DooDiligence

I've had other students ask me to read papers they've written & all I can say is damn. Anyone who has to read some of that crap & give it a grade & write in critical notes, deserves to be compensated. All joking aside, the exams we have to take for my major are not simple multiple choice & the instructors have a lot of work on their hands when grading them. Not to mention the difficulty of conveying the concepts to students throughout the semesters. The attrition rate is high & we just lost half our class going into the 3rd semester so it does become a bit easier for the instructor. We can & should be criticical of our educational systems, but a lot of the criticism should be directed at uninvolved parents who send their little poorly disciplined snowflakes to school expecting some miracle to happen. Either way, the US & Canada have done pretty well & will continue to do so as our educational systems slowly evolve for better & for worse.

Fingers crossed that Omaha will receive interest payments for borrowing! That'd be a new twist on loan sharking. Next stop Europe?

Does anyone believe that WEB might be giving us every opportunity to buy for our own accounts before he goes on a tear?

You guys did a great job! I'd take a pontoon boat over a goat. --- Vacation rentals are starting to look more attractive to me than equities. 1. More thorough knowledge of what you own. 2. More direct control over what you own. 3. Don't have to stare at whipsawed market values every day. 4. Ability to personally enjoy your property.

I need to max out a student loan quick.

Can I ask for your view on EW and its prospects? It's not a company that gets a lot of analysis or opinion. I'm not a very good or diligent analyst & tend to go with my gut on a lot of things. My thoughts on Edwards will be riddled with bias based on the fact that it has been the single most successful investment I've ever made. .... Thanks! I've been looking at it for awhile, but haven't gotten super comfortable yet. I think the price is way too high ATM & I sell a little every now & then to keep the allocation down. It just keeps going up.

Can I ask for your view on EW and its prospects? It's not a company that gets a lot of analysis or opinion. I'm not a very good or diligent analyst & tend to go with my gut on a lot of things. My thoughts on Edwards will be riddled with bias based on the fact that it has been the single most successful investment I've ever made. I bought Edwards back in 2013 when they were going through a patent dispute over the TAVR (trans-aortal valve replacement) with Medtronic. They prevailed in the suit & have since made acquisitions which got them into mitral with the PASCAL & Cardioband products. Mitral is proving to be much more difficult but has more potential patients. Their main product is tissue vales & they also offer the newer minimally invasive trans-catheter products. The pivotal acquisition which got them into the Sapien market was done at a quarter of what Medtronic paid to acquire the same technology. The minimally invasive Sapien valve replacements are approved for use on patients who can't tolerate having their chests opened for a traditional procedure & recently the company's Sapien valve has expanded its indication to include the intermediate risk pool, and is expected to include low surgical risk patients soon. Continued domination of the tissue valve market & the expansion of indications to lower risk patients & eventual (maybe) mainstream use of minimally invasive valve replacements are what I pin my hopes on.. Sales reps are highly trained & sit in on procedures. I remember reading something that said they tied sales reps compensation to successful procedures instead of sales volume but this may be faulty memory as I can't find any reference. Gross margins have increased steadily. I like that they rely more on organic growth. Slow & steady buybacks. Executive compensation that seems aligned with shareholders. Bonuses are tied to revenue & FCF instead of earnings. Their main competitors are Medtronic, Abbott & Boston Scientific. Morningstar has a pretty comprehensive writeup with potential negatives. EW_:_Edwards_Lifesciences_Corp_Analyst_Report_|_Analyst_Report_2019-08.pdf

Wouldn't it be fun if publicly traded co's started demanding that shareholders pay them a dividend?

I do not.

FUL (smallish $2.3B mkt cap.) MMM (largish $94B mkt cap.) or a home builder?

Didn't law enforcement gather a lot of evidence? Just because this turd offed himself, doesn't absolve anyone who was implicated. Does the investigation just end?

Again, BRK.B & WFC

Saw this posted on another board today as well http://sabercapitalmgt.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/WFC-Unexciting-Idea-But-Exciting-Value-2019-07-01.pdf Wells looks good to me. I hope it's correct that Berkshire can stop selling. Nice. Rings true. Sounds like a good Peter Lynch investment story. With a front run.

