clutch

Unfortunately the biggest run ups we have seen in the greater Toronto area are in the suburbs, thanks to COVID. :-/

Not really for me... First I'm not sure if I could expect 25% discount... closest it got last 10 years was about 35%? Seems like this will permanently trade at a large discount due to its obscurity, the ownership nature and the inherent holdings company discount. If it takes 5 years to materialize, I'd rather invest in more solid companies like BRK. Not that I'm saying ELF is a shady business, but things could change in the 5 years time frame so there will be variance in intrinsic value as well. Just too long to wait for the revaluation that might not even materialize.

I love Domino's, both their ordering experience and pizza. I guess I'm a minority here who actually eat their pizza regularly. But it's hard to project the future with any food business unfortunately. Not sure if their business justifies the current multiples. Aside: here in Toronto, there is now pizza subscription service offered by a local shop. They were able to raise $13m: https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/general-assembly-pizza-gets-13m-to-give-rise-to-subscription-service I wonder if Domino's is thinking something like this. I don't know if Pizza As a Service would be the thing going forward but just having the word "subscription" attached to their business the share price might explode.

It's always been this cheap for many years now, so I don't see if that will suddenly change. You don’t think buybacks can shrink the discount? I guess it's a difference in our expectations. Certainly this could become a relatively safe 10% return with the buybacks. I was implying that the huge discount likely won't close.

It's always been this cheap for many years now, so I don't see if that will suddenly change.

Buffett would never report anything like that... I used to like him but he has become a tool...

Snatched a lot of tech names during the sell-off today: AMZN, ABNB, NVDA, TSLA, SHOP also, COST.

Really? One investor might look at Google stocks as representative ownership of the business but another investor might look at it simply as a stonk that will go to the moon... What is a stock these days? Is it ownership in a company? Is it simply an investment vehicle? Is it a store of value? Is it an institutional reality? Most stocks traded are in electronic blips nowadays... So, is it in the form of a paper? is it just a data point? Does it even exist in reality? You can ask the same existential questions about stocks, bonds, money, ... Transaction fees. https://decrypt.co/33124/what-will-happen-to-bitcoin-after-all-21-million-are-mined

In the long run, we are all dead. - John Maynard Keynes Clutch, I suspect Keynes would agree with your sentiment and belief. That being said, when we are investing, we are generally talking about events occurring in the next 5-10-50 years out at best. You suggested that these pieces of paper have no real ownership. Yet, we know that is not true. Stocks - Buffett would completely disagree with you here. They are pieces of businesses, including the underlying assets within those businesses. If you own enough pieces of paper, you directly control the assets. So, as long as the businesses are operating and generating cash flow, and the balance sheet is reasonable, the pieces of paper have some real value. Bonds/Loans - We've seen enough examples where owning the bonds of a business, mean you own the actual business...especially if it defaults. So they are backed. Currency - backed by nation state assets and tax revenues. Yes, a dictator could step in and change everything, but how often does that happen in stable, developed governments and economies...so while possible, the probabilities generally fall outside of the 5-10-50 year realm. Hard Assets - generally some utilitarian purpose supports the underlying value...whether it is land, commodities, etc. Bit Coin/Crypto in present form - nothing backing it in most cases. Hey Parsad...I repeat... those pieces of paper are worthless if some dictator or our society as a whole declare them to no longer represent ownership of companies. BTW such events happened before... In almost all communist states once the ruling party comes in they abolish private ownership so all your property ownership papers are now worthless... they are not backed by anything but our social agreements. We as a society has agreed to make certain pieces of paper to represent ownership in companies and therefore have value. In theory, we can decide to reverse this agreement anytime... And the nature of these social agreements are exactly the same whether they are for stock certificates or bitcoins. So fundamentally the only thing that's backing both stock certificates and bitcoins is our social agreement. It's just that one has longer history than the other so more stable.

Regarding the lack of discussion on the pandemic... It would have highlighted his mistakes during the March-May period...Selling the airlines at the bottom and not making any meaningful purchases. It was very un-Buffett like and he was obviously too pessimistic. I don't know if he is Intentionally avoiding to discuss his mistakes... or he is still thinking that was the best course of action to take and he doesn't want to sound like making excuses.

I have expressed this argument at length before but will repeat again much more directly. Money, stocks, bonds, loans, BTC.. basically all non-hard assets are massive fantasies. It's not my argument but of a renowned philosopher John Searle. And no, he is not some French postmodernist, he is as realist and naturalist as you could get as a philosopher. But basically, all these assets are forms of institutional reality that is created via a series of speech acts (nowadays "document acts"). You may argue... but some of these assets are "backed" by something else. My stock certificates represent ownership of the factory, the money is backed by the government, etc. Well how do you establish such backing? Document acts... but there is nothing tangible and physical about this backing. How do we know? Suppose a dictator comes along and instructs all financial records to be wiped out. All of the assets above will be worthless. So really, investing in such assets all require some level of faith. Now, the chance of US currency or treasury bills facing such events will be very low... at least compared to BTC. So you can estimate your confidence. Maybe I have 99% confidence in traditional assets and 1% confidence in BTC (relatively). So I decide to invest 99% in traditional assets and 1% in BTC. But then I realize the asymptomatic nature of that 1% in terms of the return. If BTC establishes itself as a stable store of value, my gain will be significant so I decided to invest a bit more. (As an aside... I have a feeling that many economists and those with the traditional business school mindset have a harder time grasping this "massive fantasy" notion... I think it's largely because they'd like to think of their discpline as scientific and objective... they want to treat things like money, yields, institutions as the same ontological category as molecules, chemical elements, and gravity... I'm sorry they are not. In a way, I think they are resentful of the fact that they are not scientists, engineers, nor doctors dealing with objective reality... and perhaps their discipline is not as important... so they need some ground to stand on and argue that traditional assets are backed by institutions as if planet motions are governed by gravitational forces.)

Blockchain Revolution is a horrible book. No depth at all and just a bunch of shallow stories and what if. More of a marketing tool for the authors.

I use mostly paper wallets. And smallish amounts in Coinbase. You mean seed phrases kept on paper (vs. actual private keys/address)?

How are folks here keeping their BTCs as they continue to grow? Do you "diversify" your storage with a number of hardware wallets/recovery seeds? Is there anything considered more secure than a hardware wallet these days?

I don't think looking at the value of BTC as a currency would give you any answers. The value of BTC is tied to its history, not on its utility. It's based on our social construct. You might think that's silly but the concept of fiat money is also a social construct. It's backed by a government, and has more utility and a much longer history than BTC. But intrinsically they are the same. Neither are material objects but rather created via a series of social acts.