I'm mostly a #5 retail investor. That decision was based on a fair bit of research for the area I now live in.
As for Bitcoins, not interested. Not a huge fan of anything where the most important strategy is not being holding the bag when the music stops.
I do have physical stocks of a particular precious metal (not gold) which are for a) barter and b) if things get really weird. I think of it as an insurance policy.
No bitcoin here either. I’ve never invested in anything that requires the “greater fool” theory.
I have put a small amount of dough into an ETF that shorts bitcoin— just waiting until all the fools run out. I guess that means I’ve invested in something using the “lesser fool” theory. (I’m upside down on it so far— maybe I’m the fool.)
One of the things that worries me about bitcoin is that not only is it a fiat currency, but your security in the market is based on an encrypted account. If you lose the encryption, well, too bad for you, but worse yet, our government has the ability to crack that encryption - and would be trivial for them to do it.
So what happens when they decide to?
Or some 'rogue element' at that facility decides to?
what's the difference between a dollar backed by nothing and a bitcoin backed by nothing? Not only that, it's worse than a commodity like gold, since it is not tangible? Also, if the power goes out or systems are shut down, how do you access your bitcoin?
The primary difference is that a dollar is legal tender "for all debts public and private," especially taxes. This does not make the fiat currency immune to (hyper)inflation.
There's no reason why bitcoin source code could be found and release more into the world. The dollar for a long time was backed by gold, then by a stable government (which really is the most vital). Unless you have something hard backing it, it will always be fiat.
There's also the lingering threat of "Satoshi." All hell will break lose if those wallets start moving or someone cracks into one.
As for me... I made a shit-ton of money when Nissan looked like it was going to go bankrupt a few decades ago. I knew enough about the Japanese.... their honor would never let a car company literally named after their country fail. Sure enough, the government just gave them money.
I subscribe to the Warren Buffet idea of limiting yourself to about 20 plays in your life. That way it forced you to wait to get it right and pass on things that aren't perfect.
Coming here for investment advice makes perfect sense given that the proprietor drives a Lexus. Hoping retirement planning is a large part of the next First Principles.
for what you will have dumped into the signature "Don't give a shit" college hand-me-down car of 2015, you could have bought a REAL neon (SRT4) and made it decent to look at and nicely driveable. still living, still learning!
I toured the Morgan factory yesterday; what a trip to see honest-to-goodness craftsmen hammering metal and shaping wood to build a bespoke car. My guide confirmed you won’t lose money when investing in a Morgan, so enjoy the lack of depreciation!
Well JB, I’m not sure how to break this to you — or your savings account — but I learned yesterday that they are ready to start importing into the United States of America, under the “replica car” regulations. Yes, it’s classified as a replica of a Morgan, but apparently that will allow them to import around 400 per year. The first two years allotment has already been spoken for, so you have three years in which to start saving if you place your order tomorrow…
FWIW, i’m seriously considering making my own order. You can even provide them with a textile from your favourite suit and they will incorporate it into the interior!
This is what I got from the article as well, after a certain amount of explanation of investor types, etc.
I think the airlines are headed back up, for whatever that's worth. They fell too much on "fear of foreign travel" or whatever happened thanks to Trump. I think aviation in general was a bit overvalued, but the airlines fell too much. Just my opinion, but also where I have some money.
Options industry wisdom from the professional traders I used to work with: “It’s like picking up nickels in front of a bulldozer. You can pick up as many nickels as you want, but keep an eye on the bulldozer “
That's bonds and was with LTCM which had that problem. There's a whole business case about them. I was being facetious about my comment, but I've made quite a bit of money on options. More on commodities and currencies, but they just need to be quick positions.
I think that buried in the book When Genius Failed is the reason that one particular New-York-based banking firm went under during the 2007-2009 Follies.
They were the only US firm that refused to help the Fed save the US banking system during the 1998 LTCM meltdown. IIRC, that was Bear Sterns.
When, ten years later, they needed help, everyone else remembered that they were the only US firm that did not pony up. Crédit Agricole also declined to help, but they were not a US firm.
