smw397

That's what I was hoping to see. Other than the huge leap in book value, of course ;D

Who was it that once said the markets can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent? I'm looking hard at every macro hedge vehicle I can. I like this thread and hope it picks up again.

I've seen the point made repeatedly since yesterday that Desmond Tutu won the prize years before his much progress was made toward abolishing apartheid, the inference being that sometimes the Peace Prize is awarded not so much for fulfilling a goal so much as encouraging continued work towards it. Some may call that ideological, but it is the PEACE prize after all. Obama's going to look pretty stupid if he acts as a warmonger with that thing sitting on his mantle. I wish I could enjoy all the right wingers frothing at the mouth over this, but I don't really see anything as having changed there. They've been frothing at the mouth all along anyway. I guess it is nice that more and more they're being recognized for the ideologues that they are though. I did enjoy this from Lukovich yesterday: http://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/mike10092009.jpg

This. Granted, I may have a well documented liberal bias, but I detest what Walmart stands for. I see it as part and parcel of the very issues that brought the economy to its knees last fall. Walmart sells short term thinking, instant gratification; Walmart sells a lot of crap. Sure, they offer the best prices on socks and underwear and many things we actually need. But they also sell more useless junk than any other vendor on the planet. Junk designed to offer as little value to the consumer as possible, junk designed to be used up and thrown away. Beyond that, their employment practices are reprehensible and they have an unfair competitive advantage when they move into new communities that leaves existing businesses in tatters if they survive at all. It's nothing for them to open a new store and operate at a significant loss for as long as it takes to wipe out other retailers. They've been accused of similar practices with suppliers who must gear up production to meet Walmart's demand, then when the vendors are completely dependent on Walmart's business they put the screws to them and slash what they're willing to pay for inventory. What's left are once thriving communities that now depend on Walmart as the sole source of employment, only now the few who still have jobs can scarcely afford to shop there. Even if I wasn't averse to owning Walmart for these reasons, I agree with those who suggest it's run its course by complete saturating the American marketplace. I disagree that it's a well managed business. It may have appeared to be one for some time, but it's been shitting the bed the whole time and I believe all of North America is paying the price today. There are those who see the glass half full and those who see the glass as half empty. I'm among the few who just can't figure out why all the damn glasses are twice as big as they need to be.

All I need to know when deciding whether to invest in pulp is revealed when I consider the last remaining mill in my region. I long ago lost track of how many times it's changed hands. It has been shut down more than it's run over the last several years, and at this point it doesn't look like it will ever fire up again regardless of which way the pulp market goes. Here's the most recent story in our local paper: http://www.times-standard.com/ci_13356249?source=most_viewed

The bell curve analogy is what did it for me. I got 78% out of my shares and 94% out of my Feb 35 calls when the stock hit 62.50 on Monday. While another 2 or 5 or 10 dollars would be wonderful, I couldn't convince myself by Monday afternoon that the odds of further moves in that direction were any greater than the odds of the deal collapsing, or the odds that the share price might retract some over speculation that the deal could collapse. The profit on the table was too easy not to take it while the profit left to wait for was too risky to wait for.

Not just congratulations but many thanks! If not for FFH and ORH I would have crashed and burned over the last year. I spent my whole life up until recently learning about everything but money. Now that I am sticking my toe in these waters I consider myself exceptionally lucky to have found a resource like this board where I can reap the benefits of all the expertise amassed by such a visionary group of investors. Somebody said the other day this has been almost like insider trading, only legal. It is certainly the fattest pitch I've ever had a chance to swing at, and I wouldn't have had the courage had I not learned so much from the informed debate here. I especially want to thank Sanjeev for maintaining this forum, and just say I hope I get a chance to buy you one of those big ass-burgers one day! ;D

The Jan 35 ORH call was my first option transaction ever. Next fat pitch, please. ;D

With more demand for renewables comes demand for energy storage as well. Batteries, flywheels, ultracapacitors, even hydrogen, which is more correctly viewed as an energy medium than a source.

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/ExtendedTradingTrades.aspx?selected=FFH&mkttype=after

I've got two kids at UC Santa Cruz and over the last three years neither has been able to find a room in a house for less than $1000/month. They both share rooms so it's only half that to them, but still...and we're not talking about very nice houses, though at least they're within striking distance of the beach and on the bus route to campus.

