claphands22

Investor # 4 is probably Martin P Van Blerk from Boabab. Martin was born in South Africa, looks like he spent some time in the UK, and definitely has an affinity for international stocks. Also, Martin worked as an analyst for Fairfax. http://www.baobabglobalfund.com/Team.htm Even if it isn't Martin; I like the boabab fund and the letters are fun to read.

One of my good friends, el_chieh, who rarely posts here or reads this board anymore, absolutely hit it out of the ballpark this year with a 50% return. Especially happy about this since I recommended him to my Australian friend, who moved the bulk of his nest egg over to him at the beginning of the year. He also writes very independent minded investor letters. His big winner was IDT.C which I never bought. I watched this stock climb from 4 dollars to 27 dollars this year. Definitely kicking myself for not pulling the trigger on that one. Anyhow, 2010 was a great year...highly skeptical about 2011.

Financial Markets with Professor Robert Shiller http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/financial-markets/ Basic financial knowledge taught by Robert Shiller with guest lectures of Icahn, Swensen and Schwarzman. Class was taught in late 2008. For anyone who likes to refresh their basic knowledge of finance, or like to pick up little nuggets from Shiller you might enjoy these lectures. Hat tip to Sleight of Hand (http://sleightfraud.blogspot.com/) for introducing one of these videos.

Yeah, I've noticed increased bullish behavior. Couple of my relatives have gotten back in the stock market and are boasting about how their picks are making more money. Gurufocus has a neat, daily updated article on "Where Are We with Market Valuations" and it finally dipped in the modestly overvalued territory about a week ago. http://www.gurufocus.com/stock-market-valuations.php I mean, take it all with a grain a salt. My relatives are not indicative of the entire population and you can't base your investment philosophy off a GuruFocus article but it's all starting to smell optimistic again. I also like packer's ideas - especially MGAM. They have a nice presentation on their website http://ir.multimediagames.com/events.cfm and the Baupost group http://www.dataroma.com/m/stock.php?sym=mgam is also a shareholder. Personally don't own a position since it's recent rally has turned me off and I haven't done my required reading the co yet. But yeah, there definitely seems to be some cheap stuff still laying around. Happy New Year! 新年快樂!

Why is it so bad that he is buying BH stock through the Lion Fund with BH's capital? If he believe BH is undervalued and believes it is a good way to invest the capital, why is it so bad?

Total return swaps sound like a fancy bucket shop contract. I'd be interested to know what kind of interest rate they are paying the banks to do this contract.

Attached below is Alice Schroeder's 1999 report on Berkshire Hathaway. (Thanks to Dah Hui Lau for finding it) http://dahhuilaudavid.blogspot.com/2008/04/alice-schroeders-january-1999-analyst.html

Miguel Barbosa's Simoleon Sense posted a 6 part interview with Alice Schroeder. Complete Interview http://www.simoleonsense.com/simoleonsense-thanks-readers-for-feedback-interest-alice-schroeder-recap/ Part 1 http://www.simoleonsense.com/simoleonsense-interviews-warren-buffetts-biographer-alice-schroeder-part-1-the-forging-of-a-skeptic-from-accountant-to-buffetts-voice-on-wall-st/ Part 2 http://www.simoleonsense.com/simoleonsense-interviews-buffett%E2%80%99s-biographer-alice-schroeder-part-2-a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-wall-st-morgan-stanley/ Part 3 http://www.simoleonsense.com/simoleonsense-interviews-buffett%E2%80%99s-biographer-alice-schroeder-part-3-meeting-the-oracle-of-omaha/ Part 4 http://www.simoleonsense.com/simoleonsense-interviews-buffett%E2%80%99s-biographer-alice-schroeder-part-4-will-the-real-warren-buffett-please-stand-up/ Part 5 http://www.simoleonsense.com/simoleonsense-interviews-buffett%E2%80%99s-biographer-alice-schroeder-part-5-buffett-the-investor-businessman/ Part 6 http://www.simoleonsense.com/simoleonsense-interviews-buffett%E2%80%99s-biographer-alice-schroeder-part-6-curve-ball-%E2%80%93-surprising-facts-about-warren-buffett/

Thanks for clarifying.

These warrant prospectuses are hard to read and you've done way more research on these warrants than I have. Yet, I thought the BofA A warrants also had the strike price reduction from dividends. I'm looking at the prospectus (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/70858/000119312510044940/d424b7.htm#suptx70043_6) page S-28 - S-30 under "Adjustments to Warrants" Any kind of clarification will help.

I enjoyed the free preview chapter: Vagabond value. The story of this investor is wild. I've attached it here.

Simoleon Sense is a great blog that posts ideas from behavioral finance, decision making, great TED videos, book reviews, interviews (recently had one with Dan Areily), economic bubbles, and worldly wisdom. Essentially, if Charlie Munger had a blog, this would be it. I'd like to publicly thank Miguel Barbosa for running the blog. He spends a lot of time compiling interesting topics and doing interviews. I would have far less reading material it wasn't for him. Every weekend he compiles all the promising posts with a financial cartoon. He has just completed his 100th weekly post. http://www.simoleonsense.com/weekly-roundup-100-a-linkfest-for-the-smartest-people-on-the-web/ Happy 100 weekiversary!

