CorpRaider

Hey no recommendation on my part. Just saying if you're looking at hard assets due to inflation fears, timber and/or farmland to me make more sense to me than gold, all else being equal. WEB probably thinks KO will kick the ___ out of timber in any inflationary environment. hah! Nah BM that was my bad, portfolios has an obvious meaning on this board and it ain't tax law comic books.

Sorry, the portfolios are just reference books on taxation topics published by BNA. They're often referred to as the "comic books" by the tax jocks. You can probably get your hands on them at a local law library or maybe one at a business school. They're usually just a good starting point to get an overview of a subject. It has been a while (years) since I looked at the area. I think PCL has some stuff on their site about the dividend treatment for their investors that might be interesting to you. WY or RYN might have some presentations as well since they both (fairly) recently converted to REITs with greater straight timber focus (I think).

KMI

Yeah or you could do that. Buy half of Maine. Timber really must have had a prolific lobby. Even the timber reits get to pass through mostly cap gains because of the treatment of timber. There's a whole BNA portfolio on taxation of timber. hah! I kid you not.

How are you investing in timber? You could do CUT, WOOD, PCL or RYN. WEB has called out PCL once upon a time. Its a little rich for my blood at the moment, but I've owned it in the past. Or you could straight up buy some timberland; you can get some state tax advantages in some states.

I keep my gold in a safe in asia with mark faber. No seriously, my "inflation hedge" would be timber. I prefer stuff that sits there and grows to stuff that just sits there.

Yeah I would love to get on board with this thesis, but then I ask myself how much cash did he just set aflame in SYWR and online retailing efforts and how does that square with a machiavellian scheme to constrain investment in retail and transition to an insurer? Also, they point out how SHLD created all these assets by securitizing the real estate and the intangibles then gush over the fact that there are assets in the sears re. I don't get it. Didn't they just essentially transfer some assets in a related party transaction and mark them to market and overlay some securitization? Sounds a little like talking crap mortgages sticking them into an entity and blending them into AA credits.

I must say, that is some pose in the picture on value walk.

Train, The Money Masters and The Snowball; Periodicals: Bloomberg Businessweek; Barrons; Forbes; Bloomberg Markets; Skim Valueline most weeks. Just finished Dhandho and the Most Important Thing this past fall. Both were really great.

Can't wait to watch. Lynch is one of my favorites.

Barron's had an article on this situation this weekend. Nothing really substantitve imop (it was really just a political opinion article to my mind) but thought I would note it for you.

Thanks for sharing Ben.

Maybe, but it looks like we might be exit stage left in afghanistan and I don't think the Iraqis are going to be attacking Iran anytime soon. The military is largely comprised of Shiites (which we liberated from a brutal regime), isn't it?

The messes the US "created" on either side probably make it less likely Iran would be attacked by a nation state which could be disuaded by nuclear capability. You think they can work better with malaki or sadaam? The afghans aren't attacking anyone, they couldn't organize a light bulb change. The kurds could take over the whole country in a month. We are bombing the radicals in wasiristan back even further into the stone age. We basically built them buffers. As far as the interim deal; what's the problem? The israelis are constructing a straw man of iran totally and immediately dismantling its nuclear program immediately and with no conditions. Yeah that would be nice and I bet you can get alot of congressmen to say, "we should do that". But if your options are, let the israelis strike them preemptively because they are about 6 months from a bomb (as they have been for the past 8 years or so if you believe them) or lets get in there and inspect and see if we can get a deal...I choose B.

Two words: Lucent Technologies.

I think the movement in crude on this interim deal will indicate that the market very much had a premium built in for the shiite and sunni luke warm proxy war that is going on right now. Iran is just another factor in that and I'm glad we won't be manuvered into doing the fighting for the Saudis. The only thing I don't get is how the why does hezbollah/the shiites chant "death to america" when the sunni terrorists bomb them? WTF did we do? Is that your only cheer? We've been killing the same type of guys for the last decade.

Congrats Packer!

All I know about Hussman is that if we have a couple more up years, he might be "retired".

That's pretty disappointing. Seems like he's doing the same thing as he criticized O'Shaugnessy for (giving up on the strategy due to a few years of underperformance). I thought the underperformance of the international funds made them attractive at this point. They waisted a lot of time and money working up data for the international stocks. Also, I've heard him say on numerous occassions, that he didn't implement the long short arbitrage strategy around the formula companies because it worked in his data until it eventually blew up.

You're the man. I have a similar set up but with a mac mini instead of a pro an no use for windows. Excel is obsolete OP. Check out the free google and mac productivity apps. It was a good run from the Lotus 1-2-3 features they stole. P.S. I am not long MSFT. hah.

Isn't (relative) HFT and program trading what is generally blamed for the 1987 crash?

Who knows? You might become the next Dan Fuss by applying your equity style, issue by issue, business analysis to the corporate issues and later you can get some schmoe to run the government portfolio.

LOL. You guys are going to cost the young man his career and his girlfriend!

Hey, I'd rather buy disney or diageo but right now Mr. Market doesn't have a sale on those.

I downloaded it. Thanks for your efforts!