Gregmal

Started small NVTA short after hours. Added to PLUG short AH as well.

https://www.hamiltonthorne.ltd/attachments/article/250/HTL%20Feb%2019%202020%20Press%20Reslease%20-%202019%20Preliminary%20Results%20-%20FInal%20QC.pdf

Yea cash is trash. Manage your liquidity. Thats all. People spend years, if not longer, sitting on hoards of cash being scared of "the big one". Theyre better off just investing prudently within the confines of their own temperament.

Except it backfires because companies will go to great lengths to raid the bank and financially punish shareholders by waging war during a proxy fight. It really does highlight how fraudulent the notion of fiduciary duty is. How can management and a board collude to spend practically unlimited amounts of shareholder resources, to fend off a shareholder? It happens a lot. Not saying thats the case here, but it often is.

Glorious. $55 Congrats on this one again.

Preview of life under Bernie!

When you sell GM to buy Tesla at $200 you can kind of troll whenever the f you want.

Stock comp is the new charity gesture. How grateful we should all be that the directors gets paid in free shares! I'm seeing more or more companies try to swing this bs to their shareholders that compensating the board via shares "doesnt count" because its not cash. I guess this was only the next natural progression seeing as how SBC now routinely gets excluded from G&A because, well, "its not a cash cost". My question has always been "who pays for it". Not once have any of the offending parties given the correct answer, which is, "you, the shareholder"...

Regular reading and physical activity.

Bought some GRBK. Seems like there s a bit of safety in sunbelt RE at the moment.

Yea this, much like TSLA on this last spike to 900 and change has a lot of the hallmarks of the blow off top. Borrow rates have gone from basically a general collateral security, now either none(as indicated above) or HTB and 60%+ ranges. I've got some puts here from 12.5 and 18 that are still somehow indicating value, but are likely toast. Theres probably good money here if anyone can figure out a cost effective short, but I am not seeing anything. Even pairing the upper end with some calls is costing like $9 per share for a month or so of protection. Puts are juiced out. Despite all the danger, shorting some shorter dated out of the money calls is probably the best bet here. But I am not feeling that ballsy this morning.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3542632-opioid-related-payouts-to-be-less-expected-nyt Seems to be continuing to play out as they almost always do. Price in the worst, and then it turns out the world doesnt end. Hardly out of the woods yet, but there seems to be a lot more clarity.

https://seekingalpha.com/pr/17781108-dupont-announces-leadership-changes

Thats a big part of it. Too many hands in the cookie jar. I think you mentioned as well, on another thread, the fact that this gets too convoluted by all that nonsense as well as government prompted red tape. A takeout will never occur because of these things, and as we are seeing the last few years, even shutting down bad businesses takes WAYYY too long and gets dragged out much more than it should because there's extraordinary business conflicts at play with all the above. While I do believe GM is a better business than Ford or FCAU, we're starting to see deceleration with those and even in some instances, IE Ford, the wheels falling off. So even if GM is better, its bound to get dragged down by the inevitable negative sentiment and sector wide carnage. There is also a good likelihood, IMO, that GM/management is really just the hot shot mortgage broker type guys from The Big Short. Smart enough to stay out of their own way and make tons of money during the easy years, but at the end of the day, still, just dumb asses that will still get crushed when the cycle turns.

GM is trading where it was in 2010 (ok, paid a lot of dividends, but still)... Meanwhile, imagine what someone with vision and talent could do with their engineering base and distribution footprint and free cash flow... Well, that was the dream. However, after a while (probably too long) it became clear this was just a fantasy.

I agree with your sentiment, but I also dont think WFC going from 10% to 8.xx% is anything to cry over given the other bank exposure in the BRK portfolio. All of which, IMO are of higher quality than WFC, although WFC is probably the cheapest. That said, and Ive long been a critic of Buffett's paralysis the last few years, with the markets behaving wilder than a group of co-eds on spring break, I'm glad Buffett has all of that cash in his portfolio, because I dont in mine. Its a nice little value hedge, which Ive quickly made about a 7% position, up from 0.0% in December. Wouldn't it be rational [and prudent] to look at WFC as an investment as stand alone? It simply does not deliver, and hasn't done, now for years! [No matter what Mr. Buffett & Mr. Munger may have said, at Berkshire AGMs etc.] To BRK or to WFC? If you're going to sling single stock WFC, sure. But I've in the past made the mistake of getting hung up on such scrutiny, which I think misses the mark. Dec/Jan 2018-19 I "liked" the banks. I though Apple was kind of a pain, but also did agree with everyone else that the sell off was probably overdone. As such, rather than go long the banks or AAPL, I grabbed BRK for some look through exposure. Well, the banks did fine and AAPL was probably my most glaring whiff, and BRK during the same period I kicked myself maybe went from $197-$216... My point if I have one, is that if you're a fan of WFC, buy it, If you're not really a fan of WFC, it shouldn't really effect whether you like BRK. After all, I kind of view one of the benefits to owning BRK is that you're delegating a lot of the decision making to powers greater than oneself. For me, Ive swung heavily from Q1 19 to now, from heavily levered, to raising cash. Putting dollars into BRK continues to allow me to do that while also keeping alive some call options on markets performing.

I agree with your sentiment, but I also dont think WFC going from 10% to 8.xx% is anything to cry over given the other bank exposure in the BRK portfolio. All of which, IMO are of higher quality than WFC, although WFC is probably the cheapest. That said, and Ive long been a critic of Buffett's paralysis the last few years, with the markets behaving wilder than a group of co-eds on spring break, I'm glad Buffett has all of that cash in his portfolio, because I dont in mine. Its a nice little value hedge, which Ive quickly made about a 7% position, up from 0.0% in December.

Big add for Lee Cooperman.

There's a few different things that can happen. As we saw a decade ago, many are sold and then packaged into a security. Some are held on the books. The fellows I know say it's typically about 2% commission per closed loan.

Selling the loan

Ive never used Costco for this, but in my experience with mortgages, any decent broker will waive both the origination fee(typically 1% of LV) and application fee (about $500-1000). Most of the time all you have to do is ask. Other times, they'll waive them contingent upon the loan closing.

Bought a smidge more BRK 225.7

Bought a tracking position in SDGR. Super interesting company with some big name backers. Quite the valuation, but whatever. If it comes down some more I'll probably play with it a bit.

BX did the same thing and the argument was quite simple. Even if they are undervalued, they can make more putting the cash to work in the business. The example from BX was something along the lines of "if they can start a $40B fund and their commitment requirement is 2%, thats 800M in cash that will then earn 1.5% annually in fees." In other words, that $800M generates $600M every year, plus an additional profit cut. Hard to argue there.

If $2B derisks the future for a $150B EV company, why not just do an ATM? Or better yet, one of those absurd 10-15y convertible offerings that carries a 0.5% interest rate?