LC

The S&P500 earnings are around $105 and it's at 1517...so roughly about 15 times earnings. Neither cheap, nor expensive historically. It won't provide you returns larger than growth in GDP and inflation plus dividends. You also have no boost from interest rates, nor profit margins, which are at historical lows and highs respectively. Cheers! Sanjeev a question for you...do you attempt to do a rough calculation of the free "call/put option" of cash? It seems to me that this cash option has an inverse relationship with the market P/E. To state the obvious, when prices in the market are high (on average), cash's option is more valuable because the market has more downside. Do you think along these lines at all in terms of holding cash, or do you just say to yourself, "well, everything's expensive, and I wouldn't buy some of what I already own at these prices...so let me sell a bit and wait until things get cheaper"?

This is what Sanjeev is saying in the "how much cash are you holding" thread. My view? We're looking at a sideways market for a while.

I wonder what brand chocolate-chip cookie that is...

Do you think there is? I think they do provide value but I'm not sure how investors will utilize their rating system in 5-10 years. Will investors still just see AAA and trust them, or has that lesson been learned? Then again, laziness is a part of human nature. Will people always see the benefit of doing the due diligence themselves? Or will memories of this past crisis fade...

shameless plug for the co I know most about, FHCO. Has one competitor who isn't nearly at the scale FHCO is in terms of production to satisfy global demand. demand which has been all but guaranteed at the London Summit by the Gates Foundation. not a Micro cap ($213m market cap) though.

I mean, let's be honest here: the business model violates the "spirit" of the law. Ethics aside, local insurance regulators would probably not allow such an entity to do business in their locality.

I passed on BOLT because I didn't (and still don't) have a clue about the Oil & Gas industry. Interestingly I found the company when looking for "Bolt Bus".

Well don't just bait us with that, what did Charlie say!? :)

"Cigna will fund this transaction with an incremental $100 million of parent company cash, approximately $1.8 billion of investment assets supporting the run-off businesses, and an estimated $300 million tax benefit associated with the transaction."

How does one go about betting on deflation? Short gold or something like that?

Anyone else looking at MBIAs 5.70% 2034 issue? :P

Does the credit spread cause concern for you? I've seen it mentioned recently (either on this forum or other blogspots) that corporate credit is out of whack. That said, I agree with most of what you've written: most large-caps seem fairly valued to me. I'm not sure if small-caps as a whole are overvalued (the ones I own are trading around 15x earnings). Additionally last I checked, the ratio of Market Cap to Nat'l GDP was something like 1.2:1 compared to something like 2:1 during the bubble. IMHO I think the market is slightly overbought (we are near all-time highs without any noticeable "boon" in the day-to-day living of the everyday person, contrasted to the dot-com bubble or the real-estate bubble) but I can't foresee an event on the horizon which would trigger a giant selloff. That said I am about 20% cash but will probably allocate a bit to cash, up to about 25-27%, by taking some profits from some large caps which have become fairly valued and whose businesses I don't want to be in (POT for example).

I like screening for high margin businesses with low PE's. It won't capture everything but it's one place to start. I also screen for low P/B and sort by industries I have a grasp of.

Err...does that imply he completely sold out of AIG & BAC? Edit: NVM, this was from Fairholme's Fixed Income Fund. Apologies for any confusion I may have caused!

Yeah, I wouldn't mind that. As long as it is used. I don't want one job post in there over two years! ;D Cheers! My gut tells me there's more job seekers than job posters on this board, but I would LOVE to be proven wrong!

20%

Well said, Hawk4value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Progress Has anyone seen this documentary? There were certainly some eerie moments (when the JPM Chase economist divulged his job was to calculate the future earnings of third-world countries, and it was JPM's goal to match those earnings to interest payments they would have to make to JPM). There were other bits related to the IMF etc in the same vein as Confessions of an Economic Hitman. But I think the main point was summed up by the line, "Our society expects economic growth to continue indefinitely, but this is strictly impossible on a planet with finite resources" (paraphrase). I assume we're all to an extent capitalist/profit-motivated here, so I find exposing myself to those who make arguments against capitalism-as-we-know-it can be an enlightening discussion.

I can't believe I actually know what you are referring to. They don't make them like Jean Claude Van Damme anymore. Don't mess with me, I'm a Kumite champion.

What do use to get those types of alerts?

Hah! If I were to stare myself in the mirror and ask why I like LEAPs more than almost any other instrument, this would be it. The only exception would be warrants, although it's a close tie given the leverage LEAPs provide.

If I am understanding this correctly, you're saying the IV of the OTM calls has more upside than ATM/ITM calls of the same date/strike? How far OTM did you go if the strike is only 1 month out? Or are you planning on continuously rolling contracts over on a monthly basis as long as nothing systematic happens in the market? If not, why not just purchase 2015 LEAP OTM calls?

DVA is also a hedge for BRK's large KO exposure.

As the recent article regarding Klarman showed, purchasing Madoff claims was very profitable :)

http://www.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/ This subreddit is a "ride along" with a entrepreneur who started a maid business in DC metro area. Turns out he copied the idea (the idea being a maid service optimized to sell/function on the web) from another guy, but his experience is very valuable to learn from.