ERICOPOLY

I had a thought today. Given that the market is efficient, you can't underperform the market over the long run (aside from commissions). The reason you can't lose is that you have no disadvantages versus everyone else. Because all information is known to all. Now... it's easy to sell people on the idea that you can't beat the market, but I've yet to hear this one.

Good point. I need to only pick up 25 miles of charge to make that Gilroy stretch with safety margin.

It's a big problem because the one in Gilroy is the first one traveling north on Hwy 101 from Montecito. It's about 253 miles. Cutting it close! They need one in San Luis Obispo, or Paso Robles. You don't really want to drive any other route to get to the San Francisco Bay Area from here. But that's why I'm not planning on driving this car for more than day-to-day local driving. EDIT: And what if there is a line at the Supercharging station? Possibly wait for an hour or two just to get your turn of waiting for another hour? So we have a 2008 Suburban and a 2011 Roadtrek for distance driving.

More "out of curiosity" questions: What color did you pick? Do you live close to Supercharger stations (not that it'll be a problem over time.. check out their future expansion plans: http://goo.gl/OoqGg http://goo.gl/CD39O )? Do you have a delivery date yet? There is going to be a Supercharger station in my garage. Otherwise, no. I'm in Montecito. We were offered June for delivery date, but we opted for July because we're traveling in June. This is my car's design: Model S Performance Silver Metallic Paint All Glass Panoramic Roof Carbon Fiber Spoiler 21" Silver Performance Plus Wheels Grey Performance Interior Obeche Wood Matte Decor 85 kWh Battery Performance Plus Package Tech Package Sound Studio Package Active Air Suspension Rear Facing Seats Parcel Shelf PaintArmor Twin Chargers High Power Wall Connector Supercharging Destination and Regulatory Doc Fee $108,420 (price with $7,500 Federal Tax Credit and $2,500 California Tax Credit)

I doubt it's a problem. I mean, how hard can running A/C be compared to accelerating a big sedan from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds? Tesla is claiming 4.2 seconds 0 to 60 for the one I'm buying. That's awesome The 911 Carrera S is 4.3 seconds. And that Porche costs $98,900 MSRP. The Model S is faster, cheaper, and it's a family car (room for 7 passengers with two kids in the rear folding seats which I'm buying as an option). I bought all of the options. What the hell!

I doubt it's a problem. I mean, how hard can running A/C be compared to accelerating a big sedan from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds? Tesla is claiming 4.2 seconds 0 to 60 for the one I'm buying.

The claim is 10 years on the battery life. According to Franz von Holzhausen: Of course, they don't warranty it for 10 years so they're not all that confident perhaps in that number. However, once you replace the battery the car is good for another 10 years presumably (if 10 is the number). It's not like you have to worry about how many miles are on the engine though. So at resale perhaps they ask you how old is the battery? Instead of what is the milage? Putting high miles on it shouldn't depreciate it the vehicle in the same way as putting high miles on a gasoline vehicle.

Actually there is no premium. This car may be 10-20K$ more expensive than the comparable BMW, but you are paying 5-10 times less for fuel (electricity vs gasoline). So do the math :) Yes this is the point I was trying to make. The naysayers are saying this about average Jane. I agree completely with your statement. Average Jane doesn't buy a Porche, so that business is going bust.

I wound up changing my options to the Performance model. Fully loaded, every single option. Might as well do this well if it's going to get done. Decided to go with paying cash instead of financing it -- keep my debt/income low for when I shop for a home mortgage. Crazy week. Up 20% in 3 days and now this impulse buy.

Out of curiosity, are you buying, leasing, or using the new 'Tesla Financing" which is kind of a hybrid between the two? Financing.

Bernanke appears to be right about the wealth effect of stock prices. MBI and BAC go up and I order a Model S.

Last night Tesla got a $5,000 payment from my PayPal account. Looking forward to getting it in July (the earliest delivery date was end of June, but I'm traveling then).

Eric, I am not sure I have understood your comment… You really see opportunity costs today?! ??? Well, even if there were some opportunity costs today (Hey! They are very well hidden!! ;)), FFH is trying not to incur opportunity costs that will be 4 times higher in a 1 or 2 years time! That is obvious, so I must have missed the true meaning of your comment… giofranchi The unrealized loss on the hedges is the opportunity cost of the cautious stance. I bought more puts myself today.

