GoldFinger1969

LD, do you own these or are considering buying them ? What did you pay for them if you own them and what are they worth if you could somehow get them back to their original, un-stained condition ?

Because it's heavily weighted towards Samsung, APPL introduced the iPhone, and it's top-heavy in large-cap technology. Comparing an ETF which doesn't represent the index (KOSPI) doesn't make sense.

Then what drives the price ? What would cause YOU to buy stocks ?

You think those coins once belonged to Hetty Green ? If someone is selling them as proofs, not knowing their provenance, then they could be worth purchasing based on the lineage of ownership alone. But I wonder how one would trace these to the Colonel and his mother.

I'll await the experts and semi-experts, but to this novice it is post-mint damage. The quarter is worth $0.25.

I mean handling, dropping, fingerprints, etc.

It was a closed market manipulated by the CCP and riding the wave of the post-South Korean 1988 Olympics developing markets bubble. You may not follow these items -- I did.

Not at all -- it does. You have to look AT the fundamentals and BEYOND them, too....at times. Because the expectation was that China would adopt democratic liberalization measures that would aid U.S. and other business interests in China. This followed the 2000 WTO/GATT acceptance of China. Without that, China doesn't become the world's manufacturer the next 2 decades. Chinese stocks SUCKED for about 5 years until 2005 and then soared like 6-fold in 2 years. I don't need to know fundamentals to know that any market or item that goes up 6x in 2 years is probably overvalued and priced for perfection -- and perfection didn't happen the next 10-15 years for China. Ergo, market-losing returns except in select stocks.

Do you watch CNBC or FoxBusiness or Bloomberg TV ? They mention valuations and fundaamentals all day long, WC. I get 25-30 research PDFs a day....that's all they talk about.

Sure they can. But fundamentals are only 1 leg in the 3-legged stool of stock analysis. You also have to look at starting valuation and interest rates. Sometimes political considerations (i.e., China vs. Hong Kong/South Korea/Japan) comes into play. There are NO anomalies in your list. Prices and performance vary over time, but it's easily explanable for the most part.

You're hung up on EMH. Nobody buys or sells stocks based on textbook theories. Forget about EMH -- unless they talk about it on CNBC. COST is not 35% lower -- it's HIGHER. Better get a new data supplier, WC !! There are MANY moving parts to a stock's price. It's NOT just earnings or GDP or cash flow. If earnings go up but the stock was too expensive -- P/E too high -- you can have a profitable company whose stock SUCKS for years -- think CSCO after 2000. Every single market you cited is HIGHER today than years earlier -- except Hong Kong/China for obvious reasons. All that is telling me is that stocks do great over long periods of times...earnings tend to go up (about 7% a year for the U.S.)....GDP growth is important which we and Asia have and Europe does not....and starting valuations matter. Again, I don't know if you own ANY stocks at all but if not, when did you ? Because the nirvana you want to get the ALL-CLEAR to buy probably hasn't been around except in late-March 2020....November 2008/March 2009...October 2002....January 1991....October 1987...and August 1982. And I am not sure you would have bought at those great buying spots, so if not those, when ?

I thought about this while thinking about the cesspool that Harvard has become. If we went back to talking about this country's great history....and maybe focused on the minutae, like the coins and currency....you stimulate interest and learn about America, too. There is so much information contained in the history of our coinage and currency it's unreal. Even me, a guy interested in finance and economics, had to stumble upon it by acccident.

As a gift or present....preservation....ease of handling. Had there been TPGs when I was young, I think looking at the holder with the information might have stimulated my interest many years sooner. That and/or some of the books I now have which I think I would have enjoyed reading in the 1970's.

Different strokes, I say. Nothing wrong with being a growth investor, probably is better going forward than a value investor. But if you aren't wealthy and/or want to sleep at night, lower but more predictable returns might be the ticket.

I like dividends but I've had 2 stocks cut dividends. It happens..... Dividend GROWERS are often better than higher-yielding dividend stocks. MSFT yielding 2% in 2010 was a great investment.

