yadayada

[amazonsearch]Surely Your Joking Mr Feynman![/amazonsearch] Richard Feynman is considered one of the greater geniuses of the 20th century. I think he is the father of quantum mechanics, and he also worked on the atomic bomb. And he was a very interesting personality, not your typical scientist. This book is about stories and observations he made through out his life. Couldnt put it down myself, and there are some interesting bits of information in it. Guy was also a true contrarian, and didnt give a shit what anybody thought. Not really about investing, and not really about physics either, but just an interesting read I think.

how true is that 7.4 trillion figure. Having some doubts there. They were making like 2-300 billion$ a year? It seems that if you maybe look at bread or land then this figure is true. But the price of a lot of other things was very different back then because we dont have the infrastructure we have now. Travelling must have been more expensive? Finding luxury goods, because of much higher transportation costs and risks.

Noooo dont look! The idea is to post some winners in between as well. Otherwhise you will be biased and only look for reasons why it is a bad investment. The idea is to allow yourself to walk into value traps and quickly learn from something that you might have overlooked without paying for it. But in order to do this we can't just analyze bombs.

Ill start off with one: AXX - Axia netmedia this idea got rated a 6,6, which is high for that site, so it is suposed to do well. You can make account with email and look at old idea's for free. http://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/value2/Idea/ViewIdea/61190 posted january 2012 2011 annual report: http://ir.axia.com/files/doc_financials/2011/MDA%20YE%20FY11%202011-9-20%20FINAL.pdf http://ir.axia.com/Investors/financial-reports-presentations/default.aspx This idea might be a bit too fresh with only little more then 2 years old, but discuss away :) .

i looked up a bunch of highly rated idea's in 2011 on VIC that didnt work out and are either break even or trading at a lower price now. And I thought it was interesting to analyze them and figure out what went wrong. ANd see if you would have invested in them. The problem is tho, that I know already all of them did badly, so it seems that I will be results oriented and pretty biased in general. So I thought it would be interesting that maybe every week or so a different forum user posts an idea that looked really cheap 2-3 years ago (or more, as long as we can look up results afterwards) and did either good or bad. Preferably with one or more write ups about it already available to make this easier. Then we analyze it before looking up results. It seems like this way you can quickly learn from your mistakes and figure out what can bite you in the ass that your not aware of. Quickly learning from experience without paying for it :) . And it is very important that you dont look up the current price and earnings, otherwhise this exercise won't work as well imo. Also dont spoil it if you already know results.

And use Qbittorent. Alot of these torrent clients are filled with spyware. So always take the Freeware ones. Also if they dont want us to steal it, they should make it available for download or streaming more easily and for a small fee. These fking companies are too greedy, and that is why i end up stealing it. I will not pay for some expensive cable package to only watch 1 or 2 shows every once in a while (with commercials). You want it all? You get NOTHING. Im not even sure if I can watch it legally outside the US?

Sure. I consider the basic paradigm of QM to be largely settled and very solid. This is because there is spectacular agreement between experiments and predictions. And there are thousand upon thousand of really nice experimental predictions. Also every single prominent skeptic was forced after loudly kicking and screaming to admit that QM is correct!!!!!!!!!!!!. I have a special place in my heart for QM skeptics like Bohm, Jaynes and John Bell. Bohm hated QM and you can read his book on QM to see him poke holes in it. Jaynes hated QM so much that he came up with an alternative "less quantumy" theory to explain photon emission and absorption. These guys spend their lives attacking QM and coming up with alternatives. But the evidence was too much for them and both conceded defeat. This is NOT true for climatology. John Christy, Richard Lindzen and of course many of the greatest forecasters the world has ever known, weathermen, are prominent skeptics. +1 How about dark matter, dark energy, inflation, etc. Yes, I know the evidence, but I still don't buy it. It just doesn't sound like the right explanation to me. Although I'm sure this is exactly how the anti-quantum mechanics people felt. I like this quote from feynman, I think he played a pretty big role in the whole QM thing. "I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything"

actually after reading about it some more, it seems almost all credible research comes from the side that says global warming is legit. Also almost all the credible experts are on the side of it being legit. So im not sure if they fit into your discussion topics.

you need to make an account with your email, and then you can read it for free. http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21600451-finance-not-merely-prone-crises-it-shaped-them-five-historical-crises-show-how-aspects-today-s-fina Thought it was pretty interesting. Think it helps to get perspective, and not think the world will end the next time some kind of crisis will inevitably happen again.

