by Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe | January 8, 2016 4:48 pm
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Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/2016/01/friday-file-the-dark-and-ugly-start-of-2016/
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You’re wrong Travis: when you say anyone should ignore your “big picture thoughts” on economics! You make more sense in that arena than most of the PhD economists out there – most of whom are busy arguing with each other anyway, because they live in a world of theories, not a world of measuring actual performance and results like you do. I especially appreciate your remarks on demographics. My opinion: it’s too bad that so many U.S. natives have gotten soft, lazy, and feeling entitled, but it’s true. What if people who fit that description spent even half the time they spent on entertainment learning a skill instead, and/or working freelance? I’ve seen this first-hand: people who spend MOST of their time binge-watching, or gaming, or on social media – and will still complain there are no “good” jobs. Worse yet, some don’t want to work at all. Until/unless that changes, we’ll continue to need good, bright, hard-working immigrants. I see a primarily white neighborhood nearby with no work trucks parked there at night: and another a few miles away, primarily Hispanic, with a work truck parked in every third or fourth driveway – electricians, landscapers, repairmen…. the kinds of businesses and jobs too many natives consider beneath them, or too hard. This doesn’t even cover the brilliant minds drawn here to our universities from abroad, who then end up staying and enriching our professions. So as you say, we have this aging population, but insufficient legal immigration. Trump should at least present a balanced picture of the immigration issue, not just emphasize the dark side, as real as it is.
…. Trump should at least present a balanced picture of the immigration issue, not just emphasize it’s dark side, as real as it is.
Trump is a walking caricature of himself, he doesn’t know the meaning of the word “balance”.
Sorry for that attempted continuation of my post… on my screen, my first post had the end cut off. Re: Trump, what is putting him into focus for me is all the remarks like “he’s a fighter” and “not afraid of anything.” I’m not taking that away from him; he’s successful for a reason. But courage is not enough; his deficits as a candidate are many and deep. I’ll shut up and go away now: I’ve posted more than my share this week and hope others will chime in instead.
Xenophobia, racism and fear of immigration and displacement risk turning a country into Japan — homogenous and mired in stagnation for decades. Immigrants both create and are attracted to growth and vitality… Living in a place where everyone else wants to live is still a good thing, I think. It’s obviously a complex issue, and their are downsides to human mobility, but considering immigration’s importance to our country it’s hard to believe we’ve screwed it up this badly for 30 years and still done pretty well.
Thank you, Travis!
Patricia: if one side of an issue is as real as it is, what’s the point of looking at the other side – again – as it would be reasonable to infer that you came to that conclusion by looking at both sides. Trump. in his inimitable fashion, has a knack to state the obvious, often over the top.
18 Ways WE ALL Fool Ourselves with Bad Decisions: http://www.compassphs.com/blog/patient_advocacy/18-ways-we-all-fool-ourselves-with-bad-decisions/ Thanks Travis and Gummunity for assisting in making better decisions. Best2All-Ben
Ben,
But only in America can we turn $2 into $800M! 🙂 Thanks for the link.
V/R
Tom
Travis,
Another superb article! I sat out of the energy market for all of 2015. Saudi Aramco just might go public since Saudi Arabia probably desperately needs the cash for a variety of reasons. They would struggle to transition from a petroleum based economy (as Bahrain did years ago) so might be a prudent move to at least raise some funds now. I am also surprised with the “marking time” of gold but then again that is one tough market to understand and I also pretty much avoided it in 2015. Your information on TGSGY was especially intriguing. Seems like a moderate risk speculative buy at $12.53. Thanks again.
V/R
Tom
Great read Travis.
I’m looking for help…I’m considering ordering Tom Gentile’s money calendar alert “system”. I have reviewed posts back through September and found one small reference to it with no follow up….also, whenever I use the search area on this site..it never finds a result for anything that I search? Do any readers have input on the money calendar alert subscription?
Thank you.
Here you go Vance: http://www.stockgumshoe.com/2015/07/microblog-tom-gentiles-money-calendar/ Best2You-Ben
Thank you Ben. That satisfied my wants to purchase….I’ll save my money and the future disappointments.
Cheers
Vance, you made my day 🙂 Join the discussion here if you’d like and check out a recently discovered investment tool: http://www.stockgumshoe.com/2016/01/microblog-insiders-who-is-the-best-and-what-are-they-buying/
Hope you have a relaxing Sunday and beyond, where ever you are:
bit.ly/1SHfWTD pic.twitter.com/l0GAZ6zCYF Best2You-Ben
Is there a Canadian equivalent to LendingClub? Thank you for the insights.
Sort of, but I think they’re regulated a bit differently — there’s a G&M article in it here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finance/household-finances/canadians-turning-to-peer-to-peer-web-loan-providers-for-debt-solutions/article24444360/?service=mobile
Happy New Year, Travis.
