turar

When counting cash weighting, does anyone not include emergency cash? I guess what I'm trying to say is, I try to have a chunk of cash that I don't even count as part of my portfolio, as if it's not there and not ever available. Or do you just plan on selling assets at any price if a need for cash suddenly comes along?

Through Yahoo finance or something else?

By the way, what service does everyone use to keep up with company news? Something like RSS or email alerts?

There's a complimentary issue of Grant's Interest Rate Observer available for everyone, in case you're interested: http://www.grantspub.com/UserFiles/File/G28_SUMMER(2).pdf

I think it comes down to being able to wake up at 3am from a cell phone text message, that usually just beeps a couple of times and stops. Or hearing it in a crowded bar or something. I'm sure there are options on some cell phones that can make it beep loudly and continuously until a button is pressed when a text message arrives, but not all, and probably not most phones. More importantly, most people wouldn't bother to figure out how to set it up, even high-tech geeks, when there's a standard solution offered organization-wide, that will definitely wake you up at 3am. (And yes, I can confirm from my own experiences that those little pagers make you jump from bed at 3am!)

I disagree in regards to pagers. Pagers are a niche that's still used heavily, and by companies that are on a leading edge of technology. For example, almost every software engineer, tech manager, and so on up the chain at Amazon.com carries a pager. Not to mention doctors and others who have to participate in 24/7 "on-call" rotations as part of their job. Cell phones just don't work very well in those situations. As far as Yellow Pages, I haven't used it in a very long time. Like everyone else, I get a heavy tome of Yellow Pages delivered to my door every year, and I throw it straight into recycling. There's Yelp.com that, in my opinion, trumps anything physical or even online Yellow Pages can offer, not to mention Google+Google Maps combo.

Not to sound negative, but pledging is quite different from actually delivering on the promise, as evidenced by pledges of aid to Haiti after the earthquake. Not talking about Buffett or Gates, but some of those pledges raise my BS/PR alarms.

I was actually going to post that I have a couple of ideas for a web app using XBRL data from SEC, that I want to develop myself, but keep putting off for the lack of time/energy after my day job. But yeah, it's a bit of race, there are quite a few financial sites springing up from kaching to wikinvest to finviz, etc.

This may be helpful: https://www.wikinvest.com/ By the way, the site tries to become a Wikipedia for stocks, and for large caps they have some good summaries, e.g. http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/Jnj (I just noticed that the topicstarter already mentioned it in his post).

I can really relate to that feeling. Psychologically, it's much harder for me to invest in stocks that do not pay dividends, even if other fundamentals are better.

This reminded me of a post I've read recently. No offense and no intention to get political, just an interesting association. I think quoting in full here wouldn't be too harmful: This morning I was awakened by an alarm clock powered by electricity generated by a public power monopoly regulated by the Department of Energy. I then took a shower in clean water provided and its quality monitored by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration weather forecast, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched while eating my breakfast of Department of Agriculture-inspected food which has been determined safe by the Food and Drug Administration. At the appropriate time, as kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I got into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved car and drove to work on roads built and maintained by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation. On the way, I bought fuel, of a quality and quantity determined by the Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Weights and Measures, using legal tender issued by the US Treasury Department. On the way to work I deposited my outgoing mail via the US Postal Service, and then dropped the kids off at their public school. On my lunch hour, I helped Dad register for his Social Security Administration old age pension and my parents’ Medicare health care benefits, to help them survive in their old age. After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work, because of regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, I drove back to my house. It had not burned down in my absence, because of the state and local building codes and the County Fire Marshal’s inspection, and had not been plundered of all its valuables, thanks to the municipal police department. I then logged onto the Internet, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, and I posted an angry letter on Fox News forums stating that any government option in the proposed new health care legislation will be BAD because the government can’t do anything right. I am a proud blue-collar Republican who won’t tolerate any government role in my life. http://normh.us/?p=59

NPR's Marketplace program had a good story on that recently. http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/07/08/pm-mobile-pay-changes-the-way-we-do-biz/

Forgive my ignorance, but wouldn't they be resetting to the rates below their current rates, given the current rate index environment, e.g. LIBOR, as compared to say 2005?

I found the following quote from 1974 a little funny. "You're dealing with a lot of people in the marketplace; it's like a great big casino and everyone else is boozing. If you can stick with Pepsi, you should be okay."

PCL is the largest private landowner in the US, including North Florida, not the beaches though :). There were a couple of short-case write-ups about them on VIC and Graham & Doddsville newsletter, so the general perception is that it's overvalued. On the other hand, Grantham keeps saying timber will outperform most other asset classes.

That's too funny. Miller is wearing an Amazon.com shirt in the picture, though, as if to defend himself somehow. :)

Ameritrade likes doing that, you'll have to call them directly to place a trade, and tell them that it's restricted online, so that they don't charge you a "telephone commission". FFH and FUR are also "restricted", or at least were at some point.

