Ballinvarosig Investors

You're kind of contradicting yourself there. As you've stated, Harry Long has been on record regarding Fremont Michigan for quite some time. Secondly, he does have a point. People here are supposed to be value investors, so it's amazing that anyone could recommend something like MFC. Maybe you have some insight that I don't, but I see a lot that scares me, balance sheet that isn't exactly transparent (who knows what sort of corporate bonds they hold), high variable annuity exposure (even sideways equity markets will hurt MFC), etc. The AIG debacle should serve as a lesson to insurance investors. If you don't completely understand everything you're reading about the insurer, you're at risk of 100% capital loss

Only because he didn't fill the form out properly! http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Biglari-Holdings-Inc-prnews-1654543524.html?x=0&.v=1

Remember Warren Buffett was hauled infront of the SEC for buying Wesco stock after he and Munger nixed the merger with Financial Corp. of Santa Barbara. When Buffett and Munger bought stock, at least they were decent enough to pay the original merger price and not screw shareholders. It's actually getting more and more sickening to see Biglari trying to portray himself as the next Warren Buffett.

By the way, are we even allowed talk about Biglari Holdings anymore?

I notice that Biglari Holdings has rebounded substantially from its recent low of $257 a share. Well, not we know why! http://houston.citybizlist.com/YourCitybizNews/detail.aspx?id=80157 Here's a link to the actual SEC filing - http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/93859/000092189510000893/sc13da1807428lio_05272010.htm Cooley has bought a few shares as well.

Taxation at the holding corporation level in Europe is higher than that of a similar US holding corp, so that explains part of the discount.

Have any folks here dipped their toes into European stocks that are getting pummeled? Telecoms stocks such as France Telecom (FTE), Deutsche Telekom (DT), Telefonica (TEF) are huge cash generators with 10% dividends, strong balance sheets operating in oligopolistic markets. If telecoms aren't for you, then you've got several large cap insurer with strong balance sheets, generating huge cash flows and selling below book value, Aviva (AV), Allianz (AZSEY). Veolia (VE), Groupe Danone (DANOY) and Total (TOT) are other large cap companies trading at low P/E's and paying high dividends. I'm not specifically touting these stocks, just illustrating that relative to US stocks, Europe looks cheaper. Is anyone actively investing in this domain?

I don't know about investments, but it sure is fun watching CNBC now. Last month during the 52-week highs, their guests couldn't have been more bullish. Now they can't get out of the pool fast enough.

Microcap performance from late 2007-2009 was horrible. I had RLOG and ITEX which at one stage lost over 75% of their value despite the businesses being fine. I think the reason why they haven't declined too much as of late has simply been because they were so completely oversold in March 2009.

ZeroHedge Remarkable statement from Klarman.

Apparently his fund focuses on international opportunities these days. His old fund (Himalaya Capital) doesn't appear to have made any filings with the SEC and his new fund (LL Investment Partners) hasn't either. The only investment of record that he appears to have made is a 2% stake in BYD.

I've never been on the Biglari bandwagon, but that's not fair at all. On point 1, what Biglari does with his own money is his own business. Even if he decides to blow cocaine up his nose with $1,000 bills, that's his perogative and not my concern. Point 2 is fair enough. On point 3, Buffett was certainly guilty of using Ben Graham as a marketing tool, when his style was anything but Graham-like for the majority of his career. In point 4, Buffett has managers that work for him for less than what they could get outside of Berkshire, and we've already seen Biglari design a compensation package that was extremely generous for Western Sizzlin' CEO, so he's not completely self-serving (mention in the NFI letter to Biglari - http://www.noisefreeinvesting.com/blog/?p=112). Finally on point 5, have you taken a look at the Berkshire board? It's filled with family members, old cronies and certainly a few sycophants. Anyway, we're completely off-topic on this thread, maybe the Biglari stuff should be split off so we can keep this the Parsad love-in going. I certainly don't agree with everything he says, but that's probably why he's a much more successful investor than me ;D

Unless you're Greek, or well versed in Greek property and lending standards then I would stay the hell away from any Greek banks. Remember that Warren Buffett lost $240 million on Irish banks in 2008. From his annual report. Basically, Irish banks lied through their teeth about the quality of their loan books. The Irish Financial Regulator and the Irish Stock Exchange were complicit in condoning, and even covering up in this deception. Buffett obviously only read financial statements and wasn't aware of the political and regulatory shenanigans that were going on behind the scenes until it was too late. Maybe NBG is fine, I'm just saying you would really want to know your stuff before you went anywhere near it.

I think you're mad to be talking about buying opportunities when the situation is still deteriorating, falling knives and all that. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63R1CD20100428 So the assistance package required has now tripled from €40 billion to €120 billion.

