jouni1

his track record is actually pretty good. no reason to change his style. he also has enough investor money for now, i think. would be easier with less, they say.

has anyone looked at X5 retail holdings? second largest retailer in russia, saw some finnish russian value funds had picked this up. owned 47,86% by alfa group, listed in london.

i actually have no idea why, but none of our brokers offer trading in moscow. the general tip has been "buy what's in frankfurt and london". don't know if this is because of russian law. i know that individuals from outside russia can't own land there. might be the same with stocks.

nokian tyres gave a profit warning today. (negative) i thought it might be useful to list companies that will get hit on Q1 because of russia and the ruble. here are the ones from my home exchange, that have meaningful business in russia: tikkurila - paint yit - construction nokian tyres - tyres stockmann - department stores oriola-kd - pharma distribution/wholesale fortum - utility. plans to make 500m EUR in russia in 2015 ;D finnish government has 51% there are more but these are the biggest. the only one i really like is tikkurila, i have always thought it's an excellent business. it did not drop enough for me to start a position but it just might after the release the first quarter results. third of sales is from russia, they also have production in ukraine they had to shut down temporarily. would love to hear from others which stocks you are looking at regarding this crisis. especially if you have something that's gotten cheap. none of these did.

i have no idea how long i spend on research. most of the stocks i have bought, i've been familiar with the business for a long time. i wish i could go more pabrai-style, and just use buffett etc for idea generation, then buy if i feel like it. right now the portfolio is half own ideas, half stolen. on the stolen ideas i feel like the work brk(or whoever) has done on a holding means i don't have to be as thorough as on my own ideas.

is the world not constantly changing? do you actually do zero research after investing? i couldn't sleep at night if i didn't do the basic research for my holdings once a quarter. i do a more thorough look up every year or so.

that's right, finland. i've been trying to get rid of that skepticism i got breast fed as a baby for 28 years now, but after georgia i started thinking maybe the old people had it right. they built a new gas pipeline in our water in 2011-2012. that was just about the time people were talking how ukraine and belarus had the fate of europe in their hands. our ex prime minister started a consulting company and lobbied it through. made ~1million euros in consulting fees. it just feels like the script has been written a long time ago. let's hope they're done for now.

i actually thought of something similar once. you enter body measurements and the software would tell you which designers' tops/bottoms fit your body type. there aren't that many brands to even look at when you're size XL or XXL in supermarket stuff. the point is, you probably wouldn't be able to charge extra for the clothes(your service). people would just google the cheapest place to buy items your site suggested. the online fashion buying people are super anal about sizing etc, often ordering 2 or 3 of the same item in different sizes to get the perfect fit. then return the others for free. but in some demographic it may work, just not the one doing most of the online fashion buying. edit: also the garments' measurements change from season to season, some similar items in different colors might have .5" differences in critical places etc. the designers are taking too much liberties for something that tries to make sense of it all to work.

moving of troops, shooting guns, flying planes etc near the border is a standard practice. we get monthly (if not weekly) uninvited airspace visits etc. standard stuff on the border regions. can't say much about that. i'm not sure why he wouldn't have just marched the troops through eastern ukraine while taking over crimea if he wanted it too. but they have gas etc, so i've been wondering why they stopped with crimea. russian sources say this operation has been planned for 6 years. why execute so slowly? now he needs a reason to keep on grabbing land, and i think nobody's waiting in line to give him one. his billionaire friends might be a bit pissed off about the 50% hit their assets took. not sure if anything more is going to happen. with these guys, you just never know.

he founded three companies, out of which two failed. the third one would have also probably failed if twitter hadn't been one of the 45 random investments they made in 2005-2009 and the social media bubble would've been a few years late. (just a quick analysis based on what was written in wikipedia) i know icahn plays dirty sometimes, but i have a hard time believing this andreessen dude is the most respected guy in VC.

what is his track record like?

he didn't understand this new tech stuff 15 years ago either. he's been doing all right despite his stupidity. just let him be already; he's white, old and male!

The 2% number does not surprise me at all. I've noticed that I generally look over news websites (and other sites) very quickly, whereas I'll spend quite a bit of time purusing and reading articles in a physical paper. It's much more rewarding depsite getting the same information. Humans are fascinating. i haven't read a paper in years. sometimes if its on the table, i look at the page that is visible, but that's it. i don't know anyone around my age, who has a subscription or reads newspapers in paper form routinely. when i read news online, i shop around. i might read one or two articles at paper 1, then move on to the next one and see if they have anything that interest me. if i was a subscriber, i'd just read the one paper and give them all my news money. i also use adblock on news sites that use misleading headlines etc to fish for clicks. publications that get my respect get to show me ads too. i wouldn't pay for an online paper right now, but that might change if only the bad ones are free to read. this is just me wondering why anyone invests in these things. i see them getting an increasingly smaller piece of the pie in the future. anybody can write, and most of the real journalists have already found something else to do for a living. the papers around here are mostly just (badly) translating AP and reuters stuff. p.s. only thing i feel like i'm missing out on is ads from local businesses! not news, but advertisements! i always hear about sales etc from someone old who still reads the paper.

