Dustin T

I ordered a copy, I've always avoided this industry because I don't understand it well enough, hoping to change that a little as it's clear the domestic oil industry is on the rise.

Manufacturing 10 years high volume HVAC components 5 years low volume heavy industry agricultural/construction/forestry

Merry Christmas and thank you all for the ideas and education.

If the currency and it's transactions need great computing power to survive, and at some point they are no longer going to issue fresh bitcoins, I'm curious what the plan is once the last bitcoin has been issued but they still need resources to track the transactions and fight off attempts to hack the system? As they become more valuable the issuers have incentives to issue more, I wonder if there is anything that would stop them? Bad publicity and loss of faith is certainly a strong one, but if demand is great that won't matter. For bitcoins to grow in value more and more people must be convinced they do have value. I think they are much more likely to produce a speculative bubble. Traditional money has the backing of Governments that have strong reasons to keep the currency stable, along with legions of people willing to trade them for real value. Gold is a rare tangible substance that has a long history of maintaining it's value through every disruption known to man. Bitcoins has neither of these and cannot in my mind be the "perfect currency". There aren't any issuers. The process is decentralized. Everyone controls issuing and no-one wants to deviate from the original plan because this will undermine the entire currency. When the block subsidies are gone the rewards will be restricted to fees paid for the transactions. This is growing and the idea is this will completely replace the block subsidy while being a strong enough incentive for the network to be secured. I have to admit that it seems like their are some bright people behind this and that they have a well thought out plan, I think the currency without government or tangible backing remains subject to the whims of the people. They are too fickle for me, it won't surprise me if it continues to grow and make people rich or if it crashes. This isn't something I'd personally consider as an investment as I can't predict it's future with any degree of certainty. It will however be fun to watch.

If the currency and it's transactions need great computing power to survive, and at some point they are no longer going to issue fresh bitcoins, I'm curious what the plan is once the last bitcoin has been issued but they still need resources to track the transactions and fight off attempts to hack the system? As they become more valuable the issuers have incentives to issue more, I wonder if there is anything that would stop them? Bad publicity and loss of faith is certainly a strong one, but if demand is great that won't matter. For bitcoins to grow in value more and more people must be convinced they do have value. I think they are much more likely to produce a speculative bubble. Traditional money has the backing of Governments that have strong reasons to keep the currency stable, along with legions of people willing to trade them for real value. Gold is a rare tangible substance that has a long history of maintaining it's value through every disruption known to man. Bitcoins has neither of these and cannot in my mind be the "perfect currency".

Buying General Maritime GMR in Feb of 2009. I was smart enough to know I need to add some money into a down market, virtually any investment made at that time did. Not mine, I invested in a shipping company (owner operated) that paid a huge dividend in an industry heavy on supply and low on demand. They had just bought more tankers at rock bottom rates and I thought once things turned around they would be flush once more. I sold prior to their bankruptcy wiser and poorer. I did learn lessons. Shipping is outside my circle of competance. I avoid leveraged companies unless the revenue streams are very predicatable and well understood. and lastly the owner-operator was still chairman but he had hired a CEO and was running a second shipping company. He had recouped all of his investments in GMR via dividends and poured them into his new ventures and was actively running them. My money wasn't in his "baby" but in his worn out old workhorse that he had already put out to pasture. A few months ago I read "The shipping man" and it pretty accurately reflected my experience in the industry.

This is true and I feel like the US promoted an acceleration of the nuclear trend when they hanged Saddam. Guess what kind of message that sent to other regimes? Uh huh, better arm yourself with nukes or the US is coming for you. I hadn't thought of it in that way, but must admit it's a deterrence trump card, and I could see why Iran and N. Korea might be desperate to possess it.

I feel every time any nation gains nuclear weapons the world is a little less safe. I think it would be delusional to think otherwise. Iran seems more dangerous than most, it's not that the odds of Iran using them are necessarily high. It's that the consequences are so dire. I think expecting governments to behave rationally is folly, as their past histories prove them very capable of behaving irrationally. We may have coexisted with nuclear weapons for nearly 70 years now but that doesn't make them anymore safe then an active fault line or an active volcano. Sooner or later if we play with them long enough, one of them is going to blow.

