JayGatsby

The evolution of these rights in the "West" is actually fairly modern. I don't know much about divorce law, but wikipedia claims that Mississippi, South Dakota and Tennessee don't allow no-fault divorces (side note but this history is actually pretty interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce_in_the_United_States#History) . What seems to us as basic human rights now wasn't seen that way not very long ago. Women weren't given the right to vote in the United States until 1920. The Civil Rights Act wasn't passed until 1964. On the timeline of human history, that was basically yesterday. I haven't been to Syria, but I've been Jordan which is also predominantly Sunni Muslim so I guess that qualifies as "those people". I found it to be one of the most welcoming places I've ever been. I was travelling there as an American Jew coming from Israel and no one seemed bothered by that. I had a long open conversation with a guy roughly my age about culture, religion, women, etc. While there were definitely cultural differences he didn't say anything I found morally problematic. My understanding is the constitution of Syria under Assad guaranteed religious freedom. Assad himself is part of the religious minority. Syria has/had a large Christian population. The difference to me is personally I feel like a lot of Syria's problems are the result of American foreign policy. I think it's pretty uncrontroversial that ISIS gained strength partly due to a vacuum in Iraq. More controvertially, many would argue that America gave Syrian rebels weapons in an effort to weaken Assad and some of those rebels are now ISIS. Regardless of your view, ISIS seems to drive a lot of Humvees and as far as I know there's only one Humvee factory in the world. If we found the people of the region morally repugnant we should have let them be before we launched a crusade to bring them democracy. That water is under the bridge, but now that we are where we are I think we have a responsiblity to help them.

And where do we go to get reliable information for a proper background check? The Syrian government, 1-800-TERROR, or maybe we just call ISIS HR department and ask if they know the single, 25 year-old male who demands to be admitted? That should cover it for sure, really, what could possibly go wrong? You're right that there's really nothing you can do other than ask a lot of questions and see if their story holds together. It's a calculated risk I guess, but it's the right thing to do. The BBC has done a nice job of profiling some of the syrian refugees/immigrants. Based on their work, some percentage less than 100% are terrorists. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34489248 http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/34266359 Well said, SmallCap and rkbabang.

Most of this is factually incorrect and is just fear mongering to get votes: http://www.factcheck.org/2015/09/stretching-facts-on-syrian-refugees/ Pretty much everyone in America is either an immigrant or the decendent of an immigrant. As a result, pretty much everything good and bad in America can be blamed on immigration. Steve Jobs' biological father was a syrian refugee. Immigration in America is an interesting issue; personally I think the #1 factor in America's long-term success has been the ability to attract and assimilate immigrants. The branding of "the land of opportunity" and the "American dream" have been tremendously valuable. Yet, at each point in history people have feared immigrants, whether they were irish, italian, russian, jewish, what-have-you. I'm sure some people move here with ulterior motives, but every immigrant I've met has moved here in search of a better opportunity for themselves and their families. As Buffett would say, we won the "ovarian lottery" by being born in the United States with the opportunities we have. Morally, if someone's life is threatened in their home country I think we have a responsiblity to try to help them. That's how my family ended up here and I'm thankful for that. If that person's life is endangered as a result (in some percentage between 0% and 100% depending on your views of the specific location) of failed US foreign policy that moral responsibility is amplified. On a side note, grouping France, Russia and the US in the same bucket here doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. My understanding, which could be wrong, is Russia is backing Assad, while the US has backed the Free Syrian Army (against Assad). If we want to "donate" weapons to people, let's think first about where those weapons are going and how/if they can be used to better the situation. There's at least a rational argument that if less weapons were "donated" to the region, the number of refugees would be significantly lower.

I think you're exactly right. You need to make your own assumption about the ongoing capex assumptions and compare that to what they're currently depreciating. I don't know anything about oil pipeline, but it sounds reasonable to assume that a pipeline lasts significantly longer than 15 years if properly maintainted. In that case depreciation would overstate the annual expense. Two examples I'm currently invested in: 1. Outerwall - They own Redbox and Coinstar kiosks. They had a huge buildout of kiosks and are currently depreciatign ~$200M per year. Maintenance capex to keep the boxes running is somewhere probably in the $50 - $75M range. In this case the depreciation overstates their annual expense. 2. Rouse (short) - They own "B" (maybe "C") retail malls. The malls are built so they point investors to a cash flow metric before depreciation while spending significant amounts of money annually to upgrade aging facilities. The real maintenance cost is probably somewhere between the $0 they indicate and the amount they depreciate. Seth Klarman has a really good discussion of depreciation in his book.

