patrick.net

I wonder if it's possible to rezone a good chunk of the land out for commercial use.

Are we moving over here now? I was so close on the 8 minutes actually. I'll see if it pulls back at all in the next while though.

I like your Real estate strategies, we'll have to meet up to discuss that at some point!

So anyone heading over the comedy festival this weekend? Sunday, September 19, 2010, 12 - 5 PM
Sharon Meadow • Golden Gate Park, San Francisco 1 Stage • 5 Hours • 40 Comedians

I'm thinking of heading over there with my wife. Live comedy is always great if you guys have never been!

@SFace
You'll eventually find this I'm hoping! (smaller thread...)

I'm assuming you bought about 7K worth of this stock based on solid information. You've done the math, looked at the numbers, and even know/worked with some of the people involved in this company. So why buy only 8K worth of this stock? It seems like the potential here is fairly great (you're thinking upto 400% return), yet you've moved very little, % wise into it. I look at it as having great potential, and I don't very often come across these, so I would be more inclined to put more into this stock.

It seems even if this is a home run, it won't effect your portfolio by very much, yet the risk, time spent investigating it, and time you are going to spend watching it are going to be fairly expensive. Do you just have so many of these gems coming across your desk that you find no need to invest more? Was it much simpler, you didn't have the cash on hand to buy more? Or part of your aggressive capital protecting strategy, and you've bought the maximum you think is safe to protect your assets, regardless of the potential?

This is definitely about your experience and strategy, I'm just wondering how a pro thinks about these things and buys into them.

From my point of view, I would probably put 10-15% of my capital towards something like this, where as it seems you've put in sub 1%, which seems like a lot of work for such a small portion of your capital.

It's my entry position, I may end up doubling/q-druple up. No single investment is going to dominate my portfolio, regardless of prospect. I don't go for the homeruns, but I do put some money on speculative investments, it matters and it will be significant on aggregate. I am reverse of margin investing, I always have cash available so I control my investment, not the other way around. Again, my #1 strategy is never lose money, It kinda contradicts my own guildline if I let CCME become too significant.

My non 401k trading account balance is in the mid 300's. about half of them are fixed rate returns. Fidelity takes care of the 401k which is in the 500's and doing fine and I have a different strategy/goal for that, I don't get too active there.

Or sorry, one more.

Your business is writing options. Wouldn't you make a killing selling options based on your current stocks into the market? If you can price options at 25% below market for these individuals, it seems you could do an even better job selling contracts on your personal portfolio into the market? The number of class D,E,F-Z investors out there probably far outweighs the class A you normally deal with, making it seem like the market would offer you massive potential gains, at no risk (assuming fully covered)

I could see you not doing this because your stocks have so much upside potential, that you would be selling them so far out of the money that it wouldn't be worth it.

btw, the way I end up using this information is to detect BS elsewhere. When I meet others trying to hype something or discuss something, I have a better idea of how a luckly one shot wonder performs vs someone who has a proven track record and has survived multipel down turns. I'm just interested in how you view the whole business, where is why my questions shoot off in multiple directions! Not because I want to go there...

Does anyone use multifactor authentication for their brokerage accounts? I'm getting to the point where I'm considering it for my main non-retirement account, and am wondering what others experience has been. I'm looking at something like E*trade's Digital Security ID . Obviously, this helps prevent fraudulent access, but if it goes haywire, you can be temporarily locked out of your account -- which isn't exactly desirable.

pkennedy, options are priced somewhat rationally, there is no such thing as making a killing. way out of the money options are pennies, and if they are in the money, you are in serious trouble, especially on the call options that have no upside limit. Expensive options are expensive because they are risky. Now where you can value is if A prices December 15 option @1, we may perhaps be able to price it at .75c and you believe the risk is around .50cents. Clients buy options on what they demand, not what you demand so more or less it is client focus first.

I'll probably be more worrisome of any investor. People who buys options are extremely sophiscated and/or extremely risky. I'll be worried if someone buys and abnormal amount of calls, afterall, they may have inside information that you don't. In the business, we are seeking steady returns not the spectacular returns.

