ubuy2wron

I have purchased POW.to and TEF.ME recently

With great respect, Calls are only as good as the returns they produce. We were down 9% last year net of fees, up nearly 40% as of March 2012 and now "only" up 5% as of Friday. Sanjeev would you care to share your returns for the same periods (Dec 31 2011, March 31 2012, and Friday May 31) I could not find the series of posts which appeared earlier in the year where some were bragging about their returns, I used that as a signal to start raising cash now sitting around 40%. I suspect that around the time of the Grrek elections we may see something more positive emerge with mkt trends. I suspect a Greek Euro exit maybe Europes Bear Stearns moment and a larger countries exit would be their Lehman moment. The record low 10 years yields on treasuries and Bunds indicate to me that the deflation trade is pretty crowded at the moment. I personaly have found it a difficult mkt, I am a few percentage points away from new high water marks but have been relagated to being happy with single digit returns for the last 5 years because I am unwilling to go all in when stuff looks cheap. I have never been willing to take my cash below 20%.

It makes sense to own a few gold coins and a hoard of cash in your personal safe. One never knows when you may have to bribe the border guards, beyond that they are perfectly awful long term investments but gold wins over cash unless the cash is invested in t-bills.

My goodness gracious we are quick to point the finger and to allocate responsibility. The House of Morgan has well in excess of 100k employees in so many countries that its likely no one here know how many countries they in fact have an office. IMO Jamie is guilty of nothing more than hubris and a little arrogance (Ok maybe a lot of arrogance). If you run a bank and it has a huge balance sheet and hundreds of thousands of employees, crap is going to happen from time to time even if you are as good as we used to think Jamie was. The bank has pretty much dealt with what will become a tiny footnote in its history in a pretty darn responsible manner.

Hopefully P&G will not buy the patents... BeerBaron I don't get it? Why would it be bad if P&G bought the patents? They certainly have the production, distribution and marketing capacity to profitably deliver such a product to consumers.... Well, it does threaten the cavity-fighting toothpaste market. And a mouthwash that is effective for 4 days after a single rinse might threaten the twice-a-day rinse market. People buy fancy toothbrushes that vibrate or have special "reach" capability. They could be tempted to just buy the patent and never roll out a product. I'm not sure that people would stop using Crest or Scope just because this product kills the worst bacteria. There's nothing quite as nice as brushing your teeth in the morning. More likely that they'd roll out the product and price it at a point where they'd earn equivalent or higher profits from each user (hey, I'd consider paying $100/year to beat the tooth decay problem). My suspicion is that insurance policies would probably provide coverage for the initial years, as it would be a no-brainer to reduce their costs. After the patent expires (and there would probably be less than 15 years to exploit it), then every Tom, Dick and Harry could probably produce the stuff at a price competitive with current mouthwashes. Eventually P&G would have to drop their prices in preparation for patent expiration, but it could be a great run for the first 10 years. There's nothing quite as nice as brushing your teeth in the morning. Stubble Jumper you may want to rethink -retract the previous statement. LOL

Just say no thanks. I have lots of experience holding shares in illiquid securities in Canada you can only get squeezed out "forced to sell" when the majority acquires 90 percent. Right of dissent allows for a court adjudicated valuation. The last time I challenged the valuation I received a 50% bump in the buyout price by just saying no. I do not own any FBK but if the price gets cheap enuff I will.

Hesse has to be one of the worst CEO,s alive today. I suspect when all is said and done Falcone may face criminal charges what he did to his hedge fund investors with locks ups and the investing in light squared stinks.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/falcones-lightsquared-files-bankruptcy-182323779.html

This brings up an interesting conundrum. FFH and a select list of other companies mkt price is largely set by value investors. How can the price ever get over valued by a significant degree if it is simply traded back and forth between value investors. There is a relatively newish Canadian P&C company which has its roots in a ING spin off called Intact Financial and it is currently trading at 2X book. Is it not likely that overvaluation for FFH will not occur unless it can string a few lumpy return years in a row together and then have less value conscious investors apply an unrealistic multiple to that?

To quote Nancy Reagan is it not time for the non-lock-up shareholders to "just say no". There was an offer on the table for 40% more, the buyer thought that it was worth more or would not make the offer. I have no dog in this fight as I own no shares but why sell or tender unless you think the future is about to get a lot worse for FBK. I believe the courts made a very large mistake here.