I always have been an Austrian School kinda guy. I wore my "Ludwig von Mises Institute" sweatshirt past the wear-out point; I looked like a homeless person. There's an irony there. More than one, in fact!
(Sidebar: Vanderbilt values a law degree on a par with any PhD in the Humanities. I was told that was so, so Law instructors were paid as much as, say, the tenureds in the English department. Therefore, in order to graduate, I had to have a topic approved by an advisor, write and turn in a 50-page research and argument paper, and have it approved by three faculty Readers.)
My 1979 VLS Thesis argued that Federal policies intended to promote home ownership, first of all, gave the most help to those who needed it least. Then, specifically, I argued that then-ballyhoo'ed Federal Tax CREDITS (20%) on renovation of qualifying historical, etc. real-estate properties would lead to what sociologists of the time called "Urban Displacement."
DAMN! Where is my time machine??? If I could only go back and change every mention of "Urban Displacement" to "HOMELESSNESS," today I could claim to be a Public Policy Rock Star.
That is what happened. A canny investor who has earned income that he wants to shelter from income tax spends $50,000 to buy a house that (i) is being rented out illegally for its zoning (multiple unrelated people) and (ii) has the Building Inspector threatening to Cancel its Certificate of Occupancy. He then hires big strong moving guys to evict the six tenants and pile their stuff on the sidewalk. He then spends (1979, please recall) $250,000 rehabbing the house. Aha! He then has $50,000 in brightly colored Monopoly Money with which to pay his taxes.
Mr. Real-Estate investor can be forgiven for thinking that he got that house for free, can't he? But you've got six people who have no jobs, or minimum-pay jobs like parking-lot attendant. And they can't find affordable housing, because investors are running up and down the East Side in search of qualifying properties.
Now, it was not my focus, but, I plainly stated that the sum total of all these Perverse Incentives was that Housing would be a Bubble, and we Miseians all know what happens to Bubbles.
(In retrospect, the Bubble to Burst should have been my focus, and not the Social Injustice of letting rich people pay their income taxes by making poor working people sleep in their cars.)
That was 1979. I expected the Housing Bubble to burst, some time in the 1990s. I never imagined Subprime Mortgages; and I never expected the music to keep on playing until 2007.
I actually tried in the early 1980s to try to structure a series of transactions so that if a non-profit owned a property that qualified for the 20% Tax Credit, they could sell the tax credits. I think that the response to that was the moral (or immoral) equivalent of, "Why buy a cow, when milk is so cheap?"
I will give the last word to Thackeray:
"It was in the reign of George II that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now; and do not the Sunday papers and the courts of law supply us every week with more novel and interesting slander?"
I thought that the key to investing was knowing that EBITDA is all the matters since it's cashflow from operations. Even though, the investors that use it, end up causing close to 20% of all business bankruptcies in the US. Russ Hannenman was right, pre-revenue, you're a pure play. I'm sure sherman will tell me I'm wrong. Capital allocators are the most important people this country has.
For MOST people, dollar cost averaging the S&P 500 provides the best risk-adjusted returns they could ever get, and it takes essentially zero time or mental bandwidth. One could conceivably devote all of their time to investing (or “investing”) and lose out versus the effort- and thought-free S&P 500 return. It is a tremendous gift of modern capitalism that one can ride the wisdom of the broader market without having much expertise.
Pete does an excellent job of breaking down the investor subtypes.
The average 10-k is 80 pages. Even if you are an accountant, reading 80 pages takes time and can be confusing. Analyzing 80 pages takes time. With the new accounting rules, good luck getting anything from a bs, p&l and cash flow statement without dedicating days to the foot notes of each one you read. So, I will stick with dollar cost averaging.
As disclosed in Note x to the financial statements, accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America require that leases with terms of 12 months or more are required to recognize both the assets and the
liabilities arising from their lease. Management has elected to record leases under the old standard ASC 840 and omit the assets and the liabilities arising from their lease from the financial statements. Management has not determined the effects of this departure from accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America on financial position. Management has determined the departure from accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America would not have a material effect on the results of operations and cash flows.
