SI

it surprises me that the stock is below the price at which prem indicated his bid(8.26) with Prem putting his reputation on the line with his 28 year comment. I fully expect Icahn to show if this board doesn't push up the stock first. FD: I have never owned this POS(though been a long FFH owner) before but I bought at Monday's open so I now have a dog in this fight.

In my area on the beach in south orange county prices are still below the 2004 peak so it doesn't feel bubbleish to me but I have heard LA is a bit different. With affordability where it is given the fixed rate mortgage back at 4.2% and houses selling for less than the replacement value + land(in one new build analysis I did) I would disagree but real estate is always location, location, location.

Here is a good resource for those in California on $/Watt installs: http://www.californiasolarstatistics.ca.gov/search/contractor/results/?sort=avg_cost_per_watt&distance=10&agency=PG%26E&install_data-ipsquote-timestamp=past_year&input=92672&lookup_by=zip&dir=asc

Not sure if you have seen the latest Utility bill response but it is to lessen the ROI by jacking the fee for backup power so as to incent those to completely go off the grid and to reduce the amount they pay for solar they repurchase from customers. When I first priced this out I considered getting my electricity usage to a point where I was 80% off the grid but have you looked seriously at any of the natural gas converts or battery backup technologies?

Insurance policy is 2mn for their system and they will match the duration of your existing roof warranty - mine is 46 years. I found this resource decently valuable Eric. http://www.californiasolarstatistics.ca.gov/

The quote I got today from solar city was 14k(pre federal tax credit and the state credit has been exhausted at SDGE) for 2.93 KW DC system. 8 year payback is slightly better than my expectations and I came across much more warm to the idea though I will sit it out until the payback period narrows with the falling price of installation

Eric, A few more irons for the fire: -I leave in San Onofore country down south and got a notice that the price / unit will increase 20% to pay for shutting it. -Historically power units consumed rise 1.5% / yr. -If we are seeing a slowdown in the silicon portion of silicon valley, there is plenty of semi cap equipment vendors who can drive those solar revenues. -Story today on it: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-22/homegrown-green-energy-is-making-power-utilities-irrelevant -When Musk & David Crane reach critical mass, these payback period will accelerate lower which I calculate as falling one year every year. I also calculate a payback period today of 9.2 years. Sincerely, schmuckinsurance

Let's not hope for a day soon when it is the device of the bulls.

Cash FFH Anadolu Efes(f) Colt Group(f) Swedish Match(f) RSG MSFT LVLT LUV ALEX BRK GS LYV MLM Aggreko(f) Ambev(f) Wilmar(f)

Thanks Eric. I have been invested with NRG who is working on this business plan as well. David Crane is Elon Musk but he has earned a pretty strong reputation competing against the non-economic actors in utilities.

Why I am personally shorting VZ. #1 - Price: 17.5x 2013 earnings and 15.4x 2014 estimates. Valuations are unprecedented. Historically they have traded at a 15% discount to the market - today it is a 24% premium. VZ is up on mkt's hunger for div yield and the AT&T story that it could sell its towers. Subsidy discipline has also powered the stocks. #2 – Slowing Growth(this is dated but I thought u'd like to see it nonetheless): In 3Q12 wireless subscriber growth dropped to an all time low(Now in Q4 the #s were better on all the iPads added to VZ plans). Post paid growth was 1%. Prepaid growth of 10% is the worst it has ever been. Leading to a total device growth of just 3.8% down 300bps from one year ago. ARPU growth(driven by feature phone to smartphone growth)is decelerating. Upgrade rate fallen to 6.8% from 8.6% a year ago, the lowest in the smartphone era. #3 - Price, Margin & Capital Intensity Risk: -Threat of Price war is elevated b/c of Sprint capital windfall. (History of Softbank is aggressive price war). Tmobile+PCS also investing for growth. -Capital spending in the industry accelerating. -Cyclical peak in margins as smarthphone driven arpu slows and growth slowing. Target: Bernstein's analyst before he left 6 weeks ago was 13x earnings and 5.7x ebitda is $33/share. -At $48.50 I don’t know it is going down but paired against other investments I am not enamored with VZ. The div yield has now fallen to 4.25% -At 8.6% growth 2013 into 2014, the market may stay patient but given the 2.2% growth the following year I do not think the mkt will retain this love for VZ shares at 15.4x 2014 earnings.

According to the MSCI website, today is the date of change. I don't know enough to talk about when this selling pressure will fade and how many closet indexers there are out there left but the volume that has gone through over the past few weeks has been high enough to account for more than what the analysts have estimated to have been known sellers.

Thanks for the feedback. We already have a few candidates but will eventually post the job on the cfa website when we are further along in this process. As for our experience criteria, we wouldn't go lower than 5-7 years.

I would appreciate any comments as well as this is new to us but we are in our budget cycle and want to find the right candidate. I should say, we are located outside of a financial center(So. California). While we plan on mentoring and tutoring, we are looking for someone who doesn't have to be.

So 250,000 shares is more than 15 days of average volume the way I calculated it. Either way, 281k shares have traded today. Like someone previously said, hopefully Prem looks at the incremental $88mn MSCI indexers(or closet indexers) was available for sale as an opportunity.