I had the same question but then saw the note that the article wasn't available in English yet. Since I don't read French I don't know how I even got that far.

Setting aside the likelihood of an ORH buyout, would it make more sense to borrow Canadian dollars if they're looking at a Canadian takeover target?

I'm glad to see this finally hit the board here. I've been following Deep Capture closely for probably over a year now. While I find it for the most part easy to swallow while I'm reading it - save for perhaps a bit of over-stridency in the prose from time to time - frankly I don't know to what extent it's actually credible. Certainly those who are vilified in its pages are quick to rebut the accusations against them, but it seems mostly with ad hominem attacks against Byrne and Bagley, and maybe to a lesser extent Mitchell as well. I guess what leaves me wondering just a little bit is the fact that for so long there's no fallout for the alleged miscreants. Lately a case here or there is finally being taken on by the SEC but for the most part the names mentioned by Deep Capture would appear to operate with impunity, even if they're not raking it in like they may have been any more. I don't see it talked about anywhere much other than the Yahoo boards and we all know what they're worth. It's no secret that I'm relatively new to investing. I'm very lucky to have stumbled across FFH and this board, but I've made some pretty significant mistakes along the way. I stuck more than a little money into some companies whose technologies I really believe in but I didn't understand the uphill battles they faced or the forces that would be aligned against their succeeding. A couple of them took on PIPE financing; one of those ceased operations but has yet to formally file for bankruptcy. The other continues to limp along and just may recover from what was in my mind no doubt an aggressive naked shorting campaign. At least a couple others have been hit by bear raids where I believe naked shorting was a big part of the picture. Again, if we're to believe Deep Capture, the Reg SHO list doesn't exactly reflect the truth about it since these guys can keep rolling their positions over and grow the number of phantom shares indefinitely without the public ever knowing. If, and that's a big IF, the SEC is going to get serious about this, will all those alleged phantom shares have to be covered? If so, there should be one helluva squeeze coming. Then again, there are stories lately that some of the firms suspected of being the biggest violators, the ones who made the most money as things were going to hell last year, are getting hammered now even as the market comes back because they're no longer able to get away with the naked shorting that is their life blood, at least not in the volumes that they were pulling it off before. If they go under and never cover, how does that affect the equities they've artificially diluted so badly? I'd be very interested in what the community here thinks about the entire Deep Capture thesis, as well as the individual elements of the various threads they've covered over the last several months.

I saw that little after hours bump but it was only 100 shares. Is that even relevant?

I'm not going to vote because I have no flippin' clue - that's why I'm here, attempting to get one. But I would have to wonder if it's true that the new debt offering has anything to do with a potential buyout of ORH, why would they wait? Maybe a month or two for regulatory or other procedural reasons, but any more than that and it seems it wouldn't make sense to carry the interest without making the move. That's not a rhetorical question. I really have no idea and look forward to lurking while those who do discuss it.

There's my vote for best line of the day so far. Definitely got an audible chuckle out of me. I sold off a couple of small slivers at 347.50 and 350 only because I'm a bit leveraged and FFH as of this week was making up more than 100% of the total value in my taxable portfolio. I used a bit of the cash it freed up to buy a Feb ORH 35 call -- my first ever option transaction! Fortunately I still feel stupid, so I might make out OK on the deal.

Can't respond to you question about those particular stocks, but there are a few others I track that have definitely been hit hard by naked shorts in the past, including some that spent months on the Reg SHO list, that don't appear to have been affected one way or the other by this news. Just sayin'.

Toward that end, it looks at this point like we are very likely heading into an El Nino season. There's no hard and fast rule on it, but historically El Ninos tend to result in more major tropical storms in the Pacific but fewer Atlantic hurricanes. I look forward to that being baked into the cake!

THIS! Probably the most important thing I ever stuck to my guns on, aside from refusing the have cable TV. Living in the hills and not getting good broadcast TV reception was just a coincidental stroke of luck. We always read to our kids every night when they were little and without TV or video games they naturally became voracious readers. Young readers become high context thinkers capable of looking at the world through a variety of lenses, different perspectives, timeframes, etc. Sure, they're eventually exposed to video games and all the rot on TV, but by then they've got the intellectual capacity to consider it for what it is and they stand at least a fighting chance of continuing to think for themselves. My wife runs a tutoring center and the #1 issue she deals with every day isn't stupid kids, it's kids who spend too much time playing video games and watching TV so they never develop the brains they have to begin with.

