alwaysinvert

Swedish Match: http://www.swedishmatch.com/en/Investors/The-share/Repurchases/ Sold the stock two months ago, though. Valuation is not great, but the business sure is.

He also said that you could not have a good monetary system after leaving the gold standard, yet the United States continued to prosper for the next 70 years. As I said, he's the same as any other economist...right on some things, wrong on others. That is a question of contrafactual nature. The fact that we are better off 70 years later actually doesn't speak anything to the relative soundness of our monetary system since then (relative to gold, silver, competing fiat currencies in a free banking system or whatever) both because there are so many other factors weighing in on whether that's true or not and because there haven't been any large scale alternative monetary systems operating in similar environments to compare to.

Actually, some would argue that a private healthcare system is malfunctionning because of the market forces. In a private market, the buyer of insurance has an informational advantage to the seller. Which means that the buyers that thinks he is sick will get insurance while the others will not, therefore only the most expensive customers would get insured. Raising the cost of insurance for the non sick people and deferring them of buying a policy and so on... Empirical data seems to prove quite well this theory as the USA is the only country with a private system and it's the most expensive. Sometimes the market is not adequate. We need to avoid the man with the hammer syndrome. BeerBaron US healthcare system is not free-market but a corporatist one that has come about from rent-seeking behaviour, from what I understand. I'm not going to enter into that discussion, though (the reason being my relative ignorance). My point was merely that all government programmes have economic consequences and to think otherwise is pretty short-sighted, no matter if you find the tradeoff good or not. For example here in Sweden where we have universal healthcare with private alternatives outlawed in many areas. The result of this is that yes, everybody has equal 'rights' to healthcare, but instead of paying with money directly, you pay with your time, waiting for appointments and procedures. Under those circumstances, it's pretty easy to keep down the immediate monetary costs, but obviously there are secondary costs in human suffering and life. And then of course there's the people clogging up at the emergency wards with people who have colds. It's free and they are hypocondriacs who cannot get regular doctor's appointments, so of course they are incentivized to act in this way (hello, negative externalities for the seriously ill!). There are tradeoffs to everything. edit: I didn't see your last post before posting this, Myth, so disregard the econ vs non-econ stuff. I also saw that this post was pretty poorly written. Sorry for that, I hope you can understand it anyway.

What about the none Econ stuff. EPA, Scopes Trial, Medicare, Medicaid, ect. I think he ruined his article with the econ stuff, because that is and will always be highly debated but what are your thoughts on the other items relating to science, and social issues. I don't think that I am the man to comment on your government programmes because I'm not very familiar with how they are structured. Morally, I'm instinctively opposed to just about everything and generally they always seem to end up wasteful. Given that they exist they can of course be everything from pretty benign to god awful, but I just dont't have the competence to comment on your domestic issues. I wouldn't call them non-econ, though. Government programmes are always a tradeoff with the functionality of market forces.

Not surprisingly, I found that article incredibly smug and condescending. I'm not an economist but I've studied economics and history of economics, so I know for example that the popular myth that the Hoover administration was laissez-faire and staunchly non-interventionist is completely false. I also cannot find all the data points that would suggest Keynesian counter-measures being indisputably efficient in tackling The Great Depression, or our latest downturn for that matter. This uncritical belief in topdown tinkering with the economy just seems awfully dangerous to me (and republicans are just as guilty of it in most respects). Unintended consequences is a completely alien concept and the authoritarian belief in politics as a tool to solve everything from jobs to the environment is as dangerously religious as the creationist talk from my perspective.

