Gregmal

I also think that risk wise, this is probably as good a shot as any to take a swing on a short position. $40 upside best case scenario. More likely scenario is you fade this back to low-mid 300's. No position though.

Another solid quarter https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/nuvectra-reports-second-quarter-2018-financial-results-20180807-01132

This is awesome only because if finally forces guys like Chanos and Einhorn to eat it and gives finality to the notion that they are wrong. So tired of the "we're not wrong we're early" bullshit. If you shorted couple years(or longer ago) and it went against you, you're friggin wrong.

What. The. F***. I've never seen anything like this in my life. And as much as I think TSLA is a farce, I am rooting for Musk here. Guy has massive balls and fights for his shareholders like few I've ever seen.

I would think the frustrations of owning this the past year would be the primary reason one would just throw in the towel. That said it's surprising the spread keeps widening. End of the day, who knows? I can't really see any reason, barring this entire buyout being one giant fraud, for this not closing. If it doesn't, I'll live.

Buffett is a hypocrite. Is the aforementioned any different than a guy buying stock and then pitching it at a conference? Sokol had no control over whether Buffett bought the company or not. I don't think he did anything wrong at all. Warren just likes to polish his image every so often. You know how many people probably pitch WB deals on a regular basis? The notion that Sokol buying shares because he knew it would be bought are crazy. If anything he's taking the same gamble many investors do on a regular basis. Irresponsible, but nothing wrong with it. Really? Buffett, a multi-billionaire, owns $85 million of Seritage common stock, disclosed his investment in 2015. What conflict is there exactly? Through his personal investment, he gained an understanding of the investment. When an opportunity to invest a large sum of money came along, he invested $2 billion earning 7% rates, which by the way, is a fraction of his cash pile at Berkshire. He mentioned he would have owned the equity for Berkshire if he could have a bigger stake, but that's not doable. So all these comparisons about Buffett having a personal stake being boosted because of this debt investment is non-sense. Further, the 7% he earns for Berkshire is greater than the investment value of his own personal stake. Ya'll need to take a chill pill. I think you misunderstood or misinterpreted my post. Buffett is a hypocrite. He's demonstrated that a bunch of times over the past decade. But I think I clearly stated this issue about conflict of interest is a joke and I can't understand why it's even being discussed. Any rational owner of many businesses would try to use their network to create synergies. Nothing wrong with that.

I'd actually concur. I had a small position I bought just to keep an eye on this, mainly because its such a hard on for many value investors and IMO if there's any truth to Berkowitz's ridiculous values given to SHLD, it's likely buried in SRG now. I'd been relatively disappointed with it and exited the position yesterday.

Buffett is a hypocrite. Is the aforementioned any different than a guy buying stock and then pitching it at a conference? Sokol had no control over whether Buffett bought the company or not. I don't think he did anything wrong at all. Warren just likes to polish his image every so often. You know how many people probably pitch WB deals on a regular basis? The notion that Sokol buying shares because he knew it would be bought are crazy. If anything he's taking the same gamble many investors do on a regular basis. Irresponsible, but nothing wrong with it.

I think it's crazy the extent to which people are blowing this up. If I owned a network of businesses I would certainly use them to help each other and myself. This is more common sense than controversial. He is from what I know, one of the largest owners of SRG as well. If he plundered one company to benefit the other, sure, but this is a total non event.

Results out today https://seekingalpha.com/pr/17234702-frp-holdings-inc-nasdaq-frph-announces-results-second-quarter-six-months-ended-june-30-2018 This one just keeps getting better. And yea, over 300m in cash ready for deployment. Love this line to: "The problem of what to do with the proceeds is a good one to have, but a problem nonetheless. Selling when one believes valuations are at their peak also means having to deploy the proceeds when valuations are at their peak, which obviously we are loath to do. If that means letting the cash earn interest for a few quarters, that is what we are prepared to do. We are not going to wait forever to put this money to work, but this sale and its proceeds are too important an opportunity to waste, and as stewards of your capital, we are taking this moment very seriously. " Great to hear this kind of value awareness from guys in the RE business. Know way to many folks oblivious to this and foolishly rely on the never-changing attitude of "why would you pay taxes when you can just 1031 everything continuously".

I agree. It's odd to me how one's style of investing can in and of itself be an excuse. Most things don't work all the time. However if you have enough evidence to conclude that something isn't working(ie your returns suck), I don't know why you wouldn't look to fix it. Only in the hedge fund world can awful performance be excused simply by drawing some nonchalant, lazy excuse like "I'm a value guy".

I'm pretty sure Buffett spent nearly a decade working as a stock broker and then under Ben Graham. I'm also pretty sure he's also said many times how much he learned from this experience. From his Wikipedia: "Buffett worked from 1951 to 1954 at Buffett-Falk & Co. as an investment salesman; from 1954 to 1956 at Graham-Newman Corp. as a securities analyst; from 1956 to 1969 at Buffett Partnership, Ltd. as a general partner" So half a decade. Probably more non "run my own shop" experience than Ackman, Einhorn, and Tilson combined. I say the above not to be derogatory but because I've noticed a certain mentality with these types of people. They are super bright, but too academic, mainly because that's all they know. They do what the textbook says is the right thing to do even though anyone who's worked in just about any profession after studying it in school will tell you that you learn very quickly out there in the field that the textbook isn't always right. You have to adapt. The tone of Einhorn's letters lately scream "but the textbook says I'm right".

