writser

You'll probably learn a lot about selling, a bit less about analysis.

Hard to feel sorry for somebody who invested 400k of his savings in short-dated Apple options because an online guru told him so. And the guru probably believed his own story and lost some money in the process. Only losers here .. Saddens me, but on the bright side it gives me at least some hope that I might be able to outperform the market in the long run:)

Are people suffering in the future worth less than people suffering now? If not, wouldn't it be the more rational choice to keep compounding money and give it away if you die?

Be careful how you phrase your defense .. "Officer, I'm 100% long so I have been following these attractive shorts for a while. Frankly, most of them are worthless. They need a correction".

Yeah agreed. Self-control is a scarce resource, it should be allocated wisely. If you're obese you shouldn't live in a house stuffed with snacks next to a Burger King. If you want to stop drinking / smoking you shouldn't go to a bar. And if you aspire to be a rational value investor you shouldn't have an office with Bloomberg tv, Interactive Brokers terminal ready to trade and a spreadsheet to show your p&l realtime. Much easier to succumb to the short term noise. No computer in your office might be taking it too far but I wouldn't be surprised if it is beneficial. There's such an overload of information and news on the internet that it's pretty easy to lose the big picture. The worst things are the brokerage apps for your phone .. Now you can be distracted 24/7 by the performance of your portfolio! Even this forum is a distraction (though a valued one :) ). The signal to noise ratio here is probably the best from all forums I've ever seen, but still if you spend two hours here they're not as productive as two hours of hard work: reading the actual 10K's, doing the math.

Direct link: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12845 Decent interview, not much news.

I agree this is trading at ridiculous multiple (implied earnings growth) and I am short a few similar hot stocks myself (Salesforce comes to mind). But the problem is that these are 'story stocks' and there are no clear catalysts in sight. Shorting them will be painful :). In the long run if you short a basket of them you will probably do well. But for the next year there is nothing that could stop these stocks from doubling. Management can nudge the numbers a little bit, talk about growth and as long as nothing big happens the stock will only go up. And the most annoying thing here is that your exposure to them keeps getting bigger if your idea doesn't work out in the short term; potentially forcing you to rebalance at very unfavourable prices. I.e. you sell at 100, cover half at 300 because your exposure has tripled, and then the stock goes down to 50. Do you make money? Nope. So I keep these positions very small, and probably they are still too big .. So aside from my basket I'd like to short things with a hard catalyst in sight. Things like these. Unfortunately opportunities like these are often hard to borrow. Maybe I'm just stating the obvious.

I disagree. The Cypriotic banking system functions as a massive money laundering system for (mostly) rich Russians. My guess is that the EU made the clawback a requisite for a bailout because they don't want to pay so the 'mobsters' can keep all their money. Cyprus is tiny, can be saved easily, it's just a bit of politics. Basically Europe is saying: "if you stash all your money here, you better help us.". The EU doesn't want to target the local population, they affirmed this today: http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/03/18/eu-takes-shot-at-moscow-with-cyprian-haircut-as-russians-own-22-of-deposits/ http://www.eurozone.europa.eu/newsroom/news/2013/03/peg-statement-cyprus-18-03-13/

yeah, excellent read, thanks :)

It's why I use Ajay's team at UBS. They will work the trade for us at their trading desk, and then we are charged solely on a per share basis. Otherwise, you will have to look for blocks that are offered and try to buy them. Cheers! "work the trade" Care to explain a bit of the strategy behind that? They do what any competent investment banker would do: they rip you off and try to make you feel good about it. The magniture of the ripoff depends on how smart you are and how much revenue they expect you to generate in the future. "Working a trade" is a great euphemism for "let's try and wait for a couple of days to match this trade off-exchange and rip off both sides with zero risk". Granted, there are some economies of scale at work here but most of the time everybody would be better off if they just routed their orders to the exchange through a cheap broker, for example IB. Happy to see that a lot of people here agree on that.

I hope Ackman was smart enough to collar his short position, because he's screwed on this one if he didn't. And if he blows up again, what do you think these guys will be doing...sitting in the Hamptons pouring Courvoisier into their Lalique glassware, toking up with Snoop-Dog, and eating Cheetos off of Wedgewood china while their hookers prance around calling them "Papi"! Cheers! Now I understand why you entered the business :)

I've looked at this as well to track sneaky changes in footnotes etc. Oldschool nerds use a commandline tool called 'diff' to find differences in textfiles. These are a couple of tools that you could try: http://www.quickdiff.com/ http://www.diffnow.com/ http://www.diffchecker.com/ Only problem is that I haven't found one that looks at complete websites (and not at the underlying HTML code) so I can just link it to two SEC pages and it will show me the differences.

