gfp

I disagree on Fidelity's execution. The accounts I manage at Fidelity consistently display an inaccurate and higher bid/ask spread on stocks like Atlas Corp vs IB which shows the actual current best bid/ask. A marketable limit order (buy at actual exchange ask) entered on Fidelity will sit there unexecuted because they do not route orders to the exchange. They route orders to a pay-for-order-flow outfit like Citadel (I forget but I think it is Citadel Securities). It can be frustrating to get a fill but I have learned to bid more at Fidelity and consider it part of their new "free" commissions. I only manage 3 accounts there so maybe there is a better service level for others. I have no personal accounts with them.

Its a teeny tiny acquisition at Clayton properties group - https://huntsvillebusinessjournal.com/lead/2021/06/17/goodall-homes-acquires-huntsville-based-legacy-homes/

Every time I have sold some DAP.u, XPEL or even Generac, its ends up being a mistake so I stopped doing it. But those early sales still sting... Anyway - I hope you ended up with a lot more XPEL than I did!

Less and less is actually material to Berkshire parent company these days, but in the news yesterday is a large fire at an Illinois Chemtool plant. Chemtool is a subsidiary of Lubrizol (purchased in 2011). https://www.google.com/search?q=chemtool&client=safari&sxsrf=ALeKk014l-R38ukUgBp_ETy-qYpx__RDiA:1623773872280&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi22uiGhZrxAhWXXc0KHWAvCtAQ_AUoBHoECAEQBg&biw=1341&bih=1287 In other news, TransRe (an Alleghany subsidiary) and GenRe are not renewing their 5 year underwriting partnership - https://www.reinsurancene.ws/transre-and-gen-re-break-off-underwriting-partnership/

off-topic, but @mbreject, what makes BACs rewards program any better than say JPMs? This is the first time I have seen BAC described as having a good credit card rewards program. I'm not sure I have ever had a BAC credit card.

Yeah that market reaction is pretty funny considering they had basically already pre-announced everything they said today. Maybe added some specifics but this “news” was out there

Usually when something like that happens it is because there is something that they would like to talk about / include in the annual letter that isn't quite finalized or ready to be publicly discussed. I'm not sure if there is any obligation at all on annual letter timing - I don't think they are required to release an annual letter at all. Since they finally got caught up on the 10K and Q1 filing on May 24th, which included an accounting restatement for how they will treat Yellowstone (they are going to consolidate it for the limited duration of the SPAC) - they will probably be ready to release their annual letter soon. The delay could just be from the delayed 10K and restatement, or they could have some other news to share.

Over the years it seems like Chase has limited eligibility for the big 80k - 100k sign on bonuses for customers that have taken advantage of them multiple times. They call it the 5/24 rule or something like that. We have found that you can get around that restriction by using their business cards. I think it is "Ink" that we use. For real estate development we would get a 100k sign-on bonus Ink card for the project level LLC that we would then charge all the materials and appliances on, using the point bonuses that you get from Chase by clicking through the chase portal onto the website of whoever you are going to buy from anyway (like Build.com, Lowes, Home Depot, ajmadison, Wayfair, etc...) You can accumulate a quick 200k points this way including the sign on bonus. Then cancel the card after the project is finished. Next project level LLC is a separate business and seems to work fine.

I still use a thin leather wallet despite using iphone's wallet and applePay. I keep a credit card sized car key, drivers licenses and credit cards in there but try to keep it as thin as possible since I still end up sitting on it often. Also in my city cash is still a big part of everyday commerce so it is important to have plenty of different denominations for tipping. The main rewards points system we use is Chase ultimate rewards using their sapphire reserve card. We also have one of those 5% cash back amazon cards and the similar 5% deal for Lowes.

Hey Spek - Yeah the core demographic of people willing to spend a few hundred dollars per year and up on subscriptions of this type are people who have at least a few hundred thousand dollars to invest. That has been people over 50 and they have been the biggest part of the highest value subscriptions - what they call "lifetime" or "alliance" type products. This company has always done a very good job of selling additional products to their existing customers. I would bet a lot of those "silent generation" customers have been customers since they were in their 60s. One think I forgot to address in my first post is that they are definitely guilty of the typical bullshit when it comes to TAM - Total addressable market. They point to the value of the entire professional money management business as being included in their TAM which is complete bullshit. On yesterday's Baird conference Zoom Q&A they did mention in passing that they have 1% market share but I have a hard time believing that they are only 1% market share in financial newsletter publishing so who knows what they are considering their market there. Competitors / Comps would include Motley Fool (private), Morningstar (public but not a direct comp), subscription services like TheStreet.com, other Agora products not included in this company like the Oxford Club, etc... I think they would probably love to buy something like Toggle but I have no idea what the valuation on something like that would be https://www.toggle.global

Nice timing on that one!

