compoundinglife

I think the post meeting interview usually starts at 6am EST. I am on the left coast as well so unlikely I will be up for it.

Munger is going to be on CNBC in a few minutes if your near the TV.

Funny I have had similar thoughts with McIlhenny Company (Tabasco Sauce).

With regards to reading. There is a good chapter in "Investing: The Last Liberal Art" that talks about how to read effectively and also suggests the book "How to Read a Book". I have yet to read "How to Read a Book", but its on my list. The focus is not to read faster/more but how to filter out the cruft and spend more time doing in depth focused reading of the things that matter. Very interesting stuff.

"Part of their pay also depends on the other's investing success." This is my favorite part of the compensation plan.

Sharebuilder might be a good option. They are currently running a deal where they give you $100 in your account if you deposit 5k, for taxable accounts only. Their trade commissions are 6.95. I don't know if they still do this but they used to offer $4 commissions on scheduled investments if you want to do dollar cost averaging. Also setting up drip is really easy. The one downside is that they generally do not offer less liquid securities. For example I don't think you can trade the TARP warrants. But overall I think its a good option for someone who is just getting started.

Value Line screenshot attached. They report 1.23M SO and a MC of 465.47M.

I do not but I appreciated the post because as a kid I always used to check the years on the dimes and quarters I had to see if they were made of silver. I have fond memories of the excitement I would get from finding one :)

Still have it. Comcast is the fastest bandwidth in town at the moment so I decided to pay the additional for cable TV. I use Apple TV for movie rentals though vs renting them through comcast because I don't pay comcast the extra $$ for an HDTV subscription and they don't seem to allow on demand movies in HDTV unless you pay for the HDTV package. With AppleTV I usually pay the extra $1 for the HD version. I end up renting from Apple on average once a month.

Interesting tear down/apart of a $12 phone from China. http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040

There was another thread for this posted yesterday. http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/stock-act-partially-repealed/

From a different thread.... Compoundinglife -- can you elaborate a bit more on NOV? I've taken a look at the company and it looks very interesting. However, I struggle with trying to come up with a (rough estimate) of NOV's earnings power. You know, just dealing with the meteoric rise in profits over say the last 10 years -- a more than 10-fold increase -- is a bit daunting. Also, I notice that while gross and operating margins are very high, the company's RoE is less impressive (10-12% 10-year average). Presumably the reason is the goodwill created by their acquisitions, which would seem to have enormously helped in creating their pre-eminent position in the industry. However it begs the question whether they've overpaid for deals and whether they feel a need to continue the acquisition strategy for years into the future. What are your thoughts on that? Finally, everything you read about NOV mentions their high market shares (NOV = No Other Vendor). Have you been able to do any channel checks or to speak to any industry guys? I'd be really interested to know whether this is just company spin, or whether there truly are high barriers for competitors? [sorry, not trying to hijack this "What are you buying today?" thread. Anyone want to volunteer starting a NOV investment idea thread? I'm sure there would be lots of interest in it.] Thanks So here is my understanding and thoughts on NOV, and I will start by saying I am a newbe with regards to oil field service companies so any feedback or criticism is more than welcome. I have no scuttlebutt from industry folks. I would be interested to hear what other folks on the board may have in that regard. What I like is that NOV has gone to great lengths to offer their customers an all in one solution for their drilling rigs and had the vision to see that this was going to be a winning strategy in a very fragmented industry. They have done this through tons (300) of acquisitions. Lots of M&A activity is scary but it seems like the M&A is what has really made them a one stop shop and built their moat. It is different from companies like Tycho for example that would buy companies just to spin them off years later. It seems to me that M&A will continue. Maybe more in the FPSO space? I remember reading somewhere (maybe in this thread) that management considers M&A a full time thing. They stand to benefit by doing the same thing they did in the drilling space in the FPSO space (standardisation, one stop shopping) . Yes the historical growth in their business is huge and the next 10 years will not see the same growth. But at todays price it seems cheap for a company whose services will be needed for the foreseeable future, has a good growth track record, a solid balance sheet, and a decent moat and the opportunity to do what they did for rigs in the FPSO space. It will be interesting to watch how they progress there. With regards to your question about earnings power, I am not sure what their future earnings power will be. I think they will earn reasonably more 5 years from now and I think the price does not reflect that. I came across it when it popped up the Berkshire on the fillings, looked at the value line report and 10 year numbers, looked at the 10-K, read a conf. call transcript and decided I would pick some up at $67 or less. I realize this is a pretty shallow analysis but that is the extent of my work on this company.

Compoundinglife -- can you elaborate a bit more on NOV? I've taken a look at the company and it looks very interesting. However, I struggle with trying to come up with a (rough estimate) of NOV's earnings power. You know, just dealing with the meteoric rise in profits over say the last 10 years -- a more than 10-fold increase -- is a bit daunting. Also, I notice that while gross and operating margins are very high, the company's RoE is less impressive (10-12% 10-year average). Presumably the reason is the goodwill created by their acquisitions, which would seem to have enormously helped in creating their pre-eminent position in the industry. However it begs the question whether they've overpaid for deals and whether they feel a need to continue the acquisition strategy for years into the future. What are your thoughts on that? Finally, everything you read about NOV mentions their high market shares (NOV = No Other Vendor). Have you been able to do any channel checks or to speak to any industry guys? I'd be really interested to know whether this is just company spin, or whether there truly are high barriers for competitors? [sorry, not trying to hijack this "What are you buying today?" thread. Anyone want to volunteer starting a NOV investment idea thread? I'm sure there would be lots of interest in it.] Thanks There is a thread in the general discussion area. I can respond there: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/national-oilwell-varco/

WRT size I guess I am not loading up just increased both of these positions from 2% each to around %3.5.

