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This index of Indian small caps does not appear overvalued at less than book value and around 10x earnings according to their end of year fact sheet. This market has already had a decline.. The ETF is by VanEck and is ticker SCIF http://www.vaneck.com/funds/scif.aspx http://www.vaneck.com/library/market-vectors-etfs/scif-fact-sheet-pdf

according to 'the warren buffett way' on google books - In the late 1960s Blue Chip stamps had a float of more than $60 million in unredeemed stamps. Berkshire began buying Blue Chip stock in the late 60s. Buffett also owned Blue Chip shares personally and inside a bunch of other entities (Charlie owned it as well). They ultimately bought the rest of Blue Chip in 1983. Blue Chip purchased See's in 1972. edit: 'Damn Right' also has a good passage on Blue Chip - float went up to $100 million according to this: http://tinyurl.com/mbtxfkb

KMR is pretty tax efficient.

I've been looking at Tower as well today, since I received a note from Insurance Insider about the large discount today. I guess with so many material adverse changes already under Tower's belt, there are some that don't believe there won't be at least one more material 'oops'… Big spread if it goes through at $3 cash by 'summer' though… (8-k on merger) http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1289592/000119312514003005/d653094d8k.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1289592/000119312514003005/0001193125-14-003005-index.htm

Remember that the $77 Billion in float is not all from super-cat policies, and the fairly small portion that is is not concentrated in any one region. Most of the float is long-term in nature, such as workers comp, asbestos, life, etc… It is very stable year to year. It is not possible for the float to come due all at once. It is a very diversified, long-lived and uniquely attractive pool of float.

The float wouldn't be wiped out by a large super cat. BRK's policies can be very large, but all of them are capped. BRK holds tens of billions of dollars in cash and much more in liquid securities to pay any large claims event easily. But because of the way BRK is set up, BRK would have a near break-even year if hit by a super-cat that would wipe out a big portion of the catastrophe insurance industry. This becomes safer every year, as it is virtually impossible to grow the insurance business inside BRK as fast as the rest of BRK - making Insurance a smaller and smaller part of BRK over time.

I second the above suggestion by valueInv - the application that checks system resource usage is "Activity Monitor" - you will likely find that Flash is the culprit. Running the newest version of Safari (in Mavericks) and not other browser brands will help performance on a mac with lots of tabs open. For some reason, Adobe Flash has never worked well on Macs, hence Apple's all out war on Flash. I don't use the Mac version of MS Office, so I have no idea if that is part of the problem.

I use the 13" macbook air and it is a great computer. You can get 500gb of flash storage on the current models, which are very good with the i7. They still haven't upgraded the macbook air display to 'retina' quality, no that would be the only thing to wait for. I use a laptop a lot - whether I'm traveling or not. I have never liked using my laptop as my desktop and I always use a dedicated desktop, currently a Mac Pro. I use two large monitors with the left own always being full screen windows XP (through full screen parallels) and the right one regular mac osx. I use the mac side for everything but Microsoft Office, Quickbooks and eSignal. I've used this type of setup since the first intel macs came out and I could never go back to anything different. 27" of windows on the left, 27" of OSX on the right. Full access to all your files on both sides since its the same computer... I also have a full size iPad that is loaded with SEC filings and ARs as PDFs in an app called goodreader. That keeps you from getting bored on planes or in the bathroom, etc... Everything can easily be backed up to drives attached to the wireless router and a few thumb drives for particularly important files.

WEB = Warren E. Buffett

I have a friend that owns businesses like these and he had this to say, for what it's worth - "Interesting - and sounds like he's exiting the affiliate space like just about everyone else. Google's killed traditional online marketing with their updates and nobody has the stomach to keep relying on them for traffic..especially since they're becoming the affiliate themselves. That being said, I'd totally buy it for $100k. He hasn't done shit for his SEO since 2010, and that's a big deal. You could also easily outsource the telephone calls so you're running 12 hours a day at least, not 4 hours a day on MST - I bet there's a significant amount of sales drop off because of that, not to mention waiting for emails and voice mails to come in. Just pay $1500 and get live chat 24/7 at least. Lots of easy changes to make that would up the traffic and conversions."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101193820

The above post is kind of offensive. It shouldn't make a difference that she is female. Same advice applies to anyone in that situation. Increase your income by either developing a side business or switching to a higher paying career, or, preferably - both. Pay off the debt at quickly as you are able. Stop worrying about a debt repayment that is based on income and will eventually be charged off if your income doesn't increase. Just earn more income. If you can't do it as a lawyer in the middle of nowhere, do it somewhere else or do something else. If you make earning a higher income a priority you will earn a higher income. $25k is poverty. People with no degrees can make much more than that right out of high school.

