bargainman

well it's not exactly what you want, but you should probably look at mint just to track everything. Gainskeeper for the taxes stuff. Not sure if gainskeeper tracks stuff across accounts, but it's pretty powerful for matching trades up...

down 6%+ this morning..

I like Zeke Ashton's take on the use of debt. This interview is worth reading, with the part about debt around page 8: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16057124/Zeke-Ashton-of-Centaur-Capital-Partners-Exclusive-Interview-with-The-Manual-of-Ideas-May-2009

This is true now... But with Android gaining 4% in one month: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20010101-1.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0 it may not be true for long. Andriod has gone from 0-13% in basically the blink of an eye. Now if you look at the iPhone approval process. See here for a developer who stood up for Apple, and subsequently got his app, which was approved several times before, pulled! http://shiftyjelly.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/sentence-first-verdict-afterwards/ You have to ask how many companies are willing to bet 10s, 100s of thousands of $ (or millions) building an app which Apple can reject on basically a whim. Here's a list of Andriod devices out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_devices the list is only going to get longer. I'm sure iPhone will continue to be big and a big moneymaker, but Android will soon become the next big mobile app destination.

Before you all write MSFT off, here is an interesting blog post with numbers, and an interesting 'interpretation' of those numbers by another writer: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2010/06/25/microsoft-by-the-numbers.aspx http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/26/microsoft-numbers/

I think the one thing that everyone can agree on, whether you're completely against the compensation agree or whether you're willing to tolerate it (I've not heard anyone enthused about it other than Sardar), is that Sardar has really messed up a good thing. That good thing is/was his incredibly loyal shareholder base/following. That's basically reputation and culture, and I think he's messed it up with the few bad, selfish moves(not to mention his seeming complete lack of ability to listen to any suggestions other than his own). It will be interesting if he ever gets it back. I doubt he ever will. That's the problem I had with him from the start. He's an activist investor which means that he has to like the fight, by definition. He's showing that now, except that he's fighting against the very shareholders who were loyal to him and could have been one of the best shareholder bases ever. Now instead he's got Gabelli. To read about Gabelli check this out: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/06/26/8379985/index.htm they'll make a great couple...

I can pretty much agree with the article. I have no problem with MTM to report income or financial statements.. But when it comes to regulatory capital requirements... you can't run a business that way. The problem is that it certainly doesn't sound like the FASB is synced up with the capital requirements regulators. If they could both do MTM accounting and change the capital requirements regs in one coordinated dance, then that'd be fine. But I doubt that will happen. From what the articles say it's going to be even more restrictive than the previous MTM fiasco. But hopefully bank's balance sheets are in better shape... I guess time will tell, but it's something to watch...

Sanjeev, I disagree. MTM was one of the sparks. Of course, like with any massive fire, there was a lot of flammable liquid around, but MTM had a spark like effect on all the massive leverage. My beef with this is the 'changing the rules in the middle of the game' aspect of what the FASB is once again proposing. Remember how Buffett was trying to get an exclusion from posting collateral against his derivatives, but Congress didn't make an exception? Then he said that "legally since the contract was written before the change, BRK won't have to post collateral anyway, but he'd rather stay out of court?" This is close to the same thing. The problem is not the MTM but the Capital ratios that are based off of those assets. Assets which are already on the balance sheet. Picture this scenario: I get a mortgage 30 year fixed on a $1 million house, I put 20% down (200K), and I agree to a certain amount of payment every year for the next 30 years. Now the price of the house on the market all of a sudden drops 40%. Well, it sucks, but I don't care cause I just keep paying my monthly payment. Now what if the FASB said.. oh, you have to *NOW* MTM your asset and post collateral on it! Well now the bank will come to me and say.. hey, it's a 800K loan, and the house is only worth 600K, so you have to give us 200K+(600K*20%)= 320K, cause you have to keep your capital ratio in balance! To which I'll say "What the? that's not what we were originally doing? How come the rules changed? I can't post that much! I'll have to raise capital.. but I can't cause the house isn't worth anything... oh I'll have to declare bankruptcy.. Or go to Uncle Sam for a bailout!" I could have continued paying the yearly payment and paid off the loan with no problem, but now that the rules changed midstream and I have to keep my capital requirements in balance I'm bankrupt! If FASB wants to have MTM for all NEW assets being acquired I'm not so opposed to that.. But they shouldn't be changing all the rules midstream for old assets. That's what caused all the banks to have to raise capital when they could least afford it, which was one of the clear factors affecting the death spiral. Also it leaves securities which don't have liquid bids in a very susceptible position, even if they are performing. Anyway, regardless of what opinion you or I or anyone has on this, that wasn't my question. My question was.. is it a disaster waiting to happen? Will this cause all the banks to have to simultaneously have to raise capital and take huge markdowns again? If it passes my guess is it will.. Especially since they are supposedly requiring it for equities and loans this time. But I'm not an accountant or a banker, so I was wondering what others with more expertise in this area thought... Ericopoly.. What is TCE?

