boilermaker75

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!

There is another story I recall, and since you are currently reading the book you can correct anything I get wrong. At the start when there were just a couple of them they had rented space that was two rooms side-by-side. The minicomputer was in one room and the terminals were in another. Ellison came in and everyone was sitting around doing nothing because the cables were too short to run out one door and in the other to connect the terminals to the computer. Ellison left, came back a few minutes later with a hammer, pounded a hole through the wall and said run your cables through there.

Sounds like something that would attract Ponzi wantabees! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme

BeerBaron, My biggest mistake also involved Nortel (NT). I owned Clarify (CLFY) and it was doing very well. Then NT bought CLFY. My mistake was not selling at that point. I watched NT go up, and then back down below where it was when my CLFY was converted to NT. I didn't loose money, but I watched a 10-bagger turn into a 3-bagger before I sold.

ACN

I just thought of something with IB that I don't recall anyone mentioning lately. If you are short an option and it is in-the-money and exercised, you are not charged a commission for the stock transaction. I am charged for the stock transaction at Schwab and I would guess that is the case at other brokers as well.

I also have accounts at Schwab, so I have no need for any of the IB add-ons. I have also noticed the fills at IB are better than the fills at Schwab. So for the same trade I get paid to make the trade at IB versus charged to make the trade at Schwab. Note I do like Schwab and if you have a large enough account, or trade often, you can negotiate commissions. Schwab charges me $4.95 per trade. I am thinking about moving from fido to IB as well. The only concern is that IB doesn't have integration with turbo tax, which makes filing tax each year to be painful. Yes I should have mentioned that. I think that is the only negative I have encountered with IB. It is very painful for me because I do a lot of put writing and I have over 100 trades at IB every year that I have to manually enter.

I also have accounts at Schwab, so I have no need for any of the IB add-ons. I have also noticed the fills at IB are better than the fills at Schwab. So for the same trade I get paid to make the trade at IB versus charged to make the trade at Schwab. Note I do like Schwab and if you have a large enough account, or trade often, you can negotiate commissions. Schwab charges me $4.95 per trade.

That was the first thing I noticed when I started to read them yesterday.

Buckeye, I just started reading Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders on my kindle today. It was only $3.99 so as a value investor I could not pass it up! Boiler

Parsad, Yes make like Carl Icahn and tell us what you are buying LOL!

What a tease!

These are dismal graduation rates. But it might speak more to these schools not being able to attract students who are capable of college. Graduation rate is a good metric, but only if there is a way to check how these graduate rates are achieved. If the college starts making all classes A, B, or C, with no D or Fs, then the increase in graduate rate will not mean anything. I did my Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Purdue. I had a fellow grad student who took a professor position at another prestigious private university in the same state. Every semester he would give some Ds and Fs. He would be called in to see his department head and the dean of engineering and be told they did not have D and F students in their university. He would tell them they would be getting Ds and Fs if they were at Purdue. He did not get tenured. Edit: Here is a related link that might be of interest, http://www.gradeinflation.com/

I use both IB and Schwab. My IRA and my wife's IRA are at Schwab. I like them both. If you do enough business with Schwab, you can negotiate lower rates. Schwab lowered their commissions to $4.95 for all our six accounts.

Very nice, Thanks!

The 2000-2002 decline was not too far from the 2008 decline. Assuming the average time between these events is 10 years doesn't they will always be separated by something close to 10 years. You could have 5 years between events following by 20 years between events. It is probabilistic, just like IV! I'm kidding, I'm kidding I don't want to restart the IV discussion!

If anyone watched the Jon Stewart show around the time of the financial crisis, Cramer was on the show and Stewart had him wriggling and writhing so much that he looked like the guy who is just about to be convicted and jailed! The joke was on him for that one time! You can see that Jon Stewart show at this link http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-12-2009/jim-cramer-pt--1 There are three parts

My story is, East Chicago, IN > Highland, IN > West Lafayette, IN > Santa Clara, CA > West Lafayette, IN > Dallas, TX > West Lafayette, IN and starting out in IN I never thought I would end up in IN, but maybe someday I will escape for good!

What do you mean ensure the trade will go through? If you use limit orders and sell at the bid and buy at the ask it should go through, unless the bid and/or ask change in the time it takes you to submit your order. You could use a market order and it should go through near the bid for the buy and the ask for the sell. Besides commissions, you will lose the spread between the buy and ask for BRK, which should be no more than 2 to 4 cents per share. Of course there might be a slight change in the bid and ask in the time it takes you to switch between accounts and submit the trades.