Gregmal

I bought some this morning as well. However my concerns are across the board. Specifically, how can you say this is "cheap" when frankly, every real estate company(barring a few like O, NNN) I look at these days is optically "cheap" or "trading at a discount"? This is how stealth(or not so stealth) sector wide multiple contractions occur. If even the best ones trade at discounts, I dont think its proper to base buying a company on the fact that it trades at a discount. How these guys execute is a short-medium term risk. But I think value can even be destroyed here(as others mentioned) and from $92 one still makes out well if your horizon is 5+ years. Its funny though, all the talk of a bubble... real estate investors would die for even fair valuations on their holdings...Like seriously? how can we be in a bubble if you can't even get NAV minus 10% for some of the best companies in the sector?

Finally pulled the trigger on some HHC at 92.63. We should be nearing there bottom.

This is 100% spot on. It seems many are confusing a bubble in certain areas with "the market" being in a bubble. I don't think many people here are buying the bubble names anyway, so its a non event as I have no interest in shorting these. But there's always areas of froth in the markets. Nothing new here.

My remark was largely sarcastic. In terms of EV, Kellogg is about 28B, while BYND is just under $10B. Morningstar Farms certainly isn't valued properly!(again sarcasm). My gist; this is the definition of a fad. 100%. Has nothing to do with the market being in a bubble or anything else. The key for these companies is to follow the Sodastream model. Hoard as much cash as possible during your fad years, and then hope to reposition the business in as strong a position as possible once things normalize. Most fads piss away their money in good times, and then lose money when the boom is over(SCTY). I dont see this as being much different. FIZZ is another one.

Whenever I go to Costco I grab a box of the Morningstar Chipotle Bean Burgers. Very good, probably better than the Beyond Meat product or the Impossible Burger which I do like. Nevertheless I also still eat regular burgers, and it isn't taking share of anything for me other than perhaps one lunch meal a week. Key question, why isn't Kellog stock going bananas?

Good couple points on value investing https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/is-value-investing-dead-it-might-be-and-heres-what-killed-it.html At least the older fashioned version of it. Reading other threads, it just seems like people want to make excuses not to invest. If presented with a quality company that is firings on all cylinders, its "that's too expensive". If given something dirt cheap, then we get "its got too much hair/too many issues"... So it just seems like people don't want to invest.

IMO people are just using the bubble narrative to justify shitty investment returns. I remember Einhorn whining about a "bubble" and "froth" in like 2013...Marc Faber back in 2011... clearly they've just been WRONG

What I meant to communicate(poorly) is that writing something off because of the perception that it adds something negative, isn't always wise and really doesn't have much to do with whether one can make money in this situation. I am not a BTC expert and think its kind of gimmicky. The attraction I see for people is regaining anonymity. The government has gone so overboard invading peoples privacy, and strong arming foreign countries who used to have favorable banking laws, to the point where it is ridiculous. Sure, there is a criminal element that benefits from this, but as I mentioned before, there are criminal elements to everything, everywhere. So its not a deal breaker when making an investment.

Probably quite a bit less than when you fill your car with gas or pay sales tax to the state you live in, or federal taxes, or pretty much anything else you spend money on. Tip your waitress? Many do drugs. Your $20 ends up paying for dope. This is a stupid way to look at something.

I do find it amusing that the geniuses at the Fed take 2-3 quarters longer than even the average person to realize what is going on. I don't think we need a rate cut now, but I also dont think we needed nearly as many as these idiots gave us the last couple years.

MX and EBAY

CVS and MSG

I would just ignore the noise and buy quality companies while looking for the occasion speculation trade.

Jeez, I thought mine were bad at 3.7% of appraised value with a typical 3% escalation.

+1 Take a look at the sample of companies where investors have found large margin of safety: Loews Seaspan FTP Sandridge Sears Fairfax Altius St. Joe The common pattern is they get a large net asset value and market price is at a fair bit of discount to that. This gets many investors excited, they see a large margin of safety, stupid market, etc.. The thing to focus on is to look out a few years and see what the earnings are going to be. Maybe 5 years or 10 years. Focus on where the earnings are going to be. Those are the fundamental drivers of a business. Not what discount you are getting to current net asset value. OK. This is the easy one. Take the case of some companies that are currently experiencing problems. You would say, I do look out over the next few years and I am going to capitalize the earnings of the business when they normalize. Fine. Except that many of these businesses are in industries that are getting disrupted. And you do not want to invest in any company that does not sell for less than 10x earnings. So a large portion of the investment universe is out of bounds. I would suggest to look at where value is actually being created. Vinod Many here would rather own those listed companies, because the understanding of being a badge wearing "value investor", is buying shitty companies, or at best, ones with questionable fundamentals, at a big discount to IV(while forgetting that maybe, just maybe, that discount is warranted)

