Gregmal

Example number 1 of criminal justice system being totally fu**ed? https://www.yahoo.com/news/teacher-jailed-20-years-having-144000464.html Chick who has a clean record, along with likely some mental issues and a sex addiction gets 20 years for doinking a 13 year old who supposedly was obsessed with her and pursued her relentlessly. Not to mention, is it not a fantasy of pretty much every teenage boy to screw the hot teacher at school? Epstein got what, 12 months for trafficking and rapings galore of teenagers around the same age? Hopefully he gets 20 per kid going forward.

So my first post was kind of mocking this and being facetious, but in a more serious manner, if this is the case, and such a short period without power could cause mass harm, shouldn't there be contingency plans, back up power sources, etc? Like it really wouldn't take much for a foreign terrorist organization to knock out power for a day or two and cause something really, really bad, no? Like yesterdays event seemed like a normal course of business event. A shit happens and that's to be expected situation. Transformers go all the time in most areas. NYC, from an infrastructural standpoint, needs to get its shit together.

Are New Yorkers.... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/14/con-edison-apologizes-for-manhattan-blackout-as-governor-orders-investigation.html I lose power occasionally during storms for a short period of time; maybe 1-2 a year. Have had a few 12+ hour outages during incredibly bad weather spurts over the past decade. Shit happens, this sort of stuff is part of life and expected. These tools lose power for 4 hours and now want an "investigation", to "hold all parties accountable", because losing power for a few hours is "unacceptable"? So glad I moved from that area. And clueless De Blasio, out campaigning rather than doing his job despite having less than 1% of the lefties, blamed a manhole fire LOL

Pretty interesting theories out there. This is guy is said to be a billionaire, but has no known clients and has never traded with anyone. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/hedge-funders-have-some-thoughts-on-what-epstein-was-doing.html

Theres always some jerk off somewhere, trying to have his Big Short moment or get his 15 minutes of fame. I get how one can find ways to not like HHC, but in every way, shape or form, you can not dislike HHC, without finding SRG as an even more egregious example of all that one would be turned off by with HHC.

Trimming CVS a bit

SPACs are great. I dont know why people invest money in CDs and Treasuries. SPACs more or less give you a worst case treasury type return, with upside on a good deal announcement. Plus warrants/rights. This should pop, but holy he heck, 2.5x 2023 revenue! Talk about a margin of safety. LOL. Good trade though here with a floor on the stock.

Is the “James Bond PPK” a special edition? If, not this is pretty mondäne pistol , as it was the police service pistol in many states in Germany. Its not even that great of a pistol. no idea, but I don’t think it’s worth more than $500 equivalent in Germany (gun market is small there however, due to small gun laws). Always been a Bond fan and bought one maybe a decade ago for about $750 USD. Not as an investment but just cuz. So your figures are probably right. Heard a couple years later the model was discontinued.

Ill get some more after greater thought but the first that come to mind, and my best performing are vintage baseball/hockey cards. The Gretzky RC Topps/OPC has been a 10 bagger the past 6-8 years. Check out the 52 Topps Mantle as well. You have many of the qualities of other great investments there especially if you buying graded, which is the only way to go. These things started as a hobby since I was maybe 5 and of course as I evolved became a way to invest with an edge as well. Have a discontinued version of the Walther PPK7 James Bond gun as well, but dont have any idea what the market is for something like that. Probably not worth more than a couple grand either.

Finally tried this thing. 1. The Impossible Burger is way better. 2. My wife tried it as well and we both agreed it passes, especially with a bun and cheese, as a burger. 3. The main thing, is that if you know what it is, its hard not to sit there and stare at this thing while eating it, trying to process wtf it actually is. The draw I've noticed with most people, is mainly out of curiosity. Once you have it a couple times it loses its mystique and if it tastes close enough to a burger, while still kind of being subtly different, why not just have the burger, especially if it's cheaper. Fad...

Glorious last post lol(writser). Very true though. Part of being a member of a community, especially a free one, is to chip in, even if only once in a while.

Exactly. I use both. But in the case of something like this, where the wager is dictated by probability, the million dollar link in that chain comes down to whether you have correctly assigned your probabilities to certain outcomes. With something like this, I could very well be WRONG in assigning outcome probabilities. Because it is not my core investment strategy, I am not willing to wager significantly on my assigned probabilities being THAT CORRECT. However if something is right in my wheelhouse and I am oozing confidence in the probability of a favorable outcome, I have no problem betting the house. FRPH for instance I took a 5% position to a 30% position and then back to a 5% position solely to capitalize on the stock bouncing from $48 to $54 as my work told me this was almost a guarantee given the valuation. I have little confidence that there is equal certainty PACB will definitely get back to $7, despite thinking that there is a very high likelihood it does, all things considered.

