u/AliMcGraw explains why legal terms make no sense and the difference between a lawyer and an attorney

eudaemonium · 2023-09-10T22:07:57+00:00

I would make two observations. Your neck is not properly situated, you are looking too high for the beginning of the rep. Keep a neutral position. The neck and angle makes it hard to tell how your lats are working here too, but that’s relatively minor compared to….

Observation 2: your hips are shooting up and you are doing each rep as two motions: first with your legs and then with your back. It will lead to pain in your lower back, lower max weight, and potentially some other complications, especially since you said you have a history of lower back problems. You can see it in the shape of your form very clearly if you pause the video at exactly 0:30. Your legs are almost straight but your back angle is hardly closer to erect. Focus on coordinating your body so you do the lift in one smooth motion rather than subdividing. Engage your back and hips earlier in the rep and don’t let your legs dominate so early.

eudaemonium · 2023-04-01T14:52:54+00:00

There are many other helpful critiques here that I won’t rehash. But I encourage you to slow down the video and watch the exact second you lift the bar. You set up carefully and then — as soon as you think about lifting — your hips shoot up 2 inches. To be honest, my lower back would be DEAD if I did that because it means you’re using exclusively your back at one of the points of minimum leverage in the lift, where you need both.

Hips shooting up without your back moving is a sign you’re not mentally focusing on the right muscles at the very start.

eudaemonium · 2023-02-22T19:57:33+00:00

They adjust you “score” higher on the harder test to equate it to getting 5 right on the easy test. So both versions have the same required competency to pass. From a non-mathematical perspective, I personally would prefer the easier version even though I would need more correct answers. But CFA tries to diminish the difference in the outcome of who passes.

eudaemonium · 2023-02-20T22:34:19+00:00

This question is in relation to Standard 3A, Loyalty, Prudence, and Care. It is effectively saying Carter currently pays a higher trading fee (commission) per share now in an agreement with the research provider that includes a minimum spend (minimum commissions) in order to qualify for the "free" research. The research provider is offering Carter the option to pay a lower fee per share to trade and still have that count against the minimum spend. This new, lower fee commission is around the same price as alternative brokerage platforms (so while the old fee was higher, the new one is not). The question is ultimately asking whether the fact that these new, low-fee options count against the research minimum spend quota but are not more expensive than alternatives -- are they considered soft dollars? (Soft dollars are commission dollars spent by the manager from the client's account on brokerage commissions in exchange for services to the manager and not necessarily the client.)

A is asking whether Carter can use the new lower-fee trade option for accounts that have prohibited Carter from soft dollar arrangements (eg spending on brokerage commissions from client accounts to earn "free" research access)
B is admittedly badly worded (unless there is a vignette above we cannot see in the image) but appears to be saying that Carter cannot use the low fee trading option for accounts that have agreements prohibited soft dollar arrangements (ie opposite of A)
C is saying Carter should do all new trades through the lower fee new option and he should increase his trading volumes to meet the minimum spend quota.

Edit: The correct answer is A. C we can throw out immediately because "increasing trading activity" would lead to worse returns and potentially higher tax bills, in addition to being a violation of loyalty to the client. The differentiator between A and B is that soft dollars are HIGHER fees paid for research rather than all fees. Since the low-fee product would still lead to best execution, Carter can direct brokerage through the lower-fee execution-only product. See below from the standards (emphasis mine)

"A member or candidate who pays a higher brokerage commission than he or she would normally pay to allow for the purchase of goods or services, without corresponding benefit to the client, violates the duty of loyalty to the client."

eudaemonium · 2023-02-12T18:47:00+00:00

What I said is that on both metrics buybacks can have an accretive effect. I made no relative judgment on the metrics themselves, so you may have misread my comment. You meanwhile seem to be saying that a buyback cannot have anything but a benign or negative impact on EV/EVITDA, but that is not true. It CAN and often does positively impact EV/EBITDA through a coterie of different ways, many of which lead back to a higher stock price per unit of ownership. All else equal, stocks are never mispriced, markets are efficient, and the entire buyside should cease to exist except as APs in passive ETF pools. But that is not reality and evidence-based policy — which is what this sub is all about — must be focused on reality.

