Analyzing Barrick Gold's Debt And Risk [View article]
There are a couple of problems which might dent the analysis.
First is, the way percents work is, you double your money, your return is 100%. You triple your money, your return is 200%. You quadruple your money, your return is 300%. Barrick's debt has tripled- i.e. increased about 200% over the past five years. Not 300%.
Second is, it's not that hard to look up what Barrick's actual cost of debt is. Looks like it's about 5.5% overall. It's even lower if you choose to use the net of capitalized interest numbers. But 5.5% is a good bit lower than the 'average interest rate for a grade of debt a step lower than Barrick's current rating'. Yes, it's easier to pick a number out of a hat than to, say, go look up the third-quarter press release and scroll aaalllllll the way down to footnote 17B.
But that laziness throws off the rest of the analysis.
So, back to square one: if you double your money, it's not a 200% return. Start with that, and gradually work your way up to such complicated aspects of financial analysis as reading the footnotes.
The guy who ran TRER down to zero has been appointed to do the same to GW. I used to think that having a big, expensive ex-Newmont team at TRER was money in the bank. Then I realized too late that people used to multi-billion-dollar budgets with enormous companies are not the guys you want in charge of shoestring-budget companies. GW's only hope is to get bought out by some pal of LeVier's. That or toast: no other outcome. So get your butter ready.
The problem is not primarily that you can't spell. It's that you're vastly more interested in picking fights with people who criticize your careless writing than in learning anything about Leucadia. Like, 'gosh, how have those guys managed such great long-term results when their second-quarter earnings were so weak? Maybe I should take the best little stab that lil ole me possibly can at looking deeper than EPS growth/shrinkage and trying to make a trendline out of it!' It's not rawkitt science, lil dood. But it _is_ 'work'.
The central question when confronting the rare article on Leucadia is, "Is any commentary, however uninformed, worthwhile; or would complete non-coverage be better?"
Over the past couple of decades, I have seen only one analyst who was able to do a little better than 'gosh, earnings are so unpredictable here!' or 'load up on a mini-Berkshire!' Not that many have tried. Call it a dozen in national publications, and a handful of online message board posts masquerading as articles.
This piece is no different. It would be nice if enough people who somehow already owned Leucadia saw this article and decided to dump their shares. I could pick up some already-cheap stock for an even greater discount. But it is likelier that unintelligent, vapid, listless commentary will not have any effect on the stock price at all.
Now, if Seeking Alpha could get a couple dozen guys to write similar pieces, maybe the stock would fall a few pennies. Yeah. Then I'd swoop in. Oh yeah. Is this like those book reviews on Amazon, some guy who's never read the book just posts junk to get his Top Reviewer numbers up? You know, 'wow, another SA article under my belt, whooee!' Because it's just so uninteresting that I can barely press the 'publish' button.
Warren Buffett Buys 66th Local Newspaper [View article]
Buffett has been 'moving public opinion in his direction' for decades now- long before he became a billionaire, or everyone's favorite dispenser of cornpone bromides. He bought the Washington Monthly a generation ago, even before he bought an influential stake in the Washington Post. He and Munger provided all the behind-the-scenes support for Roe v Wade, and his eponymous foundation continues to support contraception and abortion, sterilization and so on, with an especial focus on warping Catholics. He is currently funding the best-funded "'Catholics' for Abortion' groups to nag ignorant Catholics into thinking the HHS abrogation of the First Amendment is no big deal. And of course he's on television and in Fortune and all the New York prestige media all the time. Plus, there's a Buffett Tax that proposes to tax the nation into wealth for everyone. You may have heard of it. But the papers mentioned in the article are in Waco and College Station- two of the most reliably culturally conservative areas in pretty non-blue Texas. So- whether he is finally giving up a few marbles or not, he's been 'influencing opinion' for a very long time now.
Why Netflix Could Fall Significantly This Year [View article]
oakey dide me crikitiss opnyun no riter. opinion dumb, add nothing, based on counterfactuals. but hey writers who are wrong about everything, it can't have anything to do with the writer, can it? do let us have first place blue ribbons for all the fine little childrens, valedictorians one and all. (oh- and stop projecting. it's soo wuude, you know, like?)