I stop by Boggleheads every now and then too. I find the general reluctance to being "active" kinda frustrating. It's foolish to make macro predictions but when interest rates are as low as they are now it's a fair certainty that they will go higher at some point, like when the fed stops QE as they've clearly indicated it will. And the sophistication behind their (boggleheaders) arguments for thier bond allocations is doubly frustrating. If they spent as much time investigating businesses as they did investigating why they shouldn't investigate businesses then they'd be much better off Well i dont find that frustrating, let them do it, less competition! I see it like this, why the hell bother with bonds if you put a decent amount of time in investing? If you find good ideas with lots of upside and limited risk then you will do better then bonds anyway. Maybe if your alot more passive because you dont have time or get bored with it, then bonds are something worht looking at. I think the reluctance to actively look for cheap stocks for certain people is a fear that the market is efficient. They think they cannot do it, because like 98% cant do it. But then I always think that of that 98% that can't do it, most are dumb as a rock or lazy or they just dont follow a system like value investors do. Most people cant even be bothered to look at earnings and lack basic understanding of accounting statements. So if you look at those, and understand return on capital, you already have an edge over most of the market participants.

I like the treasure hunt aspect of it. I tried randomly reading lots of company reports. Learned quite a bit from it, but found it pretty boring. It yielded many times less then just digging into blogs and value investor websites for ideas.

can you please expand on this? check out the SA article i posted. THey explain it pretty well. Or read their prospectus and presentation and in the thread I made about them there is a nice primer on the insurance industry.

yeah whats up with that? I read he had a bunch of crappy online businesses and managed to cash out luckily in the height of the dot com boom, is that true?

http://kickass.to/ for the people without cable or outside the US.

well thats the thing, i know very little. The bull case now is that some smart hedgefunds bought in (like einhorn). The guy who funded a good part, and most of his own money, has a stellar track record in biotech. And it is suposed to revolutionize how drugs work. And lots of very smart people involved in general. And if it works out it will be a many billion$ stock. But it just feels like im way outside of my circle of competence here. And there are better ideas out there i think.

I'm invested in this, but it's more of a bet on whether the product works as advertised. If it does and there are very few limitations to its application, then it should be an attractive product to the food&beverage industry (use less sweetener without compromising taste? also, potential cost savings? sounds pretty sweet!). The VIC post lays out the investment case very well. It's a long one. There's also good discussion on their message board. I think the author's reasoning makes a lot of sense, assuming the products work. If they don't work as advertised, then I'd be concerned about the counterpoints. I also really like this idea because of the similarities with past superstocks: the operating leverage, returns on capital, barriers to entry, competitive advantages, large addressable market. yeah i think only a few % is best so far. But i kinda want to make it bigger to like 8-9%. Just looks like a high probability of a multibagger. And i scratched intrexon from that list. And would make PIH (the insurance one) bigger. read here why: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2139333-1347-property-insurance-holdings-an-ipo-left-for-dead-with-upside-of-50-percentminus-100-percent?isDirectRoadblock=false&uprof=45 V interesting idea that doesnt seem noticed in the corner of the market. With 100% upside and a catalyst of 1 year. Also making Lombard risk bigger to like 8% instead of 4%.

well if you cant spot heisenberg when hes right under your nose all that time...

did this really happen? What were valuations like at those bids?

i definately have the prettiest eyes

haha your welcome planet earth. Dripping with narcisism.

you can partially give them a bonus when they sign up, and another part giving them stock options in the company that they can exercise in 3 years or so. This way they might also keep each other in check. This seems like it would breed a culture of longer term value.

yellow media still looks v interesting. 270m of free cash flow in 2013, and market cap is a bit more then double that. Allthough they do have 650m in debt vs 200m in cash. is there something horrible that will happen soon?

i thought a bout doing this, find ideas posted on this site, and on VIC, and see how they did. And then pick a basket of the ones that did badly and analyze why it didnt work. Im sure you can detect some interesting patterns there.

did the post your blogs thread, and got some interesting blogs that way. Seeking alpha also seems like a site that could have some gold in there. But unfortunately most of it is crap. But there must be a few high quality people writing up ideas on there? The problem tho is that most high quality write ups will dissappear behind their seeking alpha pro wall. Anybody know what they charge for that? Allthough those high quality ideas are usually free for a short amount of time, if you get there on time. So you can copy paste them quickly.

The banks get better interest rate spreads when rates are somewhat higher than they are now. Instead of borrowing at 1% and lending at 3%, they can borrow at 2% and loan at 4.3%. The 0.3% over a trillion dollars becomes significant. At a certain point rates go too high and people stop borrowing as much. Dimon is talking about hitting a sweet spot where soreads and volumes are both good. Historically banks didn't do as well in rising rate environments but most of the bigger banks now hedge off possible interest rate risk. It also has to do with the speed of a rise. That good? yeah thx. So basicly only when rates go up, do banks stand ac hance to profit from this.