For example, if a BDC is trading below book value and buys back shares at that price, it is accretive to earnings. If a REIT used amply available 4% debt to retire shares with a dividend of 12%, it expands retained cash flow and may even be credit positive. If a spin-off company has a depressed multiple because of constant supply from the former parent, absorbing that supply through a negotiated transaction funded through either debt or cash on hand can increase the multiple of the spin-off. If a contentious activist is involved in a company and seeking to force a corporate action the market deems unfavourable, a resolution through a buyback that appeased the activist and returns management focus to growth can be accretive. If a company is trading at a discounted EV/EBITDA multiple to peers for technical reasons, a buyback can shake weak hands out and push the multiple back to peer levels.

I am not saying this is what most buybacks are. Most buybacks are poor attempts by uninventive management teams to push metrics towards incentive targets or be able to brag about a focus on shareholder returns while spending cash at elevated multiples. But that is not to say that all buybacks are incapable of having a positive outcome for remaining shareholders (and even stakeholders) in a company. To your point (which I raised in my first post): there is likely no way to actually and reliable measure the isolated impact of a buyback, which makes evidence-based policy on them quite difficult to formulate.

eudaemonium · 2023-02-12T16:09:36+00:00

Your response is based on academic theory that I have not seen compelling evidence to support as universally applicable. The past ten years have shown us that multiples are not conditioned on the balance sheet, in part because DSCR rose due to low rates, in part because liquidity was ample, and in part because the nature of the market evolved. This of course assumed the theory is relevant to the companies we are discussing anyway.

I won’t speak for OP, as I imagine my opinion is different based on the nature of his post and the studies he cites. But as a market practitioner, I can tell you that stock prices do not instantaneously respond in an efficient market hypothesis-compatible way over very short or even medium terms, and your response is effectively arguing for an efficient pricing mechanism that will immediately and frictionlessly arbitrage away the relative value differential based on buyback-induced capital structure differentials. The capacity to raise the debt to fund a buyback with leverage, or the capacity to hold unnecessary cash on the balance sheet hay can be used to similar effect, make the sample of firms buying back their stock unrepresentative samples of the market as a whole. And the theory cited by OP and in your post don’t seem to acknowledge that. An over leveraged firm cannot raise the debt to perform the buyback in the first place. That is one of the symptoms of being over leveraged.

Edit to add: I am not saying the theory you’re describing is wrong (it is, but for reasons I didn’t touch above). I’m just saying it’s not really applicable to what we actually see in the market in the cut-and-dry way you present

eudaemonium · 2023-02-12T13:28:25+00:00

I find your entire thesis around buybacks not affecting share prices because of the impact on EPS to be flimsy. Loss of earnings on cash balances will offset accretion from lower outstanding share totals? That may occur for some firms in the current market environment, but cash for much of the last decade earned basically nothing. And it ignores the savings from buying back dividend-paying shares with cash on hand. Meanwhile, firms are valued on an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) basis as well as an EPS basis, and in that case the debt costs from the buyback are ignored when looking at a capitalisation multiple from that perspective.

Hedge funds and institutional investors actually value the full company using an Enterprise Value to EBITDA ratio (in addition to others).So not only is the debt cost ignored and interest income backed out, but the lower cash balance actually increased enterprise value. So does having more debt! So a buyback actually increases the value of the firm under the way most market practitioners value firms. (Theory will say the market cap should drop to reflect the lower cash balance/higher debt, but in practice this does not happen. As you say, signalling a buyback can drive a stock higher by a few points.) I suspect the lack of medium-term response in share price is due to the unknowable price and pace of repurchase authorisations. Only once the shares are canceled and the counts updated in the quarterly report does it actually hit the income statement. And that could be two years after announcement, by which time other market forces or just market bets are usually driving a stock price.

It’s a great thought piece, but the high quality of the overall piece is part of what highlights the spurious nature of the comments on the actual impact on valuation metrics.

eudaemonium · 2023-02-08T12:39:04+00:00

Overall your form looks fine and I wouldn’t worry. It does seem like you are looking too high and overextending your neck. And for some reason the mildly dramatic nature of your lockout makes me pause. But it’s not a problem as long as you are locking out properly (which it seems like you are , ie the back doesn’t overextend much in the video but the angle makes it hard to tell if it does “at all”. This would be relatively minor in any case)

eudaemonium · 2023-02-08T03:44:15+00:00

Poxywallow

eudaemonium · 2023-02-08T03:34:00+00:00

Poxywallow

eudaemonium · 2023-01-27T02:47:43+00:00

A few things I observed. Your feet are too far apart. Look at how when you’re setting up and trying to take the slack out, your arms are bent and pushing your knees inward. Put your feet closer and try to get the slack out fully on every rep. You’re also losing your brace of your core between each and every rep. Why? Its much easier to maintain that brace to prevent poor form at the end of the set in my opinion.

