ragnarisapirate

you don't even like their management even after the boardroom shake up? Not that I am super familiar with the situation, but from the stuff I have read, the company seems to be talking the talk and walking the walk of a value investor.

So, as of right now, after the earnings releases, which do y'all like more? Personally, I am a slightly bigger fan of ORH; I am looking forward to seeing what will happen to their price tomorrow, since I was fortunate enough to have bought some shares today!

I wonder if Sanjeev would be willing to elaborate on his recent experience with SNS call options? Or any other experience that he has had with options, for that matter.

so why not buy puts on a sector ETF to offset industry style slowdowns, while buying call options on a competitor. That way, you can offset the event of your company going belly up, while the other company does well (say, what happened to best buys stock price when ciruit city went bankrupt).

well, I wouldn't say that the best option is the longest dated one, but rather, the most mispriced... if we have SHLD $60 options that expire in jan of 2010 and 2011- with the 2010 one selling for a penny and the 2011 option selling for $500, you would be hard pressed to not buy the 2010 contract. Granted, this is a pretty extreme and hypothetical example. I certainly agree that options do have their place in some people's portfolios. the idea of hedging your employment is pretty genius.

75% a year? that is impressive... 2 questions: 1) how small are your small caps (for example, when I think small cap, I think DCU, whereas, most would probably think of SNS as a small cap) 2) are you investing with a catalyst for your prospective 75% returns in small caps? or are they that undervalued?

Good find, Josh. I am guessing that CIT didn't spend enough lobbying congress, since they didn't get bailed out. Out of question, does anyone know anything about how a CIT bankruptcy will happen? If all their investments are split up, would we be able to buy individual debt from individual companies? It seems to me that buying Dunkin' Doughnuts debt wouldn't be a bad idea (at the right price)-though, I do have a pretty limited knowledge of the company.

So, if I, as an American, own a Canadian security (such as FFH), do I have to pay Canadian taxes on dividends, cap gains, or anything of that nature? I know that there is a dividend tax in Puerto Rico and Germany, but that is the extent of my experience. thanks,

I second that, Ragu... In fact, I think that Sanjeev should make that a default question for all interviews! :-) -jeff

A few points: 1) as has been said, it seems like the company will be making it to 90% of it's debt covenant in 1-2 quarters (based on last Q's numbers; which had pretty bad oil prices) 2) this would be a great stock to have in a Roth IRA since you get around paying taxes on the earnings of it, no? 3) because of the taxes that will have to be paid on earnings (which you won't directly see for a bit), won't that provide for a good jump in the price (since it will provide more incentive to buy), once the debt covenants are covered?

but that is nothing when compared to their inflation rate that is in the millions of %

I read mixed reviews of it on Amazon; what was your take on the data mining parts of it (as far as quantitative things)?

I have watched what he has done in various situations and his strategy strikes me as interesting, to say the least. To me, he seems to be the ultimate contrarian. Often, it seems that he compares companies sales/earnings/assets to others, which while I don't go by that to value companies; he does seem to have a decent record. With that said, I have been scared to death to touch any of the bio techs that he has been targeting as of late. Yes, I do generally appreciate his shareholder activism- but that doesn't say much, because if there is a dissenting faction of shareholders, I am almost always sympathetic to their cause from the get go...

Does anyone know if there are any letters from Carl Icahn to his investors (not the stuff that he puts in the WSJ) regarding things like TWA and MOT? thanks.

so, I was just looking at WMT's yahoo finance page and saw that their PEG was 1.14... Their market cap is an astounding 192.4 Billion; larger than BRK, T, GOOG, JPM, and JNJ. Really, the only companies of note that they are smaller than are MSFT and XOM. I don't know, they just seem too big to grow that fast (and, by the peg ratio, be considered anything close to a growth stock.. To me this seems pretty freaking optimistic, at least in the long run.

It all depends on whose ox is getting gored. We have a double edged sword here... It is obviously bad for the public to have much say over monetary policy, since they will inevitably push for lower interest rates and more money to be printed (much like they push for ever higher minimum 'living' wages). However, as the public giving the government power, shouldn't we be able to have more knowledge about they are doing? If anyone has read even a single paragraph of my blog, I doubt it would be a surprise I said that I don't think the fed should exist... I am kinda indifferent to oversight, as it would just make the legislative branch of government grow in power (which isn't really desirable). Though, it would be nice to know how they are implementing monetary policy.

how about shorting treasuries? that seems like a good war hedge to me.