Yes but your boose is so expensive in Sweeden.. how can BeerBaron ever visit such a place.. BeerBaron Clearly, it's in the interest of promoting public health that we have a state-owned monopolist running with 60% margins... (Luckily enough Germany is nearby, thank god for customs unions)

In a relative sense, I'd guess that the prime example of that would be your country, the most successful country in the history of the world. At least historically. As for the perceived over-stubborness of the republicans in congress, that story seems extremely biased to me. Shouldn't their parliamentary strength translate to a much better negotiatory position? The opinion that sacrifices should be made in an equal amount from both sides doesn't seem prudent if adhering to the democratic process is an end in itself. As a foreigner with libertarian leanings (no emotional stake in either party), that argument reeks of smugness to me. I cant think of a country that is based on Libertarian principles. The US has some basic bits of the well fare state which are essentially unpaid for. The right simple wants to dismantle these bits. As I said I cant think of any modern countries without these bits, that I would want to live in. Perhaps you can. We have been quite successful with low taxes and middle of the road benefits, but we can no longer grow our way out of the benefits and nor can we continue to put them on the charge card. We either have to pay via taxation for them or remove them inmo. Americans have to collectively make a choice inmo. The dems should have changed the rules when they had the chance especially regarding the fillibuster. I think the right has a right to abstain from governing. The left should frame it properly and take the case to the people. They have failed at that. I think the differences are too large, and things will be decided in the next election or they wont and this will continue. Personally I think thats a good thing, a definitive choice needs to be made. I wasn't talking about libertarian states, but if Sweden can serve as an example of a good leftist/semi-socialist country, I think it is fair to say that the US can be said to be a good example of a right-wing/conservative country. Even if there is lots of room to go further to the right and left respectively for both countries (though, as a Swede suffering almost 60% tax burden I have my issues with that, lol). In some ways Sweden is and have been more pro-market than most countries, though. Certainly more pro free-trade than the US, for example. And during the 19th century, when Sweden went from one of the poorest countries in the world with over 1m emigrants to the US (about a third of the population if my memory serves me right) to the upper-tier of industrial countries we were arguably one of the freest countries in the world. As for the rest, I agree with you in your analysis, although we probably differ much in where those facts take us stance-wise. Of course, the same goes for all Western European countries, of which most have poorer demographics than the US, coupled with more extensive social benefits and poorer productivity.

In a relative sense, I'd guess that the prime example of that would be your country, the most successful country in the history of the world. At least historically. As for the perceived over-stubborness of the republicans in congress, that story seems extremely biased to me. Shouldn't their parliamentary strength translate to a much better negotiatory position? The opinion that sacrifices should be made in an equal amount from both sides doesn't seem prudent if adhering to the democratic process is an end in itself. As a foreigner with libertarian leanings (no emotional stake in either party), that argument reeks of smugness to me.

I imagined that narrated by Randall and it got even more awesome:

To me, at least, it's still about passion. Passion gets it done. My brother loves fishing. Loves it. I don't think he really even minds getting up at 3am because the activity of fishing excites him enough to do it. He is that passionate about it. Now, you may really, really like golf. However, if you loved it, the extra hour of sleep would be nothing to worry about. That poses a question for me, too. I like to think that I have a huge passion for investing. In reality, maybe I don't really, really love it. If I did, I would really like to read a lot of annual reports. In all honesty, I don't. Again, I think it really boils down to shear passion of something. If you're honest with yourself, you can know your passions. If you are that passionate about something, you'll do whatever you can to get it done. Well, my thinking is this might as well be because your brother is a more rational person than me. Or at least better at fooling his irrational self into rationality.

stahleyp: Of course it has to do with passion but that does not really address the core of the problem. As an analogy I am really passionate about golf. I also like to sleep in the morning. Some mornings even when the weather is good I'll choose to sleep longer instead of hitting the golf course. I'll invariably regret this in the afternoon, since playing golf is much more rewarding to me than sleeping one more hour, but I regularly make this decision anyway. How can you minimize the occurence of your short-term interests taking precedence over your long-term ones? Reading write-ups on blogs is easy, actually formulating your own hypotheses after wading through numbers on your own is harder.