I agree with you 100%. That post was facetious as you know. Most people have no idea what EBITDA is. FWIW I am not an EBITDA fan much like Charlie Munger. Software it doesn't matter that much.
Sure but EBITDA isn't complete revenue. To avoid taking into account the vital aspect of depreciation & interest is silly. Oh yeah, let's just ignore a giant debt amount but our earnings are high! (even though, 70% of those earnings could go to debt).
Revenue then adjusted EBITDA then EBITDA then net income.
I spent a dozen or so years as a humble servant of ho-hum community banks that traded on earnings or - even worse - multiples of tangible book value. Glad to have that behind me now!
It never ceases to amuse me that you and I utilize the same investment strategy. My neighborhood cigar lounge is offering 15% off Davidoffs this week, maybe I'll have one.
I would presume it is not a super high volume Davidoff store given the sale.
Which is good news! Look for an Aniversario Special R with fairly prominent / puckered veins on the wrapper and a lighter hue - good signs that it’s been sitting aging for a while. Get the Special R in the cellophane, not the tubo, which doesn’t age as rapidly given it’s sealed.
Davidoff cigars are an experience. If you're gonna buy a good cigar that's the marque. (Disclaimer: I'm not a cigar snob--I like the occasional cigar with a glass of Lagavulin, but I've been smoking unfiltered Camels for a decade. My taste buds for fine tobacco are long gone.)
Nothing else satisfies. I am chagrined to admit that I have been smoking 4-6 Davidoff cigars every day lately. Particularly as a lot of my day to day is phone calls at this point. I am smoking one right now, and I am going to light another one right after because I don’t have a call until early afternoon! 🤣
Be sure to retrohale (google it if unfamiliar) the next time you smoke one.
I would not have the incredible (literally not credible / believable, in a sense) opportunity that’s on my plate at the moment if I didn’t smoke cigars.
I met a guy in passing through a friend several years ago in Kentucky - a fellow cigar guy. He installed me into a company in which he was among the earliest investors as a co-founder. We couldn’t have dreamed of how the cards fell our way recently.
Restaurant chain that once employed me preached the importance of EBITDA in nearly every meeting and conference call I was forced to attend except the one notifying me of that morning's Chapter 7 filing and my new job status.
Great article, the linked articles on you personal site were also outstanding. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Also what is it like to be rich in Canada when I understand from members of the ACF community who live there, that the government spends every waking hour trying to impoverish the rich, like yourself?
Life is generally pretty good here. My kids go to public school, but the less news you read (and the more private health/golf clubs you belong to) the better. Same as anywhere in the West at present?
At the very least our government isn't any worse than that of UK, Germany, or Australia, and it's entirely plausible that at least the "flyover" parts of Canada will end up much more closely aligned with their southern neighbours in the coming decades
The "main tools" column in the retail list seems to be main risks/downsides. I couldn't expand that image enough to see before on mobile, because substack is so bad.
I find it hard to believe any success beyond simply getting the market average return in anything but category 5 at retail is anything but dumb luck. Most of the pro edges come from power, insider info, or deal access you'll never get as John Q Public.
The average reader is far better served by buy and hold index investing than anything else.
If you click the link, he is effectively chastising me for calling the 911 GT3 "gay" a few years ago, a chastising I probably deserve, although in my perpetually hidebound ignorance I thought we could go back to negative uses of "gay" when "queer" became the preferred term, the same way most of the gay dudes I know use "homosexual" in a non-flattering fashion.
"Gay" and "progressive" are both euphemisms designed to sanitize and obfuscate.
But this comment reminded me of the time I had to buy front wheel hubs for my Volvo, and the only company that made new ones was a European outfit called FAG.
When I play cribbage and we discuss a great pegging round, the Gen Z players (aka kids) all giggle like they all have doorknobs up their butts. It is troubling.
Excellent guest article, thank you! I dabble in a few of the investment categories, and honing in on what I enjoy and am actually good at would probably prove more beneficial in the long run.
