mikazo

We ditched cable for netflix almost a year ago and I don't miss it. Rogers cable is pretty expensive. My wife has been talking about wanting it back though lately...

There is actually quite a bit of thought and math that should go into relational database design. The properties of the tables that you create directly affect computation and storage resources for the database. An inefficient table design can lead to much slower querying time later on, as the database grows. This likely isn't a problem for small databases, but it's something to take into consideration. When designing tables, you should aim to have the tables satisfy the properties of 3rd normal form, at least. See the Wikipedia page on database normalization for details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization When I took a course on database design, I remember the professor saying that one easy indicator that there is a problem with your table design is if a lot of information is repeated. If every row in your table contains the same company name/stock ticker pair, for example, it would be more space efficient to have a separate table mapping company names to stock tickers, and your original table could just reference a specific row in that new table, instead of storing Microsoft/MSFT, Microsoft/MSFT, Microsoft/MSFT over and over in every row of the original table. This would result in a more space-efficient method of storing information. For a quick tutorial, see this page: http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/sql/Relational_Database_Design.html

Thank you!

I have no interest in the BAC Warrants thread, but it still "clogs up" the recent posts list for me. It's tough to filter that list per user (unless there were a feature like that where you could "ignore" certain threads in the recent posts list). I'm happy just using the email notification feature for threads and every once in a while I'll go trolling for something new to follow.

I agree with Starbucks not being my favourite normal roast coffee. For that, I go to whatever particular local coffee shop that makes coffee best. When I go to Starbucks, it's for the specialty coffees and lattes because they're better than anywhere else. Plus if you even hint that it tastes funny or something, they just take the blame right away and insist on making you a new one, free of charge.

The most famous (not biggest) Ponzi scheme in Eve online is by "Curin Trading". The person running the scheme actually posted a full confession and explanation how he did it afterwards which is an amazing read: http://web.archive.org/web/20091026234156/http://geocities.com/currintrading/ epilogue: http://web.archive.org/web/20091021193732/http://geocities.com/currintrading/bank.html Very interesting, thanks for this!

This reminds me of an interesting blog that I read a while ago about an economist that was allowed access to economic game data at Valve: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/economics/

True, but I always wondered why you can't just sell cash-covered puts. I would love to do that, but apparently it's not allowed. Is it a technical limitation to simply make brokers disallow an order if the cash isn't there, and freeze the cash if it is? I would think they could just "virtually" subtract from your buying power until the option expires or is bought back. Edit: I realize selling puts in a registered account is against CRA law, but it would be nice if that changed.

I had the exact same thinking recently and started learning about REITs. I found the following two articles to be pretty useful: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/04/112204.asp http://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/013103.asp From what I understand, Adjusted Funds From Operations (AFFO) is the equivalent of free cash flow. I've been digging through the annual reports of a few Canadian REITs looking for AFFO numbers and various other tidbits. I've come up with a spreadsheet that I might share later on. The two REITs that I've been most interested in are First Capital Realty (FCR.TO) and Dundee REIT (D.UN). I might start Investment Idea topics for those if I become interested enough.

Very nice! I've used Python/SQLAlchemy/Bottle before as well, and the type of things you can do with it are amazing! I'd love to see work on this continue!

How would you vote for new ideas while maintaining vote popularity for your old ideas so that they have time to play out and realize value/growth? I wouldn't want to have to vote for the same 5 time after time, just because the market hasn't recognized their value yet. Awesome idea though, I love this whole concept.

+1 as well, keep the discussion going!

[amazonsearch]Waltzing With Bears - Managing Risk on Software Projects[/amazonsearch] While I think this book is excellent in its stated goal of managing risk on software projects, I found it invaluable as a lesson on managing risk in general, which can be easily applied to investing. Consider the following paraphrased anecdote with which the book opens: A man running a passenger service on his old boat takes on passengers for a trip across the sea. Just before departing, he realizes that he did not inspect the integrity of his boat that morning. Thinking back to the many safe voyages that the boat has made in the past, the man convinces himself to believe that this trip will not be any different and the passengers will arrive safely at their destination. One of two possible outcomes can occur. The old boat could have been in bad shape and that trip was to be its last. The boat sinks and everyone in it drowns. Did the man have a right to believe that his boat would make the trip safely? Of course not! We can easily say that he is responsible for the deaths of all the passengers. Consider the other case where the boat survives the trip despite its bad shape. Is the man any less guilty? Even if the boat did not sink and the passengers did not drown, the man still did not inspect his ship. He just didn't get caught this time. Only if the man did due diligence and inspected the ship before departing could he then rightly believe that his ship was sound. This anecdote comes from William Clifford's "The Ethics of Belief" and is used in "Waltzing With Bears" as a precursor to the fact that risk management is essential in software projects. Conveniently, this philosophy can also apply to investing. The book lays out a risk management framework in which participants in a project constantly enumerate possible undesirable outcomes, their probability of occurring, and what can be done to mitigate those risks. It is an interesting approach that I plan on applying both in my career as a software developer and in my hobby as a value investor. I'd recommend this book to anyone on this forum wishing to better document their risk management efforts or to begin risk management in the first place.

