Gregmal

Anyone still follow this? I know it was a favorite for a while here. Been rounding out my annual base touching for the random no purpose investment pile and just got to this one. Still have a few shares tucked away here but my goodness what a joke this company has become. The latest annual report is nothing short of a slap in the face to shareholders. Shareholders, whom by the way, must think we are in the middle of a Great Depression given the performance of this thing. Yet the folks writing their reports seem to believe the company is on strong footing and creating shareholder value! Executive compensation is disgraceful for a firm of this size, let alone based on its performance. The board is a complete embarrassment. Literally a bunch of old quacks, some nearing 100 years old! and, get this, a 28 year old kid who's only work experience period(forget relevant) is working for gran pa pa's investment firm! Good golly.

I was referring to all the options, however I personally wouldn't sell calls against this. I dont like screwing with my upside on what are deemed to be high risk high reward investments. I was more so referring to the at what price is this investable? question. You can get over $3 per share selling $100 puts due Jan 2021. I certainly wouldn't mind getting $3+ a share in exchange for maybe owning share with a $97 cost basis. I started buying this week and have a cost around 141 so if nothing else its a reminder that you can certainly get swept under really quick, but if you're fine with that its an easy investment. I was again looking at stuff like Seritage and it just reinforces what a bargain SPG is if you are ok investing in that space.

Lost amongst the pandemonium Friday after the close PICO announced and expansion of its share repurchase program. PICO is a bad investment and basically a slow liquidation play at best, but they've been remarkably consistent repurchasing their shares at prices averaging mid 10s and even 11s. With firepower authorization equal to basically half of the current market cap and ~$60M remaining plus a lot of bag holders with no interest selling shares around here, buying at/around/under $10 seems like a pretty reasonable and safe trade, even if its only for a few percent back to this mid 10s. This has no correlation to all the current hysteria either, and really only relies on the continuance of the status quo in Vidlers core markets. http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4575180

I dont buy Cramer's argument. It is valid, but meaningless IMO. Wall Street is filled with money obsessed whores. Add to the list the plethora of underperforming hedge funds and money managers who preach a "value investing" style. If there's money to be made in energy, they'll go there. Just look at the activity on sites like this with the tobacco stocks and lately even stuff like XOM. While its admirable on the surface(but also more a manipulative look at me Im woke or whatever move by the pension funds and such) it won't hold. If its green, buyers will go there. If, over the long run, pension fund managers underperform they'll face pressure and ultimately start letting the things that matter dictate their investments. Its just easy right now when you can buy Tesla and claim to be a socially responsible fund.

This was actually a good read and probably bolstered my belief in what I wrote earlier. Lets see what the confirmed numbers look like in a week or maybe a month. But so far, you have barely 100 total cases outside of China and 0 deaths. You also have a death count that is bolstered by people with other conditions and complications, which is always important to consider as well, even with the common flu.

While it isn't the case, it should be a given that any investor in a company with a sub $200-300M market cap should have access to management. With companies this size, it is basically standard operating procedure for the CFO to do IR. Its always an enormous red flag for me if you have a small cap company with management that has a large cap ego.

I was reviewing some information with a couple folks for a portfolio company today, and of distinct notation was a recent corporate action taken. We were trying to pin down where this came from. After a bit of analysis, the read was that the move was made out of weakness rather than strength. This was determined because the CEO is a bit of a character, and a boastful, boisterous cheerleader. It was concluded that his reasoning for action had to be to fill a need that was expected to be filled elsewhere, but didn't materialize. How did we know? Because if it had, he would have announced it a few minutes later.... Same sort of deducing can be used here. I dont doubt all of the ground work details, and I sympathize with those effected, but am of the belief that what we are hearing about and its impacts on us here in the US of A, are entirely blown out of proportion and unwarranted. Yes, China may play games with their news outlets and censor people. But here? Fear sells and these news outlets are propaganda peddlers and this virus is a money maker for them in regards to clicks and page views. Its is and will be drummed up as much as humanly possible. Not to be callous, but I'll be concerned when I can no longer count on one hand the number of deaths in one specific state. Or maybe collectively hear about a few dozen total deaths in America.

Eh, wishful thinking. I thought last week maybe Dupont would get an intsy weentsy little bit of love for this stuff too. https://www.envirosafetyproducts.com/coronavirus-protection.html Of course, not that the bottom line would move, but in the same knee jerk way Lakeland goes apeshit for no good reason once every 5 years or so on a fear/speculation driven rally. I also thought a few years back Heineken was a nice way to play the CBD/pot rally with their CBD drinks..nope only pos NBEV. If only we were so lucky...

There will certainly be no shortage of Chinesepeoplephobia in America now....

got a little more pcyo

Its actually quite funny. Multiple days ago now, I accidentally started a thread on Simon Property Group in the General Discussion section. It still hasn't been moved to the correct place. Put up a thread with even a mouse fart sized hint of politics, Sanjeev will be here to move it in like 27.3333 minutes flat. And fwiw, ILMN had earnings which is why it was down.