Lakeside, Thanks for the find - I am curious on the question previously posed. How did you know, does MSCI send out email alerts on these announcements? And how did you know it was for 10bps of liquidity? Thx.

Does anyone know what the $52mn in "other" losses are from in the investment portfolio are which are separate from bonds, hedged equities and CPI-linked derivatives? thx

Google, Google, Bing, Google, Google

I like the oppty in LYV the US and London's the Colt group if you would consider looking to GB.

I liked the book but I also liked Greenspan's book both from a historical perspective so take that for what it is worth. I always thought Hank Paulson was someone that stood out in govt b/c he knew what he was doing, you believed would do the right thing in a very dark hour and maybe you could even say was worth being trusted. Regarding bond dumping - This is S&D 101, if you dump your bonds at a certain scale you create a price depression thereby raising the yield. If that higher yield necessary to attract new buyers raises the cost of debt things can get ugly pretty quickly as the mechanism obviously is circular. This morning, the Japanese announced they would buy more of their own debt. Most of the writers I saw were saying this was a move in support of global easing, I think it was rather about showing China that there is a bid for that debt. The problem is and the Chinese know it, and have a bevy of things working in their favor which I'll highlight below. Lee Cooperman has called this 20 year "trade" a widowmaker and he has been right but I struggle to see how economics don't ultimately eliminate the current Japanese Govt distortion which is how I am positioned in full disclosure. Concerns: -Price of cds doubled in past year -Japanese public pension(largest in the world I believe) said they will be net sellers of govt bonds this year, owns 10% of all jgbs. The electorate will get their checks. -Trade defecit for the first tine in more than 30 years -Debt/gdp ~240 % -Each citizen owes 86200 to Japanese debt holders. -Avg maturity 6 years, next 5 years 60% needs to be rolled over -Zero net immigration over 10 years -Lowest birth rate in the world at 1.2% -Bank of tokyo-mitsubishi says household savings cross into negative by 2015 -Debt service as a % of tax revs exceeded 57% in 2010 according to soc gen and int expense 27%. -50% of Japanese budget financed by debt -Sales tax going from 5% to 10%. -Foreigners only own 6% of JGBs but the consumer is tiring of these bonds, Link Below. http://www.newsorganizer.com/article/mrs.-watanabe-spurns-azumi-pit-5ce39d134843e03ccb47df8aa13b0a48/

In his book "on the brink" the stated intention which he called a disruption scheme was for Russia to collude with the Chinese to dump their bonds in order to trigger broader bailout at least of the GSEs. I believe it was something he learned of at the Beijing Olympics.

If you read Hank Paulson's book you'll know the Russians allegedly approached the Chinese about a similar strategy in the depths of the crisis about an attack on the US. At the time the Chinese decided against this path but it seems they are looking(according to the telegraph piece i'll link below) at this strategy in regards to Japan. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/9551727/Beijing-hints-at-bond-attack-on-Japan.html

Depending on how you solve for the discount rate - those paying dividends have seen a beta in this market well below the average company. Dell is new to having an income stream attached with it so to say that the impact hasn't been picked up yet I think is a rushed conclusion.

I don't think they were in shock. A few years ago, Dell brought in a head of Corp Dev from IBM(which IBM fought tooth and nail). His opportunity - our cash pile is huge(I think at the time was $6/share) and we don't compete against anyone in IT svcs so from a clean sheet of paper go get us the footprint as cheap as you can that you would have installed at IBM if you didn't have to worry about disrupting the existing IBM cash flow streams/ partner relationships. Today that pile of cash on a net basis is $3.50 but as was alluded to above it has helped out tremendously on the sustainability of the future cash flow stream as PCs took a nose dive. DB estimates that "Growth Dell" is now doing $1/share in EPS. While the cash flow profile of the new business isn't as good(what else but AMZN is?), they can keep feeding the beast of creating a middle market IBM. Any big wig at Big Blue as well as Michael and even Longleaf probably all saw that paying a dividend in this market had such a large impact on lowering your cost of capital that at a 13% payout ratio(ML has a $2.50 in FCF number for next year) that they could afford to do it b/c the opportunity to fill in the rest of the paper remains compelling and their EV/FCF is 26%.

Excuse the pun, but I don't this company gets enough play - Live Nation. These guys are 5-10x the size of their biggest competitor in their 2 markets: artists and venues. Keeping talent negotiations out of the public eye would be a great benefit and here you have a consumer sector that is growing. Their attach rate to their mkt is incredibly high(renewal rates over 100% according to them) and I just don't see what out there stops live music, where they control the relationships with the artist + venues and ticket technology where those two end customer bases meet. Now I am not sure on the growth rate of the industry but topline has been growing. For now, their margin flow through has been slow but with Liberty running mgmt I think they are overburdening their income statement with acquisitions(Electronic music acquisitions, venue deals, global promoter companies and festival launches) and technology initiatives(AMZN, FB & GRPN were the latest plus moving Ticketmaster into the 21st century) they expense. LYV trades at 5.4x ebitda. Media trades 2-3 points higher ebitda in a much more crowded albeit wider mkt save DIS.