JAllen

Ben Graham told the story in one of his books about him overhearing what was I believe an insurance company manager saying something like I'll buy it back when it gets back to 95 referring to a bond that was selling in the single digits!

Mvalue, They are really hard to buy, at least for me through IB who placed the order through Knight Securities. Sometimes I watch them trade below my bid (which is a bit frustrating). I didn't do much digging but if we are talking about the same securities (SSRAP, SBCKP) they mature in about 20 years, pay interest of $1.75-$1.85, and are unsecured debt of Sears Acceptance, a wholly owned sub of Sears Holdings.

It works for me here in Florida!

At least one of or part of the moat(s) is the management obviously.

Just buy a share, or ten.

Project Gutenberg is a great resource for over 100,000 books, especially classics which are no longer copyrighted. I believe it is projectgutenberg.com. They are mostly Kindle emailable in .txt format.

MCF

PLD, APL, FUR come to mind immediately.

I could absolutely tell a difference between Coke and Pepsi even though I don't drink normal Coke anymore. Luckily, I don't have to turn drink Pepsi very often for not much Pepsi is sold in establishments here in the South.

Ericopoly, I would personally rather not see you go and have learned much from you. I agree with others that the message thread got way out of hand but was never heated enough to cause anyone to leave the board, especially not you being one who has been here a long time and contribute more than most here. So, maybe we can focus more on tearing companies down and analyzing them and indeed, trying to see how much money we can make here in the next couple of years. I started aggregating the amount of money I should make in the next few years and it really is quite ridiculous, especially for a 28 year old. So, maybe we can focus more on company specific discussion seeing as how there are hundreds of stocks selling for less than 10% of what they sold for 6 months ago! Pretty amazing stuff!

No.

I didn't hear anything in that presentation that hasn't already been discussed widely except for the fact that it might actually be more desirable to have the least amount of captive traffic which BNI has.

At first I thought this was about Buffett's personal analyst starting his hedge fund but it turns out it's about Byron Trott, Berkshire's banker formerly of Goldman... http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/buffetts-banker-at-goldman-to-set-up-his-own-shop/?hp

It was probably the Mayo Clinic. But, are the doctors there really that much better? We're fortunate here in Jacksonville to have one 20 minutes away.

Geico had purchased some RMBS according to their insurance filings. I don't remember how much but it wasn't a huge percent of their assets.

I can't remember the company, country, or hedge fund, but a few years ago hedge funds in Europe were shorting stock and then voting their shares in the manner that would cause the stock to fall during proxy battles or some other contentious vote. Something seems wrong there!

What kind of utilization rates/EBITDA forecasts for this year are you guys thinking of? They need about $150M (assuming ~11% average interest) and have various ways of paying this interest assuming EBITDA plummets. The combined entities are capable of producing $400-700M in run-rate EBITDA but I am trying to be conservative on what I think it will be this year because frankly I don't know. One has to assume a very very dire scenario for 2009 but it seems like we are in a dire scenario. The required CAPEX is another cash need and I'm not sure how that should be thought of because they are all contracted for. So, assuming $150M of interest plus $239M in CAPEX plus ~$20M in G&A they have at least $409M of cash needs for 09'. Some of the maintenance capex can probably be postponed. How are others thinking about this?

I think he is referring to Contango Oil and Gas (MCF) Here is a brief summary but I'm sure you're already familiar with the company. http://blog.valueinvestingcongress.com/2009/03/12/contango-oil-gas-mcf-insane-value-by-aaron-edelheit/

Jack, Apologies. I didn't remember you saying you wouldn't tell us what those two things are.

I have owned PLD since the November lows. The great thing about many companies now is that they are running them more like they always should have (low debt, expense controls etc.) I haven't had time to go through others thoroughly but would like to learn more about others like FUR. FOR isn't a REIT but is probably worth about 4-6 times as much with valuing their Oil and water interests at about $100M. You get 11,000 acres of land at the junction of the second most traveled interstate connection in Florida (I-95/I-4) for free with CTO's stock price under 26. Some activist activity there. CTO is worth at least $50 continuing with business as usual.

I generally just try and own the stocks that are cheapest with good managers that I'm not going to lose money investing in. I think that Sanjeev said that if they had to they would own the stocks that they have bought for the long term. My personal opinion is that holding positions for the long-term (i.e >5 years) should be left with those with very large pools of capital and that smaller money should attempt to beat the market by greater than your 10-12% plus taxes of 35% (although that wouldn't be the average tax rate) implying a >15% annual return. Also, another risk of super long term holds is that events that might have 5% probability (ex: railroad reregulation) will happen if they do indeed have the 5% probability. Owning stocks for the 3-36 months drastically reduces these risks. I suspect that for long term holds might increase the tendency to fall in love (or overlook or understimate potential risks) with the stock. I generally own a few core positions and have other stocks with less optimal management but might be cheaper or have immediate catalysts. Is 10-12% growth for BNI your prediction Jack? You still haven't told us the reason why BNI is better than UP. I would appreciate learning your thoughts about it.

The bridge loan is 17% :o

Why would a tax payer want $160M of their money go to pay bonuses to the group who nearly crashed the financial system? It's their money that's bailing out the company, they should have some say in the matter. I'm not saying that they deserve bonuses. I just wished someone might mention the current activities of the business which dwarf the bonuses in importance and provide a much much much larger threat to the wallet of American Taxpayers if the future losses are being increased by AIG writing policies at $.30.

I wish they were more concerned with the imminent P&C losses from them writing Florida homeowner's policies way/$3,000 cheaper than everyone else among other travesties that wouldn't surprise me. They and the public are up in arms about $150M when it's a ~trillion dollar company and they own 80% of it! Shouldn't they be more concerned with the ongoing operations (or at least mention them every once in a while?!?!? Why wasn't AIG put into runoff the day after they were initially bailed out?

The disparity in valuations between the aforementioned companies is huge. Some of the larger ones that have been mentioned sell at 1-3 times book. I think their contracted 80 rigs should cover their interest (no maturities for 4 years I believe) but I'm not sure about their other fixed costs.