So? Why do you believe that is a good thing?

This means nothing in the big picture. Share price is meaningless towards the value of the company. Simply look at Berkshire class A shares around $123,000. Some people believe its still a good buy.

a- b/c Arbys blows and it makes the company more cash rich

b- well im a ******ed noob so im sure theres huge flaws in my logic here but basically how can the share go much lower and Wendys isnt going bankrupt imo...

Good argument. Just hope that they can utilize the cash. The internal rate of return better exceed what Arbys would have been capable of delivering.

No, you're not a ******ed noob, just making a common new investor mistake that the price of a share compared to its history, when viewed alone, has no bearing on the potential future value - higher or lower.

Question about junior mining companies (company that isn't yet in production/small cap, correct terminology?) How important is the balance sheet? Taking note of assets/liabilities?

Things I looked at,

- value of assets
- cash amount
- plans for funding
- current funding

Was my first ever purchase and I bought mainly because they aim to produce 150,000 oz of high grade gold per annum at a cost of $350-400/oz, if the gold sold at $1000/oz then it would have a revenue of ~93m.

What else should I look at/have looked at? I think I may have bought a little prematurely.

Market cap is ~10.5m btw.

Just a random question:

Every now and then I like to read an annual report, just for fun, and to try and keep some exposure to the markets in some way since right now I am not active with my investments.

I was thinking about finding an industry through Yahoo Finance that has a small number of public companies and requesting the recent AR for all of them, and then going through and reading them to see what I can learn about the industry and if I pick up on anything.

So far I've narrowed it down to Office Supplies, Basic Materials Wholesale, and Consumer Services.

I have a few ARs right now, Netflix, Starbucks, McDonalds, Iron Mountain, but given that they are all different industries, I don't really have anything to compare to. And at the time that I requested them it was more or less just because I was hearing a lot about them in the news and I wanted to see what I could get out of them.

This is more or less just a random experiment/hobby/reading material and not meant as a direct way to find an investment - although you never know what I'll find. I do have a starting point in screening companies, but I haven't done it in awhile because I have to go through each company on my own. I haven't found a way to do what I want automatically.

But anyways, is this just overkill? Not necessary? Or do you think it's a good learning opportunity?

how much money does one need to start trading commodities comfortably?

i wonder if you couldn't get access to some decent analyst reports through your broker? you might find reading those to be a more efficient way of getting a first take on a company's business. you'd see what metrics people pay attention to in different industries and be alerted to whatever major issues followers of the company are paying attention to. 10ks are filled with legalese and sussing out the important stuff takes some time.

Too vague, needs a lot more information, like what commodity, what time frame, what system you're using etc.

Someone please answer this question as, it's very simple and probably really stupid.

If i'm looking at a balance sheet and a table gives the years and underneath in brackets it says "dollars in thousands" and then gives a figure of $22,706, does this figure translate to simply $22,706 or would it be 22,706,000 (x1000).

Thanks.

EDIT: Second question, if a bank goes out of business and someone has a loan with that bank (e.g. a mortgage) what happens to the "ownership" of the mortgage and the money left to be paid? Is another company able to purchase this mortgage or take it over? Does the government control it? Doe the person who took out the mortgage/loan continue to pay the mortgage to the original company even if they no longer operate?

How would you read it?

22 thousand 706 thousand. So you slap the 3 zeros on the end. In other words, 22.706 million.

Another bank has bought the debt so the ownership of debt has transferred to a new entity.

It would be viewed no differently then an FDIC breakup and selling of a failed bank. Whether the legal name remains or not probably has to do with some kinda law regarding the actual closing of books for good. Not sure on that.

What will happen to my 5 lot short C june puts after the reverse split?

What are your favorite forums for trading?

good question, in the old days, it was Yahoo Finance nowadays it is pretty much junk

Ok a few more questions and probably one which is way too generalized.

In theory, a bank has been around since say 1880, so they've obviously survived a lot of financial problems etc, they make a heavy loss last year and now seem to be in trouble and going out of business, however they have a lot of money in assets but this is in the form of what people owe them which obv is paid over a long period of time. If they can't cover there operating costs and pay back there debt, what is left for them to do to survive other than selling off there assets until they can cover there debt/costs? Not including bankruptcy as an option either.

If a company goes out of business, what happens to the outstanding shares? They disappear?

How easy is it for a bank to sell of it's loans/mortgages which are outstanding with current customers?

Thanks in advance.

Not sure I may open a new thread for that so I'll post here. Please help me assess an apartment I strongly consider buying:

Costs 340k+7% fees/taxes = 364k
Estimated monthly rent if I was to rent out: 1k/month net
I'd estimate the value to rise by 1.5% every year (starting at 340k) over the next 10 years but I could be quite off. I'll probably be living there anywhere between 7 and 15 years - afterwards chances are about 50/50 that I sell or rent out.

Alternative apartment to rent: 750/month, long waiting lists though, would have to find an alternative for 1-1.2k/month for the next 1-2 years + added costs of moving twice.

Any other info you would need to assess properly?

Thanks!

1.5% may be optimistic, the average since 1870 in the US was 0.4% appreciation, so you're looking to beat the average, which is certainly possible but not without geographic knowledge.

Securitise the assets, they could also issue additional debt or equity, or get a bail out injection. About 700 banks have failed since 2008, so maybe just look at what they did/didn't do?

