bargainman

Like this caption:

Well it looks like in their recent update they've changed their mind.. They're still unranked but here's an interesting quote:

I don't know, if you're going to buy a basket you may as well invest in their instruments if you can, no? FAIRX, BRK, FFH proper. Then you don't have to second guess sales. Plus in the insurance cases you get the benefits of the float. WRT software you can probably look at Stockpickr.com to help you track these portfolios. The other one that's kind of interesting is Morningstar's ultimate stock pickers portfolio. They use a number of expert portfolios to copy cat, then analyze big sales and purchases, and conviction positions... Somewhat useful although I'm not sure what their performance has been...

As always very interesting. What I would like to see however is an article discussing the US healthcare system as compared to other countries'. There are already a lot of other countries not necessarily using high tech innovations that achieve a high quality of care at significantly lower cost for larger percentages of their population, possibly without control centers and the high tech available to the US. It would be interesting to read his perspective on that. What amazes me over and over again, both in medicine and investing is how fallible we are as humans. We seem to make so many mistakes and misjudgements, and there are so many systems out there based on trying to remove or minimize them.. It's really fascinating...

Perhaps I'm not remembering right, but I distinctly remember him saying that he will *not* backstop/support the stock. Just cause he'll purchase aggressively doesn't mean he'll hold the fort if people sell enmass. After all he might have other better deals to chase with that money if the bottom really falls out...

This one on AIG has more meat to it IMO.. Although perhaps it's already been posted.. Good read none the less... http://www.fairholmefunds.com/pdf/CaseStudyII180612.pdf

Well Prem is at a far earlier stage. When BRK was a much younger company, and Buffett had less mula to play with, he was definitely a Graham, cigar butts kind of investor...

Well that leads to the next question. Historically how accurate have Valueline's 3 year predictions been? I don't see any data for it. I remember a long time ago I saw Hulbert's take on their timeliness ranking, and basically it beat the market but was more volatile, so their risk adjusted returns were the same as an index fund.. I wonder if their 3 year projections are any better... Remember, these analysts don't necessarily have any skin in the game. I think M* has the same opinion of AIG. I suspect they are both trying to play it safe.

Just wanted to point out that this choice: "Short equity or writing put options or whatever other way you bet on their demise" Is not quite correct. If you are writing put options you are getting money to buy their stock at a given strike price. As such, it is a bullish not bearish position. Now buying puts would be a bearish position.

So says Bove! http://finance.yahoo.com/news/crazy-not-own-regional-bank-161411585.html Can't remember if people on this board like or dislike him..

The sad thing is that MSFT was actually first to market with both the phone and tablet! They had Windows CE and Windows tablet years ago before the iPhone and iPad. They could have owned those markets. It's not like search, gaming, and the iPod where they were/are trying to play catchup. They squandered their massive lead.

One way to measure developer interest is to look at programming languages: http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2012/06/5-ways-to-tell-which-programming-lanugages-are-most-popular.php C#, which is for the most part exclusively MS is still pretty high on the list (top 5 in most lists). Most of the other languages at the top can be used on Windows, but don't have to be (with the exception of Objective-C. So it seems like MS is still attracting interest from programmers. Remember that developers will go where the demand is. No one wanted to learn Obj-C until Apple created iOS and opened a huge market for developers.

Well... one could actually argue that it is the Greeks who are screwing the Germans by refusing to pay them back! But that's just more salt in the wounds...

In soccer/futbol :-) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/22/us-soccer-germany-greece-idUSBRE85L1G020120622 Not sure if that's more or less a negative to the Greeks than the financial takedown...

I find that article somewhat ironic, blaming the downfall of MSFT on Ballmer being a 'control expert'. There's this other guy what was his name at that other company who had a bit of a reputation for being a control... freak was it? I guess being a control expert leads to a downfall, and being a control freaks leads to mass admiration ;-) clearly I'm simplifying, but I do find it amusing...

Right but the big difference is that the keyboard *is* the cover! That means it travels with you where ever you go! iPads don't currently come with this option. You can get something similar: http://www.logitech.com/en-us/tablet-accessories/keyboards/ultrathin-keyboard-cover but it's not part of the package (oh, and that one doesn't have a touchpad either, which you'd want when you're typing since you don't want to lift your hand up all the time to 'click' on things... Plus the touchpad presumably provides greater fidelity)

These are interesting points. To me it's pretty interesting how Apple basically broke into this market by focusing on the consumer, and going after new form factors. I remember several times where Jobs saying that he wanted to focus on consumers where everyone voted their own wallet, as opposed to IT departments and enterprises where you had to convince some CTO/CIO to buy a bunch of machines. He said he wanted to infiltrate corporations from the consumer side. If consumers were using their devices eventually IT would be forced to adapt. That's basically what's come to pass. MSFT on the other hand is coming from the other side. They are very strong in the IT world. They're still strong in the consumer world, but not on new form factors (mobile/tablets). So they are trying to extend their reach from their core strength.. The enterprise, and in particular Office/Outlook/Sharepoint. It makes sense. IMO it's more compelling to an enterprise to have people on Windows Tablets than to have them on Android tablets. it will be interesting to see if that transfers over to Windows Phones to eventually. So far no go... That said I suspect that in IT these tablets will start to cannabalize the windows laptop sales.. Since they are essentially a replacement for them.

