Rabbitisrich

I would say you have either been a landlord or have very good intuitive skills because you have described very accurately what it means to be a rental property owner. He has some great stories on his website about the the investment process. I'm waiting for the next part of this ominously named series: http://ragnarisapirate.blogspot.com/2012/05/sometimes-its-best-to-take-pass-40.html http://ragnarisapirate.blogspot.com/2012/06/walking-away-from-few-million-dollars.html

Just saw this interesting rental ask price comparison in Seattle: http://www.urbnlivn.com/2012/06/17/seattle-rents-2002-2012/ Edit: It looks like the image function isn't working. Is there anything I should do aside from copy and pasting the image location?

Any valuation multiple is just one side of various DCF equations.

http://www.corelogic.com/about-us/news/corelogic-reports-shadow-inventory-fell-in-april-2012-to-october-2008-levels.aspx

If anyone needs a break from reading about banks, Europe, and China: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/chi-0604sushi-1-story,0,4666032,full.story The reverend Moon is a heck of a businessman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unification_Church_affiliated_organizations#Businesses Affiliated businesses include a gun manufacturer, a Chaebol, the Washington Times, and a U.S. property development company.

I think that you could make a reasonable argument that unexpected inflation is theft, although then again, you could say that the very existence of inflationary mechanisms implies that the threat is in the discount rate. Why would homo economicus care about "virtue"? It simply views the world in its various possibilities and makes its bets.

Thanks for the summary. That is really unfortunate. Looking at the March '08 report for FPA Fund, they had some really interesting ideas in retail, but plunked most of their risk money into energy and tech underperformers. The retail picks were really impressive, particularly given their bearish view. Lots of contrarian and thoughtful names... almost seems like a sub-portfolio w/ separate management.

I dunno, he didn't offer a real thesis on interest rate directions except to offer a variation of "they can only go up". Similarly, the statement about japanese flows is descriptive, not explanatory. It's like saying that Mcdonald's outperforms because they get customers who pay money for food. Does anyone follow FPA? Why were their returns so low despite holding so much cash leading up to the market drops? Did they let the cash allocations blow up when their stocks collapsed?

Some of the lost reputation is healthy for the firm and for its clients. Supporters were getting cultish and credulous because of ECRI's track record. Even now, it is a great record, and Achuthan has been more specific with his criteria recent interviews.

I can't really say because I'm only about 70 pages in, but even if the rest of the book was to start sucking, just what I've read so far would be worth it IMO. Some insightful stuff about mindsets and avoiding bad decision downward spirals, psychological resilience, etc. Some stuff I already knew about, but always good to refresh memory, just like re-reading Buffett. Looks interesting, thanks.

Whoops, I said that it was quarterly in the post above. It's an annual dividend.

I may have imagined it, but did anyone see a newsticker showing that Dell will institute a $0.32 quarterly dividend next year?

Some of the Amazon reviews imply that the techniques Waitzskin offers aren't broadly applicable. Have any of you found practical uses? I read similar critiques for Joshua Foer's book, but the basic descriptions of mnemonic techniques have been extremely productive.

Good book. One interesting nugget was that, according to Richard, financial publication editors measure story "success" by next day market impact.

Pretty interesting, thanks for sharing. Have you seen any responses from AHA representatives or "lipophobes"? The payments for the commercial use AHA symbols were amusing.

I heard a couple good investing related allegories this week. A fisherman noticed that his catch had been particularly good in recent days and decided to mark the location. After making careful measurements, he precisely drew an X on the floor of his boat. An economist absentmindedly drove his car until he felt a thump. Heart pounding, he looked behind and saw a prone figure. With a cry of "I must fix this", he hit the reverse.

Mostly PNC and BAC. I'm still finding financials to be very attractive, though perhaps that demonstrates that I'm getting some major themes wrong.

The problem with the March YTD thread was less about luck, and more about the use of short-term market results to validate business theses. It's an easy habit to form, and fairly dangerous.

There was a March thread about YTD results that was a definite warning sign. When the Corner of Berkshire and Hathaway starts reporting YTD results in March...

Vinod, have you seen any report on this? Nothing that directly addresses the question of causes behind low NIM. But a good paper that goes into the issues is by IMF www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2000/wp0007.pdf Vinod The first attachment looks at the stability of Japanese bank NIMs despite the zero boundary and rising credit costs. The second attachment covers a later period and describes some of the factors that led to improving ROEs despite diminishing NIMs. Tsuyoshi_Oyama_and_Shiratori_Tetsuya_-_Margins_Of_Japanese_Banks.pdf Loukoianova_Elena_-_Changes_In_Japanese_Bank_Profitability.pdf

The downside of being so rhetorically aggressive is that wounded parties don't want to listen: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/the-breakeven-point-wonkish-but-terrifying/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto Paul McCulley held a similar viewpoint and received walking papers from PIMCO for his perspective. Every country can point to unique villains (Greenspan) so it takes a while to see common threads.

Imagine you have $100m that you want to save. What are your alternatives? You don't have FDIC protection (and there is no reasons why bank accounts can't have negative rates), and you can't put that in a safe under your bed. Sure, regular Joe's with $5,000 don't have to accept negative rates, but they aren't the majority of deposits. Not arguing that we will see those rates, but I'm just saying that there is some reason for why T-Bill yields sometimes go negative. It could happen for longer dated issues too. Ben To protect $100m you only need to purchase 400 certificates of deposit -- each one from a different bank. The $250,000 in FDIC protection is only the limit of protection that you have from each individual bank. FDIC coverage is unlimited for non-interest until the end of the year.

I was referring to this quote of his: "...gold is a great thing to sew onto your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939 but civilized people don't buy gold - they invest in productive businesses." Maybe I am interpreting it wrong but he is basically making fun of people who buy gold thinking the shit will hit the fan (hence the holocaust reference.) I was taken aback by the comment as well. But Liberty's interpretation is probably the correct one because the statement doesn't actually make sense if intended to denigrate refugees. Munger probably (hopefully!) meant "civilized" to refer to people living in civilization, and not to connote culture or elegance.

To clarify, doesn't "notional amount outstanding", as reported by the ISDA, refer to the cumulative notional amount transacted? For example, a $5M par contract purchased five times is recorded at $25M.

I agree with that, other than the 2 additional quarters. I think it will take a little longer because of all of the legal overhang. Why wouldn't WFC maintain a premium vs. BAC, given that USB maintains a premium vs. WFC? Do you see a pathway for BAC to depart from historically inferior unlevered profit margins, and to compensate for the leverage handcuffs of Basel III?