Gregmal

That's basically it. Higher rates you have to be super short term. The worst I've ever seen is BVSN was 120% during the big Jon Lebed pump in March/April of 2012. But otherwise, it's tricky and it's also why it's dangerous to follow some of the big guys on their investments. I know Ackman, despite shorting HLF in the 40's, now has a break even around $25 because of the huge negative carry and option decay. It's why I don't think Berkowitz or Lampert have really done as bad as some people think on SHLD. SHLD at various points has been 75%+ to borrow, the highest I've seen it was 90% in late 2011- early 2012. Imagine being short SHLD at $30 in late 2011, paying 90% pa to borrow, and getting squeezed to $80?

If the guy did indeed lever a BRK quality position, he made a great move. Many people are terrified of leverage, but if used properly it's a necessity to outperformance. Something like BRK is not going anywhere. So theoretically, if I put 100% of my portfolio in BRK and then with a 1-2% interest charge consistently operated at 1.5-2x leverage buying what I believed where value investments, I'll probably do pretty damn well over the long run.

That would be a shame if it is, just when his short would have worked out. I recall Tilson actually writing a great piece on exactly this. Quite humble It was maybe late 2015 into mid 2016 where he acknowledged no longer being able to take it and covering almost all of his short book in November, only to see 90% of them declined by something crazy (like 60% on average) over the next 6 months. Seems like he got whipsawed quite a bit? Was short Netflix back in 2010/2011ish. Realized a good losses on the way up and flipped at the top when he suddenly went long - right before it dropped by ~75%. Maybe he just doesn't have the right personality for being a contrarian? Or maybe should've focused a bit more on risk management so he could stay in his positions? As someone else mentioned, it seemed many of his ideas were derived by others. Maybe that's why he didn't have the conviction to stay with them? He did always seem like a nice and sociable guy, but I never really had any reason to have much respect for him as a "super" investor that he seemed to gain a reputation as within value circles. I think being too giddy, something that plagues a lot of managers, has harmed him. In the GM thread several people were discussing this with Einhorn too. I've never understood how some people so frequently go bullish, to bearish, to bullish or whatever on a specific name or sector so regularly. At a certain point you are gambling. He was never really a contrarian IMO, more of an idea gatherer. I wanna say Pabrai also does this frequently, as do probably a lot of no name managers and investors. The guy was well connected. But I question whether he fully internalized all the work being done on a basis frequent enough to keep up with it. No question he loves investing. He's also a really nice guy from what I've heard, although I've never met him. But his investment results seem to be all over the place fundamentally, informationally dated a lot of the time, and unoriginal(as in someone else's idea). Combine that with smart guy ADD(having to be constantly active with a portfolio), and idk, I can kind of see why he got whipsawed. Reacting instead of acting. The criticisms I've heard are kind of consistent with your last statement. He kind of became a braggart, and promoted himself(as well as being promoted by others) as this super investor when a lot of people didn't think he deserved that credit. LL for instance, he did victory lap after victory lap on, when the ironic thing was that it wasn't even his idea to begin with! And then after the thing tanks to the low teens, there must have been at least 3-4 times when "Tilson covered his short and is now long", only followed by "Tilson is reshorting LL", and then "Tilson is adding to his short", which comes back to basking in the sun light and probably over-analyzing to the point of flip flopping so regularly. I've actually learned a ton from reading his work and especially his reflections on a lot of his mistakes. He's incredibly candid with all of this, especially for a hedge fund guy. Hedge funders are notorious for being non-engaging, antisocial dick heads who avoid regularly engaging with the general public. Tilson was the antithesis of that which was hugely refreshing.

That would be a shame if it is, just when his short would have worked out. I recall Tilson actually writing a great piece on exactly this. Quite humble It was maybe late 2015 into mid 2016 where he acknowledged no longer being able to take it and covering almost all of his short book in November, only to see 90% of them declined by something crazy (like 60% on average) over the next 6 months.

I think the late to the party comment more so refers to the fact that GM is doing nothing different now when every analyst loves it. Cruze is not new. Neither is the Lyft stake. The bubble sectors analysts are now giving GM credit for have been there the entire time. Meanwhile the core business continues to spit off shit loads of cash, going on 4-5 years. The stock has FINALLY started rewarding shareholders the past MONTH. Still has a long way to go and still doesn't justify the years of shitty performance. But there is a certain level of absurdity to all the analysts now loving this when nothing has changed. Adam Jonas the most egregious of them all. I've never seen an analyst have it out for a company more than Jonas did for GM during 2015-2016. And Einhorn is notorious for trading around positions. One having a 10%+ position in any name is undoubtedly plenty of conviction.