This SPAC deal was mentioned on another thread and I thought it might be of interest to other board members on its own thread. Currently this trades pre-deal-close under the ticker ACND at $9.97. The deal is with a former Agora Publishing subsidiary called Beacon Street group that will be changing their name yet again to MarketWise upon closing this deal. The new ticker is supposed to be MKTW after deal close. The primary line of business is selling subscriptions to investment newsletters. The enterprise value of the company will be approximately $3 billion and there is no material debt. ACND shares have traded below $10 since the deal was announced and I have purchased shares between 9.88 and 9.97. Unlike your typical SPAC deal shitco, this is a 20+ year old business that is growing and has been a huge generator of free cash owner earnings since formation. The history of this company is that around the 99-2000 internet boom a young guy named Porter Stansberry started a product within Agora Publishing called "Pirate Investor." This was nothing to write home about but over time Porter brought in friends Steve Sjuggerud and many others and the subsidiary grew into a mini-Agora of its own. They have over time made some acquisitions of other similar and complimentary businesses and formed many new products like the fairly recent Whitney Tilson product called Empire Financial Research. Netflix did a true-crime episode of Unsolved Mysteries that (in my opinion, unfairly) hinted that Porter Stansberry may have been hiding something surrounding the death by suicide of his long time friend Rey Rivera (who was an employee of this company in Baltimore at the time he jumped off a hotel). While I highly doubt Stansberry had anything to do with the death, the Netflix stuff was apparently enough of a problem that the founder of this carve-out-sub Porter Stansberry was forced to resign to make this SPAC deal happen and is barely mentioned in deal documents unless you dig into which shareholders of the private business hold what equity. Agora founder Bill Bonner and his family would own the most equity, followed by Stansberry. The principals of this business are experts at direct response marketing, which over the years has become online marketing and email marketing. The roots of this business are sales letters through the mail and mailed newsletters. Obviously the internet, email and the PDF document have changed the economics of the business for the better... The investor presentations and conference calls are pretty helpful to get a handle on the business from the horse's mouth. Total Billings is my favored revenue metric for this company, as it represents a cash basis look at this period versus "revenue" that uses subscription accounting to spread a dollar of revenue over the length of the subscription. This is important because the company is still growing at a healthy clip. The company will end up with around $150 million of cash on their balance sheet post-deal-close, which it doesn't seem like they should need. Historically they have been able to take considerable cash out as profit distributions on top of the very generous compensation they pay to copywriters and marketing partners (typically if another publication sells a subscription to one of these guys' products the marketing partner could take something like the entire first year's subscription value as a commission - something like that at least)... Anyway, I assume that $150m is to look at accretive acquisitions but who knows. Look through the most recent Q1 results to see the growth in cash flow from operations. It is insane and starts to make the $3 Billion EV look pretty damn reasonable. Pre-deal results are distorted by all of the noise surrounding pre-deal profits distributions, vesting of class B stock and other pre-deal adjustments that mostly show up under share-based compensation. This noise should go away post-deal. But there should be an increase in expenses from being a newly public company. Of course, the Beacon Street / Agora / MarketWise machine is not allowed to pump this in any of their newsletters or free services. Some places to start if interested: 2021 Q1 Earnings press release: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e81e117fb7d1e1df699db5f/t/60b60d00652a5e7ed49137e1/1622543617351/MarketWise+1Q21+Earnings+Release+6.1.21.pdf Most recently updated deal presentation: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e81e117fb7d1e1df699db5f/t/60b7a1b667f001412292c3c3/1622647230739/MarketWise+Presentation+05.27.2021_Final.pdf SPAC website with links to presentations, conference calls, conferences, etc: https://www.ascendant.digital

Insider purchase disclosed today from a director - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1481562/000163859921000525/xslF345X03/doc4_7254.xml

ProPublica has a not-that-enlightened article on Billionaires' tax bills, which may or may not be worth your time. But some might find Warren Buffett's detailed written response to the journalist of interest. It does come from the man himself after all. Another item of interest is a look into Michael Bloomberg's personal tax situation, since his company is a pass through LP. Orignal article: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax spoiler alert: extremely wealthy people pay a low "tax rate" on their annual increases in net worth if they don't realize gains or pay dividends. Buffett letter: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20798866-buffett-statement-june-2-2021

Oh yeah that's definitely true about the marketing and some of the products. But the business itself is very good. Tilson got lucky with getting equity in Beacon Street when he signed on to join the newsletter racket. He will probably make more on this SPAC deal than he made for himself in his entire investing career. I'm not sure I want to pay $3 Billion for an Agora carve out with Porter kicked to the curb, but the business is very very attractive and these guys are gurus at direct response email marketing. They study what works and do more of that. Based on the financials the company probably is worth at least $3 Billion. Its important to look at cash earnings, as subscription accounting makes the cash economics look slightly less far along when in reality the cash is already in the till. With so many garbage SPAC deals, at least these Ascendant guys found an actual grower drowning in owner earnings. Might get interesting as they show a blip on deal expenses and digesting their most recent growth cohort. They have good visibility on the life-cycle of a given cohort of new subscribers from Free -> one product -> multiple products -> boomers who pay them $10-15k a year