wachtwoord

Or cheat ;)

Depends on your broker. IB splits the lending proceeds with you 50/50, which is much better than other retail brokers. https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=shortableStocks&p=stockyield I have used this for a couple of years now and it's great. I don't trade a lot and the amount made with this far exceeds the minimum trading fee IB charges.

I have used IB's customer service a couple of times mainly in relation to tax issues and they have helped me a lot. They were also very responsive.

Parsad, your reverse psychology won't work! ;)

ARO +21% I hold ARO and am significantly under water on the position :P I bought at $23 en the beginning of 2011 and tripled my position at the end of 2011 at $11.7. It's been a crazy roller coaster since then. The initial decline was caused by the extremely high cotton prices but these have normalized (http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=cotton&months=300 ) cash flow is still climbing back. They still don't have any debt though :) The stock plummeted in August and I think that's a complete overreaction. +21% is just a small recovery :P

Thanks, but this is probably something for the too hard pile for me :( From the latest annual report: And they are selling for 2 times free cash flow at <$100M market cap if you buy the OTC instead of the Toronto stock.

Enbridge?

If the downgrades cause a significant retreat in share price I will increase my position.

To my mind it makes sense that the collection of large moat companies is weighted heavily towards larger companies, merely by how moats are defined. Am I wrong in this?

Not directly, but I do place a very high value in the Morningstar's moat analysis when choosing to invest in a stock and used the holdings of these funds as investment ideas.

Could you explain the advantage of A in years of inflation specifically? I would but Buffett does a better job than I could; check out the 1983 Berkshire Annual report. At the end he attaches an appendix called Goodwill and its Amortization: Rules and Realities. It is a financial masterpiece. Okay thanks I'll do that :)

Could you explain the advantage of A in years of inflation specifically?

Sorry, it stands for "too long didn't read" (summary).

I think it's the opposite. I am a Dutch citizen and am therefore strongly tied primarily to the Dutch and secondarily to the European economy. Investing in US stocks is a very nice way to diversify I think. Please also note that for multinationals the issue is moot and you'd have to look at the origin of their income. If a stock which is exchanged on a European exchange in Euro's has 80% of its income and revenue from the US market there is far less currency risk (for American's) than for a stock which is traded on the NYSE but has 80% of its cost and revenue in Europe. TLDR; 1) It's a nice way to diversify, 2) The currency the stock ticker trades in is irrelevant

I posted a reply here and attached an image but I guess it's too big (16 MB). Anyway as I was saying: Nice post, thanks! I always like these presentations. I always liked the linked image as it zooms out from the Earth, through our solar system, through our galaxy, through our cluster and supercluster to the observable universe. Enjoy :) http://www1.datafilehost.com/d/abc26b3e

MSFT 19.34 CSCO 9.81 INTC 8.38 BBY 6.63 ARO 6.36 DELL 6.09 EXC 6.00 JNJ 5.56 NVS 4.71 WU 4.03 SD 3.97 NOV 3.68 CHL 3.66 AZN 3.37 NOK 3.24 BBRY 3.00 BAMM 2.16 I'm currently contemplating letting go of BBY and am looking into ENB and CHRW.

You also might be earning $500k from your labors, but if you neighbor "earns" $500k from passive income while hiking the National Parks that is an entirely different meaning of rich. If I'd be making over $500k (gross) a year I would be there pretty damn quick. If he isn't, he's doing it wrong.

I use IB and also use their "Enhanced yield program". I like their low rates and no holding charges. I don't pay for the data feed, as I am not a trader but a long term holder and therefore don't need it (the delayed feed is fine). In my experience the enhanced yield program has produced generously more than the $10 per month I need to pay, but of course this will depend on the particular stocks you hold (short interest and prices for lending differ a lot) and the size of your portfolio (however my portfolio size is quite modest to what I expect most people here to hold, if you like to know PM me). Finally, I read all sorts of negative things about customer support and don't share this sympathy. To me, support has always been swift in responding and as long as you take the time to properly explain things you get correct answers.

I always use that for investment ideas! I love the Morningstar moat ratings and hold quite a few companies in that ETF. The reason I don't hold the ETF outright is that I find it hard to determine when an ETF is under/over-valued. If I would buy it I would dollar-cost average into it to try and mitigate the risk of buying to high.

The only thing you are right about that could be improved is privacy. (Basically Bitcoin has no anonymity other than the decoupling of Bitcoin addresses and identities). Furthermore, the crypto-currency Ripple is not an improvement over Bitcoinn. The "Ripples: are owned by the company which created it. They are handing them out for free for now but there is an active market for it. Further it is centralized and not secure due to the absence of mining. Ripple as a p2p IOU system (so ignoring the ccurrency) could be very nice, but that's not a competitor for Bitcoin.

Any rational individual would choose minimum variance when the expected value is a given. Risk is something that should be paid for. Did they find people without a gambling addiction and reasonable education that picked anything else but the third option? :o

Amazon coins isn't even something closely resembling Bitcoin. These are just US Dollars (literally). Google once considered creating something related to bitcoin (before Bitcoin) but didn't because the legal mess this would bring.

And I hear that Indian brides are demanding bitcoin jewelry for the weddings instead of gold :P Most forms of currency have some form of intrinsic value. Gold can be used for jewelry. Cigarettes can be smoked. Dollar bills can be used to pay taxes to the government. The only way a currency with no intrinsic value can establish itself is through a huge entity like a government or massive corporation providing it with value by excepting it in exchange. Gold wouldn't be valued at 1% of the current price if it was for use in jewelry and industrial usage alone.

That's gold. Bitcoin is an improvement over gold (e.g. fungiblity, not fakeable, fast/cheap/easy movable and truly limited) but trades for a 0.03% valuation (@ $200 a BTC, it's quite swingy) compared to gold. Buying BTC for an increase in value is a speculation because there is no good which will ever produce anything. However it is truly undervalued so buying and waiting for the market to correct itself can be highly profitable.

I find this a very good question and a very difficult thing to decide on. I have this problem with JNJ (bough @59.05) and NVS (bought @ 54.27 1 year ago). Both are very stable companies with nice moats but their valuation is now fair (I do not believe they are overvalued yet). For now I decided to just hold until a 30% overvaluation occurred but I'm very curious for other people's opinions on this as my motivation for this decision isn't completely solid.