Roger As I said I am only half way through, but the fact that individuals let their type one thinking make so many decisions even the important ones explains , at least partially, why the value discipline can produce superior returns.

I saw the movie first liked it a lot read the book second and I loved the book. An amusing story, the day after I saw the movie I was out with the Mrs. shoe shopping (her favorite pastime) and in the store was the girl who played Brad Pitts daughter in Money Ball. She is from Vancouver it was her first role and I predict a bright career for this young lady as she truely stood out in the film.

Almost anything by Michael Lewis is worth reading. I am sure his grocery shopping lists are riveting and entertaining

I am about half way through this gem of a book by Daniel Kahneman a Nobel Prize winner for economics. I rate it a must read for anyone who wants to understand why most individuals find the discipline of investing so gosh darn frustrating. We are mostly hard wired to make poor choices. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/thinking-fast-and-slow-by-daniel-kahneman/article2249529/

Is this where the short players start to do their work. Could not someone create a bunch of shares to ensure that either party has 50% plus 0ne.

Warren you are going to tap dance your way to work for many years to come.

I have been buying ECA as well I have not done a deep dive however it is sitting on one of the worlds largest reserves of cheap gas and the balance sheet is strong enough to survive a couple of years of ugly prices. It is also a sitting duck as far as a take over is concerned.

In my perfect world no, almost all investors however value pfds like super junior debt. The risks in pfd ownership are further complicated in some jurisdictions by different tax treatments on dividend income.

If one looks at the long history of companies with dual class structures the outcome is almost certain, at some point the non voting shareholders get screwed. One is reminded of the of the teen age boys promise of "I'll only put the head in". Even with FFH and BRK ,can shareholders be certain with the founders passing their estates will treat the lesser vote shareholders fairly. Warren has never sold a share of his voting stock but he is converting voting into non voting and then gifting the non voting to the Gates foundation. At some point control of BRK comes into play. One class of shares should be all that is allowed for public companies.

Vancouver Canada pretty much all my life.

I guessed you were from South Africa from your handle.

Wow. Those FFH leaps really paid off if you can afford a 100,000,000.00 house. LOL

The housing mkt HAS turned end of story. In almost any mkt of any consequence if you bought a distress sale in the last 12-18 months you can turn it for a profit today in some instances a large one. At the same time the housing stocks have doubled off of their October lows but then that is what they do when the mkt turns. I will be adding to my TOL on a pull back to 20 and I will add to my BAC on any meaningfull weakness and I am kicking myself for my limit vs Mkt order on PULTE which was ericoplys idea. its almost trippled. The increase in the fortunes of the housing mkt is the surest way to keep the US economy growing. I am absolutely convinced that you can not have a growing US economy with housing starts in the sub 500k. The US economy IS housing and cars the autos are back so now is housing.

It is pretty hard if not impossible to defend Mr Icahn. His track record of what happens to companies after he gets his mitts on control is there for all to see. The track record of Peter Burke on this site is also there for all to see. I think Mr Burke and Carl are soul mates. LOL

I listened to several of her speeches. If I remember correctly what she said is that, Warren got what would be considered insider info nowadays but was not considered insider information at that time. This is basically nothing more than taking directly with managers, etc. Her point regarding being a mere mortal is that he works so incredibly hard, even the gathering of "insider" information, going to insurance commission's office and looking up old records, and all that kind of leg work that very few people did at that time and that is the key to his performance. Her point being it is not like Buffett spends a few hours and just by genius of his insights makes all the money. She wants to highlight the fact that others do not really appreciate the amount of effort he puts in. She goes on to say that seeing how much effort Buffett puts into his investments, she was discouraged in trying to invest her own money that way, nothing that she cannot compete with someone like this. She might have some "MAlice" towards Buffett but I still think she thinks of his as one of the greatest investors of all time. Vinod I do not want to libel Malice. She did say that it was not illegal insider info at the time but again the implication was that he could not recreate his performance in the new highly regulated world. In response to the post that commented about the quality of what passes for financial journalism these days I must agree. Much of the new media is in a mad dash to the bottom as far as quality is concerned . There is an awfull lot that is pure entertainment. I guess I should not complain too much however as they are businesses and The National Enquirer has made more money for shareholders than the New York Times.