Seems like the downside protection of the inventory and real estate tends to be what traps people. Rather than waking up one day, liquidating everything, and giving the proceeds to shareholders, companies slowly sell off assets and use the proceeds to continue to fund the burn.

I don't like the way he does business. I'm fine with sharing your book and discussing findings (I think that's the point of this website), but doing that on a roadshow turns the whole thing into a circus. There also seems to be an increasing trend of short sellers interfering in company's underlying businesses. I'm fine with discussing the company's prospects, accounting, and anything financial related, but interfering with people's livelihoods and the ability of the company to actually do business takes it to another level. Bill's not alone in this. There was a fund that bought Ocwen's debt and called a default in an effort to profit from their short sale. There are also a bunch of funds that short a stock while taking legal actions against the company's patents.

Just finished this (the book). Thanks for the recommendation. Great read.

Here's part of it, but would love to see the whole thing: http://www.businessinsider.com/brian-spector-leaving-baupost-letter-2015-11

I need to think more about the specific analogy, but my guess is the original claim that 72o is not the least profitable hand is probably correct. 72o causes people to recognize their weakness and get out quick. This seems to back that up: http://www.tightpoker.com/poker_hands.html . So 72s actually has the worst expected value. I guess because it gives people some sense of hope that ultimately causes them to lose more money than if they had 72o and just got out quick. How you apply that to life / investing is a different question, although I think it has some good lessons.

I don't understand how Zacks and similar crap still make it into Google Finance. Their news feed is virtually worthless.

Thanks

"An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative." Safety in principal is the key to me for concentrated positions. If he's investing in Facebook at 16x revenue, a pre-revenue pharma company and highly (understatement) levered bank stocks he's taking speculative positions. I'm not sure anyone ever advocated a concentrated portfolio of speculative positions. That's asking for disaster. I don't know anything about ZINC or SUNE, although I know they're local favorites.

The surprising thing to me is always that people will have articles like this written about them. I'm sure people have been essentially defrauding others for centuries, but wanting press and glory from that seems like a more recent phenomenon. I remember reading some article about how the Italian mafia is having an issue with its members flaunting their wealth on instagram and drawing attention to themselves.

Easier said than done, but I think you have to constantly be reassessing and allocating toward your best investment alternative based on the current prices. The price you bought in at or the length of time you've held should be irrelevant (other than for tax reasons). I find that to be one of the most difficult parts of investing.

I agree with the prior comments here. From people I've seen, the primary benefit of the MBA is the career services department and the job they can help you get immediately after school. If there is a job you want and they can help you get it then it can pay off very easily. If that position is available to you other ways, the ROI becomes much more nebulous. Once at that first job the second job will come from what you accomplished at the first job, not as a student. As others have said, that's really specific to the individual. Where I've seen it be beneficial is for people who are in industry A and want to be in industry B.

Would it be fair to say that if they'll recover 8% of the acquisition price (~US$4M) over the next six months through revenue / pricing, the acquisition will add roughly $8M of annual EBITDA? It looks like most of the assets of Aveda and Hodges are tractors / trailers that aren't overly specialized and would have value in something other than oil/gas? I forget who it was who bought into a oil/gas helicopter transport company during one of the downtowns with the simple theory that a helicopter is a helicopter. Thanks for pointing this out. Interesting setup.

I like it but also need to dig in more. The CEO has been very aggressively exiting the commodity side of the business and pursuing the higher value add engineered products. I don't remember his background offhand, but he's had success with similarly aggressive strategies in his past. The headline numbers for now are crap because of all the restructuring charges. Challenge is figuring out exactly what the economics are of the future business.

He has a $1.25B investment against $3B of cash with equity upside on a pretty brilliant CEO. From his perspective a lot had to go wrong for him to lose money and if things go right he can make a fortune.