Recent Posts

1

Investment Ideas / Re: TSLA - Tesla Motors

« Last post by ERICOPOLY on Today at 07:35:37 AM »

$500 really makes no sense to me, but the Model S is still the only electric car I that would consider owning.

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Investment Ideas / Re: JMIA - Jumia

« Last post by writser on Today at 07:27:38 AM »

Jumia up ~25% yesterday. Am still absolutely not interested .

Rocket Internet still seems somewhat compelling to me. The bought back 1.75m shares in December on-exchange and dissolved a cross-holding with United Internet AG, simplifying the balance sheet and buying back cheap shares. Both operations combined cost ~E120m, so if we adjust Q3 then there's still ~E2500m cash remaining with ~136m shares, or E18.50 / share? On top of that a private portfolio valued at E1200m, E300m in loans and a public portfolio worth E300m (roughly adjusted for the sale of United Internet, didn't bother to look in more detail so far). I.e. you buy investments worth E13 / share for E4? Seems nice. I wouldn't be surprised if Oliver Samwer tries to take the company private at some point. Still sucking my thumb. Any thoughts?

Sorry for hijacking this thread again. I should maybe open a separate thread but I feel my d.d. is not up to par yet.

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General Discussion / Re: Wilshire 5000 market cap / GDP exceeds dot-com peak

« Last post by RuleNumberOne on Today at 07:13:10 AM »

I was looking at Japan's 1989 stock market bubble. That one topped out at a 139% ratio of stock market to GDP (would have been a lower ratio if GNP was used.) So the current stock market is in uncharted territory.

Jay Powell has turned out to be the weakest Fed Chair in history. We have been at 3.x unemployment for a long time but the Fed promised to not raise rates until after the November elections. Powell got bullied easily.

The market may go up another 5-50% this year even with no earnings growth. If central bankers excuse is they are waiting for inflation in Alabama or growth in Europe, they are waiting for rain in a desert - it is not going to happen. A lot of investors will feel the pain at some point in the next few years.

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Books / Re: Why We Sleep - Matthew Walker

« Last post by Liberty on Today at 06:45:11 AM »

Thanks Liberty!

On a related topic, what do you think of need for sunscreen? It seems to me that humans have evolved to be in the sun, so cannot see why it would be needed. Any thoughts or research you have done on this?

Vinod

I've seen both sides of the argument.. I ended up falling on the side of using sunscreen and getting more Vit D through supplementation.

I think humans throughout evolutionary time mostly didn't live long enough to worry too much about skin cancers and skin aging (the sun will make your skin visibly age much faster), a lot of the problems happened after reproduction age, which is an evolutionary blind spot, and throughout most of that time most humans probably had darker skin pigmentation than I do, which also provides some natural protection. There's also issues with the ozone layer being damaged in post-industrial times (some of that has been partially corrected by banning CFCs and such, but not entirely).

That's my vague understanding of the situation. I still get plenty of sun without sunscreen, but if I know I'm going to be out for a long time in the sun not being covered too much, I always try to wear good sunscreen now.

Excellent points! That makes a lot of sense.

I was recently talking about evolution with a biology professor and she made the point that evolution cared (in terms of increasing your chances of survival) only if it helped in reproduction. That is why women live longer than men, because older women help their daughters care for the children, which in turn led to women having more children. So evolutionary wise there is an advantage for mothers to have their grand mother live longer. Men, apparently no so much

Thank you!

Vinod

It's not quite as simple as that, but yes, things that tend to happen after reproduction don't get encoded (or at least, not directly, which also leads to the interesting stuff in epigenetic).. That's why aging and the diseases of aging aren't programmed, but rather, a blind spot that evolution hasn't had a time to solve against because for most of humanity's existence, there were few very old people, and they didn't reproduce. There can be secondary effects, like having longer-lived adults helping the germ-line indirectly (ie. grand-parents increasing the chance of survival of their grand-kids).. I'm no expert, but I remember that at the time (10-12 years ago), I learned a lot from this series of posts:

https://www.lesswrong.com/s/MH2b8NfWv22dBtrs8

Of course reading Darwin's Origins of Species is recommended as a good starting point, but this book is also a good place to learn:

https://www.amazon.com/Adaptation-Natural-Selection-Christopher-Williams/dp/0691026157

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General Discussion / Re: Dealing with Neighbors Who Are Heavy Pot Smokers

« Last post by rkbabang on Today at 06:29:58 AM »

Ive lived in the city for a short period of time. Ive lived, my entire life, typically about 30 minutes outside of it and no further than I am now, which is about 40 miles(70 minutes). My observation is that the further you get from the city, the more considerate, and more friendly people become. I do not necessarily think this means city people are inherently more selfish, just that this is how one must conduct themselves in that type of setting. If anything my time in the city reminded me of college(as does the descriptions of events in this thread). Everyone is in a dorm, and everyone is crammed on top of everyone else. You've people cooking, smoking, blasting music, throwing parties, fighting, screaming, etc. A free for all. Ask someone to quiet down? You're likely going to have an altercation. If you're lucky they'll placate you- only to then immediately go back to doing what they want. While as a single 20 year old I had no problem dealing with that kind of stuff, as a married guy with a family I have no desire to.