It's a great idea to teach kids about investing, but I think it's better to stay away from stock investments. If I could teach a class, it would be based on two things. 1, how to value a company and 2, how to think about the stock market. There would be no stock picking until a year after the class and only if we had 5 years to stay with company's filings. On a side note, I remember in my high school econ class we were split into small groups of three and allowed to "invest" our money into a stock market. It had to be the worse stock investing lesson ever. Our group ended up picking Toys R Us because it was Christmas time and after looking at a 5 or 10 year chart, the stock tended to go up around Christmas time. I remember being skeptical about our logic but since the only person who actually did their homework came up with the Toys R Us idea, we went with it. Sadly enough we actually won our stock picking contest and were rewarded with extra credit & candy for being great stock investors. *face palm*

Have you ever shopped at a remodeled Winn-Dixie? If you've been to a remodeled Winn-Dixie, how does the cleanliness and customer service compare to a Publix? Thanks in advance for your comments.

great video =)

Visiting my family in Mesa, Arizona for a couple more weeks. Anyone wanna meet up for a couple of beers? - Josh - claphands22@gmail.com

Yes, so I am really just being nit picky & lazy. I pretty much just want an ebook version of the Moody's Manual on an iPad so I can easily get an idea of companies, swipe my figure, and see the next company. The key statistics page doesn't have the business summary on the same page, so I'd have to click around then I'd have to type in a new stock sticker - I like the idea of discovering new companies which I don't have if I have to manually type in a stock ticker of a company I already heard about. the key statistics pretty much has all this information. I want an app that would just show the key statistics page + company summary. Essentially I want an ebook Moody's Manual

I believe a lot of these US listed Chinese small caps have gone public for dubious reasons. I've owned a few and have done well but was probably dumb luck. I think there could be a day of reckoning for these cos. I'd suggest doing the following for checking on the integrity of the company (1) I'd make sure the company has high insider ownership (2) that company didn't go public by raising equity at dumb prices (3) preferably a well known auditor (4) company has a good relationship with a bank (5) company has a good relationship with their shareholders (6) check their SAIC reports (reports they publish to chinese government) with http://www.inter-credit.net/ - the SAIC reports are done w/ chinese accounting but should be reasonably similar with US GAAP [currently in the process of trying to get these papers] (7) their financial statements make sense (should not be posting a positive net income yet posting a negative operating cash flows) Of course every company demands thorough due diligence but I think Chinese companies demand a double dose of skepticism. I really don't know why these companies list in the US. US listed Chinese companies generally get lower multiples therefore raising capital is more difficult. Maybe it's because the Chinese exchanges demand the company to be larger before listing (?) - I really don't know. CCME does look extremely interesting but my question for them is - why list in the US? Also, if I remember correctly, the management gets a bonus based on how well they do on an net income bonus - I think this gives them an incentive to fudge GAAP figures.

I would like an app that could give you a (1) page view of basic financial data like market value, enterprise value, cash, current ratio, ebitda, FCF, EV/FCF, EV/EBITDA - summary of companies basic operations, inside owner percentage, 52 week high/low. I'd also like there to be a link connecting the company to the EDGAR filings & IR page I'd love to buy something like this for an iPad - where I could quickly flip through companies and see basic financial data - kind of like Buffett's old Moody's Manual. - double recommend on TariqAli's idea (I do exactly the same thing with my good docs) - I'd also like to see Scorpions Idea come to alive

Miller and Grantham and Greenwald and Vita Maida - current US large caps are priced attractively. They are interesting companies; if we have deflation they should be able keep their prices constant - if we have inflation they should be able to raise prices, and probably benefit from inflation.

Grantham, Greenwald, Miller and my friend Gus have all highlighted the current reasonable prices on large US multinational companies. Miller makes the point in his recent quarterly that if Exxon continues to use their cash-flow to purchase 300-400 million shares a year, Exxon will be completely out of shares within 15 years! I'm not recommending Exxon or any other large cap but I think that's a good illustration of how cheap current large multinational companies are at the moment. (I've attached the Miller Quarter) Here are some large multinationals with their respective EV/EBITDA **EV/EBITDA is a tool of valuation, but not THE TOOL of valuation; remember EBITDA = bulls**t earnings - yet, I think it can be used here to illustrate the "cheapness" of some current blue chips JNJ 7.7 KFT 11.21 KO 12.66 MCD 10.58 PM 9.63 WMT 7.01 GOOG 11.48 INTC 5.65 [the Miller letter is being discussed on another post]

Afghanistan has high rocky terrain with no sea ports, because of this - the country has very high transportation costs. High transportation will effectively inhibit Afghanistan from being a player in the the global market unless (a) they do service work like India or (b) they have high profit margin exports like opium, metals, or oil. The metal thing is interesting because it will allow for another financial alternative than opium - it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in 10-20 years.

I would have a very hard time investing with a manager like Alwaleed. This guy has remarkable status anxiety which probably makes it very difficult to make independent investment decisions. Also this guy seems to be always out-and-about, when would you ever have the time to sit down and read the 10K/Qs investors need to read before making an intelligent investment choice?

I wish I had a statistic that could tell me what % of cash & % margin people where putting on their portfolios. I can't tell if we are the smart ones, going into cash or are we the Mr. Market and lots of people are going into cash, which is one of the reasons there is still value. Currently (1) I carry more cash at the moment and raising cash also...but might be buying soon as well. (2) I'm looking for copper companies to short - looking for expensive ones that sell to china - which has an obvious housing bubble if not infrastructure bubble. (3) I'd like to find an inexpensive way to hedge against inflation like klarman so I think pm/kft/jnj could be an ok substitue.

Thanks for the source.