SmallCap

Sold some PWE puts for Jan 2017 strike of $1 for $.50 If put to then I will get them at a 33% discount to today's price if they expire then i will be making a 90% Annual return seems a decent risk reward scenario, what are your thoughts?

with all the anti college and college as it is today not working discussion going on here, let me ask a practical question. I have 3 children 7,5,3 I have no idea at this point about them going to college or not because it will depend on them obviously but also because I expect the situation around higher ed to be very different when they come to that point. So would you try to save up using any of the tax advantaged college saving vehicles for them or just hold out and see what comes.

With the possible exception of the first item, I would immediately agree with all of the others, which makes me wonder if they are really that contrarian. I think most Americans think that America will continue to dominate economically and culturally forever. I obviously don't think that is the case, but I do think it is likely that the age of American dominance will last into the 22nd century. Also many people are realizing that college is a bad deal for a lot (most?) people. And also it is pretty obvious that the majority of online articles with WEB in the headline are clickbait. The first one intrigues me however. In what ways do you think WEB is overrated? Do you think he is just lucky? The theory that if you start with 100,000,000 people flipping coins and only let those who flip heads onto the next round, someone is going to get heads 25 times in a row? from my perspective WEB has BECOME overrated in the last 10 years or so. I truly think he is the most amazing investor that we have any long term public record of. I think he has immense wisdom and insight and is well worth reading and studying. i started reading his AR back in the early 90's and just loved them, every article that came out about him I read. What I see now is that he is so famous that every little utterance of his is dissected and blown out of proportion. I don't think his utterances are nearly as candid or useful as they used to be. I don't think what he has done in the last 10 years has been that awe inspiring, don't get me wrong, it's still really good, but it's tagged onto the end of 50 years of investing brilliance and that is what has made it amazing. I think the media bubble around him has both caused him to be more private about his investing and also has caused him to give opinions that are outside of his circle of competence (politics). Those various opinions he has that are outside of his circle of competence I see the same way as when a Hollywood star starts voicing their opinion about political and economic situations. The media picks it up because they said it. WEB has been getting that star treatment from the media for the last 10-15 years it seems. My statement isn't a put down of him but a realization that the bubble around him has made him into something bigger then he is. O and I will acknowledge that there was SOME luck involved in his incredible record in the same way that Joe Dimaggio had some luck involved in his 56 game hitting streak, that doesn't take away from the fact that he was an amazing player who was playing insanely good baseball at the time, but there was some luck involved in him keeping that streak going. WEB is the best of the best that we know about but yes he had some help by luck along the way.

Every time I see this topic title come up in the last few days I always think that it's the wrong question. It's like asking what company a value investor should invest in when the better question is how to get the best margin of safety between price and value on whatever company is out there. there is no value investor type of company but there is a value investor type of margin of safety and discount to value. Is the better question how to go about getting the best value for your money when you buy a car. personally I have always bought used and always from a private party. I have found that is the best way to get the most car value for my money. but due to my lack of experience in other areas I am open to there being other good ways of getting the best value for my money. Interestingly my current car is a 2001 BMW 740I which I would not call a "value investors car" this car was owned by a friend of mine who loved it and cared for it better then I have ever cared for a car and the car was in amazing condition but he was buying a new car and he complained that they would only offer him $3400 for the car. I thought about it for 15 seconds and told him I would take it at that price. he grinned and said he would rather I have his baby then the dealership so he sold it to me at that price. that was 2 years ago and I am pretty sure I could sell it for at least that price now.

This article nicly describes the thinking behind the limited option selling I have ever done. Providing insurance for someone else and being fine if put to because I wanted to own the company in the first place and this gets me in at a discount to the share price at the point I decided I wanted to own the company. I will tell you that so far I have been put to since I have sold the most put options on PWE as it declined. Psychologically that's a hard pill to swallow as I have been put to at $5 when the share price is 90 cents. But I have an idea that the emotional difficulty is what makes most people shy away from it. Then again maybe I am just delusional. I have a question from those who have more experience. I have seen good arguments that when buying call options you commonly get better returns by going with the long term leaps. But when you sell puts is it generally better to stick with the short term or the long term duration?

WEB has become overrated. With a few exceptions, the worst financial advice comes from articles the have WEB's name in the headline. The 21st century will have fewer deaths from war on a per capita basis then the 20th century did. The USA will continue to dominate the world economically and culturally in the 21st century. The % of US pop that attends college will decline.

Best idea and investment, Taking my wife and 3 kids camping. In stocks I didn't do so well, my best decisions were ones of selling not buying.