Congratulations ragnarisapirate! - appointed to the board of directors of Sitestar - SYTE --> http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1096934/000072174813000727/site8kappt.htm

Regarding the large surplus at Berkshire - it is largely because many subsidiaries are owned inside the insurance companies - especially within National Indemnity. 100% of the stock of BNSF, for example, valued at BRK's cost of $34 Billion - is owned by National Indemnity and counts towards the statutory surplus. Also, National Indemnity owns 100% of the shares of GEICO. Then in addition there are the securities, of course. GEICO, in turn, owns 100% of the shares of Clayton, McLane, TTI, as well the marketable securities. I'll attach an NAIC filing if you really want to geek out. But unfortunately, the mystery stock Buffett has been accumulating and receiving confidential status on through the SEC is hidden like always inside the "Harney Investment Trust" - Buffett's go-to vehicle for keeping stock trading hidden from regulatory filings. (Harney Street is in Omaha) 2633682.pdf

There are 31 investors

I know a group of old guys who did a similar thing with the creation of a man-made lake in Virginia - Smith Mountain Lake. Back in the early 60's, right before a couple of Dams were going to be constructed, they studied the plans and bought a large amount of property at the proper elevations. They employed surveyors to make sure they would end up with lake front blocks. They sold off lots over the years for large profits as well as gaining several "free" lake-front family compounds. They didn't have a very large delay though. The Quarry idea seems like holding costs could really hurt the attractiveness - especially if it remains an industrial area!

Willis360 is a lot like Berkshire's deal with AON for 7.5% of Lloyd's business. This stuff is really pissing off Lloyd's and Lloyd's participants.

You can think of it as him straight up selling some of his long position in the company. His ownership (equivalent) went from 4.98% previously to 3.98% of Tesco. A total return swap is just a way to get long or short. Here is the previous filing: http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail.html?announcementId=11572149 And the most recent one again: http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail.html?announcementId=11747865

This is the filing - http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail.html?announcementId=11747865

Interesting article on Ajit Jain in an insurance industry publication - http://www.insiderquarterly.com/jain-feeds-buffett-s-hunger

Revenues of somewhere around $400 million a year, not earnings. They have many products and the business scales like crazy. They specialize in selling many products to the same customer, so while they may only have 300,000 customers or whatever (probably more), quite a few of those customers are buying multiple products from them. A single newsletter that costs $100 a year with 200,000 subscribers brings in $20 million in revenues. Then you sell them premium services, special 'clubs', adjacent products, etc... You are marketing to a pool of people that are reading your copy and are already interested in purchasing these types of services. Once you have the customer base, new products are very profitable to launch and market. The Stansberry business alone is quite large within Agora, as is Oxford Club, Chris Mayer's letters, Palm Beach, etc... I'm wouldn't be at all surprised if Agora had several employees that read this board. Thanks. I thought Daily Reckoning was just a small business, run by a small team. Difficult to understand how they can earn several hundred million dollars a year and have 400 employees. Is it from advertising and/or subscriptions? Where did you get the "largest in the US" and revenue figure from? Gio - when you say 'manage their portfolios' - you aren't actually going to be managing their money right? Just having them read your publication? In the US it is very important to remain regulated as a 'general interest publication' as opposed to any type of investment advisory situation. I don't know how the rules differ in Europe, but you can get in a lot of trouble here for giving individual investment advice through a newsletter type business.

This company is the largest in the US investment newsletter business - with revenues of several hundred million dollars a year: http://www.agora-inc.com/

I'll add that it can be a very good business. I know several people who have made 8 and 9 figure net worths entirely in the investment newsletter publishing business. Email and PDF files drastically improved the economics of an already good business and now it scales like crazy. It used to cost a hundred grand plus in postage just to send out sales letters to try to build a subscriber base. There is obviously a sleazy side to the business, where sales copy touts big easy money through option trading with your life savings and all that - but that hardly sounds like the service you are going to be writing. The investment newsletter market in the US is very large, I imagine it will be much tougher in Italy to grow your subscriber base above a few thousand but hopefully your partners will market the new product heavily. It is not uncommon in the industry to pay your entire first year's subscription revenue to the company that brings in the subscriber for you.

Stephen Wolf was the guy that came in and saved the US Airways investment. He was just saying next time I do something dumb, call Mr. Wolf to save my ass like he did this time. It's just his way of praising a manager that did him a great favor in turning around US Airways (for a while). edit - reading the original passage he was probably also making a pulp fiction reference since it was in italics and he's clever like that

2015's have been out a while, so I assume you mean 2016. BAC is cycle 2 I believe --> " When are the exchanges going to list 2016 LEAPS®? Cycle 1: Monday, September 16, 2013: January 2016 LEAPS® listed Cycle 2: Monday, October 14, 2013: January 2016 LEAPS® listed Cycle 3: Monday, November 11, 2013: January 2016 LEAPS® listed "