You're smart enough to tell the real from the frauds, that is just street smart stuff. I try to learn all the basics knowledge of everyday life to help myself. I learn about cars, housing, etc. to become street smart. Whatever it takes to be successful.

ibankers are smart cookies, the average salary in our industry for the responsibility is 500K with most making 200's base plus bonus which can be 100's to 1000's. The salary is commensurate with what value you bring, there is no fluke bankers working in these firms, either you know how to make money with incredibly sophisticated strategy and/or you have connections and relationship with extremely wealthy people. Both of these attributes drives revenue for the firm. Unlike Thomaswong who is extremely expensed focused, the finance industry is top line focused.

@EBGuy

Ha! Finally something up my alley. I used to work at a company that had a killer multifactor authentication, and we actually had a sales person request "make something to break this digial security id thing so I can make a sale" and one of our lead guys took 30 minutes to make a phishing site.

The worst "multifactor" is what BOA implemented, PassMark Security. Essentially they managed to keep customers by keeping legal rights to the "pictures" they used. So you could dump them for an in-house solution (which apparently we heard people wanted to do), but all customers would essentially be reset, and lose the pictures they had picked.

Few people offer great multifactor authentication, and most banks, hospitals and what not simply don't care. They view it as risk management. How many people are going to stop using them because it's too hard, vs paying out for phishing attacks?

From my personal experience, if you get phished you need to attack them, and ensure they put your money back in your account. They can't allow people to go public with information that bank X allowed them to get phished or hacked, regardless of who was at fault. That is actually my #1 defense, I've never had to use it, but it's my #1 defense. Most companies have terrible security, even at the best companies. They appear great, but it's like putting 6 deadbolts on the front door and leaving the window next to it open. Unless you're heavily into security you won't notice it, you'll just be wowed by the 6 dead bolts.

That being said, I do have the digital seucrity ID with etrade, it was a free thing when I grabbed it and better than nothing, and it will likely do decent protection for you. However, if your computer ends up becoming a zombie due to a virus, or hacker, it won't protect you at all. They will simply see you log onto e-trade, and when you close the browser, they'll keep your cookies and/or make transactions through your connection while you're online! If you click log-out to be safe, they can simply redirect that and you'll never notice it, keeping your session open.

If someone is coming after you, you're in trouble. Your best line of defense is the "WTF! You allowed someone to take all my money! I'm going to the news!"

@SFace

I understand your business clients are very savvy, but I was wondering about selling options on your own portfolio? You must be able to price options better than others. There must be a large supply of reckless buyers as well? I just figured with your skills that selling covered calls would make decent additional income for you, assuming they were covered. Personally I wouldn't know what I was doing, and would just be dangerous.

I should also state that I'm not meeting the same people you're meeting, your social circles are geared towards your industry, where as mine are geared towards the tech industry, on the tech side obviously. I can pin point tech liars a mile away, but that's because I have enough information to decode what they're saying, and I'll be right 90% of the time. Whenever I meet someone involved in anything semi-financial related, they aren't in the 500K a year category, unfortunately. Obviously discussing finance is interesting, just as is discussing housing, cars and tech, even with less savvy people, and also very useful for me to grow, but on the flip side, getting bad information can be fairly dangerous!

As an example, Thomas could probably convince someone he's on the right track explaining to them his financial ideas (really digging into expenses) which could be something dangerous to pick up. At my level of understanding, I know his information is off, but I don't know why. Your general followup posts definately help shed light on the missing links.

@EBguy
I think I answered your last question incorrectly. They do offer more protection, so better than nothing, but take care to be diligent in your security still.

I don't know if I ever read bout these things going haywire. I should check on the battery status of mine! I haven't used it in quite awhile. They change every 60 seconds, but they have an overlapping window. So even if you're on a super slow internet connection you'll get in. Generally the last number will work for 30 seconds at least, so you've got 90 seconds to use it.

