Jurgis

+1 to what ni-co said.

EU is the best thing that happened to Europe in the last century. Seeing it fall apart is very sad. IMHO every effort should be made for more integration rather than less.

JBTC, that's a good way to look at things.

There are consequences.

As I've said somewhere else, investing is a very bad field to work in. You have a no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer baseline that outperforms >99% of investors and probably over 90% of smart investors. Think what would happen if we had this in other fields. You get sick and there's no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer approach that outperforms 99% of doctors. You want food and there's no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer approach that outperforms 99% of chefs. You want a haircut and there's no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer approach that outperforms 99% of stylists. Would anyone go to become doctor, or chef or stylist or whatever? So to paraphrase Buffett "when an investor with a reputation for brilliance tackles investing business with a reputation for being very hard to outperform, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact." And yet so many people continue trying. Me, myself, and I included. :-\ But perhaps this is OT.

Great question to ask here. My feeling about CoBF modus operandi is that "you need great research to have great returns". I somewhat agree. :) But then I also come from the fields where great research is rewarded. You don't get a name in math or physics or theoretical computer science without doing great research... ;) Not sure if this applies to investing though. Personally, I don't do great research, but my returns are also not great, so ... There are people who disagree with "you need great research to have great returns". The ones I know somewhat have had better results in the past than in couple last years though. .... There is also an issue that last 5 (or more?) years have not been kind to value investors. So you can look at a lot of "great" investors and they have been underperforming. Almost (?) irrespective if they did great research or not. Related to above the "easy" solutions for outperforming without research: buying BRK or FRFHF/FFH - these have not worked well recently. .... Edit: Arguments for in depth research: - You have to know the industry well. You have to know company well. You have to know the sales, the products, the margins, the capex, the nuts and bolts, etc. to understand where company is and where it is going and what kind of sales/earnings/FCF/returns it will offer. This requires in depth research - You have to know management well. Same as above Arguments for shallow research: - "Buffetty" argument. Selecting a good business is more important than details. If you get the gist of Google, buy it while it's small, then hold forever, done. Don't sweat the details. Being able to hold is more important than being able to do great research. - "Quantitative" argument ("Grahamy"?). Just look at valuation, don't bother much about business, buy cheap, sell when not cheap, repeat. --------------------- So no real answer to your question. Let's see what others will say. :)

It also communicates to the market that the company believes its shares to be overvalued at the price at which they are selling them. Otherwise, why sell? Yeah, sure there are some somewhat valid reasons given in this thread, but these reasons also smack of rationalization. It's not as if they just got an incredible deal and had to come up with cash at moment's notice. They knew for a while that they will need cash and they decided that the best way is to sell equity - and since they have other options, this seems to mean that they don't value their equity or consider it overvalued. Also, if some people are getting equity for $735 in private deal, then why should other people be paying more for it on market?

Very tough question IMHO. First, it is very tough to analyze Liberties overall. Second, you don't know what Malone will do next with each of them. For example, nobody knew how CWC will be attributed between LBTYA/LILA (and they still might not completely know based on complicated merger rules). Nobody knows what's gonna happen with Lion's Gate / STRZA / DISCA - merger, what merger, how, when, etc. I hold DISCA, LBRDA, LBTYA, LILA, LMCA, LTRPA, LVNTA, QVCA, STRZA. One split of this would be: Content: DISCA, STRZA, QVCA (?), LGF (if we count it) Cablecos: LBRDA, LBTYA, LILA, LVNTA (?? depends on whether they get LBRDA/CHTR deal ??) LMCA is special case LTRPA is really TRIP and possibly not very Liberty. Looking at content, DISCA is probably most attractive. However, depending on how LGF merger is structured... who knows. Content has a lot of risk due to content competition, dropping viewership, etc. It is also cheap for that reason. Looking at cablecos... honestly, I have no clue. Each has advantages and disadvantages IMO. LVNTA has some optionality based on LBRDA/CHTR deal, but then you have to deal with the other stuff in it (EXPE). LMCA looked like a big "new" "future deals" company for a while, but not so much recently. Now it looks like mostly SIRI. Spinoffs/trackers coming. Tough to judge. Depending on price might be a cheaper backdoor to SIRI - if you want to own SIRI. Overall, it's tough and I am not sure even Malone knows to optimize it fully. E.g. STRZA was supposed to be sold by now... no progress. I'd probably hold a basket, but even with that it's tough to decide how to split.

Because of the human nature. Do you know what shitstorm would happen if people were offered $40K per family (or whatever their property is/isn't worth) to get up and leave? Some people might be happy, but my guess for some people this would end up as "gov't is trying to kick us out of our houses" protest/lawsuit/rebellion. So bad solutions will be taken instead. Note that I don't know crap about Flint and the situation there, so I may be mistaken on various points.

Pennwest - not for the faint hearted Pennwest is not worthless today... or is it? ;) IMO, there's a lot of small caps some even without debt loads that will go 2x+ if oil goes to 50+. So pick your poison.

These are really great notes. Very close to audio, almost perfect IMO. A++ recommended.

Insurance results are great, but overall results are not. Of course, 4.5% book value growth in a year of flat market is not bad, but you stack that on top of last 4+ years (with divs) and you get something like 5% annual, which is low. If there was something way more attractive, I'd probably switch out of FRFHF. If market crash comes, I may even.

