Gregmal

IBKR is already so much cheaper than the "real" competitors that the grind to the bottom doesn't impact them nearly as much as everyone else. I don't know of any pros who use Robinhood. From there, we can then get into which services are superior, which is another advantage of IBKR

I mean IDK, maybe some off us are off.. If others are exuberant about the fact that this company has drove through one of the greatest autos booms ever, in the midst of the greatest equity market rally ever, WITH NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT; absolutely zero, cool, I guess. IMO Excuses are for losers.

Hahahahahahahahahaha, I'm cracking up!!! Maybe you could share with the rest of us what's that funny. The new board member has no discernible automotive and as it looks not even really business experience. I think it is fair to say that she would never been elected, if she were male. What exactly does an “expert in geopolitical and macroeconomic climate” do and how is this relevant for GM, one might want to ask? Edit: Screw it. Life is too short. CoBF is completely toxic board now. Good bye and thanks for all the fish. Have fun. I know. Somewhere along the lines people decided that it's blasphemous to dare express differing opinions or have the gall to disagree... What a shame. This is the straw that broke the camels back; questioning the benefit to shareholders of an unqualified board appointee.

Down big today, started a tiny position a minute before the close.

What would you build with? Steel. 50 years from now possibly composite materials. Agree. Look at decking over the past couple decades.

Go look at the filings...they were selling aggressively in the 90's most deal break. I was being sarcastic. I know they are hypocritical pieces of shit.

I've owned this a bunch in years prior, and it was always an awesome, predictable and profitable trade. But much like ajc mentioned, after a while it just became obvious this was doomed. I mean the stock predictably went up 50-200% at various points on nothing but insider buys, hedge funds like Baker pumping, and random jack ups of the borrow cost. But it ALWAYS came back and the operating results were never anything other than disastrous. I just dumped my monthly spec allocation in TOO options but if I was to gamble more I'd maybe take a flyer here and hope for a 30-50% bounce.

Where's Elliot? If it was "surely" worth $135 standalone a couple months ago, I'd expect them to be making a bid real soon! If they weren't dishonest and largely full of shit...

I've been keeping an eye on it, but have the following reservations. I think it's high quality, and cheap, but... dont exactly see major catalysts. I also think it's highly overrated in the sense that it often gets presented as an under the radar, orphan name. I've always seen this as a hedge fund hotel with kind of a mini BRK type of cult like following to it. It definitely isn't off the radar. They own assets that will likely face the same type of challenges any real estate co will in the present environment, there is not A TON unique to how they go about their business; the difference IMO, while there, is generally exaggerated. Because of some of the above misconceptions, I think it got way ahead of itself 4-5 years ago, and has been paying the price since. I'd also speculatively gander that the hedgie underperformance and as a result redemption and selling has been an overhang here. I'd probably start dabbling soon with a 1-2% position, but I think you need to really play the LOOONG game here with this one. It'll take time to shake out the above mentioned issues.

Thought I'd bump this. Came back $10 for no apparent reason. It's interesting and on the radar here; I'll probably dabble/add a little bit, but not no brainer cheap. Another 10% decline though, and....welcome back to the top 5.

Another guardian of shareholder value https://finance.yahoo.com/m/d6139960-08bc-34cd-9e41-ed48e5d34594/general-motors-adds-another.html I wonder how much stock she owns?

Put this on the radar recently as well. 100% agree.

The pitch is really complex. It's a good if not great, proven capital allocator getting beaten up and thrown out because people apparently think no one will buy homes with a 5% interest rate... I'm a buyer...

Failure to buy back stock doesn't look like that bad of a decision in hindsight, the stock hasn't moved in 5 years, the opportunity still exists... The bigger capital allocation miss was not acquiring FCAU when they had the chance. FCAU's market cap when Sergio did the Capital Junkie presentation was I think around $18Bn. Now it's worth 2x that and the synergies would be massive. Sergio's estimate was $5B+ per year... They laid out the case very clearly, there is so much capital waste with every OEM developing the same technologies. But GM didn't even entertain the thought because they were "busy merging with themselves." Which is code for "we have no stock so no upside if this works out and all downside if it doesn't, plus it creates extra work for us." Exactly. And for the record I was against the merger and trusted Barra and was 100% wrong.

Thats the thing, they bought Cruise with what? 2 months of FCF? Great, but they've by and large completely mismanaged capital allocation. That's pretty much the only thing they can point to over the past half decade. The Lyft investment is immaterial IMO. Go look back at this thread. I was long a big supporter of Barra. But at this point it's inexcusable. After all the rhetoric during the proxy fight about how great they are and how much they've done for shareholders... it's all a crock. How about this stop issuing shares! Maybe you need to for Cruise, sure, NONE at the GM. Everyone says Buffett endorses GM? Well BRK has 100B in cash. They are dying for a deal. Why hasn't BRK stole this yet if it's such a no brainer? I still think this is salvageable but there is no excuses anymore and it's time to stop making excuses for why value isnt being created. It's one thing if, as some used to point out, their China business is being valued at 0. But now on trade war fears they lose $10 a share? Things just arent adding up and these sort of things can go from cheap, to value trap real quick, especially in a cyclical, capital intensive business like this.