August is off to a good start with Tesla and GM. I have typically been a fan of Einhorn, but this stuff from him is inexcusable. As things shake out, and guys like Ackman and Tilson do what they do, I'm beginning to wonder if that age of hedge fund "stars" was really just a result of being in the right place at the right time. It was impossible not to outperform as a value investor in the early 2000's. If you were shorting it you looked even more genius because we all know what kind of stuff value guys would be shorting during that time frame too. But longer term this period IMO just reinforced arrogance and the textbook teachings of "value investing" which in turn probably hindered these guys ability to adapt or change on the fly. I mean between Tilson, Ackman, and Einhorn, I don't think any of them ever had a real job or relevant experience coming out of school. They basically lived spoiled rich kid lives and then played hedge fund manager with family money instead of getting real jobs. To their credit, they were bright enough to run the gauntlet and become insanely rich and popular, but I don't think they have the same hardened mentality or intimate understanding of how things really work to be sustainable. Looking at the real deal guys, Buffett, Cohen, Tepper, etc, they all did their time on the street and earned valuable life lessons before striking it out on their own. In terms of "fight" I think this goes a long way in shaping an investor vs a rich kid who's always gotten what he wants.

I don't see how this could happen. The other half of the world's phones are Android. This works with apple music and video since these are individual activities, but when we're talking about connecting with you friends, I can't see a network that leaves out half the population working. It doesn't need to have everybody all at once. All I'm saying is that Apple could very easily do something like this and you can't say it wouldn't effect FB. I've heard of people ditching their current phones for Iphones simply because they want to be able to Imessage with their friends. Having an AAPL social media network would throw a huge wrench into the equation for FB. I mean it's kind of silly even to say there is a moat when the bottom line is that there have been numerous instances of companies posing threats to FB. WHatsApp and Instagram to name a few. FB just happened to be smart enough to buy them.

Didn't Google assume the same thing with Google+ ? Google doesn't own mobile the way Apple does. Apple puts millions of devices in people's hands every day. People live on their phones. Two totally different companies in this regard.

I don't know if there is some secret pact or not, but Apple could very easily launch a social media ecosystem through it's platform. Integrate this through IOS. They already have Imessage, photos, Itunes, etc, all they'd need to do is seam them together. Not to mention you get rid of all the "issues" people have with FB in terms of advertising and data collecting. This is why I don't really believe FB has much of a moat. There aren't many companies that can disrupt them; I agree. But Apple could do it very easily.

Meanwhile he continues to hold the investing equivalent of quicksand in St. Joe as 1/3 of his fund... I generally give managers more leeway than most, but Bruce IMO, has lost it and is letting issues at his fund dictate his investment decisions.

At this stage in the game I'd add GOOG to that. They are so stealthily diversified in terms of future home runs and involvement in major trends its unreal. BRK to me, at this point largely relies on the glory of past decades and the auro of Buffett and Munger. 10 years, heck 5 years from now I'm not so sure it's profile carries the same luster. I'd even go as far as to describe it as a wonderful collection of great Old Economy companies. I'd be almost certain it doesn't beat GOOG over that time frame. Frankly I don't care if it beats the S&P as thats never been a metric I've found useful.

Yup, earnings look solid too. Merger is spoken of as a given. Will probably look to add soon.

I had several vets from WW2 in my family. It was always one of those known but not spoken subjects. I don't know if it's part of the code, or just a biproduct of the experience, but I've never met a vet who openly wanted to discuss these things. And I think thats understandable.

The problem is the bifurcation between bulls and bears. The self-reinforcing feedback loops people create for themselves (Echo chambers) forces people to one extreme or the other. It's hard to stay in the middle. It is all very entertaining, however. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-26/elon-musk-responds-controversial-threat-sue-prominent-tesla-critic Lots of shorts take this too far. But I gotta say, saying shorts are bad for harassing a journalist is a little rich considering the CEO of this company lies, has pressured an independent blogger to quit, basically hung up on analysts, and called a hero a pedophile. The behavior of this CEO and its board in their compliance with it are reprehensible. Wasn't one of the misguided reasons to go long Tesla that you basically had a free call option on Musk's genius? Why would the board mess with the (arguably) only thing of value that Tesla has? Spare me the cars. Anyone can sell a $100,000 car for $75,000.

The only plausible explanation I can think of is that perhaps some shareholders weren't happy with the increased offer. Maybe this was the safest route. QCOM IMO is one of the worst run, poorly governed mega cap companies out there. They were going to be voted out by AVGO before they cried to the US government. I would expect self preservation at this point to be the primary motivating factor for any decisions being made. Having a 30B buyback at least allows them to "caress" their stock price. Which btw is still nowhere near the "insufficient" offer from Broadcom.

I think the bounce 165-180 was a dead cat driven largely by this glamour stock's reputation as such. Short term, the outlook is hideous, and at the least will be a cloud over the company. This also has regulatory issues, and has been/become a political whipping boy. Enough to keep me away, I think we're back under 170 in not too distant future. Just my 2c though.

It's at $91 now. Will probably be volatile over the next few days as the arbs rush for the exits and GARP investors start to come in. Yea I'd wait a few days for the dust to settle. That's typically my rule of thumb in situations like this. Then again I dont always follow my rule of thumb but we'll see. This whole situation reminded me of this It was pretty much what we thought it was. 127.50 or around 90 short term. Wonder if Elliot still owns this. With their whole "worth $135 standalone" spiel. Always thought they were phonies.

I think the growth here is largely underestimated as I also think analysts are completely missing the demand that will be in place for what I consider to be "next gen" cars with all sorts of new technology; not just automated driving and AI but in car WIFI, improved navigation and even fully electric. This should transpire over the next 3-5 years and I think NXP will be a massive part of that.