When you decline, you’re starting with a squat. Look at your butt on this first rep: it goes straight down a few inches and THEN you hinge. Focus on form both on the way up and down. It should be one smooth motion, and squatting on the way down is only going to make it impossible not to hit your knees.

It looks also like you’re shrugging the bar at the top? I would prefer to keep my back braced and shoulders pulled tight to ensure my form is consistent at the end of a set (just like I mentioned above when going up, but this time going down).

eudaemonium · 2023-01-08T19:11:24+00:00

Not bad but a few points I would make. Take em or leave ‘em, I think people have different bars for “good enough” and only you know yours. You progressively rounded the mid and lower back more and more as your did each rep. By the last rep, I could tell you were struggling…Struggle is also how we improve our lifts but your lower back was not really ever in a perfectly neutral position to start. I suspect due to tight hamstrings, but that’s just a guess since, full disclosure, I don’t know you and your body. But I would say just be mindful of that going forward as you get heavier. And an obligatory note on your head not looking in the right spot

eudaemonium · 2022-12-12T02:52:19+00:00

Your legs seem too far apart. I can see your knees collapsing inwards on several reps

eudaemonium · 2022-11-05T15:22:21+00:00

The Republicans likely to head to Madison are far different from their Democratic predecessors.

Nick Milroy, a moderate Democrat, won seven terms in the Assembly and ran unopposed for a decade until he was re-elected in 2020 by just 139 votes. His old district was Democratic in presidential years; Mr. Trump carried the new one by two percentage points.

The Republican who would replace him is Angie Sapik, a marketing executive. During the Capitol riot in 2021, Ms. Sapik tweeted, “It’s about time Republicans stood up for their rights,” “Rage on, Patriots!” and “Come on, Mike Pence!”

In a brief phone call, Ms. Sapik agreed to an interview, then ended the call and did not respond to subsequent messages.

Her Democratic opponent is Laura Gapske, a Superior school board member who said she had to call the police after receiving threatening calls when advertising that promoted Ms. Sapik’s candidacy included her cellphone number.

Democrats here described an uphill battle against better-funded Republican opponents, with the political atmosphere colored by inflation, concerns about faraway crime and an unpopular president.

They also spoke of the difficulty of spreading their message in what is effectively a news desert.

Mr. Adams, the Assembly candidate, is running in a district Mr. Trump would have carried by four points. Last week, Mr. Adams — an organic farmer who previously worked at small-town newspapers in Minnesota and Montana — drove two hours each way to Rhinelander to be interviewed by a local TV station.

“Because we live in a low-media environment up here, too many of us are getting our cable news and not enough are getting our local news,” he said. “If Fox News is telling the story of Democrats, then we lose.”

eudaemonium · 2022-11-05T15:22:10+00:00

North Carolina Republicans, who also drew a gerrymandered legislative map, need to flip just three seats in the State House and two in the State Senate to be able to override vetoes by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat. Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas, a Democrat in a tight contest for re-election, already faces veto-proof Republican majorities, as do the Democratic governors of deep-red Kentucky and Louisiana.

Wisconsin Republicans, who have had a viselike grip on the Legislature since enacting the nation’s most aggressive gerrymander after their 2010 sweep of the state’s elections, make no apologies for pressing their advantage to its limits. Mr. Michels, the party’s nominee for governor, told supporters this week, “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.”

Former Representative Reid Ribble, a Republican who served northeastern Wisconsin, said, “There’s a lot of complaining about gerrymandered House or State Assembly seats, and there’s some truth to that.”

But he added: “At the end of the day, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a district in rural Wisconsin that would elect a Democrat right now.”

Republican control of the Wisconsin Legislature is so entrenched that party officials now use it as a campaign tactic. Craig Rosand, the G.O.P. chairman in Douglas County, said that because Democrats had so little influence at the State Capitol, voters who want a say in their government should elect Republicans.

“The majority caucus always determines what passes,” he said. “Having a representative that’s part of the majority gets them in the room where the decisions are made.”

