Josh4580

Barrons failed to deliver to me twice already this year.

Packer thank you. I did very well with this stock while my value plays like MWE.TO and FTP.TO are dragging me a bit. Check out my thread on Resverlogix http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/rvx-to-resverologix/

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-24/roche-holding-agrees-to-buy-intermune-for-8-3-billion.html?cmpid=yhoo Roche Holding Agrees to Buy InterMune for $8.3 Billion Olmstead, I think my ITMN pick fit the profile you were looking for. I posted the pick on February 06, 2014 and the stock closed at $11.32 Roche is purchasing them for $74. 653% gain in 6 months. What stock did you end up picking for the contest?

Just know that growth and value are joined at the hip

Kraven, I think I won this contest. http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=feye&insttype=&freq=7&show=&time=3 any reward? Yes, you get to tell your friends you bought FEYE at 30 as opposed to 97 three months ago. Actually FEYE wasn't a horrible buy at $97 if you do the math. You take 2013's Free Cash Flow of -$127 million and multiply by -1 to get owners earnings of $127 million. $97 times 145 million shares gets you $14 billion market cap. So 110x times true owners free cash flow for a company whose comps trade at 200-250x FCF.

Kraven, I think I won this contest. http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/quickchart/quickchart.asp?symb=feye&insttype=&freq=7&show=&time=3 any reward?

FireEye, Inc FEYE

Dcollon, this was a great paper by Montier. I believe everything he talks about in regards to the market valuation. We are historically significantly overvalued on all major metrics that have a strong correlation with future returns for the S&P 500. However, I am still finding cheap stocks to buy such as HRTPY & AWLCF. I am keeping a large % of my money in cash and bonds however.

Olmstead, I hope you picked ITMN and won the contest. Up a modest 170% today. I actually bought more in the am. I think it gets bought out for much higher.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/intermune-reports-phase-3-ascend-120000665.html "A 10% decline in FVC in an individual IPF patient is considered clinically meaningful and strongly predicts mortality. At Week 52, 16.5% of patients in the pirfenidone group experienced an FVC decline of 10% or more or death, compared with 31.8% in the placebo group, representing a 47.9% reduction in the proportion of patients who experienced a meaningful change in FVC or death. Additionally, at Week 52 the data demonstrated that 22.7% of patients in the pirfenidone group experienced no decline in FVC, compared with 9.7% in the placebo group, representing a 132.5% increase in the proportion of patients whose FVC did not decrease between Baseline and Week 52." Made this a 9% position and happy this morning.

It looks like most of the upside is already baked in. They have been really flying high lately. For ITMN: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-19/intermune-sale-looms-as-lung-drug-nears-fda-nod-real-m-a.html basically their drug Esbriet is approved in the EU and Canada. They have done 2 phase III studies already but the FDA made them do another one after rejecting approval in 2010. The outside FDA advisory Panel actually recommended they approve the drug and they went against that. Wall Street analysts are pegging chances of approval at 50-80%. "The company’s revenue may more than double this year and next to about $130 million in 2014, analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg show." "The pressure will be on the FDA to clear the drug because no other treatments have been approved specifically for IPF in the U.S. yet, said Liisa Bayko, an analyst for JMP in San Francisco. At least 132,000 Americans have the disease and 40,000 die from it each year, according to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation." The stock price is down from over $18 on this news: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-31/intermune-sinks-on-competition-from-boehringer-lung-drug.html However, I find that these stocks always run up before Phase III study results which are coming out in Q2.

Intermune ITMN

So if I have a 10m Roth IRA with a cost basis of 300k, she would get 5m in a 50/50 split. But that 5m is probably 150k cost basis, and 4.85m "gains". So the government would tax that gain as a taxable withdrawal.... and at 50% tax rate in California, it's probably something like 2.425m in taxes to be paid... so then the courts would likely take more of my assets to help her settle the tax bill. All this despite the tax bill supposedly already having been settled at time of Roth conversion. It's a double tax. So just wait to get married until after age 59.5. That is my plan :)

I switched from a Samsung S4 to a Q10. The phone is great but there really are no apps available, not even a Chase app. Everything else I pretty much like. The browser is a bit slow. I hated the Samsung S4. The screen was so big you had to use two hands. I couldnt type in english at all, even using Swipe. The apps would always freeze and Android has weird boxes that show up that have no use at all. I think andriod is horrible and clunky. Bbry needs to start investing more heavily in app development asap.

Capstead Mortgage's (CMO) portfolio is 100% in adjustible rate mortgages. Could be a much safer play than NLY.