racemize

I haven't started reading them, but thought it would be useful in conjunction with annual reports in a specific industry. e.g., for expanding my circle of competence and not only reading information biased by the company(ies) I'm analyzing. Alternatively, just expanding understanding while I'm not analyzing individual companies that much.

Just stumbled on this: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/industry-primers-ready-to-go Looks like a ridiculous amount of information. Downloading now...

how does one short it anyway?

ouch. I also don't understand the industry's reliance on VaR for risk...

direct link (unless there is a reason not to post it?): http://www.mcmadvisors.com/downloads/i_cannot_leave_the_truth_unknown.pdf

+1, I think a lot of us aren't digging in the weeds as we've found a lot in the large caps. If I had more money to invest now, I'd put it into stocks I already own that are still cheap. While many of these are not easy to analyze in detail, the prices are so cheap that you can be extremely conservative on estimations and still get a large margin of safety (at least that's my view).

wow, many of his positions and mine are similar with similar proportions! I'm excited.

Hi all, if you are trying to pull warrant prices into google spreadsheets, this will work: =ImportData( "http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=JPM-WT&ql=1&f=l1") (for JPM). Haven't figured out how often it updates yet though. I presume on the order of 20 minutes. Edit: This appears to make it update fairly often: =ImportData( "http://download.finance.yahoo.com/d/quotes.csv?s=JPM-WT&ql=1&f=l1"&"&workaround="&INT(NOW()/TIME(0;2;0))&REPT(GoogleFinance("GOOG");0))

I guess they don't have a video of the pershing square contest this year--too bad, I enjoyed watching Ackman last year.

I just had a ValueCarl flashback----ahhhhhhhhhhh.

Edit: Nevermind, another version was up.

Yeah, I thought so too, that being sad, the var model hasn't made a ton of sense to me in general--it seems to only pay attention to recent trends rather than serious possible risk.

I'm still targeting 15% despite all of this--it is impressive though.

IRA has no tax, at least while in the account.

The people of the country should just pool their resources together and plunk down $42b to buy +50% of the company. Then they can install their own management and forgive mortgage debt in excess of $42b for an immediate gain. Socialist! (/s)

it's not like it is that expensive to buy a share of BAC now. =p.

My RothIRA (as of March 31st 2012) was up roughly 185x "since inception", which was in January 2003 (+18,473%). $10,818 is the start balance necessary for it to be "multi-million" on March 31 (however you probably had more than 2 million in mind). Of course, I'm not sure this qualifies under "investor" -- could just as easily file it under "speculator". Since I'm a little late to the board--was that essentially from the FFH LEAPS during the short attack? (+BAC wins this year?)

Marks interview on Bloomberg: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/92131957/ towards the end, he talks about his view on the current state--neither at the top or the bottom, moving forward with caution. Incidentally, has anyone looked into the Oaktree stock after IPO?

I agree, I would rate this site in my top 5 clicks in the morning to get the day started....one of which is the Nespresso. I can't say the same for FB. Have in mind that the demographics of this board probably is the most ill-suited as Facebook customers/users. Mostly introverts, high IQs and on top of that most people here are above 30 (thus in general don't use computers as an integral part of IRL communication but as complement/substitute) and the board is exclusively male. The most ardent Facebook users are the antithesis to those attributes, so your experience doesn't really matter to Facebook. That's also the reason why Google+ is failing so miserably. It's aimed at a group of people who just plain sucks at gossiping and small talk, which makes for the cyber version of a ghost town. agreed. I actually like Google+ and still don't use it much (maybe a post every few days).

I like this part: However, there was a Fed willing to act for that one--not clear if that is true with the EU.

hidden costs are so much higher than you think they will be before going in... Painful.

one thing I'll add, even when you buy a house you are unlikely to ever gain anything off the sale, unless you go back to renting. e.g., you are unlikely to ever own a cheaper home as you age, so that money is permanently gone, essentially. comparing it versus renting (as this thread is doing) does make sense though.