Indeed all true. One interesting theory Ive heard is the wealth gap explanation. The same premise regarding how the top 1% keep getting richer at the expense of the middle class while the poor stay stuck....in business terms, the wealth gap involves a select few companies basically controlling the avenues to resources the rest of business world depends upon, and just slowly erodes middle and lower class companies. I dont think theres a correct answer, but its just odd seeing so many once respected companies looking like shit and thinking, what does the market do to these companies if we see things turn south?

MSGN a hair under 15 and DD at 52.7

Ive been chatting with a lot of folks and most of the time the lens of investment is one of a value investor. I continue to be amazed by the abundance of traditional businesses that are "cheap" but troubled. Look at some of the threads here for example. DD, AMC, XOM, GHC, certain types of real estate...dont get hung up on the specific examples. The contrast between these businesses and the ones RuleNumberOne likes to talk about is incredible. But beyond that, it got me thinking. All the classic value investors and books about such things talk about cycles and buying when things are out of favor and then achieving these heroic returns from being a contrarian. The TBTF trade was really the last classic example of this that worked. But otherwise, everything now, for at least the last half decade if not a bit longer, IMO has just stayed out of favor and continued its decline. Almost as if cycles dont exist and just transitioned to permanent secular declines. Commodity names have sucked forever now. Miners too. Many different types of real estate. Financials, Insurance, media, healthcare, energy, auto....quite a lot here. In a market many describe as in a bubble, and a few percent off all time highs, the list of traditional businesses at shitty valuations and often described by rational investors as having "too much hair" is incredible. So I guess the million dollar question is, do these ever become cyclical again(IE as in trade at premium valuations), or have we for some reason, maybe Fed induced, caused there to be a hitch in the way investments and businesses are valued? More or less rendering these things permanently challenged and essentially just part of some which ice cube can melt the slowest contest?

Sold all(but a minor tracking position) the remainder of my BX.

You're probably right and I'd likely have the same approach if I was looking at this trying to make money today or this week. Im perhaps influenced as well by the slim pickings with respect to the overall market. I dont think this will ever be a super aggressive position, but theres some good stuff(assets) here, some mediocre stuff, and probably a good bit of accumulated corporate sludge picked up over the decades that can be "refined" so to speak. Will see.

Well, Ill get $55 today(maybe a touch cheaper). All in all, a very Dupont like Q. Not narrative changing. Just meh... I dont mind this gravitating towards cheaper though, given my current ability to find value in abundance in this market is limited.

Greg, I own a decent position. Look at the $65 Jan 2021 LEAPs. Seems like IFF JV will almost be done by then and maybe you'll wind up with a basket of 4 different companies or the market will at least start pricing that in. The SOTP discount should not exist in this case, because they are actually breaking all the parts apart. This was something that I did not appreciate as much about Cannae Holdings (formerly FNFV). When it trades at a discount, they will actually sell. When the stakes in the public company they own goes up in value, they actually sell those shares and use it to buy back. They distributed ownership in other companies. So over time, the SOTP discount disappears. I'm curious, why the $65? I guess expanding a little further, why over vs under? I have not gotten comfortable enough with the value to really go after structuring a trade like this, but would probably look at the $45 calls and if anything, adding a little something via shorting similarly dated LEAP puts, at or slightly out of the money. Just a quick glance the Jan 21 $45s are probably costing you $2-3 in premium vs going out to the $65s, in a vacuum you need the stock to do $10 from here for breakeven. Might I be missing something with regard to adjustments needing to be made for all the transaction going on? I know sometimes the options can get greasy when you have a lot of corporate actions. But all else equal I typically like to go a bit further down in the money to give myself a bit of room to be wrong. One of my best trade ever I recall was in Q1 2016 I had some Citi $50 calls that were in the money and then subsequently Citi dumped to like $39 in February. Long story short I still thought $50 was still good and bought an absurd amount of calls for maybe a $1 or $2 and by expiration Citi was over $60. Structuring is very important. Right now I just own the stock with about a ~1.5% position. EDIT: I was looking at Jan 2022s. But same question stands.

Useless now perhaps but I was also an owner of this pre CABO(for CABO) and had the displeasure of having a few exchanges with certain NEOs at GHC. I did not get the impression they really gave much of a hoot about shareholders and seemed to rest on the laurels of what this once was. I exited many years ago at around 650ish, and am not surprised to see that the shares have not gone anywhere since.

I gave in a bought a little more today. You only live once.

The only thing that can justify the price movements is perhaps concluding that the market is now starting to realize rates will be forever low and thus rerating equities accordingly. Of course, this still kind of begs the question, do equities need to be expensive just because bonds are astronomically priced? The answer is probably yes, and its a powerful thing having pretty much all governments being buyers of debt to infinity. I guess as investors, we can only hope they never stop.

Idea of the year! https://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/TESLA_equity_options/2025260206

But, but, but... the shorts have better research.. All jokes aside, can all these short sellers, who are clearly wrong, please just move on and get out of the stock already so that the negative carry rates plummet..... so I can short it.

I also really like the juice on the options here. A lot of different setups where you can collect some pretty fat premiums to own the stock at big discounts to current prices.

Tim Hortons already pulling the plug. If it doesnt work in liberal Canada, its not sticking here outside of maybe NY and LA. One of funniest comments I read on another site: Dirty_godz 33m $BYND I got to short this. Seriously I'd rather eat a bat than fake meats. How do you invest in this unless you have a man bun?