the previous articles didn't even say how he got the money. just that he left canada and had a bugatti. do you honestly think he advertised only on "penny stocks" searches? if i was running a pump and dump i would also advertise on searches smart(high income) people use. it was just an industry comment that advertising on "penny stocks" searches got super expensive because of this guy. it's like saying madoff is innocent because people didn't do their research. his investors were greedy too, but it wasn't probably the wrong greedy like in penny stocks. or that he's innocent because banks or someone else has done something similar. it's still wrong and should be punishable.

so somebody with no business and/or investing experience can figure out in 30mins if something is going to be the next big thing and if investing in the-next-big-thing is a winning investment strategy? these pump-and-dump things usually paint a picture of a turn-around or scientific breakthrough. something that's extremely hard for even a seasoned investor to spot.

no but if the choice is between doing more hours at work or spending those hours on "saving money", usually working is the better choice.

When I did my basement I didn't think about the time, because like investing I really enjoyed the process. I also rationalized that if I were to lose my job I could probably get a construction job to pay the bills, I was learning a skill! It's fun to build something yourself, I love it. The impression factor is nice too. It's cool to have friend over and hang out and know that I created the place on my own. the thing is, if your employer lets you work unlimited hours and pays you well, it makes no sense to do stuff around the house. i understand fixing stuff up around the house when retired or doing just 8 or 9 hours a day, but if you have a chance to work 12+hours for 7 days a week, it's just stupid spending countless hours trying to learn a job a pro would've done in 20 minutes (usually with better results).

i don't understand how it's someone's fault for trying to invest their money. this guy who lied to people in order to make gains on worthless stock did something wrong, and it should be illegal. it doesn't matter whether the things are copied from annual letters or not. nobody in their right mind can say that these people he managed to clean up were meant to lose their savings. in an ideal world everybody is an expert at everything, but until then we need some laws to protect people and the fruits of their hard work. scamming people out of their money is WRONG and should be punishable, doesn't matter whether it's done with weighed dice or the stock exchange.

is there a way to be sure that the corruption in russia doesn't extend to oil&gas companies' reserve estimates? if these numbers are as inflated as people familiar with o&g in russia say, many of these companies are overvalued and very badly managed. being p/e 5 is good only if you can make that level of profits for an extended period of time.

"buffett says inflation is bad for stocks" doesn't work with a company that's constantly growing it's USD book value while returning money to shareholders despite operating in a high-inflation country, does it? (i'm not that familiar with banks but this one is among the few i like)

i started actively in 2006-2007 i think. it was hard to find stuff that looked cheap and i thought all the books i read on the subject were outdated. 2009-2011 i found some. there are some values around today, but quality companies for bargain prices are hard to come by once again.

That would be a difficult thing to get right to allow you to takeoff and land at any airport in the world. There are many airports where the runway is over 3 ft in elevation. Denver International Airport is 5,430 ft. So if you could set it to over 5430ft to allow you to land in Denver, but that is pretty high in the air if you are flying to Boston. It would have to have GPS and a terrain elevation map of the world built into it so it would know how high above the ground it is. Of course automatic systems can have bugs and can fail for any number of reasons, so it wouldn't necessarily be more reliable than relying on human pilots to switch it on and off at the right times. why not make it turn off when the wheels have been on ground for a minute or so? i also can't comprehend that one of the most technologically advanced industry in the world hasn't figured a way to keep track of these hundred million dollar machines. the idea that a pilot can just flick a switch and fly somebody else's plane wherever he pleases is just out of this world.

i just find it hard to believe that somebody who's flown over 18000 hours would kill 200+ people just because his hero likes men. or because his hero isn't legally allowed to like men. would it be possible to drop the (unconscious) passengers off somewhere, and then hide the plane somewhere until things cool down a bit? would there be a market for a stolen boeing 777-200? as spare parts?

some values starting to form in the border regions. might start one or two investment idea threads soon. market-leading premium non-russian companies have lost 10-30% of their value and are starting to look attractive. these are businesses that operate in eastern europe, russia included. i'm willing to bet putin won't be stupid enough to socialize every asset owned by western companies in russia. some of these companies are priced like they're going to lose most of their business, which wasn't the case last time around (georgia). that time i let my fear stop me from buying. this time i'll start buying slowly, the volatility is going to be huge. next meaningful news will move these companies 10%, the direction is still uncertain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miltefosine i'm no doctor but the drug sounds interesting. possible cancer and hiv uses in addition to the rare (high-price?) tropical disease. if the new co has the same number of shares as paladin its valued at roughly 88 million i think. sounds kind of steep. something called 3487911 Canada Inc, which is the investment vehicle of goodman, has acquired 28,55% on 28th feb and now owns 31,65% of the stock. weird name for a company, right? are these number companies normal in canada? he also has 1,14% that he holds personally. this one will be interesting to follow. the drug seems to be awaiting us approval and leishmaniasis ;D seems to be huge in india. it's sold under impavido and miltex. does the fact that they did not mention the miltex name mean that the rights for the countries miltex sells in (Austria, Bulgaria, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Romania, Singapore and Spain) are owned by someone else? if someone has some info on the drug or anything, please post!