If you haven’t, I highly recommend visiting Lake Minnetonka in the summer. The lake is magnificent, but you definitely get a glimpse of how the other half lives.
If you do actually visit MN in the summer, there are several other lakes to be recommended that are better than Minnetonka.
you certainly can't beat the spectacle and social scene of Minnetonka in the depths of summer. But if you want peace and cleansing of the solitary sort, just about ANY lake is better.
Picking a lake is more complicated than it might appear. Many factors involved.
"Hello, Amerikan. I am Africa Prince Jonny Goldman. I would like to make you "Rich Man" if you could just to help me to move $10-Billion-uS GOLD dOLLARS...." There is only one catch...
Pete, thanks for contributing.
If you see this comment, do you have any publicly-shareable thoughts on the life and tragic drowning of your friend, Bitcoin legend Mircea Popescu ?
Wait, Popescu is dead? I guess I hadn't heard anything about him for a while now.
Happy to share my thoughts here:
https://contravex.com/2021/07/04/rip-mp/
https://contravex.com/2025/02/16/monarchy-revisited/
My investing advice is that if you eat at least two large bacon cheeseburgers a week, you probably don’t need to worry about investing.
I read somewhere recently that eating two cheeseburgers is healthier than a cheeseburger and fries, sounded to me like a great strategy.
I’m not a fry guy but here in the Midwest we have cheese curds and those will definitely be a line item on my autopsy report.
Poutine for the win. Fortunately the plate I had last week hadn't been affected by a Canadian tariff.
from personal experience the curds in quebec taste and feel better than ones elsewhere
i presume this is becuase of the specific moisture and fat content of the curd which is sometimes listed on the bag
The one where the coroner reads it, does a double take and says, "Jesus!" ?
😋😋
No bacon, no sale.
I'm mostly a #5 retail investor. That decision was based on a fair bit of research for the area I now live in.
As for Bitcoins, not interested. Not a huge fan of anything where the most important strategy is not being holding the bag when the music stops.
I do have physical stocks of a particular precious metal (not gold) which are for a) barter and b) if things get really weird. I think of it as an insurance policy.
I admit I don't totally understand Bitcoin.
And that ignorance is probably saving my 401k.
No bitcoin here either. I’ve never invested in anything that requires the “greater fool” theory.
I have put a small amount of dough into an ETF that shorts bitcoin— just waiting until all the fools run out. I guess that means I’ve invested in something using the “lesser fool” theory. (I’m upside down on it so far— maybe I’m the fool.)
One of the things that worries me about bitcoin is that not only is it a fiat currency, but your security in the market is based on an encrypted account. If you lose the encryption, well, too bad for you, but worse yet, our government has the ability to crack that encryption - and would be trivial for them to do it.
So what happens when they decide to?
Or some 'rogue element' at that facility decides to?
Actually bitcoin isn’t a fiat currency; the dollar is. Maybe bitcoin is a Yugo currency; similar to a Fiat, but worse.
Many things to be concerned about with bitcoin, not the least of which are the stuff you mentioned.
what's the difference between a dollar backed by nothing and a bitcoin backed by nothing? Not only that, it's worse than a commodity like gold, since it is not tangible? Also, if the power goes out or systems are shut down, how do you access your bitcoin?
The primary difference is that a dollar is legal tender "for all debts public and private," especially taxes. This does not make the fiat currency immune to (hyper)inflation.
There's no reason why bitcoin source code could be found and release more into the world. The dollar for a long time was backed by gold, then by a stable government (which really is the most vital). Unless you have something hard backing it, it will always be fiat.
There's also the lingering threat of "Satoshi." All hell will break lose if those wallets start moving or someone cracks into one.
As for me... I made a shit-ton of money when Nissan looked like it was going to go bankrupt a few decades ago. I knew enough about the Japanese.... their honor would never let a car company literally named after their country fail. Sure enough, the government just gave them money.
I subscribe to the Warren Buffet idea of limiting yourself to about 20 plays in your life. That way it forced you to wait to get it right and pass on things that aren't perfect.
