DCG

The machines sure are fearful these days.

Google Docs is completely down for me right now as well.

3 stocks FFH owns. Care to elaborate? LVLT - people in the LVLT thread think the company's pipeline is worth over $25 billion. I think their potential value would be as a takeover candidate. Nobody seems to want to buy the company for $10 billion (which would include around $7 billion in debt). I'm not convinced someone is going to wait a couple years, and then buy it for $25 billion. Otherwise, it seems like nearly every time they announce a new deal (even after all the money they've spent on building their pipeline), they still end up spending more than what they make when adding new clients. RIMM - it's cheap on a price to earnings basis, and the company is in very good financial shape, but I think there's a good chance their earnings will come down. The next couple years. I think someone like MSFT will buy them at some point, but not sure at what price. DELL - I've disliked this company for years, and the stock is cheap on current earnings and cash, but I don't have much confidence in their future. They are in basically a commoditized business, and I think their margins will continue to get squeezed.

DELL, RIMM, LVLT

Really? Buying back stock has been an absolutely horrendous waste of cash. Eddie wasted billions buying back SHLD stock at prices well over double the current price.

For sure. I posted this in the SHLD thread a month or two ago, but my thought is for him to liquidate the retail stores and use the cash to build a portfolio of brands (to go along with their brands such as DieHard and Kenmore) and work on distributing them through other retailers. They unfortunately own some bad brands to go along with the better ones.

I know his investing style probably differs a bit from much of the board, but I thought this was a good interview, especially him talking about The VC bubble and patent nonsense going on toward the end of it (and this was done a couple days before the big Motorola acquisition). http://online.wsj.com/video/cuban-on-investing-diversification-is-for-idiots/233AE43E-9DA3-40A3-8F6B-9DC23DD82BEF.html

What are the average track records of HFT firms? They can't all make money.

It must suck to be an accountant at a HFT firm.

Go to the Chrome Extensions site. There are tons of great extensions you can add to chrome to customize it and add features. As far as a Favorites pulldown, Chrome let's you add folders to the bookmarks bar, so youn can always create a new folder and the pn drag sites into it. Also, the start page shows your most frequently visited sites.

Ha..glad I could help.

I mainly use Chrome. Safari sometimes as well. Not sure why anyone would use IE other than being forced to use it at work.

You realize you can just tap the top of the browser window in Safari (and most other iPad browsers) to automatically go to the top of any page, right?

There were actually a couple morons on CNBC yesterday having a serious conversation about whether this volatility if ever end, and whether daily 5% swings are the 'new normal'. :D

I have that issue with some browsers as well. Chrome seems to keep me logged in though.

It sounds like an issue the hosting co lay should have been able to resolve, and you shouldn't need independent techs...the key is having a good hosting company. I've dealt with a lot of hosting comanies and the good ones (host gator, inmotion, liqud web etc) are able to easily handle things like database restores. I have not had good experiences with GoDaddy either. Anyway, thanks again for everything you do for this site Sanjeev!

Hasn't he been saying this for years though? Maybe he's finally right, but he had a gloomy outlook throughout the last couple years, when the market had some of its best gains ever.

He gets a lot of criticism, but I was pretty impressed with his interview with Maria Bartiromo. Side note..Maria is a good interviewer altogether.

Good call Eric, especially with BAC (at least so far). I bought a bit of BAC common this afternoon...Went up around 16% in the next hour. Still a very small part of my portfolio though. Crazy market though... could easily go back down 500 points again tomorrow. Still have some cash ready, so I'd welcome it.

And here we go again..the market just dropped about 200 points on the Dow in about the last 2-3 minutes. Crazy. No way this is not almost all computer driven. Eta: another swing of about 200 points in the last minute.

What has your total portfolio done? It's not that anyone is shunning your ideas, or that there's anything wrong with a long/short strategy. It's that in market rallys, you come on here an tout your longs, and In Market declines, you tout your shorts. Aren't you long companies like Netflix and Ebix? if you own enough stocks, you'll most likely have a combination of winners and losers.

Added a bit to my positions in BRK and AAPL. Started a position in MA.

damn...thanks for pointing that out. I saw that referenced somewhere else today and didn't check the source. Sorry about that.

Ericopoly, what do you think AIG is worth? More than its book value of $50 bucks a share? I bought a very small position today. I haven't had the time to study the company because of work (hence the little position), but I thought if Berkowitz is willing to pay in the 40s, what the heck. Most of AIG's stated book value is not tangible. Barrons explained it last week: "The $58 billion of AIG shareholder equity includes more than $42 billion in preferred stock issued under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). That preferred, owned by Uncle Sam, is senior to AIG common. Take it out, and AIG's common equity falls to about $15 billion, or $21.80 a share. The $21.80 figure is buried in a footnote in the second-quarter financial supplement as "book value per share assuming adjustment to AIG's shareholders' equity for U.S. Treasury equity investments." Then there are some intangible assets, including $6.4 billion of goodwill and about $14 billion of a "prepaid commitment asset" linked to the government financial backstop for AIG. This will be written down by $5 billion in the current quarter as AIG reduces its $44.8 billion of Fed borrowings by giving the Fed equity stakes worth $25 billion in its two big international life-insurance operations. Strip out these two items and AIG would have had negative tangible common shareholder equity of $7 per share at the end of the second quarter."

at what price? Looks like they're currently around $1.15.