enoch01

Yeah, you can wipe your a$$ with such statements. In March G Pap said that Greece would pay every cent of its debt... But they said "solemnly"! They're really really serious! Really! Now go buy their debt before they have to use the word "solemnly" in all caps.

;D

What on earth is going on here. He closed the short around February, right? "After taking a beating as the stock surged, he closed his position in February, when the stock was trading well above $200". So when he put the short on he thought it was worth a lot less than $200 I imagine. If it were me, I wouldn't short anything I was sure was worth less than half the market price (and probably not even then). So that begs the question, what did Tilson think Netflix was worth when he put the short on? $100? $50? Now he buys at ~$75. But surely the business has deteriorated since the time he put on his short, right? What is the logic here?

Catalyst?

Unbelievable - practically speechless. Congrats shorts, I watched this from the sidelines.

YES!!!! Honest question: And after that, what would have happened..? If this isn't rhetorical, it is impossible to answer. It also shouldn't be an impediment to doing the obviously right thing, which is to let consequences occur as close as possible to actions. Instead we have socialized losses, added trillions to the debt of future (voiceless) generations, and contributed to the growth of cynicism and class warfare in our society. Such are the insidious consequences of those decisions in 2008.

Lots of volume too. I'm guessing a forced liquidation?

namecsw, You have fair points generally, but I'm not sure about this: Comparing BRK to the "piggyback" isn't really a rebuttal to the statement that BRK itself was never less than a 50 cent dollar. Further, it seems obvious to me that there's at least two reasons for owning BRK instead of the piggyback: (1) the leverage provided by the float, and (2) private acquisitions. If you look at returns of the piggyback with similar leverage, I'd be interested to see the numbers.

Conversely, the "many bagger proponents" may not be understanding that the devil is in the details. Nobody in their right mind would turn down a known 10, 20, 30, or 100 bagger. The critical questions are: (1) over what time frame will the many bags materialize, and (2) how confident are you in the bag quantity I don't think I've ever seen something that I think is reliably worth, after discounting future cash flows, 10 times more than the market price. I would count myself supremely fortunate if I stumble upon something that is reliably worth 3X-5X current price. None of that is to say the same security won't eventually be a 100 bagger, it's just that you probably won't ever see that dollar selling for a penny. Take Berkshire: it's been a glorious super bagger over the past few decades. But if you were to evaluate it at any slice of time over the past 40 years, I'm guessing it rarely ever sold for less than 50% of intrinsic value. I really liked Buffett's punchcard line the first time I heard it. But the more I thought about it, I decided it would cause unnecessary (in my opinion) paralysis. Why? Because it forces me to determine, in advance, what companies will be around in 20 years to reliably offer the 30X returns or whatever. That's really hard to do, and may be something only Buffet can do. Instead I try and look for dollars that I think are selling for 50 cents.

Thanks for posting the notes, they were a great read.

Exactly! Which is why both sides hate the libertarians. "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin

A nation that demands the federal government dole out large sums of bread and circuses (to corporations, individuals, whomever) probably deserves such an idiotic national conversation.

There's nothing wrong with unoriginal ideas per se. I also think it's a little hard to define what an "original idea" is when it comes to investing. It's the (a) magnitude of the security mispricing and (b) one's ability to hold the security until the mispricing corrects that generates your returns. But related to this, there is a risk with having an unoriginal idea: you may not develop sufficient conviction to see the mispricing through, if you haven't personally foraged for the idea and developed the thesis yourself.

I just saw a pig fly past my window!

Agree 100%. The complacency in the face of bad economic news... It's difficult to get a quantitative measure of complacency. However, qualitatively, I don't feel it out there. Yesterday I linked to an article from yahoo that ran with the headline "The Sum of All Fears...". The 10 year is at 1.8%. VIX has been high for a month. It seems there's a lot of fear already here. The aftermath of Lehman is burned into a lot of memories. In contrast, back in late 2007, people were loading up on Countrywide stock because they were going to be able to take advantage of all their crap competition going belly up. Same with FNM, FRE - I still can't believe how many people I saw buying the common all the way down, in size. Chuck Prince was still dancing while the music was playing. Who on earth is talking this way now? Agreed there's the potential to go down from here. Yet at the same time there's stuff that is cheap and has catalysts. I find it much more difficult to develop a macro thesis with catalysts with worthwhile confidence, because there's so many moving parts. Probably no single right answer here...

I bought on August 19 after all the bad news that came out regarding the quarterly miss and the Autonomy announcement. I sold yesterday at breakeven because of 2 things: 1. The thesis changes (and not necessarily for the better) with Whitman elevated to CEO, and continued uncertainty regarding the disposition of the PC business and Autonomy acquisition. Basically, I'm not sure what this company is becoming, and with Whitman and the same BOD (Andreesen terrifies me, for instance) running the show, it's reasonable to think additional value could be destroyed. 2. Better deals became available in the interim. Frankly, it's probably not a bad buy right now, I just think there are better opportunities.

Yah I agree. Let's just crash and get it over with. How much of a crash do you think we'll get, from here, when we have headlines like: "Sum of All Fears: Stocks, Commodities Tumble Over Risk of Recession, European Implosion" http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/sum-fears-stocks-commodities-tumble-over-risk-recession-201442627.html

Exactly right -- I've been buying all day, actually. I've still got about 33% in cash. (Well, with a 10% position in Fairfax, which I view as being good as cash, it's about 43% cash & "cash equivalents.") Nice job. With today's purchases it marks the first time in at least a year that I've been fully invested. If prices drop more then it will be "selling at 5X to buy at 3X", which is much tougher psychologically than having cash on hand.

i'm betting people have been too busy buying to post! :) yes, it's been a pretty lovely freaking day. as i said on some other thread: if the world doesn't end, i think there will be some springs that uncoil fast.

LOL - maybe they've found religion. No doubt there's a few board members that are historically "hazardous to your wealth".

I think $3.50 EPS is a layup. Complete the current buyback (takes out another 5%-6% of shares at current prices), grow EPS by another 10% annually, and you're there.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-21/hp-s-board-is-said-to-weigh-ousting-apotheker-after-less-than-year-as-ceo.html Is it too much to hope for scrapping the Autonomy acquisition, and instead borrowing $10 billion to buy back stock instead? Probably.

Bingo. A state-enforced monopoly like the Federal Reserve ought to be anathema to a Rand philosophy. I'm no Rand apologist by any stretch, but whenever I hear people say things like "Greenspan overdosed on Rand", it grinds my gears a little. The fact that Greenspan worked in and advanced the institution of a state-enforced monopoly is his own personal cognitive dissonance with whatever other parts of Rand's philosophy he ingested. It's probably a price he was willing to pay for having so much power.

Ah, thanks. Just starting to dig in here, and I hadn't noticed that.

I understand that the dividend is 0.175 euro per annum, not quarterly: http://www.prisa.com/upload/ficheros/cuentas-anuales/2010_consolidated_annual_acounts.pdf "From their date of issue until they are transformed into Class A ordinary shares, they pay a minimum annual dividend of EUR 0.175." Am I reading that incorrectly, or did you have a different source?