Does anyone else think this is a disaster waiting to happen? The original MTM probably ignited the financial crisis. No one could find a bid for any of their assets so they had to mark them down to nothing. http://www.navellier.com/blogs/entry.aspx?ID=124 http://www.americanbanker.com/bulletins/-1020090-1.html http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/05/28/246171/fasbs-mark-to-mayhem/

Well actually supposedly we do. We've been looking for oil for a long long time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PU200611_Fig1.png "This concept is based on the observed production rates of individual oil wells, and the combined production rate of a field of related oil wells. The aggregate production rate from an oil field over time usually grows exponentially until the rate peaks and then declines—sometimes rapidly—until the field is depleted" .. "M. King Hubbert created and first used the models behind peak oil in 1956 to accurately predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970.[1] His logistic model, now called Hubbert peak theory, and its variants have described with reasonable accuracy the peak and decline of production from oil wells, fields, regions, and countries,[2] and has also proved useful in other limited-resource production-domains. According to the Hubbert model, the production rate of a limited resource will follow a roughly symmetrical logistic distribution curve (sometimes incorrectly compared to a bell-shaped curve) based on the limits of exploitability and market pressures. "

Really interesting.. Thanks for posting this. Looks like WSBase has gone down a bit more but not too drastically. Would love to see this when WSBase makes a drastic move up or down... :-)

Yes that's the thing. You can use book value + some portion of NOLs, but since the underlying securities fluctuate, there's that volatility. On the earnings and cash flow side I have a tough time evaluating it too.. Then there is also the presumed investment prowess of Ian and Joseph (and the risk that they leave). Which is why I was asking how others are evaluating IV?

Yes I think you're right about the NOLs. For some reason I thought they had recognized them once again, but that's not the case after a quick read of the 10Q and annual letter. That said, it's still an asset going forward if they can use it. I think it lasts till 2030 so my guess is they'll get some use out of it. So, the question is do you use that in the IV calculation?

Based on what IV calculation? They're trading a bit higher than book value, although I'm not sure what to make of book value given the large NOL presence.

Just discovered this site: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ Looks pretty interesting to help reading.. not sure how well it'd work for 10Qs etc though..

Well Buffett says a lot of things. One of them was also that if he has to go to the Nth line in a spreadsheet to make his investing decision he isn't interested. That would seem to suggest that he also believes in the law of diminishing returns no?

The terrible tragedy in the gulf seems to have gotten a lot of press local to the gulf and aimed at BP and the Government. My question is, with the loss of oil revenues, fish, tourism etc, seemingly in massive scale, will this be enough to tip the US into double dip recession? Also note that the stimulus money is going to be running its course, as is the cash for clunkers and other government give aways. Just wondering what the sharp minds on this board think...

Hmmm.. I wasn't very impressed by his standpoint on this one. Why would the users not pay? And what's wrong with a gov committee assigning a rating agency?

Well Microsoft customers like the extremely pricey software they bought from Microsoft 5-10 years ago, but have no incentive to upgrade and thus send more money Microsoft's way. Microsoft hasn't put out a desktop product in 10 years that presents a compelling upgrade, so they are missing out on those potential revenues. They try to force people to upgrade via licensing and lawsuits and such but the new products simply aren't better so everyone drags their feet in upgrading. I have a copy of XP that I bought 5-6 years ago which, despite not being Vista (or perhaps because it is not Vista) suits my needs fine. Even if they do "fix" Vista I have absolutely no reason to upgrade. My Microsoft Office suite is from 2001. I might use these for another 10 years. Compare that to seemingly disposable hardware and software sold by Apple such that everyone upgrades every 2-3 years. Google has a different revenue model but as long as they remain current/relevant they'll continue to derive ad revenue from their products. tiddman. See here: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312510090116/d10q.htm "Windows Division revenue growth is directly impacted by growth of PC purchases from original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) that pre-install versions of Windows operating systems because the OEM channel accounts for approximately 80% of total Windows Division revenue. The remaining approximately 20% of Windows Division revenue (“other revenue”) is generated by commercial and retail sales of Windows and online advertising from Windows Live." They don't care if you upgrade the software. Most of their sales for windows come from new machines. My guess is that's also the case for Office. MSFT is pretty much becoming an enterprise company, they just keep trying to be a consumer company and keep failing.

Also notice who made it into: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/managing/executive-compensation-2009/which-ceos-own-the-most-equity-in-their-companies/article1581565/ Also Watsa, and Flatt (Flatt was in the first list too)

I find this interesting. Biglari has stated in previous annual meetings that he hopes to expand SNS to 2-3x the current number of stores through franchising since it's a more capitally efficient model. I forget the actual number of stores they are aiming for. But I find the assumption that he's going to let SNS shrink into oblivion a little pessimistic. pillaniman, what about your conversation with Dash made you decide to move on?

well a few days ago it was a short recommendation on the street.com I think, plus there was a negative article on seekingalpha. So maybe it's a bounce back or some one issued a buy rec at this price.

I'll second that. Add to that the quoting of Buffett out of context, quoting random value investing platitudes, and all in your first 10 posts on this board! I'd say.. that speaks volumes!

My only nit with the article is this: "Mr. Biglari’s preference for targeting underperformers and insulting their leaders, however, is a marked difference from the approach of Mr. Buffett, who seeks companies with strong competitive advantages and solid management." Buffett does what the article describes now, but he didn't back when he was running his hedge fund. He certainly was a bit more like Biglari back in the day when he had less money.

Um.. what 'classic buy and hold value investors'? usually the classic buy and hold variety are the growth investors and the Bogleheads. The classic value investors sell the stock when it hits intrinsic value! Buy when it's at 50% of IV, sell when it's at 90%. That's the 'classic' Graham Value investor no? Buffett's whole 'buy to hold' bit only came after he was influenced by Fischer and Munger, and after he had way too much money to be trading in and out of stocks all the time. I guess I'm splitting hairs, but I agree with the rest of your statement.