randomep

Or a great marketer. This. I saw a video where the interviewer asked why he didn't re-release his book and make it available. He said he liked that it was selling at a premium, it showed it's value. Another perspective. I heard someone say if his book was $20 it would be considered a run of the mill investing book not worth seeking out. But since it is so rare and expensive people think it's special. Bottom line, the guy understands marketing better than most. But one can easily get it in electronic form for free :)

This questions comes up every 4 months in one form or another. The most complete cheap source of data I find is ft.com. They have very detailed info for all international stocks. The cost for the digital is $300 / yr. I have managed to get away using their free service for detailed mining. I am not sure why but I am not supposed to. If they catch on to me I will probably cough up the $300 / yr. Valueline I find is overrated. I did a trial subscription and their coverage universe is tiny.

Utah

A microcap stock is majority owned by the CEO. Recently, he issued himself a tiny fraction of the total common shares as preferred stock. These shares are convertable 1:1 to common at any time. So the preferred stock have the same economic value as the common. He also paid slightly less than market value of the common for the preferred. But the kicker is that the preferred have a right to 20,000 common votes! How is this legal?

I think that would be a very good game. Dallas has been fun to watch this year. Raiders could be a dark horse! Oh gosh I hope so, they haven't gone to the show in 22yrs.

But you have made money from it (see items 1 & 3 with 4 & the whole pay it forward, karmic thingy as a kicker...) yes :)

I'd like to chime in with my reasons for writing a blog: 1. writing it down more formalizes my thinking which helps me make better decisions 2. helps my writing skills which sucked 3. creates a written history of my analysis for later review 4. gives back knowledge to the internet community that has help me so much, I think of how I can know so much because of free information provided by others; be it computer information, home improvement, or free software for me I know I can never make money from it so I never tried.....

Somebody from this fiasco should be featured in the 3rd edition of "Profiles in Courage" The book that JFK claims to have written.

how can this be a short squeeze if this is across the board? GLBS up 188% WTF

Taxation and regulation obviously do destroy wealth. And inequality is one fantastic aspect of a free society. People are different and they deserve different amounts of wealth. Exactly, word for word. Inequality is a feature not a bug. Taxation and regulation can act in both directions. Roosevelt's trust-busting made america what it is today. And I am saying repealing Dodd-frank will cause more shit to happen like 2008. If that happens it will bring about more inequality w/o wealth creation, which btw is fine by me personally. I think it is true and very ironic that the harder a group wants something the more likely it will get the opposite. Middle america wants more prosperity for the working class, but Trump by all indications is going to tear down banking regulations, obamacare, and taxation which will make middle america poorer. It reminds me of Tsipras of Greece who talked so tough but in the end made Greece a virtual slave to the EU.

So you are saying he is trying to kiss up to POTUS or he is reconciling himself to a very sad event.

woah, hold the horses here.... I beg to differ and I am positive Buffett is too smart to change his mind. He might tone down his criticism to appease the POTUS but deep inside he is too smart for that. Ok back to Ackman. I have no confidence in what he said because of the following. 1. remember the saying when you combine a great manager with bad business it is the reputation of the bad business that will win. If the US economy is going downhill he isn't going to be able to fix it. 2. Ackman is making a economic prediction. As we know the fallibility of great investors such as him and others recently. His ability to predict the economy is no better than any other economist, and economists cannot predict the economy for crap. 3. I think what Ackman is saying is that Trump is for less regulation and stuff, which is in general what the Republicans stand for. But we know full well that the economy does better under Democrat potus than Republican potus. 4. He is explaining why the market is bullish, but I feel the market is bullish because he is for lower taxation and regulation, which is great for investors but isn't really creating wealth, it is simply creating more inequality. 5. Trump is not a great businessman, let's say he inherited $50M in 1974 and he is worth $2000M today. That is 7.6% yearly return! That doesn't beat the S&P500. And a lot of the money he made is not through wealth creation but wealth destruction, look at the people he ripped off at trump university and his 4 bankruptcies. So based on his record, the country he leads will be screwed! 6. I think a billionaire supporting him is simply trying to be on the good graces of the government. Kinda like the oligarchs cow-towing to putin. 7. I bet under Trump it will be more of the SOS, look at the below... I think we'll read more articles like the below: http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/politics/donald-trump-transition-drain-the-swamp/

anyone able to log into chnlove.com - that's the ad banner on my page I tried a valid email address and password and they don't let me in........ damn........ anybody see any nice women there? anyone flying to china for it?

Surely you are kidding. Surely you realize that Hilary is the worst thing to happen to the democratic party in living memory. She is unelectable for prez. The pundits should have realized that point. She comes in as the early favorite and when people really have to think about it hard and make a decision they just can't vote for her. I mean her campaign against Sanders was a warning to the party.... Sanders should have been a lightweight. I hope many of us have changed our world view after this election. I thought I was cynical, but my pre-election cynicism is nothing compared to after. I was so wrong at understanding the US - where I reside BTW. And I think Hilary being the kind of woman she is cannot be prez. This is my theory of course. But I have thought about successful women leaders. They are the kind of low key non pushy types in male-dominated societies who don't threaten the status quo between men and women. For example, Butto or Thatcher. Thatcher can never be considered a feminist. She looks so motherly with her trademark purse. But Hilary is different she is a strong and smart and elite woman. If she runs the country, many will think that women have a strong place in america. And that is a threat, to both men and women. It is upending their view of their society. I cannot otherwise cannot explain the visceral hate towards her. I mean all they got on her is some improper handling of emails?? I think a lot of people who voted against her think of her as a unelectable bitch. (sorry I just cannot find a more apt word)

I'm confused. What about all the articles claiming that people voted against Dems/Clinton because they were in bed with big banks? Wasn't Trump supposed to be for the little guys and against (financial) establishment? WTF happened to health insurance companies, are we not expecting them republicans to repeal obamacare? And the MCO are up 3-5%!