While it may be looking like a good thing thus far, what are the political repercussions in the future? By this I mean, do we really want the government to invest in the markets? Any successes that they have (despite the fact that they did so out of 'necessity'), may send the wrong message to the paper pushers in power. If this works out, the government might feel that it should start choosing winners and losers, instead of leaving that up to the millions of investors out there... Heck, what if the government starts openly investing on margin? I say openly, because, any investment they make now, involves the issuance of some debt (after all, we in the US are trying our best to hit a 2 TRILLION dollar deficit this year!) Sorry for getting political, but I couldn't resist.

Sanjeev, I actually spent close to an entire day looking into buying a bunch of houses in Detroit. There are a bunch of problems that I found: 1) Insurance is a bunch. If a house on either side of yours turns into a crack house or burns down, you are gonna be getting dropped. You can't insure your house for the reconstruct cost either (it has to be done at the sale price)... so if it does get torched, you are sitting on a vacant lot and will have to get the place cleared out. 2) Land contracts are illegal if you already have the house financed with someone else (making virtually impossible to use any sort of leverage, once the place is fixed up/prices have stabilized). Land contracts are also a good way to get steady cash flows and get cash out of the place. 3) If the house is vacant, you must have it boarded up (for your ins. co). 4) There are a bunch of houses with liens on them. 5) Code enforcement seem to be Nazis up there. 6) Building inspections seem to be bad too... if you put on a new roof, you have to pay some fees, and have inspectors come out 2 separate times, just to be sure it was put on correctly. 7) Yearly property taxes are often as much as you can get some of the houses for and are not going down. Also, if there is one thing that I have learned about rental properties, you have to be able to do your own maintenance; if for nothing else, so that you can tell if you are getting screwed by your workforce. With that all said, the houses I was looking at buying were under 20K each, but still...

does anyone have a chart/graph for what has happened in the past, to insurance co's stock prices during an el nino? not that one should make an investment thesis on it, but, it would be interesting to compare now to the past, and see if recent problems have outweigh previous year's movements in regard to the coming weather.

I don't see that unless a new sector replaces the over-bloated financial sector in terms of contributing earnings to the index, and I don't see any of the current sectors being able to do that in the next 2-3 years. I think the market will be up and down for 2-3 years, so better to find good stuff, and trade as they move up, and then find other good stuff. I don't see the mass fear of the last few months, and I don't see a new bull market either. It does seem as if some of the up tick in prices of companies could be due to marginally increasing earnings and spending... Though, these have certainly been effected by the amount of money that has been printed and mark to market being tinkered with. I myself, am pretty nervous, especially since I am not convinced that gold is a very compelling investment. With that said, buying cheap & great companies is the best thing to do-regardless of where the economy is going.

Today I was in a pawn shop (Cash America; CSH) buying a guitar amp and was astonished to see what they were paying for gold... roughly 75% of scrap; which after taxes, shipping, smelter fee, payroll, rent, and utilities-can't leave much for the bottom line. It seems that competition has finally come into the gold buying market and driven out a lot of the profit. I remember a few years ago, when I was working in a pawn shop in Eastern KY, and we would give roughly 1/3 of scrap for gold... which wasn't to atypical in the bigger cities in KY... I was under the impression that they were still giving about 1/2 of scrap. Anyway, I found this kinda odd... Speaking of the usurers of the world (pawn shops/buy here pay here lots/payday lenders/rent to own sellers), has anyone looked at any for investment?

for what it's worth: The national hurricane center is predicting a 50% chance of a normal season, 25% above normal, and 25% below normal... from what I can tell, they have undershot what really happened in the past 5 years.

If people don't like Ben Graham's writing style, then how will they ever be able to get through a 10K? Let alone the full text of an 8K!

Something that may come as a surprise, is that Buffett has recognized that he has to buy worse deals than he did in the past, due the the huge amount of capital that he has to deploy... Back in the partnership days, he could compound at 50%, now, it is good if he does 20%. There are a ton of good deals out there (at least in my opinion) that are even cheaper than what Buffett has been buying. Granted, they are super small companies, but still...