rranjan

I don't think anyone should use ignore feature for ignoring an opposite view point. But after seeing some one's post in many different threads, you might simply want to make that person dissapear. Not having this feature is not a big issue because you can easily chose not to read some one's posts. Still having such feature will come handy when based on historical posts, you can be absolutely sure about not missing anything by making someone invisible.

Parsad - I just noticed that we have ignore feature in the forum now. I was just playing around with the setting under profile if I ever want to use it in future. Putting anyone in ignore list still shows the user post but text get hidden. Is there any setting where ignore makes it really ignore( I meant invisible to me). Just curious at this moment because we don't have many people here who can potentially become a candidate for my ignore list in future.

I did not asked you to take only tangible book value. In fact I did not even talk about tangible book value in previous post so I am wondering why you are using ONLY tangible book value to answer my post. I am assuming you simply ignored everything I pointed out and decided not to do any home work regarding current cash flow, current bad loan rates, bad loan reserve etc. Suite yourself. I thought you were genuinly interested. If all you have to say is - don't trust the management, not going to look into any 10-q/10-k due to not trusting the management and Current cash flow is irrelevent then I have absolutely no point to present to you. Yes, I did listen to conference call and their assumptions( check which assumptions, go back and check again) were not based on double dip recession. If those assumptions are not true then take some hair cut and then see what do you get? They persented one scenario only. It's your job to think what other scenario will look like. Assymtric risk/reward is simply based on doing some analysis which you simply fail to get involved in. Assymtric risk reward does not mean that you can not lose under any scenario. Your argument of not having insight of every single loan and banks being leveraged etc are true for all banks in all environments. If thats the only thing you have to say then you should not be discussing banks with anyone because no one is going to refute those points. Anyway, I realize that I have wasted enough time today so this will be my last post replying to you on this.

I did not asked you to take only tangible book value. In fact I did not even talked about tangible book value in previous post so i am wondering why you are using ONLY tangible book value to answer my post. I am assuming you simply ignored everything I pointed out and decided not to do any home work regarding current cash flow, current bad loan rates, bad loan reserve etc. Suite yourself. I thought you were genuinly interested. If all you have to say is - don't trust the management, not going to look into any 10-q/10-k due to not trusting the management and Current cash flow is irrelevent then I have absolutely no point to poresent to you. Yes, I did listen to conference call and their assumptions( check which assumptions, go back and check again) were not based on double dip recession. If those assumptions are not true then take some hair cut and then see what do you get? They persented one scenario only. Assymtric risk/reward is simply based on doing some analysis which you simply fail to get involved in. Assymtric risk reward does not mean that you can not lose under any scenario. Your argument of not having insight of every single loan and banks veing leveraged etc are true for all banks in all environments. If thats the only thing you have to say then you should not be discussing banks with anyone because no one is going to refute those points.

Look at the stock price. I think I've made my point. ;D ;D ;D

Munger - It's simply assymetric risk reward situation here. Very good cash flow operations/assets. Reduced leverage. High quality of loans originated in last few years. Lower quality loans originated during the boom period is reducing as compared to total. Long term deposit advantage is huge. Not being depending on short term credit market for wirting loans. Check how much bad loans are still in the book and you can check whats the delinquency rate currently to write some portion of it to zero. Assume worst case scenario and then check how much bad loan reserve are already taken. Current situations in many financials are lot different than 2008 so comparison with 2008 is not warranted. More than bad loans , non-avaibility of short term credit was problem at that time specially when most financials were dependent on short term credit avaibility to finance long term obligations which was very stupid. Next day some journalist( yes not analyst) can come and write that BAC needs to raise $500 billions and it's upto people judgement to take them seriously. There is risk in making any assumption when you estimate a range of valuation but under most reasonable estimate some people are seeing assymetric risk/reward situation here. Risk is there in any investment and it's a matter of finding mispriced bet which you feel comfortable with. You can check everything and if you can not form any opinion then just move on. There are many bargains out there and you don't need to agree on BAC. If you disagree then people are rightly going to ask you reasons.

Make sure to check you are not entering your credential in some fake site and then getting redirected to actual site to enter your credentials again. Not that I like Scottrade interface much but just a thought. On topic , I will suggest IB.

Nope, my question had nothing to do with BAC at all. You chose to raise downside protection issue based on stock price being down rather than providing any valuation logic. You have told many times that you don't have any opinion on BAC so it's clear that you have no opinion on if BAC is worth $2 or $20. After admitting that you have no idea of valuation of BAC, you were dismissing some one else statement of downside protection based ONLY on stock price movement over the last few months. I just wanted to understand the basis of you statement. I did not want to make any assumptions so asked a direct question. Based on your post above it seems you don't judge downside protection based on price movement but your earlier post was directly contradicting it. BAC might go to zero or go to $40 but you should not be talking about downside protection based on price movement. That's all I wanted to point out and it had nothing to do with anyone reading Graham's writing or Buffets past actions. That's irrelevent to this discussion.

50% decline in stock quotation in last few months is being equated to no downside protection? Do you really think that way? Munger - You chose not to respond to this. Should I assume that you agree here?

50% decline in stock quotation in last few months is being equated to no downside protection? Do you really think that way?

