CorpRaider

Put an excise tax on sugar, high fructose corn syrum. or Aspertame (perhaps one that goes into the Medicare and Medicaid trust funds) or don't, what's the big deal? He invests (or has) in petrochemical companies who are subject to excise taxes (maybe some of those should go into Medicaid/Medicare funds as well for cancer caused by their pollutants). You better be ready to apply these taxes to beef and milk and fried foods next. You will soon be voted out of office because you have nannied and ticked off every american. Isn't democracy grand? Maybe the Chinese can blaze the trail on this path, assuming they can get the air pollution low enough that you can see your hand in front of your face.

I know this is nothing new but what do you guys make of this endorsement of index funds? His rationale seems centered on the costs argument, which is what Bogle's arguments now focus on (as opposed to an acceptance of the EMH). I wish someone would ask him about low cost value index funds or fundamentally weighted funds. I could see him preferring the SPY given his quality bent (it is already kind of an alternative/fundamental index given the screening and selection (and ejection) of stocks by S&P), then again I think he still holds to value as a general proposition and those index funds would satisfy the low management and tax cost concerns. He would probably be concerned about tracking error and the potential for investor performance gaps if he mentioned those to his wide audience though.

I thought it was a stupid question 100% designed to try and highlight his mad trading skillz.

I enjoyed that a lot. Good job by Yahoo.

ETFs. Are open end mutual funds obsolete for taxable investors?

Read any of the biographies (or just their titles, or virtually any article about him like....ever) and you will know why.

He's going to be on squawk Monday morning for 3 hours too. If you feel like watching him politely dodge asinine questions and comments from Kernan for a couple of hours. :D

Yep....RPV....FTW

Finally read the transcript last night. He said banks are now regulated utilities and BAC should spin off Merrill and U.S. Trust, which are nothing of the sort. Yes, please. Also interesting comments on DNOW and MRC. Has taken positions and believes they should merge.

Sounds bit like Bogle's "low cost hypothesis".

"Margin call gentlemen."

I get what you're saying. Some would say he's really "financially independent" as opposed to retired, because he generates passive income that far outstrips his annual spending, even backing out the $400K (which is a recent phenomenon, btw). He could probably never post new content again and would still generate substantial income for years to come. But I think most would say he retired early from his career to go manage his personal investments (mostly real estate at the time) and then turned a hobby/evangelism (about stoicism and limiting consumption and the attendant impact on the environment disguised as a personal finance blog) into a huge business on accident. He really doesn't even post all that often now, maybe once every month or two.

I think he did and this touches on an important point which I feel has not been stressed enough in this discussion. Steinhardt did those things to gain an informational advantage. Without this advantage he would be a lesser legend or not a legend at all. The key word to investing is edge. You need to have an edge, otherwise your results are not good. There are perhaps four kinds of edges: informational, analytical, behavior, and financial. Insider trading is informational. WEB buying into Geico is analytical (and informational because he was able to grill Jack Byrne before his investment which no one else could have). Behavioral is self-explanatory - patience, fortitude, etc. Financial is when things are down and everyone is poorer, you still have money to invest but others don't. Few of us have financial edge - we are just not rich enough. We try to improve behavior, but we are only human. Most of the investment effort is around gaining informational and analytical edges. Without such edges which come from hard work, there can be no good investment. Think about what we are doing here - reading the posts and typing away. We try to learn. We learn lots everyday, but most of them are not good enough to become a money-making insight. Good post. I suppose bribing/pumping sell siders for information is research, but I wouldn't expect Boesky to hold forth on fundamental analysis. Personally, I wouldn't dismiss the behavioral edge based on shared humanity, but I'm not a professional who has to field calls from investors and give quarterly and annual reports. I think the incentives (career risk/herd safety, pressure to justify fees by activity, etc..) are what is going to drive the behavior. I think the financial can be a huge deal too. For example ensuring one has durable capital seems to be key. Getting slammed with new funds when everything is expensive and having to sell positions based primarily on liquidity to meet withdrawals in a downturn has got to hurt performance in a major way.

Didn't he make most of his returns by front running orders, analyst upgrades, and other stuff that would probably land him in federal "pound me in the ass" prison, today? Just like Cramer.

Since the Mexicans are paying for it, they may use Mexican suppliers.

If good is better than market average returns then historically (empirically) no. One could check out Fama and French or pretty much any of the other research on mechanical value portfolios or read pretty much anything else about the value anomaly. 200 slide presentations built on excruciating research wouldn't help you much in a quest to stay in bidness after getting smoked by the FANG/MoMo the last 3 years.

Very interesting. I've been looking to get long but it seems to never get in the zip code of cheap before JAB takes another slug. I've been sort of fascinated with the Reiman family and Bart Becht since they took me out of the coffee spin from Sara Lee. I like to listen to the COTY quarterly calls as well.

Anyone perked up by this move in the GBP? Saw something that said as weak against the dollar as it was in like 1985. I guess I will just buy more EAFE or maybe some EWU.

LOL. Awesome. I wonder if he gave her an in-kind distribution of SHLD common. So he didn't go the Ackman route and blame his poor performance on having legions of copycats. Hey one thing Ackman didn't mention (I can't believe he failed to note) is THAT is a problem he clearly solved for a while and won't have to deal with next year! haha.

At a minimum just run a small retail footprint with appliance, home services, auto and maybe tools. Basically, only keep the stuff men would buy. Did anyone rip him a new on for sending them a big tax bill in connection with a shitty AR number?

I totally tried to respond with the GIF with peter griffin from family guy trying to dive into coins like scrooge mcduck, but I failed miserably. I am getting old. http://i.imgur.com/ztZ0yAZ.gif Thank you sir. Could you drive me to my doctor's appointment?

New Cherokee makes me throw up in my mouth a little every time i see it, but that's probably a good thing from a value investor perspective.

I've never followed Burry much. Some interesting names on there. Someone should ask the dataroma guy to add him. I think I have annoyed him enough with recommendations.

C'mon man, all the buffetites know that Dexter was the biggest mistake (all together now)...because....he....paid...in....stock.

You guys must have more equity and/or better credit than me, I'm getting a 3.8% quote from the two places I checked.