Saul, I salute you, my man

Investment Analysis Clubs Saul’s Investing Discussions
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I agree 100% with your assessment of BOFI, that this isn’t a company anyone should feel comfortable excusing any longer.

The two “pieces” by this writer, Aurelius, on SA should be read by all to get the real slant on fraud - not necessarily perpetrated in the worst sense by BOFI - committed by one of their favorite borrowers, and definitely read what that “favored” borrower’s number one client has done in the past, recent and in the Housing Bubble days.

These are not unfounded accusations Aurelius is casting about. This is fine financial reporting and forensic accounting this guy is doing with just news links, 10Qs, SEC filings and the like.

Re-read tonight’s report. BOFI’s biggest borrower has in turn been lending money to a convicted felon, a man who served two years prison time for five felony charges related to the Housing Bubble scams of old. And after the SEC started investigating them and this guy . . . they continued making loans to this scam artist! And in this same article, this same man, who changed his name to try and hide his real identity, was just successfully charged with forgery…

This kind of inexcusable behavior was well known by BOFI’s biggest borrower. And with BOFI’s “warehousing” these big money-making loans, it makes them seem somewhat “complicit” that Center Street was doing some shady deals with this Ponzi Scheme artist.

Who here thinks Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger would advise you to “hold” here?

Everyone who got out of BOFI or who plans to sell it tomorrow should thank this Aurelius guy via email, and then you should thank Saul for having the stones to be the first person to post it here.

Yes, this dirty laundry, once exposed to sell side analysts who did not do the heavy lifting Aurelius has done, will surely end in downgrades in the coming future. At least that’s my bet.

I would not want to be the CEO of BOFI on the next conference call.

This Aurelius guy has a bright career with the SEC or any hedge fund which does deep dd and shorts companies which are presenting one thing to investors while hiding the real story through dark channels.

Good work on bringing this to your board to share, Saul.

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Thanks RockOYates! I appreciate the support. It’s nice that someone understands what’s going on.
Saul

You should repost that on the BOFI board too. That has the most people with their heads in the sand.

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By the way, if any of you skeptics think that RockOYates is just some short-seller who is newly signed on to diss your wonderful BOFI, let me point out those symbols by his name, from right to left:

Old School Fool
Top Favorite Fool
Big Gold Star, 5000 posts

Saul

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Saul,

I have been down this road. Some people, like myself, need a share of a disaster framed and hung on the wall before they learn.

Just keep telling us what you are thinking.

So far I am drawing a picture of a man who has made a great deal of money investing. (Not trading) in the U.S. Equities market. This picture is of a man with above average intelligence, but not terribly intelligent, one who makes mistakes, and good calls, one who has doubts and fears, and greed.

This is pretty common for the people on this site. In fact if there were a bell curve, this man may be a little to the left of it. So, why is he retired and others are not? We know the method, but methods never make one wealthy, it is actually mathematically impossible. Rather it is the implementation of a good method. This implementation is the difficult part, and the part I am filling in as I watch.

So,Saul, don’t try to save the world, just state the truth, and let the emotions show, they reveal the human in you and gives the rest of us the confidence to be OK with being wrong.

By the way, I left the market save my AT&T which I hold in my 401k, and VFF, (If I sold it I could top off my diesel truck with fuel) and ERF, which is a dividend payer and a currency anchor,(currently getting clobbered by the high dollar and low oil) and AMBA, the only Rule Breaker I held after I cleaned out my port due to the Mungofitch rule.

Keep it up, I am even softening up to buying retailers and telecom equipment manufactures. Although considering how AT&T is run, it might be considered a deep value play.

Cheers
Qazulight

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What Q just said is spot on! I’ll rec it later as I am out of recs for today.

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It’s like this, Saul. I’m a T/A advocate. Not an F/A guy.

But I realize the importance of continued dd, even into rumor, when you’re dealing with any company in which you invest.

For instance, who among America’s franchise owners of a Subway shop one-year ago would have ever dreamed their feted and well-loved spokesperson, Jared, would receive a 15-year, 8-month prison sentence on 19 Nov 15 for pedophilia and pederasty?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/19/us-indiana-fogle-i…

Do you remember when the story began to leak? Subway customers criticized Subway for “abandoning” Jared.

http://www.businessinsider.com/customers-blast-subway-for-cu…

At that point in time, he wasn’t charged with anything . . . yet. Although, when the FBI raids your home, that’s never a good sign “everything is going to be alright.”

