Liberty

I'm not sure. Probably around 2003 or 2004.

Thanks

The ONLY reason people are willing to pay current prices is the orthodoxy that prices can't go down and can't stop going up. This leads to the widespread fear of being priced out because prices will keep going up, and the belief that even if they overpay, rising prices will bail them out because they'll just take the equity out of the house as they go (making them more vulnerable to any shock to the system since they're more levered) or flip it at a profit later when they realize that whatever they bought isn't what they want anymore. Doesn't seem wise to me.

Making hardware is hard: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/24/google-pixel-2-bugs-continue-to-bother-users.html

I'd rather look at the base rate of what has happened historically rather than make theoretical scenarios about "what if everybody just decides not to sell and never pay off their houses". New households are created, people get divorced, have to move for work, the kids move out and the house is suddenly too big, need money for retirement, etc. There's always going to be a bunch of churn in the housing sector, and price discovery is going to happen at that margin. If suddenly buyers have to get approved for a mortgage at 5-6% and they're not seeing prices rise constantly (stopping the FOMO, and reducing the hope that even if you're up to your eyeballs, you can always just take more equity out of the house via HELOC to pay for consumption), the psychology is not going to stay the same.

Can you elaborate on the local perception of each companies, and what might make FB the other top magnet for talent right now. Thanks.

They didn't have to collect state taxes in states where they had no physical operations, like all other mail and internet retailers. It's similar to how if I buy something from the US and have it shipped here in Canada, I don't have to pay US federal and state taxes on that thing, and vice versa for an American getting something shipped from Canada. Makes sense to me. But over time Amazon has built warehouses and fulfilment centers in most states, so regardless of any law changes, it wouldn't apply anymore anyway.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-strikes-deal-with-shanghai-to-build-factory-in-china-1508670181?mod=e2fb&mg=prod/accounts-wsj Also, there's a lot of discussion of Elon Musk in this excellent podcast interview with Tim Urban (Wait by Why): http://investorfieldguide.com/urban/

When prices go up, people can find lots of reasons why it's going up. When it goes down, people will find lots of reasons why it goes down. It's the Halo Effect, but for cities. To me, it's not worth paying millions for a bungalow from the 1970s and expect it to keep compounding faster than Berkshire (which has cashflows and reinvestment opportunities, unlike a house), but what do I know...

If you want to learn more about the potential to cure (or at least delay long enough that new cures can be worked on) the diseases of aging, this is a good start: https://www.amazon.ca/Ending-Aging-Rejuvenation-Breakthroughs-Lifetime/dp/0312367074 Short overview: This is from 2005, so a decent amount of progress has been made since: http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research

Another CGP Grey video worth watching:

Don't believe the FUD propaganda by the fossil fuel lobby. That industry has gotten hundreds of billions in direct an indirect subsidies over the decades but now they feel threatened because they suddenly have competition from a few sources that relentlessly keep getting better every year...

Yeah, and that help for the downpayment seems to often come out of a HELOC, just to make sure that everybody is leveraged to local real estate to the max. Or perhaps the parents are adopting the Chinese practice of making sure their children have homes so can attract a desirable mate and produce grandchildren. If so prices have a long way to go before they match the levels in China. The motivations are varied, I'm sure, but the financial logic remains. Borrowing to borrow on elevated asset, and putting your whole net worth into one asset, at historically low interest rates at a time when regulators are tightening the screws isn't exactly a low risk approach.

https://electrek.co/2017/10/19/china-breaking-all-solar-power-records-aiming-for-50gw-in-2017/

Priceline investing 450m in Meituan: https://www.tnooz.com/article/priceline-group-hedges-its-chinese-bets-with-meituan-travel-tie-up/ https://skift.com/2017/10/19/priceline-invests-450-million-in-chinese-e-commerce-giant-meituan-dianping/ Certainly follows what Fogel said to Skift about China...

Yeah, and that help for the downpayment seems to often come out of a HELOC, just to make sure that everybody is leveraged to local real estate to the max.

Whether Sears is fixed or not won't be divined by doing exegesis on Lampert and Berkowitz's comments, that's pointless. Might as well ask the barber if you need a haircut. Go visit a few Sears stores, go visit their website, ask people you know if they shop there, shop there yourself and be honest about the experience, etc. Then look at the financials and the competition, what kind of operational levere/deleverage they're experiencing, at what rate the ice cube is melting, etc. That'll tell you a lot more.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/16/facebook-acquires-anonymous-teen-compliment-app-tbh-will-let-it-run/

https://electrek.co/2017/10/16/new-wind-turbine-efficiency-so-great-utilities-repowering-farms-early/ I thought this was pretty cool. Just cool to see the tech keep getting better and better, not only on brand new turbines, but with the ability to retrofit old ones.

Good book so far. I've posted a few excepts if you're curious:

Solar net additions these past few years. https://www.wsj.com/articles/your-next-home-could-run-on-batteries-1508065205

There's been. Infrastructure is just slow. But almost all new capacity is gas, solar, and wind, and a lot of coal is planned to phase out. Even China has started to move against coal. Solar net additions:

Natural gas prices went negative for a few days in Alberta... wow http://business.financialpost.com/commodities/canadian-natural-gas-prices-enter-negative-territory-amid-pipeline-outages

It's not about what Capital Power believes. Did they expect the 2030 change before it came? They might not see the next one coming either. Large secular trends matter. Coal has too many downsides (high carbon emissions, smog, mercury pollution, coal ash storage, coal mining impact, etc), while competing power sources are getting better/cheaper at a good clip. If the externalized downsides of coal ever get priced in, coal will lose any remaining competitiveness it thought it had... And it'll always be #1 on regulator's list because it's the low hanging fruit if you want to reduce pollution. Seems like biomass use and/or efficiency improvements won't help the Altius coal royalty if they reduce tonnage...