My wife and I were both from small towns, so it was culture shock for sure.  A funny story.  We bought a couple of rubbermaid type barrels for our trash to leave behind the building.  So the night before the first trash day I put the barrels on the sidewalk.  I noticed the next morning that the barrels were gone and our trash bags were sitting on the sidewalk. Someone took our trash bags out and stole the barrels.   We were telling some friends we made the story and they all laughed at us and said "What were you thinking? You can't just leave brand new barrels out on the sidewalk in Worcester".   They used to laugh at our small town sensibilities all of the time, like when my wife mentioned that she noticed that at the grocery store a lot of people pay with travelers checks.  Apparently it was food stamps, not travelers checks.

But back to the topic we just got used to the pot smell.  Our apartment smelled like pot pretty much constantly for 3 years.

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General Discussion / Re: Wilshire 5000 market cap / GDP exceeds dot-com peak

« Last post by stahleyp on Today at 06:19:18 AM »

Have you seen the latest issue of Barron's?

A few quotes from the cover:

"It is a year to be more defensive"

"There's not much margin for error"

"We have entered a new Cold War, and that is negative for global growth"

"The scale and pace of what's happening in China are beyond anything n America"

"I am not coming into this year expecting something dramatically negative the under economy (sorry this one is hard to read since the address label is there).

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General Discussion / Re: Wilshire 5000 market cap / GDP exceeds dot-com peak

« Last post by Gregmal on Today at 06:00:51 AM »

Per CNBC, both Tepper and Druckenmiller are still quite bullish on the market. Tepper is probably one of the few guys I drop everything to pay attention to, so there's that. But there's also the fact that I still cant find anyone but myself and maybe a couple folks here to pencil into the "bearish" column. Which continues to concern me nonetheless.

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General Discussion / Re: Dealing with Neighbors Who Are Heavy Pot Smokers

« Last post by Gregmal on Today at 05:55:52 AM »

Ive lived in the city for a short period of time. Ive lived, my entire life, typically about 30 minutes outside of it and no further than I am now, which is about 40 miles(70 minutes). My observation is that the further you get from the city, the more considerate, and more friendly people become. I do not necessarily think this means city people are inherently more selfish, just that this is how one must conduct themselves in that type of setting. If anything my time in the city reminded me of college(as does the descriptions of events in this thread). Everyone is in a dorm, and everyone is crammed on top of everyone else. You've people cooking, smoking, blasting music, throwing parties, fighting, screaming, etc. A free for all. Ask someone to quiet down? You're likely going to have an altercation. If you're lucky they'll placate you- only to then immediately go back to doing what they want. While as a single 20 year old I had no problem dealing with that kind of stuff, as a married guy with a family I have no desire to.

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General Discussion / Re: Dealing with Neighbors Who Are Heavy Pot Smokers

« Last post by rkbabang on Today at 05:50:57 AM »

I remember guys (and girls) smoking crack in the stairwells of my old brooklyn building. You never saw them, but crack is one of those things that you have no idea what it smells like, but you catch a whiff of it for the first time, and you immediately know EXACTLY what it is that you're smelling! Pretty wild.

And now I'm getting nostalgia...to me, nothing screams the city like repeatedly slamming a hardcover copy of Ulysses against the shared wall at 6 AM, screaming "Shut the F#(* up!!!", because the cracked-out neighbor's grandmother (sober) is screaming at her 7 year old grandson to "be a man and get dressed!"

So for a guy smoking a joint at midnight...I mean c'mon

The first apartment my wife and I had together before we were married was on the ground floor right next to a bar.  We had a huge fat lady living upstairs from us who you could hear <boom> <boom> <boom> every time she walked.  And she would yell at and beat the hell out of her kids every day.  The couple on the side of us in our building (the bar was the next building) would yell and fight constantly, throw things at each other, and it sounded like he was beating her up all the time.   And when we'd leave our apartment in the morning it wasn't unusual (it was summer) to have to step over a passed out drunk on our front steps.    We didn't stay there that long, just a couple of months and from there moved into a 3rd floor apartment where the people below us were heavy pot smokers and the spanish speaking folks that lived in the building next door would yell stuff at my wife and whistle every time she left the building, but it was a huge step up from the 1st place so we stayed there 3 years until we bought our fist house in the burbs.  I don't miss city living.

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Investment Ideas / Re: BAM - Brookfield Asset Management Inc.

« Last post by John Hjorth on Today at 04:48:32 AM »

Brookfield Renewable Partners Press Release [January 13^th 2020] : Brookfield Renewable Submits Proposal to Acquire TerraForm Power on an All Stock Basis; Announces a 5% Distribution Increase.

This reminds me a bit about the GGP transaction for BPY, however here for BEP and not a cash consideration.

Terraform Power Inc. website.