tengen

I think that's the investment thesis for SCUP.

Starbucks has an incredible brand and is very well run.

As a Canadian, the current Blackberry disaster brings back bad memories of Nortel (I once foolishly bought Nortel shares and took a big haircut, I've never owned any BBRY). So I did a bit of googling to see how things settled out for Nortel and found out that the court proceeding are still going on over 4 years after the company declared bankruptcy. The sale of assets produced roughly $7.3 billion, which is currently being held in escrow. According to an article in the FInancial Post (see link below), legal fees for the various parties currently total $915 million! http://business.financialpost.com/2013/06/24/nortel-bankruptcy-fees/

Yes, it's cost cutting. PWT is seen as one of the less efficient operators. The hope is that Mr. George can work some of the same magic he produced for Suncor (who once upon a time had similar issues).

Concerning Penn West (PWT up here in the GWN), I agree it's more of a "turn-around story" than a "value story". Rick George became the chairman back in June. Mr. George is a famous name in the Alberta oil-patch. He was the CEO of Suncor for 20 years and he is considered by some to be the "father of the oil sands sector". You can read some stuff about him here: http://business.financialpost.com/2011/12/01/an-oil-sands-visionary-departs/ Of particular interest to those hoping he brings the same success to Penn West: Disclaimer: I own some.

I live in BC and Second Cups are pretty rare out here (only 3 locations in Vancouver, none in Victoria). They are much bigger in the rest of Canada. When I worked downtown, there was one in the food court right next to my office building so I would go there quite regularly. It was pretty busy during the morning rush. Seemed decent in terms of the service, coffee, and other items for sale. As a part-time coffee snob, I would rate their coffee slightly above Starbucks but well below the best coffee you can get in Vancouver (e.g. JJ Bean). If they wanted a bigger BC presence, they might want to think about buying the privately held Blenz chain.

The cheap hack can damage the environment, which is why detergents today are less powerful than in the golden age of whiter than white.

I live in a city and, having owned a car for decades, I can't see myself not owning one. However, I can see myself owning a car and making use of a car sharing service like Zipcar or Car2go for short trips within the city limits while keeping my private vehicle for my occasional long trips out of town. I'm intrigued by the notion of self-driving cars but I don't see it as something that is necessary for car sharing to become more mainstream than it already is.

And there goes Detroit. Maybe they can lower costs by outsourcing law enforcement to robots. With private partners, they can redevelop the 78,000 abandoned properties and re-brand with a catchy name like "Delta City".

Happy Birthday and many thanks for setting up this board!

Great tip, thanks! I've set the "index" to be my Feedly start page.

After a few attempts, I've finally moved from Google Reader to Feedly. At first I was dismayed by Feedly lumping all my feeds together. For example, in Reader, I had my investment related feeds grouped under the label "investment". Reader still let me select and read each feed individually. Feedly doesn't appear to allow this. To work around the issue, I have my feeds all labelled with unique labels (e.g. "investment-abc"). Slightly annoying but no big deal as I used the occasion to whittle down my subscriptions to 10 feeds (including non-investment ones).

I played Bridge all the time when I was in grad school. We had some marathon sessions and drank a lot so it could get a bit messy. I remember one time a guy got so upset when his partner missed a grand slam he jumped out of his chair and tackled the other guy to the ground.

I have free access to Morningstar research through my online brokerage (RBC Direct). Not something I use a lot but hey, it's free.

Greater than 0%, less than 100%. Greater than 0%, less than 100%. I await my Nobel prize.

I'm not a Leafs fan but I have to give them credit for forcing a game 7. When Kadri scored to make it 4-1, I thought they had it in the bag. Blowing a lead like that is a terrible way to lose and, to my surprise as a non-COTU Canadian, I felt a little sad for Toronto.

Fascinating article in The Atlantic by Charles Mann mainly about methane hydrate, it's potential as a new energy source and what might happen if that comes about. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/what-if-we-never-run-out-of-oil/309294/

Here in Vancouver, I see bottles of the Huy Fong Sriracha sauce all over the place in certain types of Chinese or south east Asian restaurants (the kind with the formica table tops, vinyl upholstered chairs, and neon lighting). The rooster and the funky lettering are very recognizable. Definitely an up and coming brand.

Prem is so modest he didn't vote for himself?

Seems like a big story so I'm puzzled why it seems to be receiving so little attention. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/04/03/offshore-data-leak.html

There's a petition at change.org to keep Google Reader: https://www.change.org/petitions/google-keep-google-reader-running It has 136,774 signatures as I write this. If you are a Reader user, please consider signing the petition.

I can confirm that my discount broker (RBC Direct) does not charge for each partial fill, so I would expect that to be a fairly common practice.

The Smithsonian article does a much better job explaining the researcher's argument, which is quite a bit more nuanced than the Chronicle reporter makes it out to be. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Pros-to-Being-a-Psychopath-176019901.html For some amusement, go to http://wisdomofpsychopaths.com/ and take the Psychopath Challenge (I scored 8 out of 33).

メリークリスマス !

Not much for Carney to do in Canada these days except to keep a nervous eye on our southern neighbour's shenanigans. I'm sure he'll have a lot more excitement with the BoE.