It's Pretend Internet Money, existing only electronically in some server in Bangalore.
And that last word is enough to make me stay away!
Coming here for investment advice makes perfect sense given that the proprietor drives a Lexus. Hoping retirement planning is a large part of the next First Principles.
The best investment advice I can give you is summed up like so:
Don't buy a 2001 Lexus ES300.
More specifically, don't buy the one you bought. Fortunately, you jumped on that hand grenade for all of us. ;-)
for what you will have dumped into the signature "Don't give a shit" college hand-me-down car of 2015, you could have bought a REAL neon (SRT4) and made it decent to look at and nicely driveable. still living, still learning!
this isn't helping me get the pistol out of my mouth, friendo
you're pointing that thing the wrong way big boy. go rob the parts counter or better yet the guy who sold it to you
HE'S A SUBSCRIBER
I CAN DO NOTHING
make a new tier of subscriber "2001 Lexus ES Platinum" that costs $10,000 a year
Per Bill Bengen, the guy who came up with the 4% rule, after further research he’s now going with a 5% yearly withdrawal rate instead of 4%.
I'm sure his heart's in the right place but I don't think even 5 would cover the nut with a new Morgan.
I toured the Morgan factory yesterday; what a trip to see honest-to-goodness craftsmen hammering metal and shaping wood to build a bespoke car. My guide confirmed you won’t lose money when investing in a Morgan, so enjoy the lack of depreciation!
Thank God they're not offering the Supersport in the USA, I think I'd really have trouble making the payments to which I would readily commit.
Well JB, I’m not sure how to break this to you — or your savings account — but I learned yesterday that they are ready to start importing into the United States of America, under the “replica car” regulations. Yes, it’s classified as a replica of a Morgan, but apparently that will allow them to import around 400 per year. The first two years allotment has already been spoken for, so you have three years in which to start saving if you place your order tomorrow…
FWIW, i’m seriously considering making my own order. You can even provide them with a textile from your favourite suit and they will incorporate it into the interior!
Just Bitcoin and Gold, eh? I guess the music is finally stopping.
That’s not what my shoe shine boy told me. He’s still bullish.
This is what I got from the article as well, after a certain amount of explanation of investor types, etc.
I think the airlines are headed back up, for whatever that's worth. They fell too much on "fear of foreign travel" or whatever happened thanks to Trump. I think aviation in general was a bit overvalued, but the airlines fell too much. Just my opinion, but also where I have some money.
no idea who this guy is but already liked him within two paragraphs. another banger post here
much appreciated and many thanks to jack for setting it up and pete d for laying out the groundwork
time to become almost marginally less poor
I just write naked calls, is that bad?
Options industry wisdom from the professional traders I used to work with: “It’s like picking up nickels in front of a bulldozer. You can pick up as many nickels as you want, but keep an eye on the bulldozer “
That's bonds and was with LTCM which had that problem. There's a whole business case about them. I was being facetious about my comment, but I've made quite a bit of money on options. More on commodities and currencies, but they just need to be quick positions.
I highly recommend the book - When Genius Failed - to everyone.
Amen...
I think that buried in the book When Genius Failed is the reason that one particular New-York-based banking firm went under during the 2007-2009 Follies.
They were the only US firm that refused to help the Fed save the US banking system during the 1998 LTCM meltdown. IIRC, that was Bear Sterns.
When, ten years later, they needed help, everyone else remembered that they were the only US firm that did not pony up. Crédit Agricole also declined to help, but they were not a US firm.
That was Bear Stearns, yes. Jimmy Cayne’s fatal decision.
A friend of mine worked for Bear when they shut down their Chicago options office, which was a floor below my office.
When they whacked the office, each employee was given a severance letter, and on their way out the door, each ex-employee was given a boxed lunch.
I just love the boxed lunch send off. We were laughing about that one for a while.
"Pride goeth before destruction; and an haughty spirit before a fall."
That's from the Book of Adverbs.
Not.
The crisis that began when Hank Paulson went on the Today Show and told Matt Lauer that the sky is falling.
Two weeks before the Presidential election—how convenient!