Why Netflix Could Fall Significantly This Year [View article]
Another tired piece by a can't-write writer. Hey, the B Sky B thing? It's quoted in pence, which, like, someone who knew what he was writing about would know. But even if you pretend that the stock was at eight hundred dollars US, the fall all the way to today's ~ 660 "dollars" would be a drop of considerably less than the plunge that NFLX experienced. I mean, lots less, or, depending on how illiterately one needs to type to get his point across to a not-two-brite guy, "lot's" less than half.
If monkeys sitting at a typewriter would eventually randomly produce Shakespeare, it's clear that Vatty has a few millennia to go. I'd like to think that it's admirable that he keeps on trying, but life is short and there are people on SA who can think and write well.
I take it you are the author. I suppose there's no law against being inexperienced, as a very young person, and thus sounding extremely underinformed about, like, bankruptcy & stuff. It is young & inexperienced, for instance, to grasp at a single fact- that it's not at this stage a liquidating bankruptcy- as a reason for hope for some glorious return to the days of George Eastman paternalistically taking care of employees & shareholders. And- the sooner, kid, you drop the whole Indians-invented-that-... the sooner you'll sound less like you're an irredeemable doofus. Welcome to America. Welcome to adulthood. Read The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. Then try writing about investing again.
The article sounds like it was written back in the fall, before Kodak did things like, well, I don't know if it's really relevant to the author's point of view, high school and so on, or the title of the piece, survival test and all that drama, but Kodak did sort of file for bankruptcy. I dunno, maybe relevant, maybe not. "Time will tell," as the author portentously notes. But it could be that bankruptcy outweighs selling Kodak Gallery as a "survival test," and that it's possible to hazard a reasonable guess at that without waiting for time to tell us.
Analyzing Barrick Gold's Debt And Risk [View article]
First is, the way percents work is, you double your money, your return is 100%. You triple your money, your return is 200%. You quadruple your money, your return is 300%. Barrick's debt has tripled- i.e. increased about 200% over the past five years. Not 300%.
Second is, it's not that hard to look up what Barrick's actual cost of debt is. Looks like it's about 5.5% overall. It's even lower if you choose to use the net of capitalized interest numbers. But 5.5% is a good bit lower than the 'average interest rate for a grade of debt a step lower than Barrick's current rating'. Yes, it's easier to pick a number out of a hat than to, say, go look up the third-quarter press release and scroll aaalllllll the way down to footnote 17B.
But that laziness throws off the rest of the analysis.
So, back to square one: if you double your money, it's not a 200% return. Start with that, and gradually work your way up to such complicated aspects of financial analysis as reading the footnotes.
Spin-Offs: Great Value Even After Cat's Out Of The Bag [View article]
Keys To Rare Earth Companies' Success: Innovation, Cost Efficiency [View article]
Leucadia: Searching For One Last Score? [View article]
Leucadia: Searching For One Last Score? [View article]
Buy Lynas: Intriguing Hybrid Asset Class [View article]
Leucadia National's Bearish Future [View article]
Leucadia National's Bearish Future [View article]
Leucadia National's Bearish Future [View article]
Over the past couple of decades, I have seen only one analyst who was able to do a little better than 'gosh, earnings are so unpredictable here!' or 'load up on a mini-Berkshire!' Not that many have tried. Call it a dozen in national publications, and a handful of online message board posts masquerading as articles.
This piece is no different. It would be nice if enough people who somehow already owned Leucadia saw this article and decided to dump their shares. I could pick up some already-cheap stock for an even greater discount. But it is likelier that unintelligent, vapid, listless commentary will not have any effect on the stock price at all.
Now, if Seeking Alpha could get a couple dozen guys to write similar pieces, maybe the stock would fall a few pennies. Yeah. Then I'd swoop in. Oh yeah. Is this like those book reviews on Amazon, some guy who's never read the book just posts junk to get his Top Reviewer numbers up? You know, 'wow, another SA article under my belt, whooee!' Because it's just so uninteresting that I can barely press the 'publish' button.
Warren Buffett Buys 66th Local Newspaper [View article]
Why Netflix Could Fall Significantly This Year [View article]
Why Netflix Could Fall Significantly This Year [View article]
Why Netflix Could Fall Significantly This Year [View article]
If monkeys sitting at a typewriter would eventually randomly produce Shakespeare, it's clear that Vatty has a few millennia to go. I'd like to think that it's admirable that he keeps on trying, but life is short and there are people on SA who can think and write well.
Kodak Faces Crucial Survival Test [View article]
Kodak Faces Crucial Survival Test [View article]