harryh

53 ms·

271.
by harryh 6y ago
Businesses and people are different entities. There is little reason to expect that good advice for one would be good advice for the other.
272.
by harryh 6y ago
Most companies could never afford to do this. They wouldn't cover their capital costs with their income for cash hoards of that size.
273.
by harryh 6y ago
Yes.
274.
by harryh 6y ago
COVID19 represents an extraordinary circumstance where otherwise perfectly healthy businesses would fail due to revenue, quite literally, dropping to zero due to an external shock. When businesses fail and employees are fired real value is
275.
by harryh 6y ago
https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/sat
276.
by harryh 6y ago
SAT test prep has a very small impact on scores. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/after-service/201903...
277.
by harryh 6y ago
I ultimately feel like my time was wasted because the tests have almost no relation to any of my studies in class. The SAT is basically a somewhat disguised IQ test and I'm quite confident that intelligence was related to the studies
278.
by harryh 6y ago
The US has been "behind" many other developed countries in areas like paternal leave for quite some time and has not experienced the sort of brain drain you assert. In fact the drain has generally gone towards the US rather than a
279.
by harryh 6y ago
This Main St economy has as much in common with current public Wall St economy Well obviously. There is a fundamental different in the economics of a single location coffee shop and a multinational company like Starbucks. The difference i
280.
by harryh 6y ago
not mentioning that even this modest PE of 20-25 is unachievable for a non-VC tech company in the event of sale I literally mentioned Panera Bread upthread which was taken private at these multiples.
281.
by harryh 6y ago
it very directly means --to a rough order of magnitude-- that you will need to wait 30 to 100 years to break even Only if earnings stay flat. Which won't be true for many, many companies. For example Startbucks (which you mentioned u
282.
by harryh 6y ago
Easy: Once the stock is valued at x nobody is going to sell it for x/2. Well sure. But you said no one would be willing to buy it at typical public valuation levels. And here are my counterexamples showing how that assertion was wr
283.
by harryh 6y ago
Separately, you should play around with a DCF tool for SBUX. There are plenty of numbers you might quibble with, but the multiple definitely isn't detached from reality. https://www.gurufocus.com/stock/SBUX/dc
284.
by harryh 6y ago
In 2013 Dell was taken private with one really big check for ~25B. I don't know off the top of my head what the earnings multiple was on that deal, but I know that it was done at a significant premium to the public price on the stock s
285.
by harryh 6y ago
It's very, very hard to sell a company for more than about 5x. Indeed this is definitely true. That doesn't, however, mean that firms with higher multiples are not connected to reality. It just means they have achieved some form
286.
by harryh 6y ago
I'm not sure why you have modest decline in quotes as that wasn't something I wrote. As you note, the decline in interest rates is quite large. Indeed the fact that in some cases it has crept under zero is quite significant.
287.
by harryh 6y ago
No, I don't believe that conventional measures of inflation are a conspiracy by the rich and powerful to keep the working man down. I do understand that there are others with this point of view including, apparently, you. I have tended
288.
by harryh 6y ago
As to the anomaly that began in the mid 90s I will refer you back to my previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23206885
289.
by harryh 6y ago
I'm not trying to claim that rising costs in health care, education and housing are not a problem. I'm just saying that the nature of the problem isn't runaway inflation. It's a different problem than that.
290.
by harryh 6y ago
There will always be some subset of goods that rise in price faster than the rest of the basket especially when those goods have artificial constraints on supply. That doesn't mean that inflation is rising faster than the overall baske
291.
by harryh 6y ago
Indeed. The companies that make up the S&P500 are far more valuable than they were in the past due to the consistent technological and social advancement that has made the US far richer than it used to be. Progress!
292.
by harryh 6y ago
The secular decline in interest rates as well as the increased ease of diversification can both easily account[1] for a modest long term increase in PE ratios. There is little reason to believe a decoupling from the fundamentals is a better
293.
by harryh 6y ago
Anyone with a bank account and a regular phone could participate in the stock market starting in the early 80s with Charles Schwab. Robinhood has maybe 20B in AUM. That's a drop in the bucket for a US stock market worth something like
294.
by harryh 6y ago
Stock market PE ratios are up a little bit over long run historical averages but hardly out of line with fundamentals. The same goes for price to rent ratio of most real estate.
295.
by harryh 6y ago
Financial numbers are harder to come by for private companies but I have no reason to believe that PE ratios for companies like Bloomberg or Mars or Deloitte are hugely out of line with similar public companies. But if you mean small busine
296.
by harryh 6y ago
Additionally CPI tends to be a lagging indicator. This is true, but various parties have been predicting a large increase in inflation in the US for years and years and they keep being wrong. I expect them to be wrong again this time too.
297.
by harryh 6y ago
On Jan 1, 2008 the S&P PE ratio (which just uses 12 months of earnings) was 21.46. Today it is 20.53. https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio/table/by-year
298.
by harryh 6y ago
Private companies get sold for over 5x all the time. Just to pick the obvious recent example: Giphy.
299.
by harryh 6y ago
What inflation? CPI is currently negative .
300.
by harryh 6y ago
People on WallStreetBets and the like are loud but relatively few in number. They don't have enough money to significantly move the market expect in rare cases and illiquid issues.

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