I always have been an Austrian School kinda guy. I wore my "Ludwig von Mises Institute" sweatshirt past the wear-out point; I looked like a homeless person. There's an irony there. More than one, in fact!
(Sidebar: Vanderbilt values a law degree on a par with any PhD in the Humanities. I was told that was so, so Law instructors were paid as much as, say, the tenureds in the English department. Therefore, in order to graduate, I had to have a topic approved by an advisor, write and turn in a 50-page research and argument paper, and have it approved by three faculty Readers.)
My 1979 VLS Thesis argued that Federal policies intended to promote home ownership, first of all, gave the most help to those who needed it least. Then, specifically, I argued that then-ballyhoo'ed Federal Tax CREDITS (20%) on renovation of qualifying historical, etc. real-estate properties would lead to what sociologists of the time called "Urban Displacement."
DAMN! Where is my time machine??? If I could only go back and change every mention of "Urban Displacement" to "HOMELESSNESS," today I could claim to be a Public Policy Rock Star.
That is what happened. A canny investor who has earned income that he wants to shelter from income tax spends $50,000 to buy a house that (i) is being rented out illegally for its zoning (multiple unrelated people) and (ii) has the Building Inspector threatening to Cancel its Certificate of Occupancy. He then hires big strong moving guys to evict the six tenants and pile their stuff on the sidewalk. He then spends (1979, please recall) $250,000 rehabbing the house. Aha! He then has $50,000 in brightly colored Monopoly Money with which to pay his taxes.
Mr. Real-Estate investor can be forgiven for thinking that he got that house for free, can't he? But you've got six people who have no jobs, or minimum-pay jobs like parking-lot attendant. And they can't find affordable housing, because investors are running up and down the East Side in search of qualifying properties.
Now, it was not my focus, but, I plainly stated that the sum total of all these Perverse Incentives was that Housing would be a Bubble, and we Miseians all know what happens to Bubbles.
(In retrospect, the Bubble to Burst should have been my focus, and not the Social Injustice of letting rich people pay their income taxes by making poor working people sleep in their cars.)
That was 1979. I expected the Housing Bubble to burst, some time in the 1990s. I never imagined Subprime Mortgages; and I never expected the music to keep on playing until 2007.
I actually tried in the early 1980s to try to structure a series of transactions so that if a non-profit owned a property that qualified for the 20% Tax Credit, they could sell the tax credits. I think that the response to that was the moral (or immoral) equivalent of, "Why buy a cow, when milk is so cheap?"
I will give the last word to Thackeray:
"It was in the reign of George II that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now; and do not the Sunday papers and the courts of law supply us every week with more novel and interesting slander?"
i think i had an uncle who was a vp at bear sterns. or maybe that was merrill lynch
either way i was born 20 years too late to make use of that
thanks dad
Your comment made me laugh, thanks!
I was in the options business for decades and also worked on the Chicago options trading floor in its heyday.
I thought that the key to investing was knowing that EBITDA is all the matters since it's cashflow from operations. Even though, the investors that use it, end up causing close to 20% of all business bankruptcies in the US. Russ Hannenman was right, pre-revenue, you're a pure play. I'm sure sherman will tell me I'm wrong. Capital allocators are the most important people this country has.
For MOST people, dollar cost averaging the S&P 500 provides the best risk-adjusted returns they could ever get, and it takes essentially zero time or mental bandwidth. One could conceivably devote all of their time to investing (or “investing”) and lose out versus the effort- and thought-free S&P 500 return. It is a tremendous gift of modern capitalism that one can ride the wisdom of the broader market without having much expertise.
Pete does an excellent job of breaking down the investor subtypes.
"investing" lol
the market fleeces a million sheep a day. just buy the fuckin ETF dawg
The average 10-k is 80 pages. Even if you are an accountant, reading 80 pages takes time and can be confusing. Analyzing 80 pages takes time. With the new accounting rules, good luck getting anything from a bs, p&l and cash flow statement without dedicating days to the foot notes of each one you read. So, I will stick with dollar cost averaging.