AAPL and NOV

FFH especially seems like a good alternative to cash if someone is bearish. If there is a market down turn they can cash in on some of their hedges and put it work.

Here are some of things I have done WRT scuttlebutt. - I owned IGOI when it was a net/net and they were coming out with new products that were supposed to fuel growth after the company lost its largest customer. I would go to the local Fry's electronics every so often and check out the product placement, try to get an idea if any of the product had moved off the shelf from the last time I was there. Also Fry's puts returns back on the shelf with a discount sticker indicating it was returned. I bought a couple of their products, in this case a universal laptop power adapter. I broke it unintentionally within the first 30 minutes of using it, noticed that there seem to be higher returned products on the shelf for their laptop power adapters vs targus (used to be their largest customer). They were also touting their direct sales model via their website and how it was gaining traction. So I checked out the online store quite a bit to see what the experience was like and also checked the Alexa rankings regularly to see if there was a trend of more traffic to their website after launching the online store. The stock had run up about 30% was no longer a cheap net-net and my research indicated their was a reasonable risk their strategy was not working. I missed some more upside on the stock but it eventually tanked as their strategies failed. - For smaller companies sometimes I will look at the google street view to checkout their offices. - As oddball mentioned LinkedIn can be good. I have never used it to contact anyone at the company but I have used to find out much revenue a certain department does. Managers love to boast on their profile how much revenue they were responsible for and that information may not be broken out in the statements. - As I mentioned with IGOI, alexa or other traffic rating sites can be helpful in some cases for various reasons. If they launch a new product you can get an idea of much interest their might be based on increased traffic levels. - Sometimes I will go to stores and chat up they employees. Ask them if they think management is steering the ship in the right direction, ask them if things have been picking up after trying a new strategy. As Oddball mentioned people love to talk, I just try to ask them a few questions and let them do the talking. When I owned SNS/BH I managed to visit a few Steak and Shakes in my work travels and would always ask the manager/supervisor how things were going with the new management. - With SHLD I subscribe to updates on their job postings specifically in the tech section to see what kind of people they are hiring, what skill sets they are looking for. - REED is currently launching a new Kombucha product line, so I often try and visit health food stores or whole foods to see if the product has arrived yet and also look at how much shelf space Kombucha has in comparison to other vendors. Currently GT's is the largest company is this space and REED is hoping to be the #2 or maybe even #1 in the market. GT's gets tons of shelf space at the local Whole Foods and when ever visit there are quite a few bottles missing from the shelf and I ask the employees if they have to constantly refill the shelf space. Once Reed's has their product at my local WF I will be keeping an eye on how they do in comparison to GT's with regards to shelf space and product coming off the shelf. - With some smaller companies I have used google street view to check out their offices and facilities.

I would not consider it a safe store of value primarily because I think its hard to determine what the future holds for bitcoin. It is gaining traction but I can't really say what the state of it will be in 5-10 years. I have considered buying one of the new ASIC based mining rigs since it seems likely in the near term you could arb the costs of the miner fairly quickly.

I sometimes look at this screen, but its fairly short term, comparing current MRQ, PQ, TTM. I don't do this in an automated fashion but I really like ValueLine sheets for the ability to look at shares outstanding over the years very easily.

Not sure if that is a good barometer. WEB made plenty of stock picks during 2007. But yeah who knows :) Did he have any big aqusitions though? Maybe he did and I just don't remember. I do remember him saying that the subprime crisis shouldn't affect the general economy though. :P There was the 80% of Iscar that valued the whole company at around 5B in 2006. Brooks/Russell was in 2006 but on the small side around 500M. Business Wire was in 2006, not sure how much that was. But yeah to your point in 2007 I don't think they had any major outright purchases.

I agree but what is wrong with talking about it? We are not trying to predict anything IMO just discussing. Being aware of when we are in a period of people thinking "Things will get better forever" is useful, don't think we are there yet but I would like to be aware when we are.

Not sure if that is a good barometer. WEB made plenty of stock picks during 2007. But yeah who knows :)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gurufocus/2013/03/20/edward-lampert-and-francis-chous-new-stocks-see-biggest-gains/

I am reading "The Most Important Thing" as well. One thing he mentions is the three stages of a bull market, the third being "Everyone's sure things will get better forever". 1. Few people begin to believe things will get better 2. Most investors realize improvement is actually underway 3. Everyone's sure things will get better forever I don't put a ton of weight in these stages but in that context IMO we are still in stage 2.

With regards to being close to downtown... I worked within a mile of my office for 4 years and it was such a HUGE improvement on quality of life. I could leave the house or office whenever I wanted without having to worry about getting stuck in traffic or dealing with parking. When I moved this last time around I was really hesitant to move anywhere where I had to go back to commuting by car. Luckily we were able to find a place that is only 15-20 ride on the light rail to my office and I just use that time to read investing books :) So not sure what your Wife's commute is like now or what traffic and parking are like in Austin, but in Seattle I would need to pay $20-$30 a day to park and deal with all the traffic BS.