boilermaker75

With a TTM FCF of of $1B and an EV of $12B it looks interesting and worth looking into--but I have not. Thanks for calling it to our attention. The put premiums are attractive to sell with the March 40-strikes going for $1.15, which is how I like to enter positions. If I find time I will also look into it this weekend.

I love that show. I work at a research university, so it is almost like a reality show for me, lol.

There was a period of time where my answer would be zero. Now after we are exhausted at the end of the day the wife and I will sit down and watch a show, or two, until it puts one of us to sleep, usually me. Even when we are watching I'll often be working on something else. So my guestimate now is about 10 hours per week.

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/meet-lou-simpson-former-investment-star-at-berkshire-and-new-gurufocus-guru-cm203979#.UPyJdY7H021

What about SPX and DIA and dollar, or value, cost average in?

That is great. My daughter bought a place in West Hollywood in March 2012, and she maybe got in at the bottom. It was an REO and she got it for 42% of the previous sale. Maybe I made all the stupid moves in real estate and she'll have nothing but good luck. I moved to Silicon Valley in 1976 and never bought, only rented. In Dallas in 1984 when I sold my house I had to write a check at the closing :( I have been in my current house since 1985, but we have torn down, rebuilt, and remodeled so much over the years I'll have a loss whenever I sell.

That's a good way to have good above average returns and steady income with little downside, occasionally having to buy a good company at a bargain price. How did you do in the 2008 2009 market meltdown, if I may ask? What are your cumulative or average annual returns from 2007 thru 2012? The percentage I am in cash, and the number of potential positions because of being short puts, does vary. But I have been doing some form of this over the time period you ask about. Here are my returns for recent years 2007 22% 2008 -5% 2009 13.7% 2010 17% 2011 5.4% 2012 18.3% Those are very good returns! They are even more impressive when adjusted for volatility. Congratulations! :) twacowfca, Thanks. Also almost all of my long positions were established by being put to. Writing a put helps me to be patient and wait for my price. There have been very few stocks that I have wanted to acquire where this did not work as a way of establishing my position. Boiler

That's a good way to have good above average returns and steady income with little downside, occasionally having to buy a good company at a bargain price. How did you do in the 2008 2009 market meltdown, if I may ask? What are your cumulative or average annual returns from 2007 thru 2012? The percentage I am in cash, and the number of potential positions because of being short puts, does vary. But I have been doing some form of this over the time period you ask about. Here are my returns for recent years 2007 22% 2008 -5% 2009 13.7% 2010 17% 2011 5.4% 2012 18.3%

I would say I am in the $1billion plus, but usually companies above $10 billion like BRK, WFC, BAC, DOV, MDT, ITW, PH, etc. I also do a lot of put writing on the companies I am investing in. So I like a company that has many strike prices and high option volume. I am usually about 90% invested. I usually have open put positions that would put me on margin by about 10% if I was put to on everything. I get put to only on about 5% of my option positions because I am writing puts at strike prices which I believe afford a considerable margin of safety. So when I get put to I often keep the position, adding to my LTBH positions. Otherwise I turn around and write a covered call usually at the price I was put to.

I was reading the article and got to the company Moog and thought I was going to be reading about a company that makes synthesizers, lol.

I would think many companies on the Dividend Aristocrats list would be such companies. I have invested in many of them. http://www.dividendgrowthinvestor.com/2011/12/dividend-aristocrats-list-for-2012.html

Welcome aboard Grizzly Rock!

No because of Roe versus Wade, http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf And/or the decrease in lead exposure during childhood. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--MITcvOw0QQ/UO0GUwa1UGI/AAAAAAAAguY/VFpNow1JNfs/s400/Lead_Crime.gif from: Strong case that childhood lead leads to a lot more youthful adult violent crime, teen pregnancies and IQ loss I was not aware of the lead study. Thanks for posting.

No because of Roe versus Wade, http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf

Here is a post from a poster I know some of you may know from a couple of different Yahoo groups, Cougar, on the topic of technical analysis. When Cougar ran his own private message board I was fortunate to be a member for a few years. http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/chucks_angels/message/8964

Newton was one sharp dude, except when it came to investing!

I like this site, http://www.academicearth.org/

You can tell with a proper MRI study. Certainly how well a sociopath functions in society is determined by environment. There are definitely degrees to this dysfunction as well as vast differences on how it is expressed in different people. The sociopath or psychopath who becomes a senator or president is behaving differently than the serial killer who kills people and eats them. True the president may be killing far more people by proxy, but the serial killer is doing it himself personally. I wonder is this just different manifestations of the same dysfunction expressed differently because of environment or do these people have a different severity of the same dysfunction, or a different problem all-together? I read a book on the subject written for the lay person, The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout. Stout was on the clinical faculty at Harvard Medical School for over 25 years. It has been a while, and my memory is not what it used to be. My recollection is both nature and nurture were involved but you could identify them with an MRI.

You can tell with a proper MRI study. Certainly how well a sociopath functions in society is determined by environment.

I have my LTBH position in BAC, but I have been continually selling puts at-, or slightly out-, of the money for the last six months. The option premiums have been too good to resist. I wrote some March 11-strike puts today for $0.35 per share. Eleven will probably be my highest strike price.

up 17.4%

Happy New Year to all. I am glad I finally discovered this great web site, thanks Parsad!

I can't picture Russell Crowe singing. Maybe like Clint Eastwood in Paint Your Wagon?

I ended up seeing Django Unchained on Christmas day. Les Miz might be a really good movie, but I don't think I'll like it better than Django Unchained. I'm going to see Django in a couple of hours. I'll let you know what I think. I hear it's vintage Tarantino, not like some of the crap he's made recently. I really didn't like Inglorious Bastards...just way over the top. You go back to Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, and he had a much more deft touch. With Les Miz, I think you'll come to appreciate how difficult it is to sing throughout an entire movie, and still have some emotional connection with the audience...this not like those Mamma Mia type musicals...it's incredibly dark, violent, hopeless and unfortunately true to what life was like back then. Jackman may be one of the most underappreciated actors in Hollywood, since he makes all those X-men and Wolverine movies. Probably no other actor in Hollywood has the physicality he has (he's a big guy) and still has a very soft touch with his dialogue. I think he may be a shoe-in to win the Oscar. Anyway, I'll give you my review of Django later tonight. Cheers! I got to go to the LA screening in the Samuel Goldwyn theatre. That was fun. Most of the actors, except DiCaprio and Jonah Hill, were there. Django is comparable to Inglorious Bastards--lot's of violence, lots of humor. It was long but you never noticed because there was never a slow moment. Christoph Waltz delivered another oscar worthy performance.

You missed Festivus, for the rest of us! So Happy Festivus!