Your comment doesn't make sense. Yes HVAC has not performed well. Why is the existing asset management business not an investment? Why is Mt. Melrose not an investment? Both are many times larger. They are not moving to something new. Maybe you are not familiar with what they have been doing the past year and a half. Why are asset managers a sham?? They sell a service to clients just like other service businesses do. Maybe you don't need it but that doesn't mean others don't. Yea I've never understood this line of logic. In a world were casinos/betting are legit businesses, anonymous source based journalism is considered a legitimate business, and pay day loans are accepted as businesses, how is asset management a sham? Asset management isn't a sham, but single manager funds ARE very different than normal businesses in that they are extraordinarily dependent on the services of a single person. If that person quits/retires/dies the business is gone -- or at least greatly diminished. Also, think about how much leverage the manager has over any entities that own parts of the GP. IIRC the Fortress Investment Group/Graticule Asia Macro/Adam Levinson situation is a good example of how this dynamic can play out. I don't disagree, but don't people realize that this is the product they are investing in when they chose to do so? I mean I get the complaints here, but at the same time I think it's also pretty naive if folks were buying THIS, because they wanted to be in the HVAC biz and didn't realize this was massively reliant on an asset manager... That said, I've heard from quite a few respected people that asset/money managers make great CEO's(in a sarcastic, biding their time to bilk value type of sense), especially with small companies because they know the lingo, know which levers to bump to produce aesthetically promising but still ultimately hollow results and generally speaking play the long game. Not saying that's the case here but it's something I tend to watch out for with smaller companies run by finance guys.

Your comment doesn't make sense. Yes HVAC has not performed well. Why is the existing asset management business not an investment? Why is Mt. Melrose not an investment? Both are many times larger. They are not moving to something new. Maybe you are not familiar with what they have been doing the past year and a half. Why are asset managers a sham?? They sell a service to clients just like other service businesses do. Maybe you don't need it but that doesn't mean others don't. Yea I've never understood this line of logic. In a world were casinos/betting are legit businesses, anonymous source based journalism is considered a legitimate business, and pay day loans are accepted as businesses, how is asset management a sham?

That's basically the argument that's made to justify this mediocrity. Well, look at peers, look at the sector, yada, yada, yada. Bottom line is you give 10 different teams $100M you can get wildly different results based on competency and capital allocation. It seems in certain sectors just being in sector is an excuse. It's like the banking sector pre 2008. These guys were just wasteful and kicked the can down the road "just cuz" that's what everyone else was doing. I see autos in the same light, they just waste resources in different ways. And given that IMO GM is/was in much stronger position than their peers, it's even worse that they replicate this behavior and not surprisingly, the poor results. They've been preaching prudence forever now, but guess what? Come next recession they'll tank like everyone else, and then we'll be fed macro excuses. Management will probably leave richer than ever, and the shareholder with the bag.

I don't disagree, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Using the above mentioned logic has allowed countless management teams to transfer money from the patient(shareholders), to the incompetent(management). In my portfolio specifically, companies like GM and CTO are guilty as all hell of this. Talking about how much long term value you've created until you are blue in the face should not compensate for turning in nothing by the way of share appreciation for a near half decade. Especially in an environment that AT WORST, has been incredibly generous to these types of companies.

People have been claiming "peak auto" for 5 years now. That's not really an excuse for them anymore IMO. If you've been trading at 5x for the past half decade and your share price has gone nowhere, that means you are doing something wrong, especially on the capital allocation front.

MSG and CIBR

VIC is a great resource and the discussions are IMO more valuable than the write ups. You have other incredibly bright minds that can all interpret new data on the fly and give you a pretty well rounded idea of were "the market" consensus is. Honestly never heard or used the other site.

Agreed. I've added about 20% to my position last couple days. My only concern, you touched on though. It's there with auto, and it's there with semis. The whole sector is out of favor and trading at these whacky kind of valuations. And as a GM shareholder I can attest to the nuisance of how long these overhangs can persist. There's nothing IMO that will prevent this from trading at single digit multiples for the near to medium term. I do like this here though. So whatever.

Going ahead with the spin off. https://nypost.com/2018/10/04/msg-moving-ahead-with-plans-to-spin-off-the-knicks-and-rangers/

Interesting, but don’t you need to stay in the property for 1 year as your primary residence before being able to rent it out? Overall not a big deal but wanted to be sure I understood what you’re proposing. When you apply for your next mortgage to finance a primary residence purchase, is rental income counted directly against your mortgage payments or is it added to your debt/income ratio (which wouldn’t be great)? From my experience, and I know several who have had it work exactly like this, is that if you currently have no ownership of a primary residence, you can apply for a loan as a primary residence. The second the loan is finalized, you can do whatever you want. I suggested he live there a couple months simply to save on rent until he found a quality tenant. Following the rental agreement being signed, one in their mid 20's or whatever can go back to renting, or staying with their parents(easily the most cost effective way), and then immediately, or whenever they feel like it, go seek out another property. As long as you present the contract proving the other one is rented, the next one can be coded as a primary residence rather than an investment property. If you're total cost of the first property is $1500 a month, and you get $1600 in total rent, the mortgage equation gives you credit for the additional $100 a month in their debt to income equation. The above is typically rare because most people don't have the funds to do this in their mid to late 20's, and those that do, typically look to buy their own home before buying an investment. But if you can do it, you'll save a ton of money on stupid fees that apply to 2nd homes and investment properties.