Yes working hard and making good choices are absolutely required for being sucessful but not the only factors. If this same misterstockwell was born in Afganistan then chances of spending time in this forum would have been nil. More likely case would have been holding an AK-47 as teenager. Need for having a decent environment is often overlooked by lots of people when making statement about hard work/good decisions. I am not disocounting the impact of working hard/good decisions. I do admit that even in Afganistan some will perfrom better than others due to working hard/able to take better decisions. But majority of kids, who are hard worker and also able to take good decisions, will not fare too well. Luck might be a negligible factor if everyone gets the same environment to reap the benefit of taking good decisions and working hard. In reality, you receive certain environment which is totally out of your control and thats called luck. How many of forbes Rich would have been rich if they were born in Afganistan? Or they were born in African-American family 200 years ago? I took some extreame examples here but you can see the similar if not so extreame cases currently within US also.

It lasted only around 30 seconds so by the time we were out of the house(DC Metro Area), it was almost over. I was surpirsed to not see other people coming out of their house.

Paying the fair share will be a start. Right now due to tax system it's not even fair.

Packer - Author did make this point "Today, top earners—the 250,000 people who earn $1 million or more—pay 20% of all income taxes" This is as flawed as it can get because tax contribution in total pool is useless figure. A rich person should not be having less tax rates than a worker in coal mines under any circumtances. Why not fix this before author/anyone start talking about hundreds of different points. I don't even see these authors acknowledging that this is unfair system. Most of the time I see them diverting from main point by focusing on total contribution in tax pool. No one will stop investing if tax rate on dividend/capital gain goes up a bit. Rich will always have 99% of their income coming from investments and if you have a system where Rich can get away by paying less than an average Joe then you have a systematic way of favoring the rich. No matter how you look at it, the fact is an average Rich pays lower income tax rate than an average Joe due to majority of income coming from dividend/capital gains. Gulf between rich and poort has widen in last 10-15 years due to this unfair tilt towards rich. I am not arguing for tax rate increase across the board but only ensuring that richest guys in our society are not having less tax rates than an average Joe. I am not an expert but you could have anyone making over 1 Million pay higher tax on capital gain/divident etc. If tilt has to be there then it should be towards an average Joe who works very hard for living not for rich. I am not even arguing for a tilt here.

These arguments are flawed if anyone thinks logically. I see it being used to distort the main point. It is very simple, an average Joe, who might be working in very harsh conditions, ends up paying higher tax rate than those who earn more than $1 million. Amount paid by individuals in total tax pool is totally irrelevent. Only relevent point is , how much of percentage of their income goes in paying income tax. It might be debatable if rich should pay tax at higher rate or people who can barely afford to eat should start paying some tax. But anyone holding a viewpoint that rich should pay lower tax rate as compared to middle class is ridiculous. Writing a check by few volunteers is not going to bring tax rate of rich and middle income guy at the same level. Rich not willing to pay income tax at the same rate as middle class untill Gov becomes efficient in using the money defies all logic.

Or rather pretending. +1

Answer is no one. To add: 3. Are you sure about Bilgari ultimate goal being what you stated? His actions indicate that his ultimate goal is to get rich as quickly as possible even at the expense of shareholders.

There is big difference in examples you used and buying Gold as an investment. When you pay $1 for coke , you are not thinking about investment at all. Even if you are convinced that there is bubble in soda price , you will still buy Coke. When you buy gold as an investment, you are thinking about it ONLY from investment perspective. If you are convinced that there is bubble in Gold price, you will not buy Gold. Just some food for thought. I don't hold any opinion on gold and good luck to anyone able to profit from it.

I think his thinking that Software will become even more dominant is true. It will increase the productivity by transforming some old ways of doing things. But his talk about ignoring the valuation and only focusing on how software is changing the world is wrong. We have had many new things( radio, television, airplane etc) bringing huge change and all of them were very beneficial for human society but that does not mean they were good investment at any price.

Myth - This stupidity of HP management does not prove that you don't understand tech. This is a stupid decision and decisions like this can be made by management team in other fields as well. Though, In Tech field it seems we are getting more than fair share of value destroying capital allocators.

Understood now. Anyway - Since I don't hold any opinion on gold, I can not put any range of valuation. If I happen to do what you are doing then it will be pure specuation on my part.

Owning gold mining companies are bit different than owning gold. Due to gold price swing it might not be always possible but you are also basically using the principle of Inteligent Investor and Security analysis in this situation. It's easier to predict the valuation range in case of mining comapnies. My question was more pertinent in case of direct gold holdings because you can always find profitable mining companies which can be good investment at not so good gold price.

Yes, management is weak spot here but HP is overpaying by spending $10B for Autonomy Corp. and lost more than that $10B in market cap today. So current buyers will have Autonomy corp free thrown with existing businesses. Around 5 times FCF , I think reaction is over done here. Jut my opinion.

I don't have any opinion on gold but how do you suggest people should make investment decision? If it is based only on expectation of some one else paying higher price in future then wouldn't you call it a speculation? Speculations can be very profitable but it is still a speculation. Some people might be sucessful speculator but it is still a speculation unless you can put some reasonable valuation estimate. Again, I don't have any opinion on gold but I would like to hear what argument you can make for an investment decision which is not based on copy of security analysis or Intelligent Investor. I also did not mean that if certain object does not have balance sheet then you can not anayze. I am mainly talking about the essence of security analysis or Intelligent Investor.

Reaction is over done in my opinion. It's not as if they are forecasting a loss.