.pdf What's with the companies run by hedge fund guys... they just can't resist investing into ten different businesses and building conglomerates. (Yeah, I won't mention names, but you know some others like that on CoBF ::) ). I thought BOMN at least will be in 2 business areas, but nooooo they just have to do more side deals... ::)

BTW, this seems like a good thread for: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-04/apple-s-1-trillion-chase-unprecedented-try-totally-logical Ignore the headline (or accuse me for promoting a bubble ;D ). The article actually has some good numbers and charts.

Author's definition: Accepting this definition, I don't see how 3/5 of FAANG "offer little chance of any positive risk premium relative to bonds or cash, using any reasonable projection of expected cash flows". ::) BTW, it was authors who included Apple in FAANG. It wasn't me. Although it does make my case easier. Otherwise, I would have said 2/4. 8)

So you buy total market index and short top ten companies to remove them from the index. Insta profit and outperformance. 8) For sarcasm impaired: yes, it is. Or not. You can try it. Maybe it will work.

Pretty much zero valuation analysis and then claim that FAANGTB are in bubble. At the time when Buffett is buying one of the As. ::)

3rd order effect: China, understanding the strategic importance of long term investment, picks up the slack, allowing it the distinction of being able to helicopter into developing countries with new medical discoveries it can give away to extend and cement its soft power in countries that are going to be relevant in geopolitics 20 - 30 years from now. We're in checkmate here folks, we just haven't figured that out yet. We got fat and lazy while the Chinese have been working to throw us off the high horse. It reminds me of the intro to Rocky 3, where we see that Rocky has lost himself to the glitz and glamour of his fame. TV commercials, magazine photoshoots, the "perfect" family Christmas and his face on merchandise everywhile Meanwhile we are introduced to Clubber Lang, a young fighter making his way up the rankings. We see him brutally knock out his opponents while Rocky is beating up a bunch of palookas we later discover were set up as tomato cans for Rocky to squash by his manager Mickey. And while we see Clubber Lang dedicate all of his time to improving himself to better his chances at his chosen profession, we see Rocky making appearances on The Muppet Show and shilling for American Express. Rocky had grown soft and the Rocky brand was more valuable with him beating up tomato cans than risking his title against legitimate competition. But sooner or later, if you don't take the fight to your competition, your competition will take the fight to you. Rocky couldn't duck Clubber Lang forever, and when he eventually did fight Clubber Lang he discovered that his match ups with the palookas hadn't prepared him to face real competition again. Ever since the Cold War ended, we've been like Rocky. We've been resting on our laurels and beating up palooka countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, while China has been investing in its domestic infrastructure, building up its soft power around the world and rising up the rankings. The day is coming soon that the US will get knocked out cold and be unable to answer the 10 count, and it's our own fault for letting our country fall apart. All that wasted money for wars could have been used to reinvest in America and make us more competitive, but I guess reinvesting in your economic moat is a tough sell when many people believe American Exceptionalism alone has imbued us with our gifts, and that philosophy has made us arrogant and lazy. We're in checkmate; when you're in checkmate, how can you win? You've already lost, and you can't win a game that you've lost. At least, not conventionally. But there is another alternative, famous in Go clubs around Asia... The Nuclear Tesuji. You flip over the board and the pieces go flying everywhere. It's total chaos, and the usual rules and expectations no longer apply because we're no longer playing the same game. China has been besting by building up their strategically important infrastructure. It's time we do the same, by issuing trillions of dollars worth of bonds to build up our own domestic infrastructure to catch up with China. And we need to do this while we still have Donald Trump in office, because he is uniquely qualified to deal with the next step of the operation. Being the first of the major powers of the world to default on its obligations to the others. Donald Trump has had six business bankruptcies so far, that is not an easy skill to hire for. And dare I say it's one we've NEVER had in the oval office before. We are going to build up our own domestic infrastructure with the money of foreign governments, and leave them holding the bag. It's Economic Judo, and it's something Trump is very familiar of pulling on his creditors. He can do the same thing for ours, but first we need to build as big of a foreign debt as possible. The more money we borrow, the more we make up for our cumulative trade deficit to these countries since free trade became the flavor of the day. We'll have had the benefit of decades of lower prices and we'll get the last laugh by pulling back all the money that has been sucked out of the pockets of American families by free trade with our Nuclear Tesuji. ScottHall for Secretary of State! ... at the very least: ScottHall for Anthony Scaramucci! 8)

If you were in their position, would you invest into self storage? There is some synergy with the transportation. But is it good enough business to invest into? Isn't it pretty much commodity and subject to overbuilding?

How much of the Elliott plans can go south (pun? ::) ) if there is dysfunctional government in Italy? I am not talking full blown It-exit/euro crisis. Just barriers/non-approval to separation and stake sales. I guess regulator does not change with govt change, but they still might be affected by where the wind blows?

It's a great book if you're writser. But then you don't need the book. 8)

Sales and earnings look OKish, though not very hot. What I am concerned about is that they consume all OCF (and more) on capex and I don't see much results coming out of that: https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/viewer?action=view&cik=4457&accession_number=0000004457-18-000016&xbrl_type=v# I.e. sales growth is anemic. They did ~1.4B capex and got ~200M sales growth. Perhaps as someone said in the past, they have underinvested into their fleet replacement and now they are catching up?