I am going to be trying something new in today’s virtual age of online meetings. It might work, it might be a bust, who knows. But I’ll try.
Late Night Finance with Sacha
Date: Friday, May 1, 2020
Time: 9:00pm, Pacific Time
Duration: Projected 1 hour, but if it leads to something interesting, longer.
Where: Zoom
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: What are you doing?
A: This will be a Q&A session. Ask me about any company on the TSX/Nasdaq/NYSE and I will dissect it. Other questions about an economic/financial nature are accepted as well. I’ll share screens and go through financial statements and annotate (verbally or otherwise). This can be used as a sleeping aid for you.
Q: Why are you doing this?
A: Experimentation in video broadcasting. Who knows, I might learn something from you as well.
Q: Why so freaking late? I live in the eastern time zone.
A: It is late night finance, is it not?
Q: How do I register?
A: Send sacha@divestor.com an email. Subject line “Late Night Finance May 1”, and in the message body tell me what city and province/state you’re from (or if you’re international, city and country). I’ll reply later with the zoom channel and passcode to get in.
Q: Are you trying to spam me, try to sell me garbage, etc. if I register?
A: I can hardly manage a mailing list without breaking my own website, what makes you think I will spam you? No, if you register for this, I will not harvest your email or send you any solicitations. Also I am not using this to pump and dump any securities to you, although I will certainly offer opinions on what I see.
Q: If I register and don’t show up, will you be mad at me?
A: No.
Q: Will you (Sacha) be on video (i.e. this isn’t just an audio-only stream)?
A: Yes. You’ll get to see me.
Q: Will I need to be on video?
A: I’d prefer it, and you are more than welcome to be in your pajamas. No judgements!
Q: Can I be a silent participant?
A: Yes, although there isn’t much of a Q&A without at least one of you asking questions! I’ll start off with a small commentary and we can head on from there.
Q: Is there an archive of the video I can watch later if I can’t make it?
A: No.
Q: Is there a limit to the people that can participate?
A: Given the last-minute nature of this posting, I’d be surprised if there will be ANYBODY showing up, but until I get a better idea of how to manage these conferences, I’ll figure this one out if the situation occurs. This also includes me learning aspects of video meeting moderation.
Q: If nobody shows up, what then?
A: To be perfectly frank, I’m expecting this particular outcome. I’ll host another meeting with more notice.
Q: Will there be something in the future?
A: Yes, I’ll give a little more notice.
Thank you everybody that participated. Will – your email came 6 minutes after 9pm, so couldn’t get to you to send an invitation. 9 people showed up for this, far exceeding what I was expecting. Very dedicated!
Discussion topics:
* Monetary policy and fiscal policy effects (US and Canada) on inflation and economy
* REITs, and real estate valuation (commercial, residential, industrial)
* (top-level, not detailed) ELF, MRC/MRT.UN, DRM
* ATP residual value
* Detailed dissection of Westaim (TSXV: WED)
Insights from the presentation end:
* Man, my throat gets sore after talking awhile! I think this is the most I’ve talked at a go.. ever.
* An hour on this goes really, REALLY quickly.
* I found Zoom to be cumbersome when trying to share different windows at once (e.g. a browser window that opens up a PDF document, I’d have to click a bunch of buttons.
* I’ll work on getting the right setup with my two screens and camera.
* Next time it is going to be more structured, and centered around a single company.
* Still deciding how to best consider recordings, but at this point I’m not going to do them until I’ve ironed out a process for hosting these videos. It’s all a learning process for me and once I’ve optimized things I’ll work out how best to present this for general off-line consumption.
I’m also interested in hearing your comments as well. Thanks.
Great discussion, Sacha! I enjoyed it. Look forward to the next..
Dammit I need to read this blog more frequently.. or just sign up for updates! I was getting paid to stay up last night and could have easily participated and would have enjoyed your thoughts on many companies. Always very well researched and very analytical. Thanks for all your posts keep up good work Next time more noticed would have been great!
Thanks Derek
Thanks for doing it Sacha! For Zoom you should be able to just share one screen and then move the things you want in an out of that monitor. Then you can keep the video windows in the other monitor. I find that works well when I am presenting in Zoom.
Also don’t worry about recording it and as someone said there are the privacy concerns.
Could you potentially start a little earlier for the benefit of those in the east?
You should consider taking a list of question ahead of time and picking from them and then maybe do one stock analysis.
Past my bedtime. Or I’ll be too “lubricated” to be coherent so I gracefully decline. And yes I am pissed that there will no video upload or transcript. Yes interested in no so late future meetings.
Please do this: “Is there an archive of the video I can watch later if I can’t make it?”
I need to get comfortable with the format and iron out issues with doing this before I’ll victimize myself and others with a recording. So far, 8 of you have nothing else better to do Friday evening! I’m impressed!
Sacha,
I just dropped you an email
Just an audio recording would be nice….I don’t think your guest would want their faces all over the internet? A lot of privacy issues related to this I am guessing….but hats off to you Sacha in making this effort. Probably too much work to make a written transcript. Keep us posted. Thanks.
…
Hey Sacha….would love to hear about the discussion on MRC/MRT.UN. Ive been in/out of MRT.UN over the years, sitting on a very small amount now, was thinking of averaging down after the 50% div cut. I did pick up a little MRT.DB, MR.DB.A, MR.DB.B near there lows.
Me too. Would really appreciate it! Thanks
This is what I recall mentioning:
* MRT’s concession with Obsidian/Penn West being a pretty large chunk of change
* MRT’s lease collection rates, the collection rates among residential, commercial, office, etc., and how residential seems to be mostly unaffected (now)
* Did briefly mention that the YTM of MRT’s debentures are in low double digits and are a probable maturity at par
But that was about it. It was a very top-level discussion, no hard details. By this point I discovered that an hour of time goes really quickly and I could have been on the camera until 2am deep-diving. (Indeed, one of you from the central time zone did!! Amazing! You know who you are!)
Thank you. Will really try to join the next one (missed out on real estate/REITs, ATP, and Westaim convo)! If no video/audio, some sort of transcript or summery would be great too – just a thought. Thanks as always.
Thanks again.