Sold all my shares of PWE (still held options) back in Nov for 1.25 Yesterday I bought the same number of shares back for .81 Why the same number of shares, good question for which I have no reasonable answer. I have often wondered how our past purchase price anchors our future thinking and biases our appraisal of the present value. I make too many decisions based not on the present situation but based on what the present situations is relevant to my purchase transaction.

reading these right now The Boys in the boat Civilian warriors Moneyball (again) Leadership as governance

are you actually going to do this? I would be open to it, I am not at this point in time going out to actively seek such an opportunity. Right now my life is fairly busy with 3 young kids and our spare bedroom is already occupied but an 18 year old student who's parents are abroad. So I am not seeking it out but if the opportunity sought me out I would see if we could accommodate them.

Not only am I not worried but I want them to come. If they want to come I want to make room for them. I would go so far as to host them in my home for the first few months while they figure things out. One of the most common targets of nationalistic fear mongers is to position themselves against the "others" or "outsiders" and down through the history of our country that has meant immigrants which is such a strange thing when you consider that most of us are only a few generations removed from being immigrants. Side note but I had a fascinating conversation with a Hispanic family who were born in the US but who's family arrived within the last 50 years and seeing how much they looked down on and distanced themselves from "wetbacks" as they called them (those who crossed the rio Grande). the actively despised people who were entering the US from Mexico in the last few years. I believe that one of the most important first steps in dealing with the illegal immigration problem in this country is to open the legal borders to this country where those people who want to come to this country can do so legally and don't have to come fearfully and end up despising the country that they live in because that country won't accept them and they are always living in fear of the authorities. I want more people to come to this country legally. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” This is a large part of what makes this country great.

I used to read between 50 and 100 books a year but at this point in my life I have children ages 7, 5, 3 and to be honest my reading has gone down to between 10 and 20 books a year. what has kept me at that level is audio books and the one thing I can offer is that you can fairly easily listen to audio books at 2X speed and comprehension remains excellent some books I can go to 3X speed.

well what I just learned today is that Warren and I share a birthday. Happy Birthday Warren! Now i just need to work on having other things in common with him.

I have done these in the past in Michigan before they changed the system and moved away from selling liens to the county holding the lien and collecting the interest and possibly foreclosing on the property and then selling the few properties that end up in foreclosure. But back then I bought the liens and they worked out nicely. Of the 12 or so that I bought most paid out with decent interest 10-12% but one of them never paid and I went through foreclosure. All in cost of getting that one property including catching up the taxes and paying a lawyer was 5500. the property was a rural corner lot on two gravel roads with an old trashed trailer sitting on it. I didn't want to do anything with the property so I put it on the market at 25,000 not expecting to get that much but two days later had a full price offer to sell it on a land contract with 5000 down and 8% int from the neighbor who really wanted that land. so I ended up with interest getting 29K out of it I really wish that they kept that system because I was just starting to figure it out.

I was recently filling up the gas tank on my car and musing about the decline in gas prices and doing some quick mental calculations about how much money I have saved in the last 8-10 months due to the decline in oil prices. My mind then wandered back to something I had been taught years ago about Dollar cost averaging into mutual funds where as you consistently put small amounts of money into a collection of categories that when one category declines you keep DCA into it because you are buying so much more as it declines and the idea is that over time that category will come back and you will make a lot more. Today I don't DCA at all but filling up the gas tank and thinking of the money I am saving each month made me think about the depressed nature of oil stocks. This started a mental exercise for me to think about what if I each month took the money I saved on gas for my car and invested it in oil stocks. If you were to put this impractical idea into practice where would you put your monthly savings?

interesting, wonder if anyone ever ran this data against japan for the last 50 years.

