jouni1

i understand trading the valuation gap. if you can get over 20% annually with that, good for you. i'd be extremely happy with 12-15% a year. in an ideal world with reasonable taxes i probably would do things differently. sell when it reaches fair value, even if i consider the business to be of exceptional quality. but now when i have that +50-80% "gain"(on paper) from mr market finally agreeing with me, the last thing i want to(or am able to) do is trigger capital gains taxes and find an investment that will pay my taxes and return more than the original investment would have.

i googled BH. i got bunch of titties in image seach. and biglari holdings. no berkshire :D conclusion: google more titties, get more accurate results.

RTI. after it ran up :-[ been thinking about it a while now. smallest of my four holdings.

actually most people on this forum seem to have shorter term strategies. i guess trading is the new holding.

i say spacex because musk is yummy and space is cool. ::) seriously though it's going to be a paper company or something. packaging perhaps?

some companies i follow seem to be doing a bit better in greece and italy, and posting year on year growth again. up here it seems to be getting worse. construction is pretty much halted. prices are insane, at least in our big towns.

can it be bought? my broker lists it but i can't trade. might have to phone them.

toyota has been recalling like crazy in the last few years also. somehow people still see it as a quality automobile. i'm not sure if the kill count is as high though. but it seems you can sell faulty cars and have people still like you. there is still hope if they get the pr and marketing right. choosing a bank is a lot less emotional(at least for me).

BH was probably Berkshire, not Biglari.

the chuck akre interview posted here a few days back had his thoughts on valuing MKL. he said he thinks it earns 70$. that makes it less than 10 times true economic earnings. i have no idea what number it is, but it's something he uses :D. didn't look into it any more than that.

it's also fun to think about buying a distributor with different products/industries targeted. the added network can be used to distribute existing product lines also. i like them both. probably going to even them out after the spin if valuations stay reasonable.

it's the distribution parts. meaning distribution as in distributing the parts to the people who need them. keeping stock and serving customers. a bit like ww grainger or wesco international/aircraft.

Trust me, it's not the least talked-out spin. i will trust you. thanks!

i love how it's the least talked about spin off ever. it seems to make sense to break them up.

what if management dies? :D what if the world ends tomorrow? would bonds or stocks be better? :D on a more serious note i couldn't get comfortable with vprt either. i have a pretty good feeling he did though. i don't see it as a failed retailer, but a disruptive force in a very fragmented industry.

demand for foreign currency in russia is at 2009 levels. these are march numbers. it's gonna hit the fan big time if the rouble gets properly devalued.

now we need you to bump into ted and ask if the 500 hours were actually minutes.

not everyone and their mother. people are crazy about alibaba. it's catching on other chinese internet stocks. a chinese video streaming website is a good investment because youtube makes a few billion after years of google supporting it. third point is investing in japanese banks etc. none of this seems like people are super cautious about china/asia. maybe they got bored of waiting for the crash? there's money to be made etc

i'm guessing it could be relatively "easy" getting investors, if you have proof of beating the market for the last 10 years, including the crisis. the markets have been going up for almost 5 years, lots of people looking for places to invest. if you have something to set you apart (performance), it just might work out.

Using torrents, is there something special I should be looking at, to ensure it's safe? yes, you should make sure you don't download copyrighted material (like this tv show) as it's stealing and you become a distributor of illegal content while downloading. other than that, it's pretty safe. turn on encryption in the software if you want to stay private.

in 2007 i knew people who invested in stocks and talked about them. in 2009-2011 i only knew one person in addition to me. now i start hearing people talking about stocks again. we already had a ipo cue outside a bank this year(like in 1999). and it was an online retailer for 43 p/e. i'm not sure it has to be the techno bubble all over again to call it optimism.

OT: i have, but they have been bought out. in the 7 years i've been investing, i have lost 5 great small caps to buyouts. the number of listed companies has been going down, not up, since the crash. there are a few good ones left, but they're valued pretty high. wilh. wilhelmsen holdings (norway) is at 0.6 book, but i'm not sure if it's actually cheap yet. i'm trying to do some work on it atm. they do ro-ro and automotive shipping around the globe through subsidiaries and joint ventures. they also have some port services etc. the car shipping market didn't crash like rest of shipping, so i'm not sure if the correction is ahead or not coming at all. it's a much less competitive environment than dry bulk for example. konecranes is the world's leading industrial crane company (manufacturer and service). it's my largest holding. i'm not sure about the valuation right now, seems like some growth is expected. it's a wonderful business, they've stayed profitable through the turmoil in 2008-9 and 2011. super hard times, they're still making profits and innovating. they have a GE-style "internet of things" -project which helps them monitor the service needs of their cranes. chairman was around when the business was formed in 1988, ceo till 2005, now chairman. he gave his stock as a pre-inheritance (without dividend or voting rights) to his children in 2011. pekka lundmark has been the ceo ever since. he spent a few years in south east asia trying to understand where the world is going. overly simplified, he came back with the idea of making mid-price high-quality cranes for emerging markets. i thought i'd give a short summary but it got out of hand. been planning on starting threads on a few companies i believe have great business models, leadership and appreciate shareholders. but nothing is priced quite right so i'm waiting. and now for some on topic macro stuff: i get 1.38 dollars for every euro i have. right now i feel like investing in north america might make more sense.

funny you mention that. i have been following a finnish investment forum for quite a while now and i have seen a trend there too. nobody does bonds, but the hottest thing for the past two-three years has been american dividend aristocrat investing. people write daily about their 100-500 dollar purchases of "exon mobile" and american water utilities. whenever somebody asks them if they should do any real analysis, they get shot down by people who have been reading a dividend growth blog for a few months. i mean, the market just seems so irrational now. people are piling in on assets on emotional reasoning. i have no idea if these new investors are causing overvaluation, or if it's just a normal cyclical thing. anyway i find it interesting that the P/E investor (after burning his fingers with low p/e cyclicals in 2008/09) is now looking at dividend/earnings ratio and historical dividends. it's like there's a magical number to look at and get rich. it just changes every 5 years or so. don't know if this phenomena is global, but 4/5 finnish investment blogs are pure dividend blogs, no real analysis, just listing historical dividends. we didn't even get the indexing boom here in between. i have no idea how to profit from these observations, other than to stay extra cautious and miss out on some gains.

has anybody else noticed how everyone is a great investor these days? every time i see a news article of some never-heard fund manager, he's done over 20% for 12 months running or something. now i know this isn't impressive (even if they have beaten me lol), but people in track suits are reading these articles and eating up their advice like a hard-core buffetian at the berkshire agm. everybody is doing great and investment success is measured over 1-3 year periods. stocks will keep going up and you add on dips. people on internet forums are finding easy doubles and are going to triple their money in the market after a +40% year. the masses are investing in price action, not businesses. i'm starting to see the investor enthusiasm that was around when i started investing in 2007. almost everybody knows that everyone should invest in stocks. in a way it's frustrating reading about all these great investment ideas, and just not seeing it. hand-sitting is the hardest part. sorry for this incomprehensible rant. was just reading some seekingalpha etc and i was wondering if anybody else feels like there's just too much optimism.

jamie dimon. doesn't fit your criteria though.