Had Subway been traded on an exchange, I think that day, the stock would have taken a major hit and would have continued to crater as each new development took place.

Whether Subway brass knew about Jared’s sick predilection, who knows? You work off what you read.

These things happen.

You can’t know everything going on behind the scenes. You have to work (as an F/A type) off what you trust is truthful and forthcoming financial information - and news - which you guys do in spades over here.

I have differences of opinion with most of you about “entry” positions on a load of these stocks, as I also worry about Macro-Economic portends and what I see on my charts.

But I steer clear of disrupting this board where many of these “picks” are out-performing where I thought they would be today.

I trade. I only “invest” free shares made by gains off successful trades. And if they are dividend payers, I let those “free” shares compound.

I’m not going over to the BOFI board as I’ve never posted there. I would be disruptive, I think.

But those posters over there who are still “true believers” would do well to read directly the things you just enumerated here moments ago, and then re-read both well-documented pieces by this SA writer, Aurelius. Then they should ask themselves if they still feel comfortable about this company’s prospects when so much of the hyper-growth comes from a “middle man” company that has thrown caution to the wind?

You got the right defensive look for something like this company, Saul. You’ve changed your optimism to pessimism. That takes stones.

You don’t marry any company facing these mounting problems. You move on, find something better.

You’re not to be faulted. You ran a very good screen to find this company earlier on and invest in it while the going was still good.

You got cold feet on this a few weeks ago. You bought back in, a much tinier position (or maybe not, I don’t keep up with this board like most people here.) And here you are tonight, you’ve taken bits and pieces (your enumeration a few posts ago) and come up with a new picture that doesn’t jibe with your original F/A or your recent “wait and see” cautious optimism/pessimism. (Ha, I don’t what to call your selling and then wait and see. But you get my drift, you still continued to follow this story. Good on you.)

You’ve done the right thing with your warnings.

Again, I believe sell side analysts will be caught flat footed here. And remember, some of these guys follow this company and maybe a few more, far fewer than you and this board try and follow day to day. You’ve struck before the downgrades. These sell side analysts will not be reacting as quickly as you tonight, nor will they give your readers of this board this loud warning you’ve given this evening.

I say good work on your behalf. I mean that.

I wish I had your smarts back when I lost over 90% on satellite radio stocks that I “knew better than the analysts.” I knew the sat radio stories backward and forward, and discussed each little milestone with investors on the old Yahoo boards for XMSR and SIRI. I fell in love with the sat radio stories. And there wasn’t a single investor over there warning us about the debt for equity swap, the ex-CEO’s past (of Sirius), faulty satellite reception upon launch, etc. Had someone done that, we would have shouted them down.

Here, you’ve done a service sharing your mind, the mind of a seasoned investor whom from the get go has explained he doesn’t “marry” these stocks. You sell when the good story changes. You even lighten up when one of your positions becomes too big in your port.

You share your savvy, your convictions, and doubts, for free.

I don’t know what more anyone could ask for, where you share your picks and F/A.

You’ve done right in my mind.

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BOFI’s biggest borrower has in turn been lending money to a convicted felon

BOFI should e interested in whether the loan will be paid back, not the past legal problems further down the lending tree.The one owing the money to BOFI is not the ex felon.
There are lots of reasons to not be in BOFI but IMO this isn’t one of them.

Felons can even get re elected in Washington DC (Marion Barry)

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Hello,

BOFI’s biggest borrower has in turn been lending money to a convicted felon

Out of respect to Saul I am not going to refute the article that you referred to. I am curious as to your source for the statement relative to BOFI’s largest borrower. Center Street may, in fact, be their largest borrower,or not. However, neither you nor Aurelius, can know that. I have read and re-read the Aurelius hit piece and can find nowhere there that BOFI’s largest borrower is identified. Likewise, in BOFI’s 10-Q recently filed with the SEC there is no "biggest borrower’ identified. The simple act of filing a financing statement does indicate the presence of a borrower-lender relationship. How do you know the extent of that relationship or how do you accurately compare the size of that relationship to their other lending relationships?

Hint-bank examiners know, but they are prohibited by law from disclosing that kind of information about specific individual bank customer relationships. That is why you see loan categories reported and not individual loans.

Best regards,

Mike (still long BOFI)

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