I did not purchase the property. As time has progressed, it is apparent that Michigan has even MORE problems than what I initially thought. Crime is terrible. Taxes are bad (income, property, gasoline, sales). Auto insurance is 6.5X what I was paying in Texas, and is the highest in the country. It is highly likely that gasoline tax will increase $.40/gallon over the next 3 years resulting in the 2nd costliest gas in America. Most public skewls are a joke... The demographics are terrible. Winter is silly/brutal. People still believe/think of global warming? It was SNOWING during the tigers game on April 23rd. And to top it off, I missed getting killed by 5 minutes the other day. A truck plowed into the lobby of a business that I had been in 8 minutes earlier. One of the wildest things I've ever seen! I am seriously considering leaving the state at the end of summer/fall. Time for me to move! Sorry to hear that things are not getting any better over there. We need to have some sort of special economic zone there where there is a federal tax exemption for any start up or sub 100m annual revenue business for the next 10 yrs. the infrastructure is built, it just can't be maintained etc. Lots of social problems that have roots in economic problems. Interestingly the western part of the state is doing fine, more like a Wisconsin economy. Very pretty as well. Reading this thread I feel like I really need to "defend" Michigan and point out that Michigan isn't Detroit. There is a lot more to this state then what is happening in Detroit and Flint. I live on the West side in Holland Michigan and the entire economy around here is going along just great, less then 4% unemployment and there is a housing shortage around here, all the realtors are complaining that they can't get any listings. my brother in law put their house on the market not really serious about selling but just put a high price on it and within a week had a full price offer. I work with a lot of small businesses in the area and they are having hard time finding employees. The downtown areas of the cities around here are thriving and wonderful places to walk, eat and shop. crime is low and the geography is beautiful. I live on the west coast of the midwest and interestingly there are many parallels to the west coast of the US. The lake provides a moderating effect (not enough because the winters are still too cold and gray) so there is a large fruit belt along the lake that helps the agricultural output and diversity. the weather is simply awesome for 6 month of the year, questionable for the other months. This ended up being a #pureMichigan advertisement but when you come to Michigan be sure to check out the west side of the state and when you do feel free to look me up.

I have tested at INTJ in the past but now tested as a INTP with P being 11% more then J I haven't really looked that hard into why I have changed in this way. Anyone else see theirs shift over time?

I am the Entrepreneur in residence at a university which means I get to teach on entrepreneurship and work with and mentor those students who are actualy developing a business while in college which is a much better way of "teaching" because you just can't really teach entrepreneurship from the front of the room, somethings they just need to try out. Anyway I have heard so many app ideas, frankly getting tired of them. of the roughly 20 of them that I have heard so far this year 2 are possibly viable( lots of questions but they should pursue the idea) 3 of them didn't actually need to be an app to solve the problem that they wanted to solve and the rest just don't have a chance in my opinion. But Apps are cool and they seem to be all that this kids think about.

The Bakken (North Dakota) saw a significant decline in oil production reported today. January production was 1,190,490 bod, a 3.0% drop from the peak production month of December. interesting that this drop occurred in conjunction with an increase in the number of producing wells from 8945 to 9052. (The Bakken has the earliest real production figures available for oil production in the US) Here is the data from the ND gov site, please excuse the lack of tables Year Month BBLS Oil Daily Oil Wells Producing BBLS Per Well Daily Oil Per Well 2014 12 36063116 1163326 8945 4032 130 2015 1 34989917 1128707 9052 3865 125 Here is the link https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/stats/historicalbakkenoilstats.pdf

Since this is becoming a thread about Michigan let me jump in. People tend to point to Detroit and say that Michigan is in trouble without looking at the west side of the state around grand rapids and the lakeshore. over here we are doing great. housing is getting hard to find, my county is one of the counties with the fastest growing jobs market and none of them were tied to the oil industry. and to give you a auto insurance comparison I pay about 1800 a year for full coverage on 2 cars (BMW 740I and Toyota Sienna) If any of you are in the lakeshore area feel free to drop me a line and I will show you around.

An excellent point, and others should take heed, but I have 3 young kids.

I obviously left off buying new, if someone can make a good argument for buying new I am interested. I know there is a little overlap in some of these answers. I have never really been the type of person who defines themselves by the car that they drive, I know the type of car that I am looking for but am not really hung up on the make or color. I will take high miles or older car if they offer the best value for the money. Being a value investor type I am always looking to get the best value for any dollars I put into a car, I am looking for $1.00's cars I can get for $0.50. I have realized in the past that I have spent too much time trying to find the great deal that my time investment made it an expensive car. I really wish that I had someone who had a value investing mindset who had a lot more knowledge about cars and their prices then I do and they would just find me a car. but everyone that I have tried this with is more inclined to find the car I say I want regardless of the kind of a deal it is. they just don't seem to get the idea of looking for a deal instead of looking for a preference. Even though I don't expect to ever make a profit on a car I buy, then again why can't I dealers do it all the time, why can't I buy like a good dealer does and then not sell it like they do?

Is this really any different from the chapter on Ireland in his book boomerang?

just a question, I have heard again and again until I and probably most other people just take it as a fact that shale oil wells produce almost everything they are going to produce in the first 2 years. But I have never seen any raw data on this just the fact stated in article after article. Does anyone have any good hard data on the depletion rates of shale wells? I know they are still new and the tech is changing rapidly but do we know anything beyond 2 years?