Good points and I think we agree more than maybe we both realize. There isn't a moral issue at all with gambling. Me, with my personal money, have even made a handful of sports related bets when I thought the odds were off. I actually just got a notification from IBKR stating something to the effect(I skimmed the email) that they are rolling out a play money sports betting platform where you can trade odds. IE You think -200 is off so you buy it and then can flip it if the spread narrows to -160. I try to keep David Tepper in mind when investing/speculating. His style(his results which are hands down better than anybody including Buffett since the early 90's) more or less resembles your banana loving colleague. Name of the game is to make money. Motherf*cker bought SNAP IPO when everyone else was whining about it being garbage and when asked said, "I thought it would go up"... Thats why I keep certain percentages of my portfolio available to literally do anything. But I also think staying within our own circle of competence is important and picking out long term or medium duration investments would be moreso what I consider mine rather than short term merger plays. The biggest edge I think an investor has is time/patience. That edge simply does not exist with these things. If you've seen some of the other threads(CRSP/EDIT, MDXG, BTC, etc), I am quite comfortable going outside the normal "value investor" box and even sharing thoughts on it, while getting criticized by the other badge wearing, underperforming, value investor police, which seem to enjoy rolling up to my posts with their sirens on and screaming "what are you doing sir? You are not acting like a value investor". The rationale behind these type of things is if you do 100, over time you make more than you lose. But at the same time, each one of these is different. It'll probably take a long time to do 100 of them, and even within that sample size you probably have 90% of the scenarios being quite unique. How many times have you seen a hold up with a no revenue dumpster fire being acquired by a $55B company? Or Cabelas getting the green light, but Staples/Office Depot getting squashed? So I give myself room to participate, but since it is not what I consider my core strength I make sure I dont start getting crazy and as such, have position limits for both entry and final positions.

I have preset position limits for specific types of investments. This is standard for these. A few things. 1) These are not investments really. They are speculations. I view them as alternatives to cash. Maybe you can make a case for the MON/NXPI/CAB(potentially AGN) deals as investments with short term upside in a deal close, and long term opportunity in a deal break, but the EXXI/RSYS/PACB stuff is a pure game of playing hot potato with poo poo. Allocating 1% to the bad deals and who knows how much to the good ones IMO is a quick way to tie up all your capital in stuff with a rather static profile. Although I dont know how big the merger stuff is in terms of your investment strategy. I generally allocate about 5% of the portfolio this this stuff and SPAC's. 2) I edited my original post simply because when I read it I immediately know I'd likely have some spreadsheet warrior get hung up on the "how do you derive a 90% confidence" remark, and miss the gist of my post. 3) If you are strictly looking to express something as maximizing your return and betting the house when the book says the numbers are there, I dont know... its like betting hard with a high count in blackjack. OK. But again that's gambling. Ill do that with small sums. Not my investment money. Heck if we wanted to maximize returns in this space, you could have just bought ILMN back in December when all the uncertainty started, and made 25%+ or CRSP and doubled your money, or quite a few other genetic plays. 4) My initial read on this as shown in the first posts here was spot on. I thought there'd be bumps here. That has largely played about. I find $6 with a 4-6 month wait time to get an outcome much more deserving on my time than sitting on this at $7-$7.5, holding for a year, waiting through 20%+ mtm losses, only for what? 10% IRR. No thanks. 5) Kind of in relation the first couple points, but this is not a playing field where you or I have any real edge. I mean look at the real guys in this space. The legends like Perry.. they're spending $3-$4M per deal on their guys at Skadden Arps, Cravath, etc for around the clock regulatory/legal insight. I manage money for some folks who work at big firms like that, and particularly a few in the UK who have an interesting handle on some of these things. We have investments in a lot of the genetic stuff, so this situation has come up from time to time which is where I've been able to kind of get comfortable here, vs the situation months ago. But nevertheless, to really be a meaningful player with these, you need much more by the way of resources than you or I are willing to dedicate, and as such will never have a real edge. In respect of that, I see zero reason to ever make these "bets" meaningful allocations in the portfolio. You've(jokingly I presume) made remarks prior about your strategy being "buy and hold on for dear life" and "hopefully a short term trade doesn't become a long term investment"... which is fine and all, but that sort of stuff doesnt work when you manage other peoples money. Although I probably would(actually I have) done shit like that with my own money.

