racemize

I've been considering construction/construction products (e.g., carpeting). However, I think there has been a run-up recently, so there may not be deals right now. I still need to look into it.

this may be old news to you guys, but there is a conference call scheduled: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Fairfax-Announces-Conference-iw-435002284.html?x=0

I think the key issue is whether they would/could get a good allocator--tech companies typically do not do their own allocations very well. Were I a shareholder, I'd rather they just buy back shares or pay a dividend so I could allocate rather than hope they find a competent allocator themselves.

I'd be curious as to how he got his earnings power estimates for AIG (I believe he was estimating at 6 dollars a share?). When I went over the filings, I didn't get that high of a number. However, we haven't been able to get him in our 401k, so I'm not currently a shareholder...

This link got posted in reddit and I thought it was pretty good. Then it turned out it was Plan Maestro! I figured I'd post it for him. http://variantperceptions.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/charting-banking-xxiv-pre-tax-pre-provision-earnings/

It may be somewhat excessive, but between my wife and I, we have 12 devices.

I guess there isn't a full interview video yet?

do we know the size of his RIM position relative to the portfolio/FFH? How big a bet is this?

I'm pretty stunned by this--it makes me somewhat nervous as a FFH shareholder, but I can also see it working out. I'm hoping for the best!

West, speaking from my own experience, it took me quite a while to set up a spreadsheet (using google docs) to manage my investments and calculate various metrics (e.g., TWRR, IRR) with live updates. When I started, it wasn't too clear how to do all this and my investment broker is terrible about performance (Fidelity), although they claim to add it soon (I bet it is only TWRR though). Potentially, this might be of value; however, I probably also wouldn't have paid very much money for the service, so perhaps that isn't too useful to you.

I think apple does this with snippets or some name like that--it never interested me though.

Adding on to what Cardboard said, with a more "normal" economic environment and ROA/ROE, earnings power should be much higher than the .97 cents. That said, it will probably take a while for all of that to come through.

Just finished reading: [amazonsearch]The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing: Morningstar's Guide to Building Wealth and Winning in the Market[/amazonsearch] Although it has a terrible title, it is probably one of the best introductions to value investing that I have read. It starts out covering all of the basic topics: research, moats, margin of safety, long term holding, selling. It also gives several mistakes to avoid in investing. After going through that, it goes through basic accounting and financial statements with several examples. It also points out several accounting tactics to look out for. It wraps up these sections with valuation and intrinsic value, with examples. Finally, it covers several industries with information on what to look out for. Overall, I would recommend this book first (or close to it) for people getting into investing.

I actually know that author professionally! Crazy. Now I can talk value with him when I see him.

Tuesday was ex, Thursday was report.

Actually, that isn't true, LifeSize (now owned by Logitech) does the same thing for cheaper than (or at least as cheap as) Polycom.

I think there is a link problem.

This seems like a fair number of shares--does the board as a whole have enough shares to act as a significant group?

Thanks for posting this--it is very interesting. Out of curiosity, how much of your portfolio did you commit to the 13 net nets? Are you doing buy and hold for good companies for the remainder?

Hi all, I've read quite a bit about the various bubbles and crashes in the stock market throughout US history. Many of them seem readily identifiable during/prior to the time that they occurred (e.g., various times when stock become extremely overvalued, such as tech bubble, 1929, electronics boom, etc.). However, I'm curious as to how identifiable the current crisis was--was the board/members of the board aware of what was happening? Additionally, how identifiable was it for individual companies, such as AIG? In that case, my understanding is that many of the CDS contracts were written under a single rogue group, which seems fairly hard to spot.

I think it's more like one side wants to increase revenue and make large cuts and the other side refuses to any increases in revenue whatsoever (didn't all the candidates refuse 10:1 in the debate?).

I agree! The headlines are getting way to cheery. I'm saving up cash now.

Perhaps this was naive of me, but I've been comparing it to the S&P TR without adjustment. I could do what you are suggesting by creating another IRR with a TR index value, but then I would be discounting any timing effects that result from skill, e.g., me choosing to invest at (hopefully) the right time. Is this not appropriate? Edit: Went and looked at mutual funds in my brokerage accounts, and they are using the TR as the benchmark, so it appears that they are not adjusting either.

Thanks--when you did do it, what structure did you use? Could you expound on why it was unpleasant?

Perhaps because there is more demand for investments (e.g., more money from 401k plans or retirement accounts)? It seems to me that we are still regressing in terms of P/Es, but maybe we've reached the end of that for now.