Jurgis

Running a business is very different from investing into stocks. Buffett might be correct that doing one makes you better at doing the other, but it doesn't mean that people have aptitude for both. A lot of stock investors are numbers/reports/etc. types and have no wish, interest or capability to run actual businesses. Power to the ones who want to do it, but let's not diss the ones who don't.

Oh, but noes, there's Elliot wave reversal and the core of the Earth stopped spinning ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298814/?ref_=nv_sr_1 ) and there's an Arquillian Battle Cruiser ready to attack ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119654/?ref_=nv_sr_3 ), gotta go, sell everything.

I was going to suggest 2016 return thread, but then thought it was too painful for most here. Especially if you annualize the returns of last 10 days. ;)

I am sure there's a number of people on this board who are net short. :) As for me, I keep going long (actually I don't short period, but I'm not even raising cash, I am lowering cash). You can take this as evidence that market will keep dropping lower. 8)

LOL, nice switcheroo there. You realize that your new question is total turnaround from your previous claim that oil has no intrinsic value? The fair price of oil is obviously the price paid right now in open market. But that's again not what you really wanted to know, is it?

Can I have your stuff? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=can+I+have+your+stuff%3F

Right.

That's not evidence. Go to Barrons.com. Scroll down to the 'Barrons Picks & Pans section'. Watch this over an extended period of time to see how often they are wrong. I read Barron's. I know what they pick and pan. What you are saying is still not an evidence. Have fun.

That's not evidence. I don't watch CNBC, so no comment. Seeking Alpha has a lot of crap, has some good analysis. Barron's publishes interviews with fund managers. It also has columns by its journalists about stocks. They do annual performance review. Unfortunately it's per-column and not really scientific, I admit that. Barron's has been subject to PE creep: in 2011 they recommended buys at 10-12x current earnings, while now they recommend buys at 15-18x future earnings. But this is something pretty much everyone is guilty of with the market runup. OK, I'll bite the bullet and say that Barron's is right more than CoBF forums. :) Now this should enliven the discussion. :P

Petec, for how long have you had this portfolio and did you manage to hold everything in it so far?

That's how my portfolio feels. /nods ;)

This might be true, but you have to think about converse too: the cost of your time (and commissions - though they may be low) for the upkeep of your "own etf". Slippage cost if you make mistakes during upkeep. BTW, there might be even tax benefits in ETF vs your own solution. I'm not saying that your own solution won't work. I'm just not sure it will cost less and be better than ETF.

Not to pick on Uccmal, but do these studies include portfolio changes when dividend grower slashes dividend? It seems self evident that "dividend grower" will perform acceptably while it grows dividends. But what happens when it has a problem and slashes dividend. Won't you lose a lot of previous outperformance by switching to something else at the worst time?

I've heard this quip multiple times and I think it's hogwash. Supporting evidence please?

IMHO, divvie stocks performed really well post 2009 with low bond rates and people attracted to the "safety" and yield of divvie stocks. I thought that we'll get into divvie stock bubble and it's gonna implode at some point. So far, it seems not. But I think the possibility remains. FWIW.

If I had to invest in taxable account, I would have gone forever-hold or indexing long time ago. When you have 20%+ tax cost on gains, outperforming an index after taxes is pretty much impossible without forever-hold or similar. (I probably should have done this in my tax advantaged accounts too. No taxes encourage bad trading behavior unfortunately... :( ) To answer frommi: No, haven't tried what you are suggesting. I think ETFs would be simpler/less trouble, but your idea might work.

CoBF subscription. :P (though maybe that was past past year)

I'm getting it for my and relatives' crappy miles (that won't be used otherwise). But, yeah, that's probably not a bad offer.

$35 on Black Friday. ;) Use it as a coaster. just kidding

LOL. Of course oil has intrinsic value: without oil nobody goes anywhere. If you believe that businesses have intrinsic value - and I guess you do because you mention "cash flows" - then you should realize that without oil pretty much all your businesses have no intrinsic value either (there are few exceptions perhaps). It's amazing how for people with a single hammer ("cash flows") everything looks like a nail... ::)

Dorsia, You are thinking about this incorrectly I believe. Take 255m cars. Let's say 16M cars enter the population, which means that 16M cars exit the population. The rest (255M-16M=239M) age 1 year. So you could do back of napkin computation (239M * (11.4+1) + 16M * 1) / 255M to get the new average. This is actually not correct in general, since the average will be affected by which cars exit the population. If really old cars exit, it reduces the average, if newer cars exit (through accidents I guess), this increases the average. However, we don't have that data, so we have to use this dirty method. Now, for average age to go down, you have to solve for X in ((255M - X) * (11.4+1) + X * 1) / 255M < 11.4 This solves to X > 22M So for average age to go down, you need at least 22M of sales in a year. This is quick and dirty, I know caveats, so likely you need less than 22M of sales for average age to go down. But likely more than 16M. ;)

ATW: This probably reflects current situation: http://marketrealist.com/2015/12/atwood-postpones-delivery-drillship-weighs-heavy-stock/ ( see part 2 / part 3 about backlog and debt/etc. if they don't open automatically ). In short: 2017-2018 are not contracted. If they are not contracted, ATW will face significant issues coming into debt repayment. OTOH, are you sure that DO is in better situation? Looking at balance sheets, I don't see why DO is higher rated and yields so much less. Is that because of possible L backstop? Edit: I guess one argument for DO is that they might be able to repay 19's and 23's and then they don't have maturity until '39.

Can you say who you consider to be current Outsiders and invest into? Thanks Sure, Mark Leonard of Constellation Software, Selim Bassoul of Middleby Corp, and Brian Jellison of Roper Technology. Thank you.

Not true in general. Our dept has tons non-CS majors and our group at one point was 50% non-CS. Of course, candidate's chances go up a lot if they have engineering/math/physics major and they know programming well. Specific situations may wary.

OT? ATWOOD OCEANICS INC NOTE CALL MAKE WHOLE 6.50000% 02/01/2020, B1/BB, 26% YTM. Too distressed for you? Atwood had a pretty good fleet but I think they levered on top of the cycle. Still their fleet should be (much?) better than DO. I have to relook at these, since I only glanced through some time ago.