I can't produce the data you are looking for, but I have been interested in the theory that owner operators outproduce the rest of the market for about 5 years and towards that end I created a marketocracy portfolio that is in the 97.2 percentile of funds on that site over the last 4 years based only on having a basket of owner operators as it's portfolio. I also randomized the S&P taking the first 30 stocks that had either a CEO or Chairman owning at least 2% and have compared it to two different random control groups on an excel spreadsheet. Four years in the Owner operators are beating one control group and losing to the other, but what I find most interesting is the top stocks in both control groups are Ralph Lauren and Whole Foods which are both ran by the founder which owns them at 1% without them the owner operator stocks are the clear winners. Running a correlation on the data, it showed a 20% positive correlation between ownership % and total return. I know enough about statistics to know that my data isn't a perfect scientific test, but it has certainly convinced me of the validity of the owner operator idea and within 24 hours of learning about Murray Stahl I had invested in his company which is I think a record for me.

I certainly agree that one can find folly looking for the "next" berkshire, it would be easy to focus on things that weren't core to Berskhire's success like fun annual letters or owning an insurance business. I think it's useful all the same, history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes. Jeff Bezos isn't Sam Walton but there are things about Amazon that remind me of Wal-mart in the Walton days. Elon Musk isn't Thomas Edison but I think he's our generations version nonetheless. I've made it a point to read biographies about Rockefeller, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Walton, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett and all the titans of industry. There are a lot of commonalities between them and while I never expect to see a clones of any of them having an understanding and looking for young investors, industrialists, inventors is I think a very useful exercise.

Although cannibals are nice, I need to remind myself to not look at an increase in share count too much, especially if shares are issued because the stock is overvalued and the company is run by a great capital allocator (e.g. IEP). Totally agree, I always look at the share count history and try to discern what the CEO is doing with them. I also want to thank you for helping to bring FRMO to my attention. I'm wondering if Mr. Stahl will take advantage of FRMO's elevated stock price. I tend to think he will if the situation persists and the price get's high enough.

My favorite part of this book was the introduction to Henry Singleton of Teledyne. I'd heard of him and the company before but didn't realize his significance. The way he made wise capital allocation decisions based on the market climate and whims of the age made me realize how important it is to have a CEO that thinks for himself and like an owner. Using his ability to print money via stock to buy companies when Conglomerates were in vogue and traded at a premium. Then turning around and buying back shares once conglomerates fell out of favor almost seems obvious in retrospect, but it took courage to go against the conventional wisdom of his age. I truly don't believe conventional business wisdom has gained much true wisdom in the years since.

This is a great idea for a thread, and all the companies named so far are ones I keep hoping I can purchase at a fair price. Considering it's success with him versus it's difficulties without him. Howard Schultz of Starbucks.

I loved this quote from John Templeton "The main thing that people need to learn is that selecting assets is totally different from almost every other activity. If you go to ten doctors and they tell you the same medicine then that's the thing to take. If you go to ten engineers to build a bridge and they tell you the same thing that's the way, but if you go to ten investment advisors and they pick out the same asset you better stay away from it"

I suggest a Coverdell ESA. I have one set up for my daughter. You can invest the money in anything you could invest an IRA in. I've got her's in common stocks. It really works a lot like a Roth IRA. The only downside I see is it has a lower maximum contribution limit. $2000/yr.

I guess my definition of value investing is fairly broad. Anything from Walmart to Apple to a Microcap drug company can fit my definition if the price is right. I liked the article in that it does warn against group think, which I don't see as a problem on this board, it's full of intelligent and independant thinkers, but I think it does infect some value investors. I do have reverance for Graham, Buffett, Peter Lynch, and Watsa. Their words carry much weight with me. I also believe that succesful value investors of the future must build on there lessons, not blindly follow them. Isaac Newton once said "If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" I'm not sure who will be annointed as the next great value investor but I fully expect it will be someone that absorbs all the knowledge available and then adds to it.

Recently sold half of my position in AAON a HVAC manufacturer that does a lot of custom systems. I just think it's over priced. It's great company Owner Operator, growing market share, strong margins etc.. I put that money into LMCA Which has bumped up nicely since then.

I chose to convert mine in 2009 when the market was crashed. This added to my tax bill that year, but removed my future liability at a discount. I'm not a tax expert, but as I understand things it's advantageous to wait for a pullback vs. doing it while the market is on the high side.