Personally I think opportunity costs are real. That's okay though, we just live with them. They don't feel as bad, which is probably what has led to the traditional of not thinking of them as real losses. Gains don't feel as emotionally important as losses, so I think people are relatively comfortable with losing by missing out.

You don't really need margin calls. You just need a lot of other relatively more appetizing bargains. I'm sure if WFC is at $8 again, AXP is at $10 again, etc.. etc... a given number of shareholders will once again dump their FFH. Given the hedges, there will always be people who hold it as a "defensive" position, an "alternative to cash". Those people will be gone when huge bargains arise. Anyone buying their FFH shares will have to ask if the price for FFH is low enough to make them choose FFH over the rest of the bargains out there. Thus the price will come down.

quoting: Limiting tax-favored retirement assets of people who have saved all their lives to about half of what taxpayers will give Obama for eight years in office is just wrong. End of story.

It's too bad Berkshire subs can't market their goods as "40+% of profits go to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation". They basically do, indirectly through Buffett's pledge.

Only a few days after I buy my Fairfax shares I read this "Inflation Out, Deflation In" article. Then I found another round of articles this weekend talking about the slumping materials prices, gold selloff, decline in government bonds, rise in USD, weakness in "growth" stocks relative to the rest of the market. And a weak recent auction for TIPS. http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/04/19/inflation-out-deflation-in-bad-news-for-euro/ So perhaps the Fairfax deflation hedges starting to regain some value already this quarter?

Interesting point: Would public employees face the same upper limit on their pensions? If they already have reached the $205,000 limit, could we stop making contributions for them? Or could they stop getting pension raises? What if you have a pension and other tax-deferred accounts? Who is responsible for aggregating the information? Who will pay that administrative cost? http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2013/04/15/the-ira-cap-devil-is-in-details/?KEYWORDS=IRA

Two years ago I had surgery on April 4th. Didn't walk again for a couple of months. Last year we were in California house hunting April 1-15th. This year I turned 40 on April 10th (day of the meeting) Perhaps the right time will come along.

Gary actually came to our dinner with Prem this year. Cheers! Too bad I didn't go because he didn't reply to the email I sent him. I got an auto-reply offering a subscription to his newsletter. I wanted to ask him why he expects a reversion to the mean of home ownership rates when the population demographics are changing. The homeownership rate for people in the highest bracket is 80+%. And in all the brackets below age 55, the rates of homeownership are actually below the mean. So you can see where this is headed if there is mean reversion -> higher ownership rates. It's like he's arguing that the population is older today than it was 5 years ago, so mean reversion would suggest that boomers are going to start getting younger to normalize things. Maybe Shilling is going to be younger next year? EDIT: If it wasn't clear, Shilling thinks home ownership rates are still too high and will fall back to "the mean" level.

Japan has had very low rates of unemployment the entire time.

I worried about that, funny as it may sound. However I've doubled my holdings of common in my taxable account lately after selling it from my RothIRA -- so the cost basis on those new shares is close to $12. There are a few strategies for what to do if BAC is down in November and the puts have not generated the needed loss: A) purchase calls in November in RothIRA. Sell the common a month later for a loss (December 2013). Then book the gain on the puts in 2014, dump the calls, and repeat the strategy in taxable account hoping for the new round of puts to look relatively worthless in late 2014. B) Sell the FFH at a loss in Dec 2013, buy something else that is truly beaten all to hell. I need FFH to be down to about $300 per share for this to be fully effective. So I might have to combine it with scenario A. C) Sell 1/2 of the BAC for tax loss and buy something else, hedge that other thing with new puts and have those puts be worthless in late 2014 so as to offset the gains from the BAC puts that would be taken in early 2014 So I'm sort of hoping that we don't have to go there. I would rather just have my $12 strike BAC puts being nearly worthless in late 2013.

Because I want Obama to get ZERO of my money. Now I'm pissed and the gloves are off. As soon as the 2016 puts are out I'm going to stock up on them. Then I'm going to wait a month and sell all of my 2014 puts for a big short term capital gains loss before the end of the year. Thus, no taxes due next April for 2013 ;D ;D ;D

I bought $100 strike IWM puts for the same reason. Mine is a 20% hedge versus your 25%. I like the Russell 2000 index more because it drops harder during crashes. Seems like the average company there is more fragile versus the mega-caps that dominate the S&P500.