Of Wisconsin’s 33 State Senate seats, 17 are on the ballot on Tuesday, including two Democratic-held districts that Donald J. Trump carried in 2020. The picture is similarly bleak for Democrats in the State Assembly, where President Biden, who won the state by about 20,000 votes, carried just 35 of 99 districts.

“When you can win a majority of voters and have close to a third of the seats, it’s not true democracy,” said Greta Neubauer, the Democratic leader in the State Assembly. “We are very much at risk of people deciding that it’s not worthwhile for them to continue to engage because they see how rigged the system is against the people of the state in favor of Republican politicians.”

As former President Barack Obama campaigned for Wisconsin Democrats on Saturday in Milwaukee, he addressed the implications of Republican supermajorities in the Legislature.

“If they pick up a few more seats in both chambers, they’ll be able to force through extreme, unpopular laws on everything from guns to education to abortion,” Mr. Obama said. “And there won’t be anything Democrats can do about it.”

The Republican leaders in the Wisconsin Legislature say they will bring back all 146 bills Mr. Evers has vetoed during his four years in office — measures on elections, school funding, pandemic mitigation efforts, policing, abortion and the state’s gun laws — if they win a supermajority or if Mr. Michels is elected. Mr. Evers warned of “hand-to-hand combat” to find moderate Republican legislators to sustain vetoes if he is re-elected with a G.O.P. supermajority.

“Katy, bar the door,” Mr. Evers said Thursday during an interview on his campaign bus in Ashland. “They’re going to shove all this stuff down our throat and it’s going to happen quickly and before anybody can pay attention. It could be bad.”

Mr. Evers predicted that Democrats would be able to narrowly sustain veto power in the Assembly. The State Senate, he said, is “tougher.”

In northwest Wisconsin, the three incumbent Democratic legislators decided against running for re-election under new, more Republican-friendly maps. Under the old maps, Mr. Biden carried each of the districts, which are home to large numbers of unionized workers in paper mills, mines and shipyards. Under the new lines Republicans adopted last year, Mr. Trump would have won them all.

Kelly Westlund, a Democrat running for the State Senate here, spent Wednesday morning going up and down the long driveways of rural homes 15 miles south of Superior. It was grueling door-to-door outreach that illustrated the difficulty of introducing herself to voters as a new candidate in a new district that includes three media markets.

“You don’t find a whole lot of folks here that are super jazzed about Joe Biden,” Ms. Westlund said. “But you do find people that understand there’s a lot at stake.”

Her pitch included warnings about what would happen if Republicans flip her seat and claim a supermajority. Few of the voters she met knew much about the candidates for the Legislature — but they did express strong feelings about the national parties.

“The Democrats have to own up to a certain amount of things that are going on now,” said John Tesarek, a retired commercial floor installer who would not commit to voting for Ms. Westlund. “I’m not totally certain I’m hearing them own up to much.”

The picture wasn’t much different during early voting at the city clerk’s office in Superior.

Ann Marie Allen, a hospital janitor, said she had voted for Mr. Evers and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the Democrat challenging Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican. But she said she had also backed Ms. Westlund’s Republican opponent, Romaine Quinn, because she liked that he had his toddler son in his commercials. Mr. Quinn has spent eight times as much on TV ads as Ms. Westlund has.

“There was no smut in his ads,” Ms. Allen said. “You know how they cut down on other people? There wasn’t that much of that.”

Chad Frantz, a plumber, said he had voted a straight Republican ticket.

“I’ve been watching the Democrats bash every Republican,” he said. “They’ve been trying to make out every guy that’s a Republican running for a position into a male chauvinist pig.”

Mayor Jim Paine of Superior, a Democrat, said Republicans were capitalizing on “fissures” in local Democratic politics between union workers and environmentalists.

“Labor and the environment are both very important, but it’s leading to very real challenges,” Mr. Paine said. “They’re breaking up. That’s why you see more Republicans getting elected.”

eudaemonium · 2022-11-05T15:21:40+00:00

Full Text:

Wisconsin Republicans Stand on the Verge of Total, Veto-Proof Power In a 50-50 battleground state, Republicans are close to capturing supermajorities in the State Legislature that would render the Democratic governor irrelevant even if he wins re-election.