You could be locked out if you stepped on it, and/or broke it, or lost it! They would definitely need to mail you out a completely new unit, as they're all unique.

Little known information about passwords! Passwords do not need to be complex, long or changed. The longer, more complex the password, the more likely you are to reuse a password on many sites. The more often you have someone changing their password, the more likely it becomes something mundane and/or gets written down, which is a real danger.

Passwords need to be complex, long and/or changed not because of YOU. A simple 4 digit pin will suffice. 3 times and you're locked out. Chances of someone getting in are very small! So why are you changing them? The rules used to set a password should be setup based on the security of the password system and the company who is storing your password. If a complex password takes 60 days to crack via brute force, then you should probably change your password every 30-60 days. Assuming someone breaks into the company and steals their password file, it won't be usable because the time it takes to crack a password is less than the time it takes before a new one is issued. The complexity rules are used to increase the 60 day limits. Complex passwords only make the chances of a successful phishing attack on you more likely as you're always forgetting, or setting new passwords. Anyone company who has insanely rigorous rules, is a) trying to appear security conscience b) has idiots behind the security wheel (more often than not) c) Understands they're vulnerable and is trying to mitigate their problems by shoving them off on you.

Typical 2nd factor authentication now requires you to enter in 3 questions/answers, along with your password. If you guys are filling in those questions, avoid using true answers as that information is often very easy to find via google or a couple of quick phishing emails to you. "Your high school" or "Your favorite color" really? try google, for a color try blue, it's right over 2/3rds of the time. A big auction site, has over 60 million accounts with the password password.

I think I answered your last question incorrectly.
I'd say you went on some interesting tangents (I did like your best line of defense!). If someone stuck a keystroke logger on my system, the two factor system would give an added layer of protection -- which is the most immediate threat I could think of... You did have me wondering how easy it is to intercept/takeover an active connection at the endpoint (between the SSL layer and the browser). Do they have replacement DDLs that a hacker can slip in? That's a much more sophisticated operation than trying to steal a password through logging (and I'd like to think I'm not vulnerable to phishing).
SFace, I'll give a second to covered call writing; anything you want to pass on would be appreciated.

Well there are a lot of tangents for getting your password, Man in the middle type of attacks. In fact I saw something like this just recently on a company machine. They simply changed IE to proxy through a local port, where they had something running, but it had been destroyed by some virus checker by the time I got there. I only noticed the proxy server by chance.

There is also spear phishing that is happening, where people are being targeted directly. That is a dangerous one. Phishing comes in all kinds of forms as well, and while I feel like I wouldn't be susceptible to it either, it's only a matter of time before I click on something by mistake.

The latest method is tricking companies into serving ads with malware on them. Big companies have been tricked into shoveling malware out to their customer base! So even if you think you're pretty safe at avoiding evil sites, it's popping up on reputable sites.

Like I said, one of our best guys had a man in the middle attack setup in 30 minutes, it did a proxy path through and everything. You simply wouldn't even know you were being fished, especially if the proxy server was on your own machine!

@E-man
To sum it up: If you're hacked for any reason, become a squeaky wheel to get your money back. Any PR regarding security at a bank is bad, they don't want it :)

Yeah I'm not really sure where to go from here either. I don't like the idea of buying into a high, but I do think the markets will keep going up for awhile.

I got a nice surprise about a week ago - one of my old 401k's is going away, the company was bought by vmware, but vmware posted a "Won't materially effect our numbers" which probably means a firesale so I'll probably get nothing from those stocks, while now having to deal with this 401K from there. I'm thinking of putting most of this one into REITs. I'm going to go back over your guys recommendations. There isn't that much in this one, so I'm guessing 4-5 max. Any obvious recommendations?

Pkennedy,

I inventoried the REIT's and came up with two criterias:

1) Current dividends excluding return of capital and capital gain distribution exceeds 5%. (Ordinary dividends are more indicatative of future, return of capital, capital gain distribution is a one shot cash distribution)
2) Ordinary dividends must be either rising or being maintained vs 2009. (I favor companies that increase ordinary dividends or at least maintain them)

with just these two criterias, there are only 4 REIT's and good starting point

ADC
AGNC
CIM
OLP

details sent to your inbox.

