Jurgis

AFAIK, prefs trade mostly based on liquidity: more liquid ones have less upside, less liquid ones have more. Some of the less liquid ones trade at huge spreads and on appointment, so you can have big variations on upside that are hard to arbitrage away. I think that most people don't look at exact divvies since the upside to par dominates. Also FIDO does not allow online purchase for common and a lot of prefs: probably because they are afraid that widows-and-orphans will buy them and then blame Fido for purchasing "bankrupt" securities. They do allow online purchase of some prefs that they probably missed when they put on limitations...

I don't think so. I think diversification is just a sign of particular character. :) Disclaimer: I can't make myself to own a concentrated portfolio, but more because I like too many companies. I just can't say "no". :-*

Right. I prefer that people talk about numbers - which is what they are talking about now. ;) So... here's the number tease for you: Let's do backward and forward Graham arbitrage analysis. I'm taking the $6.55 price, $50 par. Don't count 9% interest - sorry Merkhet - you guys can adjust yourselves if you want. ;) Assume January 2017 resolution: 1.5 years remaining time. Assume zero on negative outcome. Assume you want 20% expected annualized return. Then you can calculate the implied chance of success: 17% and implied chance of failure: 83%. If you go with 2.5 years to resolve, the conditions imply about 20% chance of success and 80% chance of failure. The length of time to resolve does not influence return or probabilities much right now unless you start talking about 5 years+ to resolve. Clearly, you can go in the other direction as the calculation is usually used. Feed in probabilities of success and failure that you believe in, and you'll get expected annualized return. It is somewhat clear though that with probability above 20% you get a large annualized return. So the question becomes: is the probability of success higher than 20%? (and I won't get into that as promised :P ) Now if prefs run up to $20 on $50 par as they have done in the past, you are suddenly looking at implied probability of over 60% success. Whether it's worth holding at that time, is your call... ;) I completely agree with Mephistopheles that common will be likely diluted (a lot?), so calculations on common are IMHO much harder. Caveats: I used straight Graham merger arbitrage formula, you can use something more complicated to account for compounding, etc. Have fun.

http://reactionimage.org/1174804810.html That's what I am talking about! ;D

I kinda knew someone will ask ;), but I'd rather decline because that's ideological arguments again and I'd rather not go there. :) Peace.

Thanks. I would not evaluate the situation the way you did, but you might be right. While I think this is accurate, one has to put it in the proper context of the time. Men weren't supposed to spend a lot of time with their kids. Being completely a man of leisure was and is weird. And he definitely felt the pain of Susie leaving, long before her death, just because this was patched over a bit doesn't make it less so. You assume that they both would have found common interests and happiness if Warren edit: retired worked less and/or changed his habits. Maybe, maybe not. My reading of Snowball is that the situation was more complicated than just Warren working too much. But I only read the book, I did not know them in depth personally, so I can't know.

So it's an ideological investment for you? I think it's a value investment for him Well, none of his claims for me are value claims. They are all ideological claims, in particular suggesting that there is only one resolution - the one that benefits him. I can't say I am expert in this, but I see at least a number of ways to preserve 30 year mortgages with very little return to present shareholders and prefholders.

So it's an ideological investment for you?

Thanks. I would not evaluate the situation the way you did, but you might be right.

Value of R&D depends on R&D. You have to know the field. You have to know people involved. There is still no guarantee. Some R&D is worth zero, actually less than zero considering opportunity cost. I doubt anyone can give you a formula that applies to "average" biotech.

Anybody interested, I am selling a personal 100 year bond with 0.01% yield! AAA+ character references from CoBF! :P ::) Much better deal than those negative yield euro bonds! 8) ;D

Can you elaborate on this?

1% lottery ticket. Holding prefs. No buy timing. Would sell if it went to ~0.5 expected value without resolution in courts. Otherwise hold until resolution one way or the other. Unless you are a lawyer experienced in this particular branch of law, have read through all the legal documents and are experienced in assigning probabilities based on legal documents so far, this is a pure lottery ticket. Don't kid yourself that you know the "certainties" or probabilities based just on what Merkhet, Fairholme, Ackman and a bunch of journalists write.

How do you know when you're at the top? Miller was at the top for 15 years. Should've he retired 3 years into the streak? 5 years? 10 years? 20 years? ;)

Cramer is a smart guy. It's somewhat worth listening to what he says. It's not worth following him though.

You cannot treat index fund as 1 position. Of course, based on that logic, conglomerates like BRK come closest to being attractive as 1 position - they are almost funds.

+1 Another TL;DR: capability of human societies and organizations to prioritize issues mostly sucks.

Grouping: I think I can do that if by grouping we mean "here's a bunch of stocks/companies that are attractive based on my criteria and here's a bunch that is not so attractive and here's a bunch that are no-nos". I have no issue with that although clearly there are some stocks/companies on the edge of groups. It helps that in grouping I can wave away companies/stocks via "I am not certain about this one, so I'll just not consider it at all". Ranking: This is much harder for me than grouping. Yes, you are right, the issue is judging a priori the outcomes and therefore rank. Also at this level I cannot easily wave away anymore: the company is already grouped as attractive, I have to rank it to decide if it should be part of my portfolio and how big a part. Thanks

Perhaps I should split off a thread on this. Let's do this if people want to continue talking about this: "How to rank ideas". I have trouble ranking ideas discretely - not sure what you meant by this - or not. I guess it's possible to rank them by expected return. But expected return is a range and usually overlapping range. Plus there is a risk factor and yeah the business-line-diversification factor. How would a person rank, let's say BRK, FFH, AAPL, SFTBY, LMCA, JPM at current prices? For curve balls that might be more difficult to rank (or less difficult for some?): FRMO, Fannie/Freddie lottery tickets, any oil stock. Assuming you can rank, the next question is what position size do you assign to each rank.

I have trouble committing 20% of my portfolio into 1 position. I doubt there would be situation where I'd commit 100%. 1 position is a bit extreme. I have a related question though. Some people argue "why would you put money into your 25th best idea instead of putting it into your 1st best idea". If you follow this line of thought, how come you have more than 1 position? ;D I never could do it, because I never know what is my 1st best idea. ;) But I wonder what others think.

Like people above said, there is some market for this mostly around events and less affluent people attending such events. I know that students post about sharing hotel rooms when they go to scientific/research conferences. Participants usually prefer to stay in the conference hotel for networking and convenience, but rooms there are usually expensive. So sharing works. OTOH, conferences usually get hotel discount, so it's not clear how 3rd party site could facilitate sharing and still get the conference discount. Anyway, good luck. :)

Yeah, your premise is wrong. The goal of debate is rarely to change minds. It's entertainment and a tiny bit of learning. I've accomplished both those goals. I think that the risk of introducing politics into this board is that people start fighting, split into politics-based camps and discussions in other threads deteriorate because of attached political labels. It is a real risk, I know another board where this happened. Of course, as long as it is entertainment and learning, it's fine. But beware These show up a lot in political discussions. This being said, I have to +1 RichardGibbons and I liked/learned quite a bit from Otsog's and yadayada's posts. Peace

BRK and FFH have no chance then... ;) Although I wonder if they have 800 pages combined across all threads...

If you run firecalc, it does modeling that includes worst bubbles of the past. With that said, you can get ~100% solvency for 40 years at 3% withdrawal. If you go with 4%, you get 95% chance to survive for 30 years. If you really believe we are in a bubble, you can adjust that 95% chance downwards. I'd also feel much more safe if I had portfolio/spending that matched 3% withdrawal.

I have not used "Fulfillment by Amazon" when I sold books/etc. on Amazon. Hope you get some answers from customer support.