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oldye

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Everything posted by oldye

  1. 'Natural gas rotary rigs totaled 389 as of Friday, March 28, according to data released by Baker Hughes Incorporated. This represents a decline of 29 rigs from the previous week and is the first time it has fallen below 400 since 1999. Oil rigs rose by 30 to 1,354' Rig counts are what we want to watch here, and they're down 40% YOY! I think I remember Ken Peak saying that the depletion rate on natural gas wells is around 30% annually, and nat gas in storage has dipped below the 5 year average. This should be relatively bullish for NatGas and SD. Cheers!
  2. I found this to be an interesting read because I always thought that networks became more valuable useful as they grew http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/09/is_facebook_too_big_to_survive.html
  3. I think Dell is strictly a capital allocation play, they're taking money out of a dying business and investing it in higher margin business's, share buybacks and dividends. The share buybacks done at current levels are very shareholder friendly and I would love to see them buy back a few billion dollars worth of shares at these prices but realistically we'll probably only see 12-20 million shares bought this quarter. The higher margin business's at Dell currently have about 20 billion in revenues and generate more than 2 billion a year in profits and are growing nicely. The computer business is in decline but still capable of generating nice cashflow and at this point is worth less than nothing according to Mr. Market. I'm not sure why anyone is still talking about pc's vs macs when it comes to dell...
  4. Dell says that they've done about 10 billion dollars worth of acquisitions since 08, have already collected about 9 billion in revenues and have increased revenues by 90% from time of purchase.
  5. http://www.bloomberg.com/video/warren-buffett-fails-the-cherry-coke-taste-test-NnWahJqjSg6e6DUIzxkg_g.html ???
  6. Is 3% really such a high cost of capital? Berkshire has about 60 billion in debt that costs them more than 4%..
  7. Just found out my dad has a small account with them, now frozen. There is never just one cockroach
  8. Where do you get your android numbers, Oracle is claiming they're making 10m a day, in the lawsuit they announced that they're predicting to make 1.2 billion in 2012 from the ads alone. Currently the number of android devices is growing by about 100%/year...that will get them to about 500m devices by the end of 2012.
  9. I bought my first apple products (2 ipods) a year ago and after loading it up with apps etc I was totally hooked. About a month after purchase I stupidly broke the screen by dropping it between the wheels of an elliptical machine. As you can imagine I was totally pissed and decided to take it to the apple store to have it fixed. After waiting for about 15 minutes the apple genius came out and gave me a brand new one for free. My takeaway is that this company does a fantastic job building their moat(A friend had a similar story with a macbook!)
  10. I think Petrochina was a trillion dollar company for a little while
  11. Had a feeling this would start to happen http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-12/sears-supplier-loans-halted-by-cit.html
  12. The U.S did pretty well in the 90s after the Soviet Union collapsed, perhaps we're in store for a similar period where lack of demand from Europe results in lower commodity prices and a higher standard of living.
  13. Amazon agreed to start charging sales tax in California sometime in 2012. I think a bigger headwind is the fact that their customer base is old and I'd guess is dying at a rate >1.5% a year. Online sales are currently about 2% of total sales...even growing at 20% a year its going to take a long time to become significant, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to double down and try a bid for overstock...I hear they're pretty good at liquidating inventory!
  14. ;D Great area, lots of construction, there is going to be a new Trader Joes (why can't they be public?!) opening next to it.
  15. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/1025/1224306446361.html
  16. According to the P&C association of America there is about 560 billion dollars in surplus capital right now for 400 billion in premiums
  17. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-18-2011/world-of-class-warfare---warren-buffett-vs--wealthy-conservatives http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-18-2011/world-of-class-warfare---the-poor-s-free-ride-is-over
  18. In hindsight he should of bought Fairfax stock instead but he probably doesn't read this forum.
  19. They've spent $1.6B over the last three years on capex, so if he's not pouring it into the stores, where is it going? Sears Canada was better off than Sears USA, but it is going to run up against stiff competiton for the forseeable future. Buying Sears Canada may prove to be a poor decision, when that cash could have been invested elsewhere. Instead, they're burning through the cash in Sears Canada too! Revenues keep dropping, shareholder equity keeps dropping, debt has increased dramatically...slow burn! My opinion remains: Pour money into investment ideas or other businesses; runoff the underperforming stores; sell off properties in bulk as values stabilize or start to increase; license core brands to other retailers (Craftsmen, Kenmore, etc); eliminate paper catalog business and move everything online; decrease store footprint and reduce number of inventory items; reduce operating expenses to the bone. Cheers! Its actually 1.3 billion spent on cap ex over the last 3 years on 4000 stores which works out to about 325,000 per location and that is without consideration for the money they spent on i.t, logistics etc. Revenue and cashflow are strongly tied with new housing starts and I think they'll look much healthier, and Eddie a lot smarter, once the U.S gets back to 1.2m vs the 600k we have today.
  20. The department store model maybe in a slow runoff but Eddie is doing a good job of not wasting money there. He is rapidly increasing the amount of franchises, bought most of Sears Canada, and buying back stock.
  21. http://www.economist.com/node/17647627 I think its great that our civilization is starting to think about these problems now. Luckily for us just about every element is found in sea water and with enough incentive someone will figure out a way to extract it. Like Charlie Munger says, just about anything can be accomplished given a cheap source of energy and an efficient way to store it.
  22. According to wiki Buffett paid 4.50 an ounce, I remember him saying he paid 3, either way it was probably less than it costs to take out of the ground at the time.
  23. "The long-term demographic need for new housing in the United States is approximately 1.5 million new units per year, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies." Total Housing Starts: 1998 1,616.9 1999 1,640.9 2000 1,568.7 2001 1,602.7 2002 1,704.9 2003 1,847.7 2004 1,955.8 2005 2,068.3 2006 1,800.9 2007 1,355.0 2008 905.5 2009 554.0 2010 586.9 As always Warren is probably going to be right give or take 3-6 months :) According to usg, a typical house built for 100k has about 20k worth of materials and 80k worth of labor...makes sense why he thinks we'll be back to 6% unemployment in a few years.
  24. For what its worth, I showed up 8 minutes late to the annual meeting, and it was already over. They did have a very nice spread (I might go next year just for the chocolate croissant.)
  25. 10% inflation means treasury rates of at least 10% which means bonds and most stocks get killed because their current earning power becomes less attractive compared to the risk free rate. Inflation is already priced into most commodities, what asset class provides the same optionality as cash?
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