Viewing profile — fiprofessor

But Berkshire Hathaway does do stock buybacks.

The earnings per share certainly increases. But this is (at least theoretically) offset by the fact that the firm's assets have decreased. For example, if the buyback was paid for …

No, because the future cash flow per share is not reflected in the current market cap. Perhaps you are thinking of share price instead: there it is true that dividends reduce share…

Who would invest in or create a company that would never pay a dividend and never bought back its stock? How would shareholders ever yield gains from their investment? Short of som…

Prior to the Bush era tax cuts, all dividends were taxed at the income rate, which I think explains the biggest motivation in the shift from dividends to buybacks in that era. Nowa…

I understand the cynicism, but the current text of the bill explicitly creates a separate trust which receives the revenue, and is restricted so that: "The fund shall be used exclu…

This seems like the same article, but without the need to subscribe to read the whole article: https://jacobin.com/2024/02/tax-ivy-league-endowments-public... > Based on the size o…

> And if you look at any graph of college costs vs wages over the past 40 years or so, they have simply skyrocketed. Absolutely, no debate there. The particular surprising claim in…

Point taken, but it's very common to adjust by CPI (or some other price index) when comparing prices over time. All attempts to track prices over time have some flaw. But not adjus…

Well, it's not worth it to bring this optimization to the attention of the CEO. But it definitely exceeds the engineer's weekly cost by a lot, so if it only takes a week, it's pote…

Yes, but sometimes switching to arithmetic/absolute thinking is the right thing to do. For example, suppose an engineer who is paid $200k per year can spend a week to implement an …

I think they will over time if PE deals start to implode or reveal themselves to be as bad as people claim. But the reaction will take a while to happen. With partnership-based mod…

> A PE takeover is the signal that you no longer need to hedge those shorts; the company, loaded with the debt used to purchase it, will soon go bankrupt, and you will be absolved …

> Honestly though, I think the good times are over for PE, as most of the industry (and finance in general) has been cushioned by a low interest rate world, and as debt starts to c…

> The gameplan is simple: lend your buddy the money to buy the business. Now you have a line to the person who has the most access to data about, if not control over, the direction…

> And then she was with Devon Welsh, a singer/songwriter whose father was an actor. And most famously has been the partner of Elon Musk. She's had probably a larger share of carefr…

Nice essay, but some of the contemporary examples in this paragraph about the independenlty wealthy are not really that compelling: I’m not saying wealthy people can’t make incredi…

Even though Meta doesn't issue dividends, they did do massive share buybacks last year. That effectively returns cash on hand to investors, much as dividends do. (Of course, Meta's…

That makes sense to me. But, in light of that, the ones who do go to Jane Street are relatively more likely to be interested in their tech stack and OCaml, as opposed to wanting to…

> I think people go to high-technology finance because they want to test themselves against a harder class of problem in a more adversarial setting against people who feel the same…

It's wildly inaccurate to say that much of Alzheimer's research has been shown to be fabricated. The article you link to is about one person's work. Even though he is a very influe…

It might better to link to directly to the FTC press release ( https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/08/... ) instead of the FTC "Consumer Alert" that is current…

Should auto-manufacturers be liable for emissions produced by cars that have had their catalytic converters stolen? Should medicine manufacturers be liable if someone circumvents t…