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alpha231616967560

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Posts posted by alpha231616967560

  1. RBS has roughly 900 m Lb exposure to Greece some of which has already been written down, and about 1 B exposure to the others - S,P,and Ireland.  Total losses, if they materialized can easily be soaked up.  Backstopped by the UK government. 

     

    Ucc- where do you come up with your figure for exposure to Ireland, et al.? According to Morningstar RBS has >$40B exposure to Ireland via Ulster Bank (RBS subsidiary).

  2. The argument is basically this: 

    A diet that raises your blood sugar too high will trigger an insulin spike, and this insulin will signal your fat cells to store the energy in fat.  Thus you are left feeling low energy and you tend to want to eat more.

     

    This is basically the rationale for my no-sugar habit, based on a steady stream of remarks from my wife (a physician) on my former favorite habit of eating a gigantic (six inch diameter!) chocolate (oh man it was delicious) cookie (oh how I miss it sometimes) from the local co-op. Daily habit. Sometimes twice daily habit. So now no sugar, I no longer crave those damn cookies and I am dropping weight consistently and have more energy. Going dancing right now, in fact.  8)

  3. To me, the interesting thing about the food supply as far as meat is concerned is that what Americans eat today is far removed from what we (as a culture) ate 35 years ago. The vast majority of beef today comes from factory farms (as opposed to grass fed beef of yesterday, which is "premium" today) and the cattle are fed corn because it is a lot cheaper than grass thanks to subsidies, but also because it creates the marbled fat that people have come to like. So someone who hasn't changed his diet in 35 years is eating *a lot* more unhealthy fat than he was back in the day. Also, the antibiotics and hormones required to keep cows from being constantly sick on this diet are enormous, because their digestive system is custom designed for grass.

     

    I don't know how this contributes to the chronic disease correlation, but it barely resembles what our fathers ate back in the day.

  4. We are all buying individual businesses for the long-term, correct?  Then any volatility is a good thing, regardless of how painful the short-term effects (1-4 years) may be.

     

    Mr. Market is having a tantrum and today's reason for the tantrum is "Will Greece default?"  Do I care?  Nope.  I don't plan on investing my money for a few months or years.  I plan on doing it until I die, and I'm not about to put it into 10 year treasuries yielding less than 2%, when Wells Fargo's annual dividend alone is going to be double or triple that in the next year or two. 

     

    If the price of Wells falls to $9 like it did in 2008/2009, all I'll do is buy more.  If the price stays down below $15 for two-three years...who cares...I'll buy more over two-three years.  To put it as simply and succinctly as I can..."I don't care!"  I live a frugal life and make more money than I spend.  If my investments are undervalued for 2 years, 5 years, 10 years...I don't care.  I'll just keep buying more and more over that time. 

     

    The phrase for today, and really for all your days as a value investor, should be...yes, that's right..."I don't care!"  Cheers!   

     

    Sanjeev - I want to take a moment to appreciate your attitude. It is the attitude that I aspire towards but have not yet achieved fully. I am currently reading "The Most Important Thing" by Howard Marks (excellent book) and he talks about the inevitability of all sorts of cycles in the market, and how basically you will never be able to predict the future, but you can be sure that the pendulum of the market is always in motion and that somewhere people are always overreacting to that natural motion, which is what creates the greatest opportunities for the investor who can truly keep his emotions in check. Over simple? Maybe, but there is an acorn of truth that is impossible to ignore.

     

     

  5. I listened to this Wealthtrack interview with Bill Paul (energy analyst) about the smart grid yesterday and was still thinking about it this morning -

     

    http://www.wealthtrackextra.com/full-episode-archive/tag/berkshire-hathaway-and-the-smart-grid

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    very interesting topic that I am just beginning to understand. Has anyone else here come across good reading or business research on the smart grid? It sounds like it will affect pretty much everything eventually. He mentions MXWL as one company to look at, which I plan to do this weekend. The analyst talks about a Microsoft exec (?) who thinks that the smart grid will dwarf the internet in terms of it impact on Microsoft.

     

     

  6. I saw this tonight on Netflix.  Very good by the way.  Never mentions sugar, but I won't look at animal products the same way again.  Makes me think about cutting way back on the animal products.

     

    http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Forks-Over-Knives/70185045

     

    Curiously, it makes a claim that drinking milk actually increases the rates of osteoporosis.  The claim is that the rich protein content in milk contributes to a condition in your body called acidosis -- and your body buffers the condition by releasing calcium from your bones to buffer it.

