NeverLoseMoney

Thanks for that article. Bodymetrics looks really interesting. I think this is where the real money is. If you can develop a great body-mapping product, it will solve a lot of problems for online fashion retailers. Issues with clothing size are probably the most important thing that's holding online retailers back and a competitive advantage for traditional stores. I think Amazon would pay a lot of money for a startup that is able to solve that problem. They're probably working on a solution themselves. At some point the problem will be solved by someone. An online shop could automatically filter out all the products that don't fit you. People would worry less about a product not fitting and be more inclined to shop for clothes online. Product returns would go down, driving down costs. Online shopping for clothes would become much more attractive to consumers and the cost advantages and convenience compared to shopping at a B&M store would become more important to them.

I'm pretty skeptical about it being good for society. Every stock needs to be owned by someone. All that I'm doing is cherry picking: picking up the cheapest things and avoiding the overpriced things like the plague. If I do this right, it will benefit me. If I choose not to actively invest at all, someone else will own the bargains and he will get the benefits. I guess you could reason that you help make markets more efficient and help capital allocation in some way. Still, that's all pretty abstract stuff. Let's face it: we're not brain surgeons, fire fighters or farmers. Those professions offer a much more visible and greater benefit to society. Of course, I'd like to believe it is good for society, but I see plenty of people doing jobs that I think are pretty meaningless making the same claim. The main way where investing could help is indirect. It can provide you with a lot of freedom in the way you spend your time and money. That can provide a real benefit to society, whether it is by supporting a charity, doing volunteer work, being able to be a better parent, etc. But when you're able to do those things it is still your decisions and actions that provided the real benefit. Investing just allowed you to do it more or better.

For searching in topics: try the 'site:' search in Google. For example: site:http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/shld-sears/ your search term here Perhaps that works a little better. For other threads, just copy & paste the URL and replace it in the code above.

One thing that I think would be useful is to update the first post in a topic for a particular investment idea after some time. It would contain highlights from the thread and some links to individual posts in the thread that highlight the bull and the bear case. The major problems: you would need a mod(s) to do this, it would take time to write the updates and the person who's providing the update is probably biased.

From the article: So, not the next CEO. When Buffett's successor retires though, she should be in a great position to get the job.

This looks like one example: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/23/nsa-officers-sometimes-spy-on-love-interests/

Indeed, WTF: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1363357/000091228213000678/0000912282-13-000678-index.htm

For an introduction I think "Value Investing Made Easy" by Janet Lowe is a good choice. She has also written "Warren Buffett Speaks", but I have not read that one. And I also vote for "The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville" as an antidote for the efficient market theories.

Recently finished: - How We Know What Isn't So - Thomas Gilovich Really enjoyed this. If you like the work of Cialdini and Kahneman, you'll probably enjoy this one too. - The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction - David Quammen A very long read, but well worth it for me. Lots of great insights about evolution and extinction. - The Outsiders - William N. Thorndike Recommended. Just started reading: - The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession - Peter L. Bernstein

Here are some random observations from my end. 1. The success of Bitcoin should not be measured by looking at a graph of the price. If I wanted to answer the question whether this currency has a chance of succeeding, I would make a list of a few hundred of the largest e-commerce sites and check which ones accept Bitcoins. That seems like the best way to measure progress. 2. Can associations with dubious merchants cause major problems? For example: I read that the Pirate Bay accepts Bitcoin. Can this fact be used by authorities somehow to seize funds somewhere or in some other way that would disturb transactions on marketplaces? 3. It seems to me that the more legitimate merchants accept Bitcoins and the more Bitcoin becomes a viable alternative for traditional currencies in online transactions, the stronger the incentive for governments to make life hard for Bitcoin exchanges, merchants and users. The stronger Bitcoin becomes the weaker the "moat" of traditional currencies becomes. I think the US, Europe, China, etc. will all feel the same way about this. 4. I don't think Bitcoin is unstoppable. You can make life very hard for all those involved. Study how the US dealt with the online poker sites and payment processors for years and years. It took a while, but it has been pretty effective in the end. I know Bitcoin is something entirely different, but some of the tactics used there can be used again. 5. Besides governments, there are probably a lot of large corporations that want Bitcoin to fail (credit card issuers, PayPal/Ebay?). The more successful Bitcoin becomes the more lobbyists will fight it. Their donations to politicians buy influence and policy. 6. I've been looking at the map on http://fiatleak.com/ and a lot of demand seems to come from China. I don't know what this means and whether the Chinese use Bitcoins for actual transactions or they're just using it to speculate or as a tool to get money out of China. Looking at the explosion in the price of Bitcoins and many of the alternative cryptocurrencies, coupled with the large Chinese demand, it does look like a speculative bubble to me. I don't know if Bitcoin will succeed or not, but I like the idea. Having said that, I think it would be smart for those who were lucky or insightful enough to mine Bitcoins early on to take this opportunity to cash in at least some of their chips and buy some more shares in their favorite company. 7. Bitcoin has the best chance of succeeding. If it fails and becomes essentially worthless it would be very hard for another cryptocurrency to succeed. So many people will get burned and the media will be all over it. The faith of users in a currency is vital. If Bitcoin fails, who is going to trust any alternative? So, if I wanted to speculate on a cryptocurrency I would bet on Bitcoin. Diversifying into a basket of cryptocurrencies seems like a terrible strategy to me.

I use ChangeDetection for some sites and it works well for very simple webpages. It is not useful in other situations, for example when you're tracking a page where annual reports are posted, but where that page also includes a list of links to industry news that automatically updates every day. It should work fine for the PD-Rx site, because the annual reports page is a static HTML page. It looks like they downloaded a free template for their site: a link to the template directory is at the bottom of the page. For most companies this would be a red flag for me, but here I get the impression that the company just didn't want to spend any money on their website design. If the website is not important at all for their business this is OK, but in most cases it makes no sense to risk putting off some of your customers with a poor website design just to save a few hundred bucks.