From an accountants perspective, let me know how you really feel about right of use assets/liabilities. /s
Anything that isn't an audit:
Basis for Qualified Conclusion
As disclosed in Note x to the financial statements, accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America require that leases with terms of 12 months or more are required to recognize both the assets and the
liabilities arising from their lease. Management has elected to record leases under the old standard ASC 840 and omit the assets and the liabilities arising from their lease from the financial statements. Management has not determined the effects of this departure from accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America on financial position. Management has determined the departure from accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America would not have a material effect on the results of operations and cash flows.
What a joke.
I agree with you 100%. That post was facetious as you know. Most people have no idea what EBITDA is. FWIW I am not an EBITDA fan much like Charlie Munger. Software it doesn't matter that much.
If you are starting, owning, selling, etc. a business, you’d like it to be valued on revenue!
If you are buying, less so!
Sure but EBITDA isn't complete revenue. To avoid taking into account the vital aspect of depreciation & interest is silly. Oh yeah, let's just ignore a giant debt amount but our earnings are high! (even though, 70% of those earnings could go to debt).
Revenue then adjusted EBITDA then EBITDA then net income.
I spent a dozen or so years as a humble servant of ho-hum community banks that traded on earnings or - even worse - multiples of tangible book value. Glad to have that behind me now!
As charlie munger says, there's nothing more BS than adjusted EBITDA
It never ceases to amuse me that you and I utilize the same investment strategy. My neighborhood cigar lounge is offering 15% off Davidoffs this week, maybe I'll have one.
I would presume it is not a super high volume Davidoff store given the sale.
Which is good news! Look for an Aniversario Special R with fairly prominent / puckered veins on the wrapper and a lighter hue - good signs that it’s been sitting aging for a while. Get the Special R in the cellophane, not the tubo, which doesn’t age as rapidly given it’s sealed.
I'll give you something with veins on the wrapper to smoke.
Sometimes a Cigar is just a Cigar
Davidoff cigars are an experience. If you're gonna buy a good cigar that's the marque. (Disclaimer: I'm not a cigar snob--I like the occasional cigar with a glass of Lagavulin, but I've been smoking unfiltered Camels for a decade. My taste buds for fine tobacco are long gone.)
Nothing else satisfies. I am chagrined to admit that I have been smoking 4-6 Davidoff cigars every day lately. Particularly as a lot of my day to day is phone calls at this point. I am smoking one right now, and I am going to light another one right after because I don’t have a call until early afternoon! 🤣
Be sure to retrohale (google it if unfamiliar) the next time you smoke one.
Hell, if I could afford it I'd be doing the same thing.
I would not have the incredible (literally not credible / believable, in a sense) opportunity that’s on my plate at the moment if I didn’t smoke cigars.
I met a guy in passing through a friend several years ago in Kentucky - a fellow cigar guy. He installed me into a company in which he was among the earliest investors as a co-founder. We couldn’t have dreamed of how the cards fell our way recently.
so you just smoke a half dozen cigars and talk all day?
man if you dont sound like tom waits by now im going to be extremely disappointed
-I read a lot, A LOT (5-6 hours a day)
-I listen to a lot of podcasts / interviews / etc. that touch on my professional and personal interests; they’re free, but you can learn quite a bit
-I send lots of emails, texts, etc. of course
-I make and tweak slide decks
-I talk on the phone a lot (strong preference for that over Zoom); I was on the phone 6-7 hours yesterday
And I can smoke quite a bit while doing all of that stuff.
Gamblers re-evaluate
Along the dotted line
Restaurant chain that once employed me preached the importance of EBITDA in nearly every meeting and conference call I was forced to attend except the one notifying me of that morning's Chapter 7 filing and my new job status.
Restaurant? EBITDA? Yeah, that’s a certified “no fucking clue what we’re doing” moment
Great article, the linked articles on you personal site were also outstanding. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Also what is it like to be rich in Canada when I understand from members of the ACF community who live there, that the government spends every waking hour trying to impoverish the rich, like yourself?