Just read your Friday file that you wrote last week. Enjoyable, as always. I have been long enough investing in the stock markets to know that today’s headlines (or panic) in the stock markets is only just that : today’s headlines (or panic). And today, who want to spend even a cent for a piece of last week newspaper?. No one! But please forgive my habit to read all newsletters in my Inbox at least a week afer I received it. That way I would be able to find valuable insight in the newsletters. Up until today I am still reading your newsletter.
We both know that, even if the market says otherwise, opportunities are plenty and even will be more rewarding in down market if time is our friend. Thanks to today’s excessive negative sentiments on energy space today we can find – and invest in – so many energy companies that meet one screen criteria : companies with NEGATIVE EV like KAR.AX or company with Market Cap less than the amount of cash they have in the Bank like TGL.TO and we can find the same situation in lots of other energy companies. It’s just like we bought a house, pay 100 dollar and the house owner told us that we can get all the cash (more than 100 dollar, mind you) in the safe-deposit box inside the house. It’s just like you assigned no value, BIG ZERO, to the company’s oil reserve (P+P). Yea, yea, who knows what the oil price would be in the coming months. Not to mentioned in the coming years. Of course if the oil price gone all the way down to 5 dollars we shall have assigned Zero value to the company’s reserve. But why bother if time is your friend, and I get more dollar in cash for every dollar I pay?. Beside, we all know that the cure for low price is low price.
Without excessive negative sentiments in energy space, how can we got the opportunity to invest in oil midstream MLPs with low-debt and strong cash-flow generated from fixed 5-10 years contracts? That way we can enjoy oh-gosh-so-yummy 15 pct plus yield like GMLP, KNOP?. Or, how on earth in this low interest environment we can earn high double digit yield by investing in ARLP? I know, it’s a coal company. But don’t “investors” realize that even at today’s coal price which has gone down for more than 60 pct the company still generate strong cash flow with Debt/EBITDA at around 1.2?.
Who need 170 IQ to understand this simple math? If it is not simple, not easy to understand and it would take more than 30 minutes to explain how good the investment is there is a very good chance that it is not a good investment. Why took a diificult route in investing if you can find a simple way to gain a more rewarding investment? And let the time do the compunding. If friend is our time, and time has shown that Buffett is right, why we fight that very fact each and everyday?. The fact that compounding is the best route to get rich?
Oh, I almost forget to tell you that I once told to myself and my children : NEVER invest in the commodity-based companies (no-moat companies). I just realize that I should have finished that advice with the followings words :”……unless in the time like this, when there’s blood on the street, and when you can pick up the money for free”. Where did I get that statement? From Jim Rogers? From you? Ah, negative EV, I’m so much in love with you. Please alllow me to dig deeper so I’d be able to know you better. Who knows it could end up me singing :”…….. I want to marry you” .
Yes, I know that no one know what the future will hold. But the power of compounding will take care itself. Remember Law of 72 in the Math?. No need to worry about the future. Do not waste your time with all big words from people who try to predict about the future. Every time you hear those experts, just remember what JK Galbraith once said :”The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”.
I am long GMLP, KNOP, ARLP and intend to include KAR.AX, TGL.TO in the portfolio ASAP.
Keep up the good work, Travis.
As far as Input Capital goes, it had been its policy to issue a NR with preliminary revenues with an optimistic tone within a week of the quarter’s ending, no such NR this month which worries me enough to close my small position.
Interesting, hadn’t thought about that pattern they’ve shown. Of course, it could be that they don’t want to reiterate what they’ve already said on the bad news front (“like we said, revenue for the next couple quarters will be 20% lower because of the canceled contracts”), but I don’t have any special insight into their reasoning on that. No news is bad news, perhaps, but we also were already told that there would be bad news for the remaining two quarters of fiscal 2016 as the total canola sales for the fiscal year drop from 80,000 tonnes to 65,000 tonnes. That drop will be felt in those final two quarters, since the contract wasn’t canceled until early November, so it will be an outsize drop that’s probably felt with some severity in the quarter to be announced in early February — the fiscal third quarter, which is the fourth quarter of the calendar year, should tend to be the largest volume sales quarter for them, so also the quarter when the big drop is felt. That’s not news, and I suspect that the terrible expected quarter(s) is the major reason for Input’s huge drop on that day two months ago when I bought shares… my working theory is that the business model still works following this hiccup, but that investors overreacted and sold off the shares because they can’t sit through a short-term disappointment before the company rebuilds its streaming “book” with new deals. The biggest threat for me, absent any possible canola-specific problem (like a crash in prices, or a failure of the harvest by a bunch of their farmers), is if the business model just doesn’t work and they can’t replace those lost contracts on good terms — that’s what we’ll know more about over the next three or four months as they try to rebuild the portfolio during what is really “deal season” for them in the winter.
Maybe they were just waiting for someone to notice 🙂
Ask and ye shall receive, I found this PR relatively reassuring after the market close today: http://s1.q4cdn.com/784243260/files/doc_news/Input-Capital-Corp-Reports-Record-Q3-Streaming-Revenue.pdf