Tilson was somebody who's biggest asset IMO are his connections and ability to pick off other people's investments. That's sounds harsh but I don't mean it in a bad way. His longs were basically Bill Ackman's positions with a couple other big hedge fund hotels sprinkled in, and his short book was basically VIC write-ups.

Totally agree on Einhorn. I don't even think GMCR ended up being that big of a winner for him. But all in all, he's a hell of a stock picker. How about Chemours last year? My biggest gripe if I had to find one is that the guy simply doesn't learn/isnt willing to steer clear of shorting good companies solely because of valuation being excessive. It's such a common mistake for him, over and over and over. It's easy to identify, and his performance would be much better if he'd just stick for shorting junk.

I have a small position in this. My thoughts are as follows. The company is cheap. There is a moat. They're doing buybacks and are generally shareholder friendly. I wanted to add today but did not simply because of my larger concern, one that the company has no control over. The government, and more specifically, shithead mouthpieces like Warren and McCaskill have and will continue to use public companies to boost their political status. Its easy for them. Who is going to stand up to Warren for railing the big banks? Or the greedy corporations doing inversions? No one. No politician has the nuts to take the other side so what you have is now widespread abuse of controversial companies whenever someone needs a status boost. Hillary did this non-stop. And it won't end. It's the same reason I haven't pulled the trigger on AGN. And FWIW I think Tepper owning AGN is more a reason to buy it than Buffett owning DVA. Buffett may be the Oracle, but Tepper since '92 has been God.

I feel like this is nothing but a story stock at the current moment. I don't see any "value", and I see a rather generous compensation arrangement for the managers. Nothing against these guys at all; I do not know them. But if I could collect a penny for every asset manager/fund/business out there who's reeled in a dollar quoting Buffett and mimicking not only the language but the supposed investing style, I'd be a billionaire. That's not to say this won't go up, or won't eventually grow into something valuable, but I think there are better places for serious money.

The related party transactions, as a percentage overall revenue are not very material. Additionally, something to keep in mind is that this management team is very entrepreneurial, and are involved in some businesses that do business with TWD simply because of convenience and synergies. Resiweb is a good example of that. This is a product we should see integrated shortly which is essentially a free call option. From what I looked at, something like 60% of the $3m AUD in related party transactions were related to building materials. The company does use somewhat promotional language when describing it's business model, but again, I don't really have an issue with that if they are producing. Why not get excited and present the business in the best way possible? The longer term track record here is exceptional. These guys have a stellar reputation and will benefit from regulation. All in all, red flags shouldn't be overlooked. But at the same time these things aren't massive issues to begin with, and when you look beneath the surface the reasons they exist are not outlandish. Then you look at the results these guys have produced and I am quite comfortable with the investment. Should red flags continue to regularly pop up, sure, you re-evaluate it. But these things have existed for a while and they are nothing alarming or overly symbolic of flaws to the business.

I think it depends on how far out we want to go. I've said it before but BRK is essentially a collection of great "old economy" brands and companies. If Elon Musk's Boring Company or Hyperloop can successfully send something from CA to NYC in 60 minutes or whatever, couldn't that effect BNSF and all the rails? La Croix and many of the sparkling waters are killing it thanks to newer perceptions of soda that will likely only grow. What will happen to GEICO and insurance companies if people stop buying cars and/or we have predominantly autonomous vehicles? I don't know if these are specifically Amazon threats to Berkshire, but technology is certainly a major threat to the Buffett kingdom if you are looking out several decades.

It's pretty incredible when you really sit down and run through what Google owns. Outside of the search+ad everyone knows, you've got Waymo, YouTube, Travel, Cloud(all businesses that by themselves could fetch 50-100B valuations), even the private investing arm, and then a huge pile of cash.

True, but what is the point of continuing to discuss an investment on a value board if it has already reached (or is near) intrinsic value? There's really not much incentive (for me at least) to continue to discuss value investments that have worked. When that happens, it's time to move on to the next hated stock. Just my two cents. Maybe I'll clarify as perhaps I could have been clearer. Rereading what I wrote may have, although not intentionally, come off a bit schmucky. Ideas that are under-followed or out of favor typically don't have huge followings. Is/was SHLD or VRX really out of favor? Surely it was polarizing but every value investor in the world was in SHLD. FNMA is obviously different. Its either worth 0 or way more than it trades for today. But what I've seen is that a large chunk of the talk and speculation seems counter productive as people obsessively over do it with the speculation. Making things seem more of an issue than they truly are. SHLD again for instance, there was and is so freakin much of the "what does Lampert/Berkowitz have up their sleeve" type stuff that perhaps it blinded people from the obvious fact that the business sucked and the properties were valuable and that time would be a negative carry, especially with a downturn in the economy or retail sector. These are just lazy examples; there's definitely more of them, but I guess my point is that I think people over/under estimate the importance of a lot of the things they spend a lot of time pondering. Hence the huge threads(from my perspective) seemingly having a high correlation to big time stinkers. And I say all this as someone who has owned SHLD here and there over the years and is currently long FNMA.