This is flat out incorrect. For a period after the 1930s, Coca-Cola slipped behind Pepsi in terms of sales when Pepsi decided to increase the size of their packaging while maintaining the same price. Furthermore, Coca-Cola has improved/modified their formula over the years with small iterations. The company could have been behind even more, had it not been for Roberto Goizueta. I believe Warren Buffett's own investment in Coke only occurred after the changes guided by Goizueta. I'm reading a book about Coke at the moment and would be happy to provide you with passages and page numbers. Ok, but I think you're being pedantic. My point is that Coke has been around for an awful lot longer than Apple, has a product that's a heckuva' lot more predictable than anything Apple have and won't be going away anytime soon.

The critical date for Greece is May 19th. $12 billion of maturing debt will need to be rolled-over then.

I'm sorry, but you simply cannot compare the Apple moat to Coca-Cola. Coke has been around since forever, it's simple to understand, it hasn't changed in 100 years and has been completely dominant since inception. Coca-Cola hasn't been improved upon in a century, can you honestly say that the Iphone or Ipod won't be improved upon or made obsolete in the next century?

I know Greece is a small country, but I'm completely amazed at how the situation which is deteriorating so badly, hasn't even but a dent on the stock market rally. As of last night, the yield on a 2 year Greek government bond hit a record 13.52%. I don't know of any sovereign government in the world that is currently paying those yields, let alone a Eurozone member! The serious risk in Europe at the moment is that if Europe bails out Greece, other Eurozone members like Portugal, Spain and Ireland could be further weakened, which could trigger more sovereign debt problems. If Europe does nothing, Greece will certain default, but so too might other Eurozone countries. To me at least, it's like fall of 2007 all over again. We're seeing the first rain drops of the storm, but for some reason the markets seem to think it can all be contained. I still think that the Euro, in its current form, will no longer exist within 2 years.

Where are the moats though? The Ipod/Iphone itself has no moat, any new technologies they introduce can be copied by anyone else. Itunes has no moat - there's nothing stopping anyone buying content elsewhere. The Ipad (so far) doesn't appear to have any applications or user base that would give it a moat. Apple personal computers are still only used by a tiny fraction of PC users - ironically, the only moat Apple have is amongst designers; it's just a shame they're a flyspeck of the entire market. The Apple brand is strong - but it only takes one crappy gadget and it could irreparably be damaged. I guess what I'm trying to get at, is that the dominance that Apple currently have could easily be fad-ish. If you want to talk about a moat - take a look at Coca-Cola. 100% years old, easy to understand and so deep that you would actually have to purposely destroy. Apple can only dream of having a moat like that.

I wouldn't go anywhere near either stock, certainly for a buy-and-hold strategy. With the advent of free operating systems, Microsoft could easily be moving into the territory of a "buggy-whip" stock. This may, or may not have already happened, who knows. All I do know, is that you'd have far more safety holding something like JNJ, KFT or KO with all the upside that a growing economy would bring. As for Apple, that is most definitely in bubble territory. Ok, they make neat little gadgets, but one of these days, someone will invent an UberPod and people will decide that Apple is no longer cool. When that happens (and it will happen some day), Apple certain won't have the second largest market cap in the world.

My estimates on the intrinsic values of the above companies is mere opinion. However, when you look at tangible book value, both Berkshire & Leucadia trade at about ~1.4 times book value. Most of Leucadia's book value is held in an equity portfolio that is marked at full value. Berkshire of course has a significant number of assets that are carried on book for less than cost of replacement. So before you even consider a Buffett premium, Berkshire is already cheaper than Leucadia. Fairfax on the othehand is trading at a multiple of only ~1.1 times book value. When you consider that all three companies have come out of the recesson in decent shape and with great earnings, I really can't see why you would pay more for the likes of Leucadia & Berkshire unless you have some intuition that either will outperform Fairfax in the future. It's probably a bit too simplistic to just look at book values when dealing with these stocks. However, when you consider that you're likely to do well from any of these stocks; surely it makes sense to just buy the cheapest one?

In fairness, the wine investment is a flyspeck on the tapestry of Leucadia. Reading that letter though, I don't see anything that suggests that Leucadia is undervalued. Leucadia < Berkshire Hathaway < Fairfax

That only gives me the total volume for the day? I'm looking for a list of actual trades that were placed on a day.

Hoping some of you guys can help me. I need to get a list of the trades/volume that were placed on a particular stock on a day this year. I know with Google Finance chart, for recent days, it will graph each trade made on a day, but when you go back a few months, you can only get daily volume information. The stock is listed on the Nasdaq and quite thinly traded. Any help would be fantastic.

Anyone here like Wesco? It looks outrageously expensive to me.