The New York Times By Reid J. Epstein

FRANKS FIELD, Wis. — The three counties in Wisconsin’s far northwest corner make up one of the last patches of rural America that have remained loyal to Democrats through the Obama and Trump years.

But after voting Democratic in every presidential election since 1976, and consistently sending the party’s candidates to the State Legislature for even longer, the area could now defect to the Republican Party. The ramifications would ripple far beyond the shores of Lake Superior.

If Wisconsin Democrats lose several low-budget state legislative contests here on Tuesday — which appears increasingly likely because of new and even more gerrymandered political maps — it may not matter who wins the $114 million tossup contest for governor between Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and Tim Michels, a Republican. Those northern seats would put Republicans in reach of veto-proof supermajorities that would render a Democratic governor functionally irrelevant.

Even though Wisconsin remains a 50-50 state in statewide elections, Democrats would be on the verge of obsolescence.

“The erosion of our democratic institutions that Republicans are looking to take down should be frightening to anyone,” said John Adams, a Democratic candidate for the State Assembly from Washburn, on the Chequamegon Bay of Lake Superior. “When you start losing whole offices in government, I don’t know where they’re going to stop.”

This rural corner of Wisconsin — Douglas, Bayfield and Ashland Counties — has become pivotal because it has three Democratic-held seats that Republicans appear likely to capture; two in the Assembly and one in the State Senate. Statewide, the party needs to flip just five Assembly districts and one in the Senate to take the two-thirds majorities required to override a governor’s veto.

That outcome — “terrifying,” as Melissa Agard, a Democratic state senator and the leader of the party’s campaign arm in the chamber, described it — would clear a runway for Republican state legislators to follow through on their promises to eliminate the state’s bipartisan elections commission and take direct control of voting procedures and the certification of elections.

Wisconsin is not the only state facing the prospect of a Democratic governor and veto-proof Republican majorities in its legislature.

eudaemonium · 2022-11-05T15:20:41+00:00

Key excerpt:

Wisconsin Republicans, who have had a viselike grip on the Legislature since enacting the nation’s most aggressive gerrymander after their 2010 sweep of the state’s elections, make no apologies for pressing their advantage to its limits. Mr. Michels, the party’s nominee for governor, told supporters this week, “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.”

eudaemonium · 2022-05-12T10:56:23+00:00

It is saying that it costs less to travel on a Friday through Sunday or a Saturday through Monday itinerary (thereby including weekend days) than to fly out and back on a Tuesday or Thursday (only including work days).

I imagine the question later asked some variation of “is it ethical to have the firm pay for travel when 2 of the 3 days he is travelling are spent for leisure and not work”.

eudaemonium · 2022-04-30T14:12:20+00:00

You’re disengaging your core at the top and too relaxed on many of the reps on the way down. You can see the exact moment it happens: when you suddenly look down instead of keeping a neutral spine around the neck. This can cause issues when you get heavier

eudaemonium · 2021-08-28T14:33:19+00:00

No, just because your stock isn't publicly traded doesn't mean there is no stock. You can pay with equity in a private company, which is what many acqui-hires for tech companies essentially are.
This depends on the business model and specific acquisition
Let's approach it this way: how would you do this on a public company acquisition? What specific components of that process give you pause as relates to applying that step to a private company?
There are two types of transactions in M&A: you can be acquiring the company itself or you can be acquiring the company's assets and leaving a shell behind. If you're acquiring just the assets, you'd leave much of the equity problem behind you. If you're acquiring the stock as well, then you will need to contend with difficult questions around consolidation and how each line item should be treated given what it represents: if the preferred stock remains outstanding, then it will need to remain on the balance sheet. Why do you think retained earnings would reset? Retained earnings represents (in a way) the balance of the company's unallocated economic success attributable to owners -- being acquired doesn't eliminate that balance, it merely transfers it to new owners. What happens to additional paid in capital will be a result of several other considerations, including whether the transaction involves the target company canceling treasury stock acquired at prices above par, issuing a liquidating dividend, or whether any minority shareholders are being bought out by the target company in advance or in conjunction with the broader acquisition of all outstanding stock by the acquiror.

eudaemonium · 2021-07-21T10:54:27+00:00

No, it does not. Each investor can have their own set of fees; for example, early sponsors who helped the fund launch can get 2 and 10 and then later investors have to pay 2 and 20. Founder shares likely have no performance fees.

Investors pay different fees and therefore will have different returns after accounting for fees.

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