Life is generally pretty good here. My kids go to public school, but the less news you read (and the more private health/golf clubs you belong to) the better. Same as anywhere in the West at present?
At the very least our government isn't any worse than that of UK, Germany, or Australia, and it's entirely plausible that at least the "flyover" parts of Canada will end up much more closely aligned with their southern neighbours in the coming decades
Rudyard pretty much called it https://youtu.be/N3rgdTr71Qg?si=a54iJCxGST_0wOo2&t=164
The "main tools" column in the retail list seems to be main risks/downsides. I couldn't expand that image enough to see before on mobile, because substack is so bad.
I find it hard to believe any success beyond simply getting the market average return in anything but category 5 at retail is anything but dumb luck. Most of the pro edges come from power, insider info, or deal access you'll never get as John Q Public.
The average reader is far better served by buy and hold index investing than anything else.
Very deep and enlightening, thanks. Now then, gold. So William Devane has been right all along?
Casually using gay as an insult in 2025, really?
Here at ACF, we don’t tone police, no matter how silly, egotistical, retarded, wrong, haughty, hateful, “bigoted” etc.
Whoa, we're never wrong here at ACF.
https://i.makeagif.com/media/2-21-2024/28XTmY.gif
And we’re all above average.
If you click the link, he is effectively chastising me for calling the 911 GT3 "gay" a few years ago, a chastising I probably deserve, although in my perpetually hidebound ignorance I thought we could go back to negative uses of "gay" when "queer" became the preferred term, the same way most of the gay dudes I know use "homosexual" in a non-flattering fashion.
Pete himself is socially progressive.
"Gay" and "progressive" are both euphemisms designed to sanitize and obfuscate.
But this comment reminded me of the time I had to buy front wheel hubs for my Volvo, and the only company that made new ones was a European outfit called FAG.
They've had a plant near Joplin since 1969!
https://www.schaeffler.us/us/company/history/
69, dudes!
My gay friends say “fag” when they want to denigrate a fellow gay person. I assumed that was like the gay n-word.
I'd like to think that I'm *at least* as socially progressive as, say, Robespierre. So I guess Jack has me pegged (but not like that)
But there wouldn't be anything wrong with that!
When I play cribbage and we discuss a great pegging round, the Gen Z players (aka kids) all giggle like they all have doorknobs up their butts. It is troubling.
"doorknobs up their butts"
bro what
Oh I was confusing pegging and plugging again. You wouldn't believe the trouble that has caused me! heh heh.
Leave it to a Canadian to catch my error ... ;-)
hell yeah brother
its making a strong comeback along with retard
“You people are retards” has a nice ring to it.
There’s a good X account called I Find Retards that you might find enjoyable.
Party like it's 1999
Game. Blouses.
You didn’t see the EO?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFGw2ZWO-tP/?igsh=MTB5NGQ4dHg0Z3hoZw==
Excellent guest article, thank you! I dabble in a few of the investment categories, and honing in on what I enjoy and am actually good at would probably prove more beneficial in the long run.
If you haven’t, I highly recommend visiting Lake Minnetonka in the summer. The lake is magnificent, but you definitely get a glimpse of how the other half lives.
If you do actually visit MN in the summer, there are several other lakes to be recommended that are better than Minnetonka.
It was the 19-year-old Apollonia who made the lake great, rather than the other way 'round!
you certainly can't beat the spectacle and social scene of Minnetonka in the depths of summer. But if you want peace and cleansing of the solitary sort, just about ANY lake is better.
Picking a lake is more complicated than it might appear. Many factors involved.
Which category does Loan Sharking fall into? 2.5?
By hard assets, do we mean over the road tractor trailer equipment?
If so, I'm an investor!
1 BTC = $95,000 USD
1 oz Gold = $3,300 USD
(as of publishing date, just gotta leave this here because in 2030 few will believe what laid within grasp in 2025)
"Hello, Amerikan. I am Africa Prince Jonny Goldman. I would like to make you "Rich Man" if you could just to help me to move $10-Billion-uS GOLD dOLLARS...." There is only one catch...