The company gets stripped down, debt holders and prefered share holders get paid first, and then the scraps goes to the regular shareholders, like a dividend pay out. Usually there's nothing left, so the shares expiry worthless. Company is de-listed by then, so the shareholders will usually receive a coupon saying they're entitled to whatever they find on the company, which is usually nothing or 1c to every dollar.

Depends how good the mortgages/loans are and how willing other banks are in taking on more risk. Its easy to sell something of value that's simple to evaluation, like mortgages (unless you have a complete credit meltdown ie 2008), its the more complex arrangements that are difficult to price and move off the books.

Are you asking about a specific company? If so it'd be easier to talk about it if you just posted the name. There are a whole bunch of questions in here and they are very situation-specific. Just to get it started:

The fact that a bank has been around a long time doesn't mean anything, management and business environments change. Lehman, for example, was founded in 1850.

If a financial firm needed cash quickly, they could try to find a white knight to come in and give them money (like wilbur ross did for mbia during the financial crisis, or buffett did for goldman) for either debt or equity. Or they could try to get taken over (like wamu and chase). Or they could try to sell assets. The customers aren't an issue; banks sell outstanding mortgages all the time. The price they can get for them totally depends. You can get a decent price for a lot of mortgage assets now. You couldn't in 2008. But it's also worth noting that just because a bank posts a huge loss in terms of EPS doesn't mean they are desperate for cash. They could just be writing down the value of an asset and still be fine in terms of cash.

Also, be wary of balance sheets for financial firms. Do you really know that the asset number is good? Just because a bank says its loan is worth face doesn't make it so. This is what a lot of the panic in 2008 was all about. No one knew how to price anything on the balance sheets of the big money center banks.

The company in question is Brooklyn Federal Bancorp, (BFSB). On the balance sheet the figures I was looking at were total loans receivable and a table titled "loan portfolio maturities" which showed how much and when certain loans were expected to be paid back to the company (i think?).

I'm really not sure on how much cash the company has, i know that in june 2010 they reported a loss of 10.3m for the year so far (2009 they had a net profit of 1.3m and in 2008 it was 5.6m).

On the subject of how much money they have, the chairman issued this in the statement at the start of the report, "We are pleased to report, however, that we continue to have capital ratios that exceed all thresholds for Brooklyn Federal Savings Bank to be considered “well capitalized”. As a result, we can continue to support profitable growth, and we decided not to participate in the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s “Troubled Asset Relief Program”.

Other info that I thought was relevant but im not sure, they have total deposits of ~400m (this capital can only be used for certain things like loans/mortgages?). They have net assets of ~520m, ~400 is in loans receivable.

This is all from the 2009 report as they haven't released one for 2010 yet.

brent crude oil, holding for roughly a week, using a trend following system.


not sure if that helps or not.

Surely you mean 0.4% over inflation?

it's hard to say much about BFSB without spending a lot of time digging around. i would suggest you be cautious though, for a couple basic reasons:

first off, it's a penny stock with a market cap less than $10mn. these tend to be the province of hucksters and scammers. the economics of being a public company just don't make any sense at that level. there can be some weird gems but generally it's trash.

second, the company isn't current on its filings. for a financial firm this is terrifying. why haven't they been able to submit their filings? it could be because they're near failure and are trying to stave it off. that's the story their filings tell. a recent 8k had to do with the office of thrift supervision dressing them down for their poor capitalization situation and putting them under direct supervision (http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/...8112-10-002702). then their chief credit officer was forced out (11/10/2010 filing). then their well-known accounting firm, grant thornton, RESIGNED (12/10/2010) which is very scary, with only the comment that the accountants thought they hadn't properly accounted for "loan and lease losses" (12/23/2010). then they got another accountant, crowe horwath, to take them on (2/9/2011). then their chief lending officer resigned (3/15/2011). one of their last filings before they stopped giving them (can't find it now but saw it earlier) was a financial update that massively increased their loan loss reserves.

maybe they are actually okay, i don't know. i can't know because there's not enough disclosure. they look like a textbook case of what a bank would do if it were failing. you cannot trust the stale balance sheet numbers because what they say an asset is worth is always subjective, and here, it looks like there are good reasons to be extremely suspicious of those claimed asset values. if you're in the nyc area and could somehow get better info on what exactly is on their balance sheets and check out the commercial real estate and stuff in person and verify that the projects are actually doing okay -- you could hit a home run. but shallowly, based on the publicly available info, i'd be extremely nervous about getting involved in this.

Yep, inflation adjusted:


Source.

It depends on your risk levels, current volatility of the market, your systems edge. Trend following tends to be high variance, lots of small losers looking for that one big one, I'd say to trade one contract you'd need around 25k.

Yeah it's a penny stock now but only due to the loss in sp, like you those were the 2 things which confused me the most, I wasn't too worried about the resignations except for the fact it shows such a huge lack of confidence and obviously not realeasing the annual report/8-k just adds to the theory that there not doing well and there going to wait it out for a long as possible.

Unfortunately I live in the U.K. so my information is just gained from whatevers on the internet.

With balance sheets, I thought these had to be accurate by law? I know the company can word things differently or change headings to make it more appealing/disguise a problem.

I don't own anything in the company and I can't really remember how I came across it, i've only recently got into looking at annual reports of companies and was just interested in this one. Part of a learning curve i guess.

So this definitely falls into the category of a speculative buy rather than a solid investment? Or would I need to dig a lot deeper?