Most comments here either confirm or cause me to disgree. But this comment is a real eye-opener. I don't even know what that means. The reason the whole world is in shock today is because they're not underestimating the USA. I don't understand what you don't understand. The OP was thinking of something and I am probably thinking of something similar. You don't know what we are thinking. Just read post #79 and see if the statement makes sense.

I will offer one explanation I think is a big reason, it is name calling it isn't even an insult. A lot of white people see a black man run the country for 8 years, and now, an unpopular woman? These people want to take their country back. It isn't really what I think is racisim, it is just looking after their own. All races look after their own.

Most comments here either confirm or cause me to disgree. But this comment is a real eye-opener.

I watch Wealthtrack religiously but this is one installment I fastwarded and skipped. It sounds like just advertising for Greenblatts latest fund.... yadayada.......

Love your avatar (and your thinking...) Thanks (I hope you meant it Doo......) So back to the original topic, yesterday's 2-3% rise in the US market shows how the market is deeply worried about the choice of prez.... I am not saying the market is all-knowing or that it is pricing the market efficiently. But investors are telling you what they think with their actions........

well Obama or no Obama, Obamacare stays. Even if say someone like Trump manages to repeal Obamacare as president, it will live on in some other form. The genie is out of the bottle and cannot be returned. When people talk about repeal they generally mean the individual mandate but that is a relatively small number compared to the numbers impacted by medicare and other aspects of obamacare.

Superb post. I also think long term indexing is probably right for most people, but each and every one of these points is relevant and means that those who choose to invest a lot of time in it can do better than indexing. There is something I really don't understand when some wise investor says a person should invest in index. Invest in which index? Most of us think of S&P500, but that's probably cos most of us are in north america or are influenced by American financial markets. But what would the recommend to someone in Japan? Is the logic to simply invest in your home country's index? You can see what is disaster it would be if one did that for 20yrs in Japan. So come to the present and one could still make a similarly bad decision investing in the S&P500 index. I am becoming more convinced that the next 20yrs will have really subpar stock market growth in the US. In that case fast foward 20yrs and we'll be saying indexing doesn't work. Saying to go index is just another fad, albiet one with much less risk. Indexing is not a substitute for thought, if one buys 100% S&P500 index one has to made the decision to do so because there are so many indicies out there not to mention bonds insteads of stocks. I don't know if the investing public realizes Graham talked at length about the investment allocation for much of the Intellingent Investor.

Well looking at it the opposite way. If the prez doesn't have much influence on the economy then who does? If you say Alan Greenspan is responsible for the bust then Yellen is now responsible for the recovery? Or is the economy this unwavering train that no one can rein in? I think the prez heavily influences the economy. I don't think it is a coincidence that the economy is much worse under republican prez than dems. The president appoints the Fed chair. He can guide the direction of congress on the economy. Kennedy called for tax cuts in the 60's, to this day I don't know if that was the cause of inflation in the ensuing 15yrs. If Nixon had won in 1960 maybe the economy would have turned out much much different. Obama didn't have to work hard, he had to make tough decisions like getting Gneither to lead the treasury. The presided over lots of the bailouts 2009. And there are things he didn't do. Like Bush adding fuel to the fire by saying every person should own a home, or trying to get Social Security to invest in the stock market. Funny thing is Trump says Clinton will be a disaster for the country if she runs the country. Yet he also says Clinton will be another 4 years of Obama. The latter case would be great!

That 's a very good point. Well two good points. One is to learn from one's own errors in judgement. And the other is about news sources. I think writers work backwards with a thesis and find supporting data to confirm their thesis. Which then makes a great story. From the top of my head I recall reading some pretty hilarious articles when looking in hindsight. 1. Stan O'neal of Merril Lynch, I recall a flattering front page Fortune article about his great leadership. 2. An article about what great innovations Americans brought to the mortgage market. This was their explanation for why the American economy and stockmarket was doing so much better than the rest of the world in the mid 2000's. 3. A article about the Nortel CEO as the management of the year in a Canadian business magazine in 1999/2000. A few years later..... nortel went kaputz My point is not that the article writers are idiots, but that they have no basis to judge the people they are writing about. Time will tell and the authors can't judge just like we can't judge.

I agree. Scott Adams is profoundly brilliant. He has completely transformed my thinking on how people make political decisions. I now understand why facts & rational arguments are useless when in the realm of politics or articles of faith. And, reactions (like almost all of the messages posted on this thread) are so easy to predict that it's become laughable. Thanks to Packer for the original link to him. He may have some really clever thoughts. I read through his blog a bit. But he says Trump has 98% chance of winning. That pretty much got me to stop reading his stuff, not because he seems to be pro-Trump but because I really question his judgement. Am i reading it wrong?