Relax Sanjeev. There is Santa. And his name is Buffett. Or Watsa. I think. ;D

It is normal for a very large percentage of the world’s investors to be paying borrowers to take their money? Is it normal for a major economy to be creating almost 10% of GDP in credit in a single month when their current credits are deteriorating rapidly? Not saying you can’t find good investments but why be so quick to dismiss people who bring up these (and other) important issues as crazy perma-bears (especially Dalio, who isn’t even making a long or short case, just stating the facts)? I'm certainly not a perma-bear, but I'm also not willing to just stick my head in the sand either. The fact that something is not "normal" to you does not mean that the result will be the market crash or the end of civilization. When TwoCitiesCapital says , he's being much more honest than when he and a bunch of others predict that this will end in 50+% crash, recession/depression, endless deflation (or is it hyperinflation?), etc. I'm going to go with "don't know" too. But I am not going to take macro bets of shorting, currency bets, etc. to attempt to predict the outcome. If that makes me crazy bull, then so be it.

I like how a 0.22% move is indicative of a crash. Wonder what this algorithm thought when it went ex-div at the beginning of the year... this thread just cost me 2min of my life the sacrifices we make to participate in CoBF. 8)

And bearishness is of course "well justified". LOL.

I wonder if this article was automatically generated. Would not surprise me. Would not surprise me if this was written by human either though... ::)

First, let me say that I don't know what is going to happen. We may have some serious instability (lol it's IMO a stupid word for drop or crash), we may not. We may have it this year, in next couple of years or in next 10 years. There is a high likelihood that market(s) will drop over 20%+ sometime in the next 10-15 years, but not because of doom and gloom predictions, but because the probability over that time period is high. I do not have concrete examples how things will be dealt with. The monetary issues are in the hands of central bankers and even though doom and gloomers say they have no solutions, that's just based on their limited view of the future. The same was said in 2008-2009 and later during Euro crisis, etc. Yet things worked out so far. Regarding debt issues, this needs political solutions, which may or may not come. Once again, doom and gloomers believe that no solutions will come. But IMHO it's putting on blinders to any solutions and their possibility. In USA tax reform can solve pretty much all issues and I don't really see monetary issues in US. In Europe, situation is harder because of Euro, so yes, there is more risk that Eurozone won't arrive to a good solution. Yet, I would not give more than ~60% chance that Eurozone will have a huge crisis and crash. In China, like in US the problems are solvable. There might be some market drops while they do it, but there's nothing catastrophic. The problem I see is that doom and gloomers may be kind-of right sometime in the next 10-15 years, but you will be missing all kind of opportunities while you wait for the crash to materialize. Buffett has been preaching inflation for the last 30 years or so. What would have been your return if you listened to this? OK, so maybe Buffett is bad at macro, but how do you know that X, Y, Z aren't too? (To address the topic of this thread: Dalio makes some good arguments. But you have to look at him like you look at Buffett: he talks one thing and invests... well he invests to make money like Buffett does. So don't expect him to be 100% in cash, gold or whatever the current gloom and doom favorite play is.) BTW, I think I see a preconception bias here already when you label the policy "experimental". :) History does not repeat (although it rhymes), so every day is a new day and every policy is "experimental". Muddle through is a possible future. Long term (not 1-3 years) what happens in China (and perhaps other populous emerging economies - India, etc.) will affect the world enormously. So one positive situation: China grows to be like US in 20th century. The rest of the world has a muddle through growth by supplying/trading-with China/etc, while having so-so internal economies. Inequality and debt can be dealt with in US via tax reform (though, yes, it's tough to do a good tax reform due to a lot of vested interests). BTW, yes, if you ask me about next 10-15 years, there's a high probability that we will go out of the Goldilocks zone of 1-3% inflation sometime during that time. On upside or downside. Might lead to big market drop. I have no clue when and whether it will happen at all. I have somewhat high hope that it would not lead to catastrophe for our way of life, but nothing's certain. Even longer term 20-40 years, I think we have a significant (over 10%) chance that we'll have a serious social disturbance that may impact the whole planet. But again, like Tetlock says in Superforecasting, any predictions that go over 5 years are waste of time and no better than a flock (sic) of chimpanzees. ;) Anyway, I'm probably not going to convince you. Not my point either. Everyone is welcome to follow their own convictions, etc. I probably should not post on these threads. It just sometimes gets under my skin. Take care

Yet another the sky is falling thread from the perma negative crowd. Why am I not surprised.

Buffett's Berkshire was acquired because of anger..... Right. Though Buffett says it was a huge (biggest?) mistake. ;)

Anger is a powerful force. And it can be constructive as well as destructive. Anger has led to positive changes through human history. Jealousy and envy - hmm, I wonder how many fortunes were built based on these. Not sure if those are positive examples though.

SWF seeking HF for LTR; PICs; DD+++

I completely agree with Buffett. However, it's "America's best days", not necessarily "investor's-who-just-bought-whatever-US-company-stock-and-expects-that-GDP-growth-will-make-his-pick-work best days". If I had to pick whether to be born in US right now (knowing nothing about the future) or any time in the past (knowing in general what will happen up to 2015, but not particulars that would make me rich), I'd pick to be born now.

BAC without WTA. And some others.

I prefer http://media.giphy.com/media/Kerg053G7ZJUQ/giphy.gif nowadays.