boilermaker75

I concur about IB. I don't believe I have ever received actual mail from IB. Maybe I am just not remembering something coming when I first opened my account. But definitely nothing for years.

WHO IS SANJEEV? The Dude, AKA the big Lebowski

Sanjeev, Make sure you exercise everyday. Include strength training and stretching. Try to get up to an hour a day of such physical activity, which I do. It has done wonders keeping me fit and feeling young. I am 60 and I can still do kicks (Tae Kwon Do) over my head. Boiler

I teach electrical engineering, specifically semiconductor devices and electromagnetic fields. I also spend half my time doing university administration.

Most of the web sites I use have been mentioned, but I don't think this one has, http://finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=111&f=fa_pfcf_low,geo_usa&ft=2&o=company a good free screener

Happy and prosperous New Year to all!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Holidays to all!

I'm 60, but I feel like I did when I was 30. I have always worked out an hour every day.

I can't find the quote now, but I recall that the illustration was replacing every current car with a fuel/energy efficient one. We don't have the resources to merely make the tires for 1 billion cars, much less the car itself. It was also in reference to a growing middle class in emerging countries that would want a vehicle. The resources may not be there if they want to replicate the nature and number of vehicle ownership in developed countries. All that may be wrong of course. I also remember, possibly from the same book, that if everyone in China wanted an extra teaspoon of rice oil, it would exceed current worldwide supply by 100%. Sounds like something I have read in a Jared Diamond book.

That letter was necessary because Berkshire did not know the extent of liabilities at General Re before acquisition in 1998. Berkshire is careful to write policies that limit their super-cat losses to acceptable amounts. As long as Berkshire doesn't again unknowingly acquire super-cat liabilities they will be ok.

Berkshire is the reinsurer of choice because of their ability to fulfill all its commitments under conditions of extreme adversity. For this they can charge higher premiums. Also many policies are not activated by the first super-cat that meets the policy terms, but cover a second, third or fourth event. Some policies are triggered by only a specific event, like a hurricane. Berskhire is probably the largest writer of reinsurance in the world. A super-cat policy pays off usually if two things occur, specific losses over a threshold and aggregate losses for the industry above a certain level. Berkshire prices super-cat expecting to pay out 90% of the premiums. If they write $1 billion in premiums the result could be $1 billion in profits in a year with no super-cats to $2 billion in loss in a year where they have to pay out totally on commitments. In the 1994 letter to shareholders’, “All things considered, we believe our worst-case insurance loss from a super-cat is now about $600 million after-tax, an amount that would slightly exceed BRK’s annual earnings from other sources.”

From the 1998 letter to shareholders, "In particular, my decision to sell McDonald's was a very big mistake."

After seeing XOM was the secret stock, I took a quick look this morning and it does seem expensive. An enterprise value of $392B with a TTM FCF of $12.6B. Capital expenditures seem to eat a lot of the operating earnings each year. FCF was $40B in 2008, but the highest it has been since then was $24.4B in 2011. I'm sure it will be a home run for Buffett, but I don't know why.

I agree about MCD. It is a long-term holding for me.

Reminded me of Charlie Sheen's response to the judge who was sentencing him for using a prostitute as to why a man like him would pay for sex. Sheen's response was, "I don't pay them for sex, I pay them to leave."

We have Comcast and we also hate them. But we do pay less than most everyone else, probably about 70% of what everyone else pays. About once a year our bill pops back up to what everyone elses' is. My wife calls Comcast and asks for customer retention. She says we are going to stop their service and switch to directTV unless they can do something. So far, for several years in a row, they have given us a one year special deal. This year they even threw in 3 months of free HBO, which we didn't have. We just had to cancel the HBO after three months so that we would not start being charged for it.

I have about 20% cash in my accounts, but I am making it work. if I were put to on all my short option positions I would be about 10% on margin. So maybe you could say I have -10% cash? (I have become more conservative this year. In previous years I often had open short option positions where I would have been about 20% on margin if put to on everything.) 90% of my short option positions will expire over the next three expiration dates 11/1, 11/8, and 11/16. They are now all out-of-the money, some by so much I will probably buy some to close and eliminate some risk. I agree with Heilko, there seems to always be something if you look. For example, a couple of weeks ago I was writing 57.5-strike PSX puts. During the last week I was writing IBM 170 and 175-strike , BAC 14-strike, and COH 48- and 49-strike puts. (Yes I would be better off had I purchased PSX and IBM, but I was being conservative when I wrote these as out-of-the money puts. I had the extra margin of safety of the option premium plus the difference between the stock price when I sold the option and the strike price.) I really like the weekly stock options, you can get some very good premiums for writing insurance for a few days to a week.

As at all research universities, I would change the professors' motivation to I assume that top professors prefer to do research at Harvard because they want the best and brightest graduate students.

Georgia Tech is starting an on-line masters in computer science, http://www.omscs.gatech.edu/ I share the opinion of the american people regarding these on-line degrees http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/10/15/americans-doubt-the-rigor-and-quality-of-online-education The drive is to bring in dollars, not the quality of the education.

How is Neil Young a better songwriter than Lennon and McCartney? Keith Moon and John Bonham are definitely contenders for the crown. Both had that crazy drummer thing going on. "She loves you , yeah, yeah, yeah," which should be enough evidence! Just kidding. Lennon and McCartney each wrote some great songs. Neil Young is my favorite artist. So when Uccmal mentioned Young as the best songwriter I had to concur!

Best Drummer: Obviously Neil Peart Best Guitarist: Jimi, Living: Alex Lifeson; Best Songwriter: Neil Young All Canadian Line-up. Only a loser would disagree. Best drummer - agreed on Peart Best guitarist - gotta be Eddie, although I have a soft spot somewhere down deep for Michael Schenker and his Flying V. The cool pick back in the day was the "fastest" guitarist, Sweden's favorite son, Yngwie Malmsteen. The songs sucked, but he played fast! Best songwriter(s) - Lennon and McCartney of course! All Canadian line up? Jimi wasn't Canadian, was he? I thought he was born in Seattle, but can't remember. You can't have an all Canadian line up without including Triumph and, um, Aldo Nova? I'll agree with Hendrix as best guitarist and Neil Young as the best song writer. But the best all-time drummer is a tie between Keith Moon and John Bonham.

Are you sure about that? Virtually everything I've read suggests the opposite. Active is still the bigger piece of the pie by a large amount but indexing has grown a lot. For example, "Since September 2008, assets of passively managed U.S. and foreign stock mutual funds have doubled to $1.31 trillion, according to Morningstar. By contrast, assets in actively managed mutual funds are up 28% in the same period to $4.58 trillion. Demand for exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, also has exploded since 2008. They now hold $1.5 trillion. ETFs, which trade on stock exchanges, are designed to replicate broad or narrow market indexes." http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1006-main-funds-20131006,0,409152.story?page=2 And a significant fraction of those managed funds are really shadow indexing. They don't want there performance to be worse than the index.

I have been writing BAC and PSX puts.

So what type of girls did you search for? :)

I own ORCL. That was cruel!