Thanks, I'm going to go over a bunch of these.

I figure they're all semi-expensive right now because of the current economy. I wish I was buying in at a better time, but so be it. I can wait, see if I can catch a decent dip. I can spread out into other areas as well, I'll look around.

yep, reits looks on the expensive side overall.

I didn't really see anything interesting in the REIT market, I'll dig further. They all seemed over priced. I guess they're like bonds right now, people headed towards them as the market tanked. How does a REIT market expand btw? How do they purchase other properties and grow? Can they take any money and reinvest it? It seems that they need to constantly return 75% at the minimum, which doesn't leave a lot for growth, if any?

CCME, I didn't buy in, I've been waiting for a pull back on the market, but as E-man said, it seems the market keeps pushing foward, without any major retractions. With the massive volume + constantly lowering prices on CCME I figured it was a strong sell signal and was waiting. The market keeps going up, and CCME is taking off. Still a strong buy. Would either of you say it's worth jumping in now and not worrying about 10-15% drop, or better to wait and see if things pull back at all? I don't see any real negative news coming out. Possibly 1-2 more months of upticks, with a possible year end selloff when retail doesn't deliver.

Visa just keeps going up, I've been waiting for another good place to buy in there, I figure it will follow the market back if it pulls back from these highs. I sort of figured we would have something by now on that one! Same with Rig, I figured after all those gains we would see something pull back, even if it was only a quick 10-15%.

@SFace,
M&A. Oracle just stated "we're looking at buying chip companies". The only real company to purchase would be AMD. Oracle runs better on AMD products than Intel. They already have SUN/Mysql, an amazing purchase. Well not necessarily SUN, but getting Mysql for 7B was an amazing deal. If they were to buy something, this seems to be a good place for them to buy in, AMD is at the VERY bottom of it's hardware cycle. Everything is starting to look weak, but next generation hardware is looking very promising. Therefore, next year AMD could take off on it's next cycle. Can you translate what they mean? :)

I'm just curious. I'm holding for the next cycle regardless, I'm just wondering if a buyout might be coming. DO's comments on Rig's seemed obvious. This one isn't as obvious. Actually this buy out would suck for me, because the returns next year are probably going to be pretty good based on previous cycles. Therefore, it's also an awesome time to be bought out.

Ok partially answering my own question. At 2am I was thinking of this.. christ..

Oracle makes the statement to allow rumors and news not to effect it's price during these negotiations that may or may not be taking place right now but likely in the near future. This way when an announcement does come out, their stock isn't hit hard by an unexpected event.

Although their price should recover fairly quickly, it seems that speculators could drive up the price of the people they're trying to buy, thus making negotiations harder for them.... Of course the price on all semis will go up as people guess what is being attempted.

It only makes sense that Sun and AMD likely have some employees who have worked at both, or are friends, room mates, what not. Sun/Oracle/Amd being in the bay area as well, will likely have employees that respect each other and likely have spoken well about each other. Amd did a lot of "correct" things, which sun probably appreciates as their x86 implementation was well done, as well as their dual core and quad core offerings (intels were total hack jobs, but they worked). They also have beefy CPU's for their DB applications, with a lot of good DB centric hardware in there. IBM doesn't have much that would be interesting to them. Nvidia is graphics, not CPU and they haven't proven themselves there. There were some other companies listed in a couple of articles I read, but they wouldn't forward Sun or Oracle, or be a very good match either. But picking up AMD would just be a nightmare, it means they're in the super tech rat race that needs to double performance every 18months... Oracle and Sun never had to do this.

Nvidia is graphics, not CPU and they haven’t proven themselves there.
Are you sure about that? Parallel database loads get interesting on GPUs. This paper focuses on accelerating SELECT queries and describes the considerations in an efficient GPU implementation of the SQLite command processor. Results on an NVIDIA Tesla C1060 achieve speedups of 20-70X depending on the size of the result set.