Definitely recommend Montreal. Great restaurants, reasonable on the cost side compared to big cities, so clean it blows your mind, especially if coming from a shit hole like NYC, people are welcoming and friendly, hardly any homeless people, and everyone loves hockey. Oh yea, world class strip clubs too. I remember seeing someone rush across the street to pick up and throw out a soda can and thinking, we need more of these people in US cities. People bump into you on the sidewalk? "I'm so sorry" is often the response. Not the "what are you looking at" stuff you get from the savages in NYC/Chicago/etc.

~30bp. No interest in owning PACB on a deal break for the reasons stated above.

I recently went long this. After speaking with a number of consultants and then doing some follow ups, essentially, the case that should and will be made is that Pacific Bio is not a business that can survive on a standalone basis. Their operating history certainly supports this, and if competition is a concern for approving the deal; seeking to exist certainly doesn't help. This issue in regards to Illumina is a lack of pure-play competitors and the winner take all dynamics within many areas of genomics. Illumina is being given a hard time because people need to cover their asses, but barring anything totally asinine, this will go through the extra reviews, but should close early 2020. At $6 entry I see maybe $1.25 downside and $2 up, with probably 90% likelihood(lazy guesstimate, certainly not an exact formula derived percentage) the deal closes or we get a nice quick bounce up that provides and acceptable IRR on it's own.

Are people surprised that dropping the Model 3, already unprofitable at $50K+ down to mid $30K range resulted in more sales? Let me know when they start making money... This continues to be a great achievement for Musk, and poor investment from the short side; and.... a massive Ponzi scheme that requires Huodini to pull a rabbit(profits) out of his hat. Those profits continue to be non existent. And please, spare me the AAPL and AMZN rhetoric. Apple pretty much always had profits once they got going and AMZN did too once you got through the masking gimmicks Bezos employed to fuel growth and dodge taxes.

One look at the man, and Gregmal declares “he is fat”! This is a great business, at the very least, as a short term investment. Potentially, it’s a long term compounder. No need to get caught up on obscure nuances. I was once told something by a mentor that has resonated ever since. The ideal combination for an investor is to be smart enough to see what’s relevant, while being dumb enough not to see or get hung up on every little arcane detail.

The difference between a software company and an auto company is capex. Tesla most certainly falls on the auto side there.

Started BUR.L Also added AVM last night

Sold to close OSTK $10 Sept calls

I bought a little starter here this morning. Very unique business. Seems to have lower correlation to broader market. Kind what I'm looking for in my investments at the moment. Thanks for bringing this up. And LIT as well cameronfen.

Ok. So there's nothing bold here at all....Let's either get some answers or put a bullet in this pig's head. A few questions/comments. 1. What kind of due diligence was done on this property? How is it possible to be blindsided by run rate $800K in annual capex(or did I misinterpret you remark about savings and this is actually -$200K per quarter in net losses, rather than just capex)? A novice RE investor would be able to see problems this large. I have bought real estate where admittedly, I did little to no due diligence on the specific property because I felt confident with my existing knowledge. But to find a gem where less than 2 years later you are generating annually expenses equivalent to 20%+ of your purchase price? And then selling for what amounts to pennies on the dollar of your acquisition price?? Either they knew of these issues and went ahead anyway(totally inexcusable and a breach of fiduciary responsibility), or they completely missed these things because they didn't know what they were doing in the first place. 2. Go back through this thread. How many instances are there were management does really shady shit, and then comes forward with some benevolent sounding excuse? I am fine with people making mistakes. The first time management does something where shareholders say "what a minute, this is foul", perhaps its a misunderstanding. Perhaps it just appears worse than it is. But this is like what? The 10th time these guys have done something sketchy? So yea, no one should be buying the "oh its totally benevolent" bullshit. After this many instances, its either 1) these guys are deliberately taking liberties and screwing shareholders if they can find the slightest excuse, or 2) they are totally tone deaf and oblivious to things that the common folk looks at and says "wow that's bad". Neither situation bodes well for people in this position. My guess is that this is just typical Wall Street nonsense. Management takes massive risks and makes big moves with no consequence. If nothing happens, they make out well. If they hit a home run, they make a ton of money. If it fails, it's no biggie, shareholders pay for it. Nothing comes out of their pockets. They don't give back their salaries or bonuses. They just shrug their shoulders and say "sorry we tried and it didn't work out"...

I'm sure the British thought the Patriots/Rebels were lefties when they sought independence...thank goodness for lefties! Cheers! No one is stopping them from leaving and colonizing somewhere else!