CorpRaider

Thanks for sharing. What's the thought process here? That he can employ some leverage and perhaps more importantly, hedge to reduce some of his horrible down years? His ~12% per annum, since inception is good, but its about where Gayner is....and guys like Loeb and Pabrai have crushed this, no? I guess his fees are a little lower.

A "catastrophe" is you mailing the keys to the house to the bank and you're not much worse for wear.

Yeah, I think this is going to be one of those levels of comfort with risk answers, but I would probably take as much sub 4.5%, 30 year fixed, tax deductible debt as I could get...

I like the bloomberg businessweek, I recently resubscribed after catching the Hank Paulson/financial crisis installment and a couple of other interesting issues before and after. Also, I did it via a banner add on this site, so hopefully some of that helps defray some of the overhead here.

Tell me about it. Bought it at a little over $7 during the credit crisis for my own portfolio. Sold out at $20 a couple of years later! :'( Cheers! We all have similar stores -- I bought WFMI $10 pre split - sold at $45 (pre-split) it's at like $120 or whatever right now? It is amazing the bargains available when everyone thinks the world is ending. I did roughly the same thing with WFMI. Oh well.

I doubt Baskin Robbins will be partnering with SBUX for so long as they are owned by DNKN.

Yeah and with value investors there is rarely a big rush to put on the position since they/we are usually early.

The fact that schultz couldn't leave gives me a lot of heartache about their brand durability, moat or however you want to refer to any sustainable competitive advantage.

I like DNKN better. Its interesting: Sbux wasn't doing so hot without Schultz; DNKN wasn't doing so hot before PE shop came in and served its highly useful societal purpose. Crazy how much Texas Pacific Group must have made on the DNKN deal. They deserve every penny in this case.

I've been pretty disappointed in wiki vest personally. Also wish mint was better with the investment accounts.

I expect it would have to stay closed for at least a week or two to make an impact.

I dunno, lack of subject verb agreement? hah! I kid.

Sorry just throwing out ideas; you said emerging markets exposure, so I figured you wanted a fund and more of an "asset allocation" play. The RAFI, of course is not cap weighted...that's the whole idea. I personally doubt, however, that the fundamentally weighted stratagem is likely to work as well where in emerging markets, where the data reflecting the fundamentals is probably questionable...but its not cap weighted and you really just need to beat the cap weighted index to justify the product. You could check out HLEMX, or maybe the Dodge and Cox international fund. Or you could, of course, just buy some YUM or some SBUX or maybe some MDLZ.

You might take a look at the RAFI EM index ETF (PXH, I think), assuming you are a "fundamentalist" like most on this board.

I subscribe to both as well as Wealthtrack and Freakonomics Radio. I prefer planet money to marketplace. I wish forbes still updated Steve Forbes intelligent investor podcast.

Yeah, seems like its a shitty business unless there is some future scenario where the home healthcare providers are advantaged in reimbursements over full-time "in-patient" nursing care.

GTIV keeps popping up on my magic formula type screens, but I haven't been able to get comfortable with it. I offer the following analysis regarding GTIV: There are a crapload of old people in America. Nursing homes are like the fifth ring of hell. Disclaimer when it comes to leveraged interprises: I went down with the ship on CHTR some years back.

COH

Yeah, you guys are right, children are horrible people and they don't get better with age. hah!

If abercrombie maintains its allure (which I kind of expected, probably largely due to price signaling) it might be time to really kick the tires and think about opening up a position. I have an affinity for it because I caught almost a triple in it back when it blew up last time (when hollister was still in its infancy). Now they're rolling out that gilly hicks brand apparently going after VS' pink and the juicy lines.

This might get interesting here with sort of a confluence of factors, the psychological impact of the spike in mortgage rates, yet the actual yield curve flattening out again because of no taper and throw in maybe a scare around the debt ceiling...Sort of a period of potential nasty transitory influences on the financials, if you will. Earnings could look pretty nasty for the banks with no mortgage refi's, no real steep yield curve, vastly diminished bond trading volumes, maybe a mark to market on some their fixed income portfolios. Guess we should start getting negative preannouncements in the next few weeks?

I've had occasion to speak to one of the guys working on this bankruptcy in the last few weeks and even they are sick of these proceedings! There was alot of value in the IP portfolio though, if Nortel could have somehow sold the assets prior to filing...I'd rather buy stock in the big 4, those guys do most of the particing of law anyways. heh. I've heard some Big 4 firms double their rates for bankruptcy work.

Yeah, stock fund flows are matching levels in 2007 as well, aren't they?

Wish he had reopened FAAFX and FOCIX. Maybe if the house panics financial markets again and his financials get hammered like in 2011... I wish Berkowitz he had a book or biography. The healthcare move he made back around the time the ACA was working through would have been a home run looking back on it now, but I suppose he saw the extraordinary opportunity in financials before it was allowed to play out. Is he prominently featured in any of the value investor compendiums like money masters or tilson's book? Thanks for the head's up on FOCIX as well ValueCFA, that one would be harder/impossible to replicate without the scale or paying someone 2 and 20.

I tried the mini recently, as well as the nexus 7 and the nook and kindle 7" HD offerings. I liked the mini the best, especially for reading books and pdfs like value line reports (the screen is .8 bigger and is just about perfect), but the nook was great for the price (~$150). I would probably rank the nexus next. The kindle is kind of clunky, but its convenient if you're dialed into the amazon media ecosystem.