Added to BRK.B Started a position in WFC, pretty much because of the last half dozen or so posts by koshigoe. http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/profile/?area=showposts;u=9320

Nice. Did bitcoin boy get his lunch yet?

BRK & VDE

I hope he didn't buy squat. More cash piles up. Shares go below $200. (beep, beep, beep - trucks backing up) Then they start buying shares over the next ? years (or not.) Great bunch of businesses. It's like an Easter egg.

I get that you think Einhorn is an idiot, a point that has been repeated ad infinitum on this board in recent years. Do you have any actual thoughts on the point he's trying to make here? I thought the Pets.com-Chewy parallel was an interesting one. Of course Einhorn leaves out alot, like that Pets.com was nearly pre-revenue when it IPO'd. Chewy is an actual business. Pets.com was never much more than an idea. More broadly, I think the profitability of selling dog food on the internet is still an open question. Zooplus in Europe looks like it operates around break even. Even more broadly, I agree with Einhorn that many US companies seem priced for something close to perfection. For what it's worth, when I was at UPS I remember whenever the Chewy's contract came up for bid UPS pursued it hard. Dog food deliveries were (for UPS) high margin. Dense heavy product packed in a box as small as possible that was pretty much a recurring monthly shipment. Pet food deliveries were always increasing yoy. Again, from Chewy's perspective can it be profitable? I don't know. All I can say is, the demand seems to be there for the product and delivery service. Customers had nothing but good things to say about it. Women loved not having to pick up 50lb bags at the grocery store. Cat litter is also another big one. That's really interesting, thanks. From Chewy's website FAQ: "Orders over $49 ship free! All other orders ship for a flat rate of $4.95." I wonder how much their average cost to ship a 50lb bag of dog food is? IDK but Amazon will ship a bag costing $26.74 for free. https://www.amazon.com/Purina-Chow-Complete-Food-Bonus/dp/B00PFXFH6O

This might have something to do with it too. https://cointelegraph.com/news/number-of-crypto-notables-on-buffett-lunch-guest-list-grows

The roll of luck in investing & life is like a dividend for hard / smart work.

Looks kind of like a Punnett square ;) http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/lucky-gene-clover/ Statistically there is only a single four-leaf clover in 10,000 but, as usual, statistics alone do not tell the whole story. A clover is just one part of the whole clover plant, which can cover a large area. So if you look hard in the vicinity of a four-leaf clover, there is a good chance you will find at least a few more. My take from this, be grateful & ride your lucky streaks hard. --- Paraphrased Garth Brooks lyrics as counterpoint to the Dalai Lama: She wasn't quite the angel that I remembered in my dreams And I could tell that time had changed me In her eyes too it seemed We tried to talk about the old days There wasn't much we could recall... Some of God's greatest gifts are all too often unanswered... Some of the God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. (insert favorite God or real smart dude who never claimed to be a God)

I need to re-read it too. The 1st time I read it I was totally in flow for a month +/- & then it went away. Being less self absorbed makes you really powerful. Keeping your thoughts to yourself magnifies that power.

This would do wonders to help people grow up. Personal sacrifice has taken the back seat to "me too" - to the detriment of the country. Dale Carnegies' principal #1 - Don't criticize, condemn or complain. I find this very hard 2 maintain if I look at Twitter all day long. Before Summer started, I was only allowing myself to visit Twitter for the 1st 7 days of the month. I'm going back to that as of now.

A neighbor of mine took over an old hardware store down the street from my house & turned it into an Ace in 2009. The old place was super unorganized but everyone loved the owners & it was convenient. The new owners are great & prices are competitive with Lowes, which saves me a 30 minute drive. (I can ride my bike to the Ace.) The new(ish) Ace has thrived & he's added a rental business & most recently, a large warehouse in back to store more materials. --- Interesting story on the coop structure of Ace, https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2015/02/11/how-ace-hardware-turned-corner-stores-into-a-4-7-billion-co-op/#5588d26f52e1 Too bad BRK can't buy this business.

Crap, NOLA can't seem to get a break.