Even though this board seems to be filled to the brim with hard-working people I'm sure all of you sometimes have problems with procrastination. So the question is how do address the problem? I have had a weekly deal with a friend that I would have to put in x hours of work or donate a substantial sum of money to a charity I loathe. While it worked in getting me to put in the hours, I'm not sure it actually made me more efficient or purposeful in reading/working. So short-term I prefer surfing blogs, boards and news sites, and while nothing wrong with that per se, I'm sure that long-term a whole lot of that time would be put to better use reading company reports and books. How do you make yourself buckle down and get things done?

I was working on an a paper in Open Office the other day when my laptop broke down permanently. So from here on it's Google Docs all the wa :( Not the first time that's happened but certainly the last...

Guest lecture in Robert Shiller's class by David Swensen: http://oyc.yale.edu/economics/financial-markets/content/sessions/lecture09.html

I absolutely love this book.

As a side note, I find his attachment to Becky Quick a bit cute. He doesn't come on air when she is not on when he always comes on air otherwise? /creepy Perez Hilton mode off

A good rebuttal imo. I find it hard to take any argument seriously that neglects the fact that taxes on dividend and capital gains are not only double taxation for the absolute majority of people, but triple taxation when accounting for the corporate tax. All taxes are taxes on people, to say otherwise is pure newspeak and intellectual dishonesty. I don't find any other explanation for that but a political agenda. I mean, if you want the rich (in a relative sense) to pay more taxes percentage-wise, just say so and we could have that debate in an honest way. Don't twist the numbers just to make your argument more palatable.

I don't see how that is relevant if the expected risk adjusted value on holding the stock is greater than holding cash (or any other investment you could find, obviously). Sometimes it's surprising to me how much people on this board try to forecast macro and time the market.

http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/epstein-on-flat-tax.html

Increasing in everything I own, across the board. Some BRK at 69.83 among that (25% of my portfolio). Cramer says 'sideline, sideline, sideline". Buy indicator of the year?

I like G+ more than Facebook, very much due to the circle structuring, but this far they entertain totally different niches in my case. G+ is for intellectual exchanges, following high-grade academics etc (more as a complement to Google Reader than a social network in the FB/Myspace sense). This is pretty obvious if you look at the gender distribution of users... As long as G+ has nothing to offer more than nerds discussing topics they are interested in they will never overtake Facebook. The transition from the userbase as of now to a more mainstream one seems hard to make since the two worlds don't overlap that much.

I haven't but from what you say I will definitely add it to my next order!

I'm not skilled enough to do turnarounds, but to me there seems to be a significant survivorship bias in this area. I.e the ones that work out obviously give outsized returns but there is a silent graveyard of unknown size. Not saying that there are no opportunities in the area, obviously, just that the 'soft side' of investing that Sharper talks about is even harder to evaluate in these cases.

I find that many of the value investing blogs/writeups I read adhere to a very strict procedure in regards to free cash flow, earnings history and balance sheet composure. When I review my holdings I find that almost all of my holdings break rules that I have set up for myself, but that I find the tradeoff to be good. My best investment as of yet with a gain of 300% was in a company (an ISP) which as of the date of investment had only been listed for 2 years, did not generate a lot of FCF and was micro cap, sub $15m in market cap. A quick glance through my holdings as of now gives that most of my current stocks do not fit a strict adherence to the most common value criteria. Some of the 'rules' that I break off the top of my head: Earnings history FCF history Listed company history (only pro forma numbers) Risk of technological obsolescence So my question to the board is how rigid are your rules of investing? If you break the rules as of this moment what is your reasons to make this tradeoff? What rules would you never break? If you want to, maybe you could give a short review of a 'problematic' stock that you own and your reasons for holding it in spite of these issues. Personally I can't seem to find that many companies with for example 10 straight years of FCF growth (which someone suggested as a set rule) that is still attractively priced and has reasonable future prospects. Fire away!

Almost no cash. Was up to 15% but then BRK gobbled up those funds. On top of BRK being a good value play, I badly needed some geographical diversification so I'm not sweating. OMXPSI -9% this year so maybe I can start finding more domestic values soon, as well. Happy midsummer's eve!