Liberty

https://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/sp-moodys-boosting-rating-fees-faster-than-inflation

+7.53% without dividends (haven't bothered to look at those yet). Feels worse than the end-point because was up around 33% a few months ago, but that's how the market works... It goes up and down ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

‪acquisition : "Volaris Group Expands Position in Communications & Media Vertical with Acquisition of Powel Metering" https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/01/01/1679288/0/en/Volaris-Group-Expands-Position-in-Communications-Media-Vertical-with-Acquisition-of-Powel-Metering-to-become-Avance-Metering.html Nice to see more acquisitions being done in Scandinavia (the kind of place where VMS makes sense... advanced economy with expensive labor):

Li Liu on his birthday: https://www.facebook.com/groups/754138784714366/permalink/1869028093225424/

Acquisition: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-earthport-m-a-visa/visa-to-buy-british-payments-firm-earthport-for-about-250-million-idUSKCN1OQ0EC

Yes, aggressively buying. Turning a US$300K plus retirement account into ATUSF shares. My broker likes the fees. That one company is still 100% of your portfolio?

I don't think you have to be an expert here. To use the WB quote about being approximately correct: From a birds eye view the economy has been doing great under a low interest environment for what, 7 years? Therefore, time to start raising rates. That's my "approximately correct", 1000 ft view. Regarding the minutiae as to "well they should've done XYZ 6 months ago or whatnot", well just seems like noise...trying to figure out if the guy on the scale is 200 lbs or 205 lbs. Oh, I think you can have a 5-sec opinion like that. But to have an informed opinion on macro-economics, it's something you have to actively study for a while, and I haven't, and I don't think many here have.

So, linealdin, are you buying more here?

How about not having an opinion because fed policy is outside my circle of competence? I'd guess it's outside of the circle of many others here, including some of those with the strongest opinions.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-02/trump-has-340-million-of-debt-linked-to-powell-s-rate-decisions

Have fun, but be careful!

We're not disagreeing.

Guess we should give the Fed a third mandate like Druck seems to imply (because Druck seems to believe that Mr. Market is the world’s best economist—Ben Graham would disagree): the Fed should maximize the S&P 500. Surely that will lead to great long term economic prosperity. I'm not sure if Ben Graham would disagree, actually. He still respected the market a lot (was actually incredibly conservative and insiste on huge margins of safety because he understood how hard this is). The market is often wrong, but that doesn't make it more wrong than any single random economist or group of economists. The choice isn't between a group that's right and a group that's wrong, but between who's less wrong... The hard part is more interpreting what the wisdom of the crowd is saying and getting the message through short term noise, rather than anything else, and even then you'll often be wrong (but more than any talking head on TV or at the fed? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). As for your (I assume) sarcastic suggestion, I'd say that if the goal was to maximize the health of the market over long periods (10-20 years increments), that would be pretty close to just "make sure the economy is running well, not too hot, not too cold". If the goal was over the short term, that would indeed just encourage bubbles. Just guessing, though, as nobody can be sure about any of this, which is also part of what makes it so hard. It's those people with so much certainty that are the most dangerous...

Trump is a highly leveraged real-estate guy. Surprising to anyone he'd want forever zero interest rates? Druck said he's more about removing forward guidance on the fed, and he's be for raising interest rates in a couple months and has been for normalizing them in the past, so it's not like he's taking the same position as Trump.

https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/1076202167286022144

The first year Tesla had any real revenue to speak of they filed an S-1 and went public. Which made a lot of sense. Capital-intensive industry and your goal is to scale up very quickly to mass-market production and integrate manufacturing vertically... That's what the capital markets are for.

My question would be if Musk is an owner-operator? When you think about the owner-operator category, in the past, these used to be guys who over many years built up a company and then eventually that company went public. For guys who started out by raising venture capital and then went public within a few years, are they really in the same category? Do they have the same incentives? Would someone just investing his own money continue making money-losing cars for 10+ years? Musk used his own money (from Paypal sale, mostly) to grow both Tesla and SpaceX for many years before Tesla went public, and SpaceX still isn't. That's why he owns a large chunk of each. He didn't start out with VC money.

I don't think it has anything to do with the news. It's just indiscriminate selling.

Selling imaging businesses to Teledyne for 220m: http://www.ropertech.com/sites/default/files/181219_Teledyne%20to%20Acquire%20Scientific%20Imaging%20Businesses_FINAL.pdf

Alternatively, it's probably not a good idea to get emotional on a 25bps interest rate change causing a 2% market move.

I certainly hope it's the whole thing or close to it. I'll see what I can find out.

I think it's only part of it that is being sold, but it's not clear how big it is.

Another one at Volaris: https://www.motortrader.com/motor-trader-news/automotive-news/cox-automotive-sells-incadea-dms-business-volaris-13-12-2018

Irish acquisition: https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/business/cork-beauty-software-firm-sold-for-over-15m-892840.html