I read a similar book a while ago: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Old book, but a classic and very enjoyable. I found the chapter on the tulip mania to be the most interesting (probably because I am Dutch). Some epic stories about the madness: :)

Epic. I'm wondering if he really thinks it's a good opportunity or if he's doing it just to fuck with Ackman. I hope the latter :).

yeah, or maybe Pargesa / Groupe Bruxelles Lambert? I've been looking at that as well to diversify. A primer: http://seekingalpha.com/article/277018-pargesa-and-gbl-a-tale-of-two-discounts

I'm not so sure about this. Maybe it is because I am from Europe, but afaik most people are highly sceptical about the stock market. All I hear (on tv, in the grocery store, whatever) are stories about the US deficit, the China slowdown, the Eurozone breakup, currency devaluations, the terrible housing market and unemployment rates. People do not trust any financial institution or government and prefer to keep all their money in their savings account. I work in the financial sector but most people I know there are not invested themselves in the stock market. There are a few niches in the market in which optimism reigns (cloud computing, 3d printing, social networking) but overall the market is pretty pessimistic I'd say. Of course this is just a gut feeling and I cannot quantify this, so any data would be appreciated. Also, there might be a significant difference between Europe and the US of A.

Sorry, I have to disagree completely :). I think that you have to be completely rational and you should have all your facts straight: only then can you make an informed decision about price vs. value. My intuition can't tell the difference between Bear Stearns right before it collapsed and Bank of America when it was trading at $5. Only good research can. In time, all the effort you put in investing will probably result in a 'gut feeling' about investments in the future. That feeling might be right most of the time but it is the result of years and years of hard work and it should always be double checked. Grandmasters in chess also see the right move in 99% of the cases, but in a critical position they still revert to the hard work of calculating all variations to make sure they're right. I'm pretty sure Warren Buffett and Bruce Berkowitz do the same.

The distinction I miss here is between making a career out of managing OPM and managing your own money. In the first case you probably need a huge amount of luck (besides skill and work ethic) to become one of the big fund managers. But I think a lot of people here aren't really interested building a career in the industry, they just want to invest their savings wisely. In that case you don't give a shit about the rat race as long as your results are good enough for yourself.

Agreed. Dark pools and alternative exchanges like BATS & CHI-X steal volume and drive prices down. Trading volumes are decreasing steadily. And it doesn't help that the regulators are watching the entire business closely. Also interesting point (at least in Europe) is that the crackdown on short-selling combined with transaction taxes and other regulatory requirements drives people away from "classic" stocks and into obscure off-exchange derivatives and swaps (which was exactly what they wanted to avoid in the first place .. ) because it's cheaper and easier. For example the CFD market is growing quickly.

Interesting, I've been looking at Bennett as well. At least for that one I like that there are several other value investors involved; both passive investors with a large stake (http://www.valueinvestigator.com/en/valueinvesting/) and active investors who took over the board (http://secondcitycapital.com/funds/fund-i). So something might be happening there in the near future. The problem is that the business is losing money. The spare cash isn't really a margin of safety if nothing is changing and I don't know enough about the business / the people informed to have a qualified opinion on the chances of a takeover / merger / liquidation happening. I do have a couple of lowball bids in the market though. On-topic: I don't think there is ever a "too big" margin of safety. If margin x is good, margin 2x is better :)

Yeah, but there's a slight difference here: Microsoft has a great ROIC, their business is stable so they can (should) leverage up a little. They should do this regardless of the dividend policy. The article mentions companies who borrow with the purpose of paying dividend. That's something different. If you have to borrow just to pay out a dividend, you shouldn't do it. Unless you have some nice options and you want the yield-hungry investor to drive up your stock price.

This has always baffled me. It happens a lot, but how can an efficient market ever tolerate a stock that borrows money just to pay out a dividend? The stockholder has spare cash to invest in the stock market, yet at the same time borrows money from the bank (through the company) to provide a stream of cash. Yield pigs .. ?

This is the correct answer.

Lol, I'm a trader. Pleasant surprise, would expect them to top the list :)

Too bad they don't allow foreign accounts.. Looks like a nice experiment.