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LewisBraham
Hi Hank,
Your satire came across very well. Don't worry about the user name.
Best,
Lewis
Not much of a spending difference between boomers and millenialls here except for the fact that many millennials don't have families yet and are beginning their careers so they probably eat at home less:
Millennials spend 44% of their food dollars …
@Jojo26 Surveys are admittedly imperfect, but a lot more scientific, predictive and accurate I would think than a few personal anecdotes about your college friends being wasteful. So critiquing the survey as being a "poor indicator" seems like a pot…
Last time I checked China owns $1.2 trillion of U.S. Treasury bonds. If it ever decided to sell, watch out. I have to think all this talk about trade wars isn't helping. Meanwhile Japan has over $1 trillion in Treasury debt too. They have powerful …
Yes, one can find examples of wasteful people on every strata of society, yet as I said earlier it seems we accept it a lot more when those wasteful people who have no sense of personal responsibility are at the top instead of the bottom:
@Jojo26
The 401(k) is a great vehicle for retirement,
I'm sorry but this simply isn't true. A defined benefit pension plan that promises income for life is almost always better than a 401k plan not just because of that promise for lifetime income bu…
Yes companies and public pensions made unsustainable estimates for their pension plans. So why this blame of the employees--public or private sector--for these unsustainable estimates, that they need to take "personal responsibility" for their emplo…
This may be one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever read, falsely equating market value with broader economic value. What's good for shareholders isn't necessarily at all good for the economy as a whole. Moreover, causing a stock price to ris…
@joj26 People need to take more responsibility for their own future well-being, and not rely on the support of others. If you want a "guarantee," you're going to have to accept a de minimis return.
Why didn't anyone say that to the banks in 2008? W…
Well, I would think under a normal regulatory environment any foreknowledge of impending tariffs would qualify as insider information and a major conflict of interest for a former adviser with securities affected by those tariffs. I doubt anyone wil…
@larryB I don't think you're in the wrong place. Sometimes things are more a matter of tone than the point one is trying to make--how people say things as opposed to what they're saying. Using pejorative terms like "Repugnican" are sure to set some …
@Maurice This is in Warren's letter to BlackRock's Fink:
In your January 12, 2018 Annual Letter to CEOs, you explained that companies have a duty to positively contribute to society. In that letter, you called for a "new model of shareholder engage…
Why we can't get anything done about the issue even when we agree about the issue:
https://nytimes.com/2018/03/01/opinion/negative-partisanship-democrats-republicans.html?rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&actio…
@Ted Oh, bs, please. The founders never intended a "well regulated militia" to include lone gunmen nuts with AR-15s. And there are now plenty of gun owners who agree that assault rifles need to be regulated or banned altogether. It's not stopping an…
And yet both gun and non-gun owners now support some form of gun control:
https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2521
Support for universal background checks is itself almost universal, 97 - 2 percent, including 97 - 3 percent among g…
The notion that Warren is suggesting divestment with her letter is false. Engagement and divestment are two different things and both can be effective in their own way. This article goes into the differences and what money managers like BlackRock ca…
@Maurice And is Sen Warren's solution of divesting the right one?
Nowhere in Warren's letter to BlackRock did she recommend divestment. She is talking about engagement as one of the largest shareholders and owners of gun securities, which BlackRock'…
Here is an excerpt from the above-linked article in the Atlantic on the AR-15:
As I opened the CT scan last week to read the next case, I was baffled. The history simply read “gunshot wound.” I have been a radiologist in one of the busiest trauma ce…
First, I call horse pucky on this libertarian myth that corporations have always existed solely to make profits for shareholders and not for any other purpose such as the public good. There has been a notion of corporations existing for the public g…
Part of the problem with alternative funds today is for a long-time we've lived in a low interest rate, high valuation, low volatility world in which many asset classes move in tandem. That makes it hard for a long-short manager or any active manage…
I prefer the risk of one or two examples of intentionally fudged or incompetently assessed numbers over a completely inaccurate consensus or a black box of ignorance. If you think about the case of valuing illiquid Uber private equity for instance, …
Some foods it makes sense to buy organic and others not, but it is generally overpriced unless you buy it in bulk at Costco or at a food co-op. Here is an important list worth reading, the higher the ranking, the more worthwhile it is to buy organic…
Once one opens the floodgates to allowing two funds to treat the same securities differently, it seems that metrics fly out the window, and fudging (analogous to window dressing) becomes the norm.
My point is that is already happening with regard to…
They just desperately want to disarm and render defenseless all the good people
Who are the good people and who are the bad and how do you tell them apart? Are there any so-so people? And are there good people that sometimes have bad days and do ver…
@MSF I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around the concept that the same security could be classified differently with respect to liquidity by two funds, even managed by the same company
Two things to consider:
1. Different funds have differen…
@hank This idea that one should ignore politics when investing and that giving capital to gun stocks and thus gun companies doesn't have political ramifications are absurdities in my book. What gets people so angry about the discussion is they don'…
I want to hear how the industry will try to explain how this is good for shareholders in any way, shape or form. Oh, wait, here it is:
The mutual-fund industry has panned what some analysts called the “bucketing” requirement, saying it requires them…
