crastogi

Currently - the upside of irrationality by Dan Ariely. Great book!

In addition to Gurufocus, I also like dataroma for idea generation

Wow, 15 years return will make even buffet envious especially without leverage and cash position, whats your secret holding :) Indeed, it is quite incredible. That is over 100X the starting capital. In general, some of the records here are so impressive. It is a shame they do manage money publicly

Thank you, Eric! This truly sounds great! As I have said, much work for me to do in options and much room for growth… As you have said, it surely will be worth the effort! ;) Cheers, Gio Hi all - great discussion. I like the idea of deferring gains as long as possible, while protecting the downside. When i log onto my broker (TD ameritrade) the longest duration option I see is May 14. Do i need to be looking elsewhere? Regards

It sure is very impressive. What is your investment philosophy? Congratulations for a great year!

45 and happy with my age!

~31% Big contributors google (now sold) and apple leaps bought when aapl was around 400. brk.b helped too :) Laggard - farifax Other big gainers DJCO and capella (sold)

Congrats Packer!

Great Post. Your clients are lucky to have such a thoughtful manager. I too have gravitated towards similar approaches, screen for low ebit/ev, low debt, reasonable roe and substantial insider holdings/ buying, then look for qualitative factors.

Great article. Thanks for the link

I am from Metro Detroit area, and I can attest to the fact that these numbers seem correct, as I have more than a few teacher friends. I cannot speak for other parts of the country Evidently the job has been filled, but the Barbers Hill school district was hiring kindergarten teachers a few months ago, and starting wage was about $50k with no experience. I am unsure about where that position would top off at with 15 years time put in...I am sure that there are good numbers of teachers in the Michigan area who can make very close to $100k with a Masters degree and 15 years put in. Please see: http://www.teachersalaryinfo.com/michigan/teacher-salary-in-birmingham-city-school-district/ So if you have a Masters degree and 15 years in, you are going to be somewhere above the 75th percentile...That puts middle school teachers at about $79k. The 90th percentile is at about $93k. This is a decent living for somebody with a bit of education in their very late 30's, early 40's. Bloomfield Hills is putting up similar numbers... Livonia is putting up numbers about $8k per year less. Taylor is similar to Livonia... Ann Arbor schools are similar to Livonia & Taylor. These schools are all suburbs of Detroit. Birmingham and West Bloomfield are relatively affluent suburbs. Livonia & Taylor somewhat less so... I have also heard that teachers and admins get paid additional sums for after school activities, such as attending/supervising football volleyball games, running the French club, etc. So I would argue that these are relatively well compensated positions with AWESOME benefits... As to why more people don't flock to these positions, I simply do not know...perhaps it is not well known just what teachers are paid and their level of benefits?

Are you sure about that? Virtually everything I've read suggests the opposite. Active is still the bigger piece of the pie by a large amount but indexing has grown a lot. For example, "Since September 2008, assets of passively managed U.S. and foreign stock mutual funds have doubled to $1.31 trillion, according to Morningstar. By contrast, assets in actively managed mutual funds are up 28% in the same period to $4.58 trillion. Demand for exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, also has exploded since 2008. They now hold $1.5 trillion. ETFs, which trade on stock exchanges, are designed to replicate broad or narrow market indexes." http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1006-main-funds-20131006,0,409152.story?page=2 I think he is being sarcastic ;)

HAHA, I'm screwed as well. I agree with the spirit of the article that "value" now is buying the big stocks with moats at attractive prices rather than buying low P/B, low P/E, low EV..heck low anything. I offer a few thoughts: -Start a thread about some smallish profitable stock selling at 50% of BV, you'll get one or two responses. Start a thread about the value du jour that Buffett might like and you'll have 45 pages within a week. -While everyone seems to give lip service to the buy low P/B, valuey stocks not many do it, moat companies are seen as 'safer'. -All of the older funds that were doing the net-nets, low P/B stuff in the 1970s and 80s have grown and graduated to the Buffett value, moats etc due to size. Quick, name five mutual funds that are investing in the Graham/Schloss tradition. -I have thousands of readers on my blog, I blog exclusively about these little value stocks, I can't even begin to count how many people have said they enjoy reading me, but would never invest in anything I write about. I would conservatively estimate that's about 70% or more of my readers. -Look at most of the newer value investing books, they all universally disparage net-nets and low P/B stocks with comments like they were around in the 1930s when Graham was investing, but don't exist anymore. Personally, I could care less what label is given to me. I've found a style that's suited to my personality, and suited to my intelligence. Many of the threads on this board are way over my head, I will probably never price and option or know how to create these complicated trades, I'm not sure I could do a DCF without cheating and lookup up the formula. But if I see a little ignored company at 50% of BV I'm usually smart enough to pull the trigger, and at the end of the day that alone has served me well enough. +1.

Boy that's expensive. Here is in Michigan I am paying 440/mo for a policy for 2 mid 40 adults and 1 teenager. It is an HSA plan with 8000 deductible. So min is 5280 and max is 13280. Move to Michigan, Ericopoly :)

great! Thanks, I will check it out

Hi Folks: I am interested in a portfolio tracking software/utility which can calculate dollar weighted and time weighted returns. Currently I do that in excel, but it is messy as I have to enter dividends, splits, etc by hand. Also, I use Sigfig.com, but it only gives you up to 1 year returns, indices only, no dividends for comparisons. Furthermore, i am not sure it imports data from all brokerages. I am wondering if there is any other utility available. I am willing to pay a small amount. Any feedback suggestions welcome. best, CR

So how much cash are folks carrying? I was almost 0 cash 6 months ago, now i am up to 22% cash as I trim and cannot find things to buy that I like.

Confidence is key, absolutely key. Random story that is related to this: I had a friend who needed a guitarist for a band, they performed every week to a decent sized audience. I asked what he looked for and this is what he said "I want someone confident, I'd rather have someone who isn't that great and acts like they are verses someone who is insecure and reflects that." Granted there are caveats to everything, you need to have a proficient level of ability, but given two people with the same ability level the confident person will win out. I have been investing for the last 15 years using concentrated value philosophy. A lot of my friends/family know I do fairly well, and often ask me for ideas. Usually many stocks I own/have owned have a lot of hair around them. So, most who ask either do not buy the recommendation, or will bail at the worst possible time (when they should be adding). Many of the folks asking for recommendations are very smart, but this happens almost inevitably. My feeling is unless you do enough research to "own" an idea, it will be very hard to hold if the stock heads south temporarily, as most do. For this reason, "cloning" sounds a lot better in theory than application

Detroit area, MI

You could also look at dataroma.com and insidercow.com to get an idea of insiders buying stock and see if it leads you to some interesting candidates