I agree with opihiman2 that discussion of intangibles doesn't really make sense, as it's highly subjective and will depend on personal experience. I kind of regret even going into that. Most people, especially on this board, would definitely have a higher standard of living today than 30 years ago, simply because of age bias (i.e. a broke college student in the 80s is now a successful professional, or a newly arrived immigrant family in the 80s is now a thriving family business, after years of hard work, etc.). My point was simply that I don't think that the standard of living increased so significantly since 1980, that it should be obvious to a fifth grader. It's not obvious to me. I don't think CPI-U vs CPI-W would be so different. Using CPI-W tables, your quoted median wage of $7.12 in 1980 is equivalent to $19.33 in 2010 dollars. That's a decrease when compared to your quoted median wage of $18.85 for 2010. The table used: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/avgcpi.html I don't see how you're getting a 36% increase. No, I'm typing this message from Mars. Like I already said, I regret pulling some of those intangible comparisons, as they're highly subjective. My point is simply that wages decreased or stayed flat (see above), prices for "important" items such as health care and higher education have increased significantly (no data to prove that, just guessing), and prices for "unimportant" items such as computers or phones have decreased. But how does that make "standard of living" higher? And what is "standard of living" anyway? The cars maybe better, but they still take you from A to B as they did in 1980, and cost about the same. The housing quality is better? Not sure. Definitely bigger, but better? I keep hearing horror stories of quality of residential construction built in 1990s and 2000s, as compared to older houses. But again, just anecdotal and highly subjective. The food -- definitely cheaper and more mass produced now compared to then. But if I taste a beautiful, big, shiny, nicely waxed apple from Whole Foods, and compare what I taste to an ugly-looking, smallish apple with a worm inside from a bazaar in a third-world country or from a private orchard, the comparison is not good for the former. That's roughly what I meant by "food quality", but yeah, otherwise there's plenty of it, quantity-wise in 2010 than in 1980. Again, these intangibles are highly subjective, let's not get bogged down debating these.

Watsa, where are you getting your numbers? I couldn't find these exact CPI numbers on BLS. However using their online calculator and your hourly median wage numbers (without adjusting for hours worked), $7.12 in 1980 is equivalent to $18.84 today, so flat almost to the penny. Online calculator: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl If I dig further, I find the following AVERAGE wages for 1980 and 2010 (couldn't find median wages): 1980 Weekly hours: 35.2 Hourly rate: $6.85 Weekly rate: $241.1 2010 Weekly hours: 33.1 Hourly rate: $18.91 Weekly rate: $625.92 Source: ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.ceseeb2.txt Using the same online calculator, $241.1 in 1980 is equal to $637.89 in 2010, about a 2% increase. Using CPI-U numbers that I could find, which are different from yours, I get about the same difference using my own calculation. Source: ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt Now I'm not an economist and known for lack of attention to detail, so correct me if I'm wrong. Regarding changes in technology, such as better telephones and computers, I already made my point. I'm not sure they can be treated as a major contributor to the standard of living. I'm also not sure health care cost decreased, I keep hearing otherwise. Regarding non-tangible things like racism and sexism, I can think of offsetting newer issues such as terrorism and surrounding security paranoia, food quality (genetically modified produce), lower quality of K-12 education, lower standards of national discourse (media is idiotic), etc.

The question was about 30 years ago though, not 50-60 years ago. I think that's a big difference in terms of women and minority rights. Also a difference when considering technological advances. I've read some debate elsewhere arguing that in the last 20-30 years, there weren't really any significant breakthroughs in sciences on the scale that were occurring in the first half of 20th century (think space exploration, nuclear physics, etc), and that the most of the technological advances we're seeing now are simply the result, the application, of major breakthroughs of many years ago (i.e. Internet, a.k.a. ARPANET, was the product of research in 50s and 60s). But that's a little off-topic. P.S. Oops, realized I was replying to an older version of your post, but yeah, 30 years is different than 50 years in that regard.

The discussion on standard of living change interested me a bit. Seems like the expected answer is that it did increase from 30 years ago, mainly due to innovation in technology. But I wouldn't consider technology an integral part of standard of living consideration, certainly not in the same category as food, housing, and health care. 30 years ago is only as far as 1980. I tried looking up historical personal per capita income in the US, and just eyeballing it, it didn't seem to increase much at all, adjusting for inflation. Seems like some basic costs such as food and shelter have stayed flat as well, but some of the "quality of life" costs like education and health care increased a lot more, thus opening room for argument that the standard of living may have actually decreased. Am I missing something, or am I really dumber than the fifth grader? http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

onyx1, Rabbitisrich, TariqAli, thanks for all the suggestions!

I think Harry's main point was that he suspects that a lot of us are not actually doing enough of our own due diligence, and instead coat tailing on "guru" picks, or ideas of others. I have caught myself on several occasions doing this, and it's kind of a scary problem for me, with the main excuses being "not enough time" & "information overload". I wonder whether I'm the only one. On a side note, how are you guys reading the reports? I find reading anything longer than a couple of pages off the computer screen hard on eyes and concentration (especially with the rest of the Internet a click away). I tried printing and reading, but seems like a huge waste of paper. I tried requesting companies to send me printed materials, but it's even a worse waste. I tried using Sony Reader e-book device, but the formatting is horrible in any readable font size, especially financial tables. Just curious.

Looks like there was a mini "flash crash" again today around 2pm for drillers, or just a weird coincidence. I'm looking at day charts for ESV, ATW, RDC, HAWK, HERO, PTEN, etc. Just an interesting observation.

Thanks!