Hester, Your previous posts are very unconvincing in my eyes. Here is my response: What you did was choose the the poorest nations in the world, and/or states, who's poverty in all cases predated their religiosity, and then drew a conclusion that as a result of their religiosity they achieved their respective levels of prosperity. It is completely unfounded and demonstrates your lack of understanding of the positive impact of religion on society. The facts are that none of the states or countries you mentioned with the highest rate of religious citizens ever achieved a level of prosperity that was any higher than their current level (with the exception of Egypt in the days of the Pharao's). They have always been poverty stricken for a multitude of reasons, some of which can be easily explained and some of which are more complex. But to say that Alabama and Arkansas represent societies with a high penetration of religiion, and hence are representative of the results of religious penetration is insane. Here is how things work in the real world. Historically, societies that embraced religion, democracy, and free-market capitalism, began to prosper, through several cycles, prosperous societies and their offfshot generation became more and more intelligent incorporating science as a means to explain the granular workings of our physical reality. As more time passed capitalism (or money) and knowledge have become more important pillars of society than religion historically and that is where we are today. People are more interested in making money, and explaining everything, and less interested in compassion, temperance, and justice, this trend is obvious to anyone living in the western world today. Hence my comments relating to Virtue. The facts are that as societies experience more prosperity they become less religious, but there is absolutely no proof that being less religious leads to more prosperity. Societies that are most poverty stricken, naturally tend to clamor to anything they can which may provide them with hope, the fact that some asshole is able to manipulate millions under the guise of religion is sad, but is not indicative of the fallacies in religion, if anything it is indicative of the lack of compassion in the rest of the world, whos inhabitants should treat each other as equal humans and get involved more rapidly in such situation, but again I am simplifying these cases (and I have some experience as my Father spent alot of time in Africa). Certain societies have ingrained in them traits which lead to them constantly being under dictatorship... Bottom line, the modern intelligentsia will have you believe that science, with its clear and concise logic, the best foundation for societal advancement, and that embracing science is the best path towards prosperity. The problem is that not all human beings have the propensity or natural intelligence to understand that science and logic are only one component of being a virtuous human being (IE: reading spinoza on the side). And when you take a society as a whole and inject only science you are creating a society that lacks certain of the attributes which makeup what most would view as a virtuous human being today.. In closing let's take at look at your 5 least religious countries in closer detail so I can prove that religiosity has nothing to do with their standing as a prosperous society: 5. Czech Republic - 4. Norway 3. Denmark 2. Sweden 1. Estonia When I look at these Countries, I see absolutely nothing special, with the exception that the first 4 were some of the easiest Countries for the Nazi's to occupy with almost no resistance (that is another thing too, atheist societies tend to have less heart in battle, because war is so illogical isnt it?). I see absolutely nothing special economically with Estonia for example (your first place winner) having less GDP per capita than Greece... and Norway as you know does not belong in any comparison due to their hydrocarbon endowment. Oh yeah I found another common denominator, all 5 of your "Intelligent/non-religous" countries rank in the top 20% of countries in terms of suicide rates. On average 20% of males commit suicide in those nations (21% in Estonia!). So it doesn't look like all this logic and science is contributing to them being happy, if anything it almost seems like they are desperately trying to test their own theories by killing themselves prematurely :o Don't understimate the power of religion, which on the whole is a very positive power on humanity and I say that with regards to almost all religions out there from Budhism to Islam. Religion is very important for humans, whether they have a high level of intelligence or not. And if you are someone who does not require that conditioning as a youth and as you mature, that is totally fine but don't extrapolate that the athiest way would have produced the same results, as I have seen no indications of such. The biggest issue I see is that ironically, and as proven by this thread, it is the atheist who spend more time proselytizing nowadays, and that is something which will surely guarantee wider adoption over time. This will contribute towards the trend I mentioned in my opening post on this thread, a lost of virtue over the ensuing generations. Weak.

weak.

Did you add in the noncontrolling interests? Or just the NAV per BRK shareholders? I may have messed it up, I did it really fast at the time. I think I included noncontrolling interests.