Do you think the consumer side demand dip is cyclical, or a harbinger of things to come? I'm too old to live 'in the cloud', but I'm guessing we're going to cut over sooner, rather than later. I mean, I still have CDs -- 'youts' probably just have a virtual shelf on iTunes. Add Google docs, email, social networking and a smartphone may soon be all you need. On the business side, sure, we need the quad cores to keep our compile times down to a manageable half hour -- but for the everyone else...???

I have a cell phone that is about 5 years old now and I just replaced the battery in it! I replaced my computer that was about 5 years old just a couple months ago, only because I was itching to buy something new, but had no reason to do so. I still buy CD's as well because I know where they are and can do whatever I want with them. I have turned over to the amazon kindle though. That is a fantastic device. Everything else, Bah!

The cyclical cycle in terms of purchasing hardware has changed from 2-3 years to 4-5 years. It's still there, and 5 year old hardware is still good. But after 5 years, no matter how well your computer is working, it's getting to a get to a point where new machines are so much faster it's almost impossible to not make an ROI.

Hardware specific for DB's would be interesting. I don't think buying Nvidia would give them a leg up there though. They would essentially be destroying the gamer base of that company and turning it into a DB focused application. If it came push to shove, they would probably speed up their DB hardware side than speed up the gamer side of things. Those cards don't fit in 1U cpu's and they require enormous amounts of power. I can see a 20-70x speed up, but it's probably very limited subset of what needs to get done. Not to mention, if they started making headway, Intel and AMD would simply put those instructions into their CPU's.

Finally, I think if they're going to go with hardware they need more of a complete package to really make it worth while. They need a really great CPU that is insanely fast + add in really great SUN error correction and 100% uptime capabilities + utilize HyperTransport3. That might make a killer company. I remember reading about HT3 and what it was promising to allow, nothing has materialize out of it though. Apparently you could make custom chips and put them into CPU sockets. 1x16core CPU and 3xDB sub processor chips! Or put in 4x16core cpus and plug in a couple CPU's via the USB port! Or PCI, or any other connection you could think of! Now that would have been interesting, but nothing happened. Cores per CPU got out of control.

I think AMD has enough relations with other silicon valley companies to make it worth their while. But again, it seems like a pointless venture to buy them. It's not a huge money making company. Even Intel is looking for other sources of revenue.

Btw, Intel is looking to put in a pay per upgrade system. I'm not sure how that will effect them, and whether it will just piss people off. Essentially, they'll create fewer chips. Instead of say 30, just 10. Each chip will have things turned off to make it a baseline product. You then buy a "$50 turn on extra core card" or "Increase CPU speed card" and basically enter in the scratch off number to activate it. They're looking at creating an App store, with only apps working on their CPU's that have been validated. It's part of the anti virus software purchase I believe. I believe we're about to enter an era of nickle and diming the customer on their CPU purchase.

From a buyer perspective that would piss me off. But then again, there are a lot of stupid consumers out there.

Apparently you could make custom chips and put them into CPU sockets.
There are a couple of companies that put (Xilinx and Altera) FPGAs on a CPU socket. They target specific high performance niches. No 'custom chip' necessary; just program the FPGA for your workload. Sweet!

FPGA's generally run pretty slow though, because they're exact matches to their workload they can process at insane speeds though.

Making "custom" is fairly expensive though. So again, I'm not sure what they would gain. If it's not for a faster CPU + technology that AMD has, then it has to be some sub chips for SUN. I can't think of anyone worth buying in that market either. Sun isn't exactly a hot seller these days. Trying to recover that market + enhance it with more tech? I just don't see it happening.

E-man says

Not possible. It got voted down in 2006 for all NEW DEVELOPMENT on hillsides until 2018. I bet some developers would find a way to put it on the ballot again after 2018.

Nice catch Eman... lots of land there alright!!