We had all our kids quite young, the last of three born when I was 24 and my wife was only 21. Neither of us had gotten very far in school at that point and it was several years before we were able to start picking away at our degrees. We both finished school but not before our kids were in high school. In the meantime, we worked a lot of crappy jobs and were rarely able to amass enough funds to do anything with, so investing wasn't anything we knew much about ourselves, much less enough to teach our kids. We did, however, learn an awful lot about frugality and self sufficiency. We learned that you can actually be quite comfortable if you live in such a manner as to not need a lot of money, so that your time is much more enjoyable because you're not slaving it all away always chasing a buck. My parents and siblings all live in far nicer houses and have far nicer things, but I don't think they've ever had a fraction of the fun we do. Interestingly, my nieces and nephews, who grew up in beautiful suburban neighborhoods with all their needs met and the knowledge their parents were investing wisely, not only seem miserable but frankly I think they're all quite lazy. My kids may look like a bunch of unkempt hippies but they're all in fantastic physical condition, they all know how to grow food, how to cook great meals, how to maintain a house, and what to do if the power goes out of the well goes dry. Now all in their early 20's, two of them will graduate with hard science degrees this coming school year. Both have studied abroad and accumulated extensive experience in their respective fields. Other than a bit of travel support I've never put a dime into either of their educations as they did it all working part time and earning scholarships. The oldest has been swinging hammers since he was a tot, went into the trades right out of high school, and will earn his contractor's license soon. The most important thing I taught my kids about money was to just hang onto it if you don't have to spend it. Use it to acquire things that are really useful to you, things that will move you forward on the chessboard. Don't shy away from having fun or doing anything you want, but make those desires work for you so they become assets rather than liabilities. It's only in the last few years I've finally been able to start putting money to work, and thankfully I've got a good friend and adviser who's been doing this his entire life so, despite a few missteps related to the collapse last year, things are working out (go FFH!) and I've learned an awful lot from him and examples set by those who post here regularly. We've talked to our kids a lot about the whole process ever since we started investing and are confident that as they begin to earn once they're out of school, they'll continue to live well within their means. The particulars of finance and value investing will have a lot more context for them at that point and I imagine we'll spend a lot of time talking about it going forward. In the meantime I'm just happy that if the sh!t hits the fan, they're all competent enough that they'll never starve, and will always thrive since they'll be the ones who know how to provide what people really need.

Well that Vertex One letter was...interesting. I don't think I've run across any other such bold assertions regarding FFH's 2nd quarter returns. I'd certainly love to believe it but they don't provide a whole lot of reasoning. Looking forward to next Friday to see just what's what.

It's most likely good overall for California. After several years of severe drought, the heavy rains likely to follow El Nino might finally replenish the reservoirs and, to some extent, the aquifers. All of which will hopefully mean a less disastrous fire season than the last few. And it definitely means more and better surf!

I can't speak to the impact of biomass energy on any particular timber company's bottom line, but I do some technical consulting work for a couple of such plants in our area and can address the impact they have on mill operations and local energy infrastructure. These plants are quite economical from that perspective, delivering power at around 4 cents per kilowatt hour here, compared to 11 to 13 cents from PG&E. What's more, the mills are typically located in relatively underserved rural areas where once the power plants are constructed the communities quickly become dependent on any surplus power they are able to deliver to the grid. Because of the nature of the fuel they use they tend to be a great deal more maintenance intensive than conventional fossil plants but there are so many side benefits to how they operate that it is generally viewed as well worth the investment. In short, it's a good business, and over the years these plants have been among my best and most reliable customers.

First off, thanks to the whiners for getting all complainey about the ads. I too use Firefox with Adblock, so I'd have had no idea the ads were even there if a few malcontents weren't making such a stink about it. That said, are you for real? Do you really give a fig whether there are a couple of ads on a website for which somebody else is carrying the cost for your benefit, or are you just being silly trolls? I am so proud to have raised a houseful of children with more sense and maturity than to ever carry on in such a manner. Now I'm going to go turn off Adblock for this site and start clicking like crazy. I only hope the two minutes it will cost me every now and then -- considerably less time than was wasted by this thread -- will result in a measurable amount of revenue for the site. Sanjeev, thanks for sponsoring the site, and beyond the financial commitment, thanks even more for all the time and hard work I'm sure it took out of your already busy life to make it happen and keep it happening.