These aren't fallacies promoted by "Wall Street" -- even folks who disagree with WS marketing agree that numbers are numbers. You can quibble with the numbers but you can't say they aren't representative of the fundamentals. Yes, but that doesn't mean the P/E is irrelevant. You need to know if earnings have collapsed. Clearly, they haven't. So the P/E ratio IS useful right now. If we enter a recession, I agree: best to buy at 25x EPS instead of 16x EPS (although the trend in recent years has been for the multiple to collapse MORE than earnings). MULTIPLE compression is often WORSE than the earnings decline. No. Markets and the public change and so do stocks. MSFT went public in 1986 and didn't pay a dividend until about 20 years later but it went up 100-fold in that time. AMZN has never paid a dividend and her stock is up 1000-fold. WMT never paid a public dividend until after 30 years as a public company and returned 34% a year. All those companies GREW -- they were GROWTH stocks -- and their stock prices reflected those realities. If you were advising Sam Walton, he would have paid a dividend in the early-1970's and never toppled Sears-Roebuck. And if you were a stockbroker, you would not have recommended buying WMT in the depths of the 1974 bear market...because the S&P 500 sold for 6x EPS and WMT sold for 12x EPS, 2x the market. You would have passed on the stock at $12...even though it would have been A BARGAIN AT $600/share !!! The market has returned a nice CAGR since 2000. You can't stay in cash for 23 years. Dividend yield is not something that is useful today as it was in the Old Days when the DJIA (the index followed then) was a buy at 6% and a sale at 3%. It hasn't been at 6% since the 1980's -- you can't stay out of stocks for 40 years because some indicator says so. Your Other Lengthy Posts: Buybacks reduce share count and increase EPS if done at attractive prices and NOT offset by share dilution from bad M&A deals and/or compensation shares. I lean towards dividends, but buybacks done effectively reward shareholders. So does dividend reinvestment. The market ex-Mag 7 is pretty cheap. It's not dirt cheap, but it's certainly not a "mania." A mania was tech stocks in 2000....a mania is NFTs in 2021....a mania is gold in 1980....a mania was bonds in 2020 and 2021 with the 10-year Treasury yielding 1% or less. The stock market at 21x is not a mania, though with cash paying 4% it now has competition. No, the S&P 500 at 21x and the Small Cap 600 at 15x are not "manias." MSFT and GOOG at 25-30X might be rich, but not a mania (you think anybody will knock them off like GM or EK ?). AI might be extended and NVDA might be a bubble, but would you buy it at 22x EPS instead of 32x with the earnings RISING ? I would. Look, I tend to be a Value/GARP investor over Growth because of various circumstances. But you can't say something is a mania or a bubble when the conditions that would alleviate it don't appear for decades. In that case, the assumption of the mania or bubble is wrong, IMO. I'd be curious to see at what level of the S&P 500 you would be a buyer.

So you tried out an RSV vaccine, just not the one that is now available and got approved ?

I LOVE "The Odd Couple" but don't see what the classic parking scene has to do with members here. Maybe you can elaborate ? BTW, very interesting: WLNY-55 (ch. 79 on my Optimum/Altice system here in NY) runs an "Odd Couple Marathon on New Year's Eve and into New Year's Day. That's not unusual, but the length of the episodes is: they are original, uncut which probably hasn't been the case since their original air dates. 25 1/2 minute each....3 segments of 90-second commercials. When I saw most of these episodes in the 1980's and 1990's, they lasted maybe 22-23 minutes, tops.

I just got the new Covid Moderna shot yesterday. Seemed to have a worse reaction this time. My left shoulder is still very sore 20 hours after I got the shot.

Wow, that's hard to believe. I believe you...but...wow.

I found a 38-page thread over at CACForum that must be what you and others are saying is the Holy Bible on CAC and CACG. It might take me a few weeks, but I'll try and read all the posts.

That's not relevant, the capital could be deployed into other vehicles that yield more than on "your purchase price" -- an opportunity cost -- so you have to compare apples to apples current yields at market values.

Can the Smithsonian sell coins they "own" ? Have they done it in the past ? Maybe where they have duplicates of the same coin, year, mint ? I believe the CT Museum/Historical Society sold a few Saints over the decades.

If we all were the same personality and we all agreed with one another 100% of the time and we all had the same knowledge level of coins....who the hell would want to be here ?

OK, I go back to that interview with Maurice Rosen from 2008 because it's JA's own words...he's specific...and CAC had just started. He said that (at that time) 85% or so of the coins were "A" and "B" and all/virtually all of these coins were getting the CAC sticker. They were avoiding the "C" coins which were NOT worthy of a sticker but he said definitely: they are OK for the grade (i.e., MS-65). As for so-called "D" and "F" coins...these were clearly OVERGRADED but outliers and not a concern here. Now it's possible that SOME of those "C" coins weren't OK for the grade but the bulk had to be (JA's own words). Now...he's saying that they do NOT belong in a CACG MS-65 holder though it's possible the same coin was looked at by the CAC sticker people and they said not worthy of a CAC sticker but yeah, it's OK for this PCGS or NGC MS-65 holder. See what I am saying ? I'm just repeating what JA said. Maybe I am too literal, I dunno. The interview also had JA saying that lots of quality coins for the grade were being "hoarded" by investors and collectors and the MS-65's (to use an example) that the dealers had for sale to the public or newcomers like me were largely the "C" coins. And maybe that's where the problem was ? They start to pay "A" or "B" prices for "C" coins and then what are the "A" or "B" coins worth ? A premium if not $$$ from 1 grade higher and this is how you get the intersection of market grading and gradeflation. I think.