Well I don't know about desktops making the most sense for corporations. Any meeting I go to these days is littered with laptops all connected to some conferencing software. If someone has a desktop they RDC into it all the time. Teams are distributed around the world, and when they travel they need their laptop with them, and that's in tech/engineering. Now for sales and marketing laptops are probably the only thing that makes sense vs desktops. WRT the tablet, well this is almost a full powered laptop with an i5 chip. The only underpowered aspects are screen size, SSD memory, and the keyboard potentially (although msft claims the thicker keyboard cover allows for full speed typing since the keys do have a millimeter or 2 of give). So... there's a USB 3.0 port - attach your keyboard, mouse, and extra hd if you need it. There's an SD port too so add memory at least up to 32gb if not more. There's a displayport (or HDMI, I forget), attach your nice 24" monitor! Unless you're doing something intensive like coding/video editing you now have the best of most worlds.. I say of most, since the small screen would still be worse than a 15" laptop screen for doing real work, but at least you have a 'real' keyboard on the go, and the stylus, and the tablet like nature.... it's relatively compelling...

Well that's one of the selling points if you read the announcement! Windows Office will be on these devices...

Notice how the kickstand is in the landscape direction? one can imagine that most people will use it in landscape mode? I've never been a fan of the 16:9 format. It's annoying to have so much horizontal space that never gets used... it makes sense on a 24" monitor where I can stack 2 windows next to one another, but to have it on a tablet or a laptop doesn't make that much sense to me. After you look at the menu, the title bar, the toolbars, the ribbons, then the headers for most websites etc, everyone makes use of the vertical space, squishing whatever is left into nothingness... I'll stop my rant now...

I spent some time watching the event posted online today: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57455851-75/microsoft-posts-video-of-surface-event-online It looks very interesting. The guy who talked about the design was interesting in a 'not very like Jon Ive' sort of way. Sounds like they put a lot of emphasis into making it feel solid. The hinges and the piece that folds out to make it stand apparently was engineered to sound like a car door closing and to be flush so the hinges don't show. Apparently they also have a vent all along all the edges so that the air can flow no matter where you hold it. Also the magnetic cover makes it so that you can not put it on wrong since it glides in correctly. When you move the keyboard/cover to the back, it knows it's disconnected and doesn't press keys. Also it looks like the pixels are supposed to be very close to the glass so they have a stylus which just clamps on magnetically when not in use, and samples at 600 dpi, meaning that when you write on the screen, since the pixels are so close, it really looks like you are writing where you are writing (if that makes sense). Anyway after that I was watching part of the apple wwdc event, and I must say... MSFT has a lot of work to do in putting together a polished presentation. Balmer and Sinofsky stumbled over their words a number of times, the tablet crashed, and the design guy, although passionate kept going on and on about how perfect it was and kept trying to hit you over the head with all the things they did with it to make it just perfect...

And how would that appeal to MSFT's demographic? MSFT has always gone for the masses while Apple has always gone for the discerning customer. Gates talked about it numerous times. I doubt it will be as polished as Apple's tablet, and I don't think it will need to be as long as the price point is right. The question is whether it will deliver the value to MSFT's constituency not whether they will out Apple Apple.

Sure does. Remember Magic Johnson? There are consequences, some dire. I would probably put Larry Bird up there as a reasonably good role model although I'm pretty sure he had his share of indiscretions too. I doubt there's any high level professional athlete who hasn't cheated. Magic Johnson talked about how at every city there would be women leaving their name and number at his hotel box. Lawyers, businesswomen, models etc, not just any woman. Society has its icons, and pro athletes are right up there.

Yeah something tells me they won't get things *that* clean with UV wands: http://www.guardiantechnologies.com/LW18-UVC-Sanitizer-Wand-Details.html Under the "How it works" tab: "Disinfection of items or surfaces can generally be achieved by holding the UV-C Sanitizer Wand over an object or surface for 20 seconds at a distance of approximately 1-2 inches." I doubt they'll be going over everything at a distance of 1-2 inches for 20 seconds each!

If you think it's complicated with just one person, imagine how complex it gets when you have a spouse and kids. You really have to start modeling out scenarios. What if I lose my job? What if my spouse? What if we both lose our jobs? Then there are the kids. Losing a job would mean fewer daycare expenses. Then under what scenario do you take the 6 month - 2 year fund? Then you assign probabilities to the scenarios and their required funding requirements and come up with a number. Kind of tricky since the best case scenario (6 months + lower income earner loses job) is an order of magnitude less than the worst case scenario (both lose our jobs + 2 years). This is not a simple question at all unfortunately.