I think the thing is to understand the fundamentals, but also be aware of the context. If you look some of the great long term compounders, in hind site they are easy to see. Duh. But what is easy to see is also capable of being extrapolated and applied to ones search for current companies with those characteristics. Google, again, just using it as an example, is a dominant, one of a kind company, regardless of where we are in the grand scheme of things, and will be, with almost 100% certainty, in the future. So now that I've determined this to be my foundation for owning a name, next up is price. Which at the end of the day, for a high caliber, established and dominant company, IMO(and I say this with a lot of caution for myriad reasons), is not really all that important in the grand scheme of things; all things considered. Why? Look at how long people have been talking about Amazon being overvalued(I am one of those people). Plot that chart and tell me how many times you could have bought it and how many times, over the long haul, you would have regretted it? Draw downs are just part of the markets glorious opportunity. You could have bought Apple before the GFC, Priceline during the tech bubble, etc. With proper risk management(averaging in slowly, a bit of diversification, continued diligence making sure you continue to own quality) the odds of getting hurt are very, very, small, if not, dare I say, almost nonexistent. Versus just sitting on a large pile of cash and being the grumpy old man that complains about why things are so expensive... It always makes sense to own great assets. The prices paid for them changes with the times. If you stay flexible with your ability to adjust(going overweight/underweight) as the price paid changes, you will make out quite well. But I have a hard time convincing myself it EVER makes sense, not to own ANYTHING of a great company.

Its an interesting scenario. I've argued for a really long time that the market isn't really expensive all things considered, people are just looking at things the wrong way. In the spring/summer/fall, I do a lot of fishing. When I go out, I always have a cooler with me for drinks and whatnot. Doing this, I would invariably run through a lot of ice. Spending $2.25 for an 8lb bag will take a long time to add up, but in time it will. Nonetheless I started thinking, and honest to god truth, Yeti coolers are the only coolers that ACTUALLY do as advertised and keep things cold for 6+ days. All the others say they do, but you're lucky to get 24 hours out of them. If in the course of a week I go out 5x, and instead of buying ice 5x, buy it 2x, the payback period is not that long and its actually quite beneficial. So, I was able to find a value proposition in a $250 cooler that my entire life I had thought was grossly overpriced. Your last paragraph is an example of that. Managers are using the wrong tools to evaluate some of these great businesses. Much like Buffett has said about missing Google. Its not, "we buy the most expensive assets and add as they go up", it is "we buy tremendous businesses and they appreciate at a greater rate than crummy ones".

Yawn. Basketball sucks.

MSGN.

The problem is that, management gets rewarded for bankrupting a company. Ward made a fortune crippling them. Then the next crew had every incentive because then they got a clean slate and tons of free stock. If a company goes bankrupt, senior management should mandatorily be fired. As long as it is the current way, file and get a big slug of free stock... things will never change.

This whole thing just screams fad to me. Lets face it, there is a certain ambiguity to the TAM here, but realistically, only a fringe number of people will stick with this. Hardcore "manly" men, the BBQers and whatnot, will never switch. Then there is the "oh that's cool" crowd, probably like myself. I tried the Impossible Burger, and it was good. But I'm not getting it every time I go out and order a cheeseburger. At last, there is the health crowd. But from everything I have read, this burger is basically on par with beef. There is no real health benefit to it. So the only place, long term for this(after everyone has gotten over the "its cool I need to try one" thing), is the vegetarian/vegan who doesn't really care "that much" about their health. These things aren't replacing Big Mac's and aren't taking over the world. There is nothing really stopping knocks offs from emerging, and its hard to really get comfortable with future valuations when the current multiple is 100x sales. What price/sales ration does Lamb Weston trade at? Thats maybe where I'd be interested. That said, outside of selling OTM calls, I think stuff like LWAY and CLXT might be tertiary plays with way more upside should this trend continue.

Have owned USAK on and off over the years. A steady combination of value, mismanagement, M&A, quasi-fraud, low float, and sector sentiment have made it a pretty spectacular trading vehicle in an OK-ish sector that has historically had its fair share of struggles.

Shorting longer dated OTM calls usually works well with stuff like this.

I would think Buffett, like any semi intelligent or better, successful entrepreneur, would approach this as a unique opportunity to exchange thoughts with an individual who has done admirably well using a non conventional approach; one different than his own, and as such, this is perhaps an opportunity to learn something.

Trimming CRSP.