Well there are a lot of tangents for getting your password...
Here's, I think, everyone's worst nightmare.
Zeus -- aka Zbot -- is a sophisticated financial malware toolkit that helps criminals automatically create online attacks, supported by botnets, aimed at stealing people's finance-related credentials, such as bank account login information. In other words, rather than directly attacking bank systems, attackers simply try to fool bank users....For example, an attacker might infect both a person's PC and smartphone, steal money, and then reroute any security-check phone calls from the bank. "So when the bank detects a suspicious transaction and calls the customer for confirmation, the criminals can pick up the phone on the other side and do that on behalf of the customer," he said.

I've heard of this before. Criminals installed a logger on a guys computer. Got his password and read his emails.

He went on vacation, they knew this.
They logged onto his account and changed his email account, the institution just let him.
They stole all his money
He didn't notice until he got back because he was never notified of any changes.

His angle was you changed my notifications without telling me, meaning I had no way of knowing anything was going on. You're responsible, and they ended up paying up when he started getting some attention.

But yes, it's pretty scary. In many countries they don't have this kind of protection. I can go to the ATM here and get money in 15 seconds. In brazil my wife is putting her card in, taking it out, entering in passwords, then confirmation codes. There are random codes so people can't "shoulder surf" your password. Her online banking is even worse, with installed software on her computer, virtual keyboards, multiple passwords, and out of band confirmations!

People are now getting targeted very directly as well. People get some of your information and then start phishing for more from you. Trying to get in through facebook, google searches, etc. Find out a bit about you. Start making calls to your work to get more details. Start mailing you real mail directly to your house. Ugh! It's going to get worse in the coming years :( That's all I have to say.

Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (FRFHF.PK)

I was reading on seeking alpha about this company about a week ago. It only caught my fancy because it was touted as the warren buffet of the north. Owner has most of his assets within the company.

Although, looking at their charts very briefly, the stock almost shows CDN vs USD increases, or in other words, no gains?

Any thoughts on this? I haven't done much more than read the article on the stock. Looked at it's charts and noticed they almost mimic the fall of the USD, which I would presume would enhance their profits, pushing their stock price up as well.

Any obvious "don't bother investigating further it's crap..." advice on this one?

I'm new to this board and was just looking around for tips on housing and ran across this thread and some others by you guys. Man, SF Ace, your investment picks are impressive. Congrats!

For those that cares, Investors are likely sitting on a ton of realized and unrealized gains but IMO It is time to hunker up and roll over $$ into PetroBrazil.

* The 70B Offering is behind the company and took the price to where it is today. Institutions have left this stock briefly and there were huge numbers of shorts in anticpation of the dilution, but every international fund will be back and there is few reason to short further. The future offering will be via bonds not shares.

* There's a reason why PBR raised all that money, they have the most significant oil discovery recently. However, these reserves are deep and hard to extract thus demand for capital. In the offering the proceeds will be use to pay the Government for the right to produce 5 billion more offshore fields. The investment will double the company’s production to 3.9 million barrels a day by 2014 and PBR's growth rate will dwarf its peers which are struggling.

* It is trading on severe discount compared to XOM. yet boast the best margins in the industry. PBR should be trading at a premium not discount without the effect of the offering.

* Every commodity made their moves this year except oil. Oil is a great place for the long term, and now is not a bad time to get in. If you are long oil, the best play right now is to long the company that is leveraged the most to the price of this commodity, PBR.

Price target of $58 in 12 months. Very little downside risk from here. Great risk/reward play. Dividend is in the 4-5% range currently.

Interesting property deal. It's very close to (if not right on top of) the Hayward and Calaveras faults... whoever looks at this should be very diligent in checking out what kind of structural reinforcement it has. House should be strongly bolted to the foundation, lots of shear walls all around the first floor, etc.

good property deal for the long haul

Does anyone know anything about a neighborhood in San Ramon called Windmere? My fiance would like us to look at homes in the area because she says its a pretty up and coming place for immigrants (she is Chinese - working on becoming a naturalized citizen). I want to make her happy, but I’m very reluctant to look at higher end homes that have had price runups before the crash.

Anyone have anything to say about Windmere?