http://www.news1130.com/2013/07/15/loblaw-to-buy-shoppers-drug-mart-for-12-4-billion/?cid=dlvr.it

The Austrian School of economic thought claims that all valuation is subjective (i.e. there is no "one true value" for any good). See this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value "The subjective theory of value supports the inference that all voluntary trade is mutually beneficial. An individual purchases a thing because he values it more than he values what he offers in trade; otherwise he wouldn't make the trade, but would keep the thing he values more highly. Likewise, the seller agrees to trade only if he values his good less than the price or good he receives. In a free market, both parties therefore enter the exchange in the belief that they will both receive more value than they give up." Therefore, intrinsic value is subjective and changes per individual...?

Exactly. Plus every year there is some probability the plant will blow up. Maybe a 1% chance that it blows up in year 10. So if you could restart at the initial point in time 100 times one of those time-lines the IV would be zero in year 10 and 99 time-lines it would not. Saying there is one IV is equivalent to saying your whole life is predestined and that your decisions just don't matter because they are pre-determined. I have used quantum mechanics in my career and my belief is everything is probabilistic. Agreed. :)

I think a more accurate description of a single intrinsic value would be the following: There is only one intrinsic value for a single point in time. Think of the following example: You build a factory and it becomes more and more efficient each year, thus its intrinsic value is growing each year. After 100 years, there is an accident at the factory and it explodes into smithereens, rendering it completely and utterly useless. At time = 100 years, its intrinsic value is zero. Does that mean it wasn't worth building in the first place? Or do you do a discounted cash flow analysis? Do you include year 100, where cash flow is zero? Or do you ignore year 100 and do your analysis up to year 99? Whether you include year 100 or not, you get a different intrinsic value. So it all depends on your end point in time, even if you have perfect knowledge of interest rates and cash flows. You get a different answer, depending on if you sell the business at year 99 for lots of money and thus realizing your return on investment, or you sell at year 100 for 100% loss.

All my holdings are tech and most of my watchlist is tech. I'm sticking with what I know :P

I got a Q10 and I'm really enjoying it so far.

That's one legitimate reason to require dividends, to lower cost basis and eliminate market risk. Another reason could be to maintain a stable income over time. Personally, I don't give much weighting to dividends one way or the other, unless the payout ratio is super high (in which case I'd have concerns). The type of risk I'm more concerned with is business risk and capital allocation (or mis-allocation).

This is assuming that you're investing for income in the first place (which is a legitimate goal). But, Buffett teaches that he'd rather own companies that make more tax-efficient use of their free cash flow (i.e. not pay it out as dividends). In this case, total return from buy and hold becomes completely about capital gains.

Some on this board might consider it sacrilegious to watch videos on trading and speculation (gasp!), but I've found the YouTube channel of Tastytrade to be very informative for me in trying to learn about options (which I can then apply to investing in LEAPs, etc.). Anyway, they posted a video today that I found interesting and actually relevant to some discussion that has been going on on the board recently. As the market has been pushing new highs, members have been discussing trimming various long positions. It occurred to me that this wasn't in true Buffett style to not buy-and-hold-until-you're-dead. The following Tastytrade video compares buying near market lows and selling near market tops to simply buying near market lows and holding forever: I haven't checked their math, but I'm curious if what they claim in the video only works for the specific time period they chose, or can be generalized across the history of the stock market. In any case, I thought it would be interesting to watch and discuss, even though we're value investors and the guys in the video are not.

Agreed, really don't like Marchand. As a former Leafs fan and no lover of Boston, I was hoping Toronto would have it in the bag with a 4-1 lead! Have to give credit for Lucic though, saying how Toronto played well and they should be proud.

They say the word "ass" but other than that it's fine. Assuming you're allowed to watch YouTube at work.

The date on the video is about a year and a half ago though