 this update. In a nutshell, we push orders through the IEX exchange, when possible.
For us as value investors, all of these events are short term in nature and not “trades” we would ever participate in. Additionally, it is really a hindsight event that might have never come, which would have been the only reason to invest in it in the first place. As we wrote about Bitcoin a few weeks back, we have no idea what a “fair value” for Bitcoin is, and we do not believe it to be more than a price speculative line of code. However, with GameStop, we can actually look at what we believe it may be worth. GameStop is a stock; therefore, you are buying a share of that company. We look at GameStop’s business and do believe it’s dying. Almost half of their revenues come from game sales, which could completely evaporate in time as Microsoft, Sony and even Apple own their own game stores that have entirely shifted to a digital monopoly. The other bulk is in hardware sales, which will be increasingly difficult to differentiate yourself from the likes of Best Buy, Amazon or even Wal-Mart. That leaves less than 10% of their revenues, which are in collectibles. It seems the only area in which they may grow, but it seems difficult to beat eBay, who has already dominated this niche online. If GameStop bolsters their e-Commerce business, all the investment made in this we see as just delaying the inevitable. They had a value proposition to trade in your old games. However, that advantage is quickly disappearing, if not already gone. Therefore, it was a business we would have never wanted to own.
We wish the company the best. But when you see a struggling company that was trading at nearly a $30 billion total value with half the revenues it had five years ago when it was valued at 1/10th the amount, you quickly see the market inefficiencies and investors paying zero attention to the price being paid. This was simply an exploitation of an over-shorted company, which lead to a short squeeze in a magnitude not seen since 2008 with Volkswagen. We do worry for those not understanding this and trying to jump on a band wagon that will eventually run out of gas. But, as we can only do, we highly advise clients to avoid and not participate in the “trade” and simply watch the events for entertainment. We love to see so much interest drummed up around invest, however we hope it teaches investors that valuations eventually matter. We continue to be astounded by market events that witness investors not paying attention to what value is being paid. UPDATE: The price of GameStop was just $17.25 on January 4th, hit a high of over $400 last week, and closed at $90.00 per share in today’s trading. This has occurred during a period of less than one month. The “bubble” may have burst already.
If you were to go buy a private business, we assume you’d look at the financials and attempt to make a reasonable offer. Within the public markets, we continue to see examples of businesses that trade at values that may never make sense or at least take decades of superb execution to justify. At F.I.G., we utilize value-based investment principles focusing on what we believe to be undervalued securities to purchase for client accounts. We are not gamblers or price speculators. We are investors, and we will continue being so into the foreseeable future. We believe it is the best strategy for the long-term during most environments that will assist in preserving clients’ wealth over the decades ahead. Our clients rely on us to achieving their financial goals and plans. Value investing is not a strategy to mint new multi-millionaires overnight, but rather helping clients stick to their financial plan and achieve goals outlined far into the future. We are saddened by investors’ constantly expecting to “get rich” overnight, when investing is truly a lifelong planning process. We do optimistically hope this event brings more interest in younger crowds towards long-term investing and maybe create a few value investors from it.
As always, please don’t hesitate to call if you have any questions or we can be of further service in any way. We appreciate the privilege to be of service and look forward to working with you in the years to come.
Your TEAM at F.I.G Financial Advisory Services, Inc.Josh Robles was going to have to wait another year for his shot at a conference championship. With less than a minute left in his finals match Saturday at the Cook Inlet Conference tournament, the Eagle River 113-pounder trailed East’s Octavius McCleskey by eight points and was running out of gas.
“I was tired, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do it,’” he said.
But Robles wasn’t about to quit, either, and when McCleskey made a small mistake, Robles pounced.
“I just saw an opportunity and I took it,” he said.
Robles used an uncommon pinning combination, turning McLeskey onto his back while bridging over the top of the East wrestler and pressing down with his back — Robles described it as “kind of like a head-and-arm but from the floor” — to pin the stunned Thunderbirds freshman with just 36 seconds left in the match.
Robles improved to 29-5 on the season, and said he learned a valuable lesson about conditioning in the process.
“I was getting tired, if I had more endurance I could keep on going,” he said.
Eagle River coach Chris Ruggles said he “was jacked” to see Robles pull off the miraculous finish.
“He knew he had to do something big and he did,” Ruggles said.
The win gave Robles the lone win among eight Chugiak-Eagle River wrestlers in the finals and helped the Wolves to their second straight second-place CIC tournament finish.
“It’s taken a lot of time, but success breeds success,” said the Wolves’ fifth-year head coach.
South won the overall title in runaway fashion, racking up 508.5 team points to more than double the Wolves’ output. The Wolverines won nine of 15 weight classes and qualified 23 wrestlers to state. West finished third, followed by Bartlett, Service, East, Dimond and Chugiak.
Ruggles’s team qualified 15 wrestlers to state, one fewer than last year, when the Wolves finished a program-best ninth place.
“That’d be awesome if we could break that, that’s our goal every year to do better than the year before,” Ruggles said.
Ethan Robles (98), Collin Blank (106), Austin Kraft (120) and Grant Burningham (145) also reached the finals for Eagle River, but none could join Josh Robles atop the podium, and all fell to South wrestlers: Ethan Robles lost by technical fall to Adam Concepcion, Blank dropped a major decision to Aedan Concepcion, Kraft lost a major decision to Niko Mayo and Burningham fell 8-4 to Spencer Martin.
Andrew Hamilton placed third at 160 pounds for the Wolves, who also got a fourth-place finish from Caleb Robles at 132.
Chugiak will send six wrestlers to state, half what they sent in 2016. Chugiak had three wrestlers in Saturday’s finals, with Riley Demboski (132), Cameron Peck (138) and Daniel Niebles losing to keep the Mustangs without an individual champ. Demboski and Peck suffered back-to-back pins to — you guessed it, South wrestlers — as Riley Harris got the better of Demboski at the 4:33 mark and Micah Ee stuck Peck in just 50 seconds. Niebles also saw his match end early, with Service’s Tyler Farless posting a technical fall early in the third period. Freshman Grant Jones finished fourth at 145 pounds in his CIC tournament debut.
Farless was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Wrestler, while Service coach Daniel Murakami was named Coach of the Year.
Eagle River also had four participants in the girls’ tournament, which was held concurrently with the boys tourney. Caitlyn Blank (106), Caitlin Andrews (120) and Braydn Boswell (132) finished third for the Wolves, while Kyla Trout was fourth at 120.
Wrestlers will get a crack at the rest of Alaska’s Division I and Girls division programs next weekend at the Alaska Airlines Center, where the ASAA/First National Bank Alaska DI/DII/Girls Wrestling State Championships will be held Friday and Saturday, Dec. 15-16.
After winning his first career conference championship, at least one wrestler is already raring to go.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated Stafford’s placing.It's been 2.5 years since I got my first android phone, and NO ONE has properly addressed this problem.

(at least to the best of my knowledge - please correct my if I'm wrong)

Ever since I got an HTC Desire in early 2010, I've noticed that MMS photos are broken. Whenever someone with an iPhone sends me a photo with text attached, Android treats it like a slideshow/video, and it looks like this:

http://i.imgur.com/rcLPD.png 

If they just send the photo (no text), then the photo displays fine. But when text is attached it's a 30-odd second video; 25s of