Yea I've actually noticed that the most popular ideas/threads here(outside of BRK&FF), the ones with a million comments and everyone frothing about the value, are largely major duds. Definitely some psychological stuff behind it. SHLD and VRX probably the most glaring recent ones. I'll even add in FELP, which while the original posters made money, I'd presume there are a lot of bagholders who got carried away and are now underwater with the stock off 50% from the highs. People get way too attached and biases are deadly.

Queensland based home builder that is not really a typical home builder. Splendid track record since going public in 2000 and very much the owner-operator type management team. Very shareholder friendly. Grew revs 30%+ last year while paying out a nearly 7% dividend. Company is super conservative and has always been debt free. Franchising and services/systems model that de-risks the company from many typical problems a traditional home builder will run into. IMO kind of a very unexciting but superb business with a decent moat, great reputation and proven track record. The big upcoming tailwind and reason to really get long is that there is a massive crackdown regulation wise on construction/home builders in Australia. This short term is adding to G&A as compliance costs increase to offset some of the underlying growth. However, these regulations will ultimately wipe out much of the competition(the company is primarily engaged in residential work which is much more mom and pop type competitors). Per Chairman Robert Lynch- “a period of aggressive regulatory enforcement” was adding to costs but would likely boost its bottom line by killing off smaller competitors." With no debt, consistent dividend growth, and a regulations that will likely eliminate a good chunk of their competitors, trading at about 10x earnings, I think this company is massively underappreciated by the market given it's brand and staying power.

No position but this is getting interesting. That said, this has to be one of the most mismanaged companies out there. Incompetence can not be discounted enough.

I don't mind them hoarding as much cash and liquidity as they can here. If they can retire shares with those proceeds then the net cost is barely 2%. Although admittedly, I'd be a smidge ticked if they did a massive buyback here at $38 after seeing them dick around for the past 5 years between $25-$35. But I'd still probably all in all be ok with it.

As someone who has gone through the whole identity theft thing, it's a pain, but in today's day and age, it's inevitable and you are better off getting it over with. Long story short, I was getting what I thought were spam calls. Eventually I picked up and it was a collection agency. They said I owed Verizon $1900. I double checked all the info, and sure enough, my social was on file and shortly after I moved from my college apartment to my house, a Verizon account had been established in my name in Brooklyn(I live in North NJ). I confirmed I'd had a continuous account with another provider for a decade, and that I no longer resided at the address on file when the account was opened. I had to file a police report and contact the credit agencies, and that was it. The collection was removed from my credit report and as a result, the credit bureaus had to enroll me in a special program for people who were victims of identity theft. This included an automatic freeze and verification on my accounts upon any new credit inquiries, plus free freeze/unfreeze of access to my credit reports, all for seven years. It's been a slight hassle when applying for new credit, but otherwise I sleep well at night, and thats the point I guess.

Deal closing Sept 25.

I closed out my second go around on this from 60.71 at 61.1. With half the expected 80c gain occurring within an hour, that was good enough. If it dips a tad lower I'll probably re-enter. This has been a money machine.

Trophy assets. They are one of a kind, and NY is the best market.

Looks like this closes within the next 3 weeks. Still have about 80c or 1.3% over that time. Not bad Sept 21 is the date mentioned Using IB, I can borrow for ~2.5% annually. 1,000 shares for 3 weeks costs me roughly $95 in interest and if the deal closes I make $800 from here. My only risk is the deal not closing.

Yea I've wanted to get involved on this one for years. Its interesting because there is certain case for both bull and bear. Its crazy cheap, IF. Its also a 0 in quite few scenarios. It's expensive to short and can whip around quite viciously, so I've been looking into a way to maybe hedge it out. The one thing that seems certain, is that if the bear case plays out, a major catastrophic event will be the catalyst. So jumping in front of one might not be a bad idea if sized right and hedged.

My bad. Looked briefly, didn't see it. Thread looks dead.

Used to play quite a bit, along with Chess. Both I think are great supplemental, yet fun ways to develop a mental state necessary to succeed with investing. I remember talking to someone who was quite ecstatic about his last couple trades. The subject came up about how there really isn't much structurally different from the trades that work and those that don't; it's really just luck/variance when the framework used for the trade is the same. Which is exactly like poker. You have a strategy and the cards can fall however. You're not great at poker because you hit a straight on the river just as you aren't terrible because your straight loses on the river because your opponent landed his full house/ But over time if your strategy is sound and you have the discipline, you should make out alright.