     

    Really?  They showed a chart of the countries that drank the most milk -- these were the countries that also had the highest rates of osteoporosis.

     

    I saw Forks over Knives in Portland a few months ago and was also impressed. I was similarly fascinated by (the book) The China Study by T.Colin Campbell, which essentially compares eating habits in the US with eating habits in China and then compares chronic disease patterns in the US and in China. It is an eye opener.

     

    Seems to me that one of the most significant shifts in terms of healthcare, use of resources (especially water, but also topsoil and feed), not to mention ethical treatment of animals - would be a shift to a less meat-centered diet in the US. Few people realize how significant an impact it has on our economy.

  7. I recently noticed that I was up to a weight that was easily the heaviest in my life, so I decided to quit eating anything with any form of processed sugar in it. No muffins, "health bars" with cane sugar, tea with sugar - nothing (I still have been eating fruit and other foods / drinks with naturally occurring sucrose or fructose) and I dropped 9 lbs in about 3 mos. I had no idea how many things have a secret dollop of sugar in them. I also have a lot more energy.

     

     

  8. I would like to open an Australian bank account - the interest rates are much better than in the US, the banking system is stable, and the AD seems likely to continue to strengthen. However, it is fairly difficult to open an Australian bank account as a US citizen because of their taxation system. Has anyone else had success with this?

     

     

  9. I like how Moynihan is taking responsibility and running the company with an eye to creating a long-term sustainable profit machine instead of milking the next earnings report for a pop in the stock price. It is the same thing that I like about Google's current strategy, which basically ignores the short term and is making a solid bet on the long term.

  10. Anyone else picking up more BAC.WS.A at this price? I think that Moynihan is doing some interesting things in his management of the MBS problems and long term vision. If he is even moderately successful, the A warrants are a screaming deal at current prices.

  11. Seems to me that respectful disagreement is the cornerstone of any valuable debate, and that ignoring someone is the opposite of respectful. If you think that a certain poster is full of it, why not just say so? An ignore function creates a web of hidden possibility in that you're not really sure if someone is reading a message or not because they may have had the ignore function set.

     

    Just my $.02...

  12. Having been in the search engine business indirectly for more than a decade, I think of Google like Coke or Wrigley's. It is the brand name that everyone knows and goes to. It is their organic (non-paid) search results that provide the moat because of the quality of those results. Everyone knows this either consciously or otherwise. It is the reason that they beat Yahoo! and AOL back in the day and continues to be the reason that most people use them as a search engine. MSFT may have some small success in eroding that moat, but my guess is that it will be mostly people who don't think or know to change their default search provider from an OEM PC. With 60% of market share, and no competitor having even 10% Goog is not going anywhere...

  13. I guess it's better to be slow and to come up with good ideas than just to fill pages with mediocre investment thesis

     

    I agree wholeheartedly. Slow and insightful is much better than the usual...

  14. No wonder Apple makes heaps of money, btw. Most of these books are almost impossible to come by in a less legal way and I have spent several hundreds of dollars in Itunes Store the last few months...

     

    I live in Portland, OR and get these kinds of books (including the Steve jobs biography) from our library system all the time. I can request interlibrary loans online from their website, which means I can get pretty much any book in publication at no cost. The only book I've ever requested and not received is klarman's margin of safety. . I can also access value line and morningstar paid sites through the library website, as well as a very good selection of audio titles.

     

    I don't know if this is an amazing exception to most library systems in north America or not. Maybe worth a look at your local library system?

  15. The site is running great Parsad. I notice that SMF (the forum software) is making some improvements also. I truly appreciate your dedication in running this site. It is an excellent ongoing conversation.

     

     

    It's paid for by the ads you guys all complain about!   ;D  Glad it's working faster.  Cheers!

     

    Much faster, thanks.  But I'm willing to help pay for the site with cash donation if people choose to block your ads.  Microsoft's new enhancement to their browser:

     

    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoftpri0/2013616394_microsoftaddsdonottrackliststointernetexplorer9.html

     

    The new tracking protection will allow anyone to create lists of websites users can permanently ignore. Those sites will not be able to send cookies or other tracking software to the user's computer.The sites have implications for online advertisers and website designers. Many websites that people visit include content from other websites that serve Web ads, for instance. By blocking those other websites, users could eliminate those ads on site they're visiting.

     

    So, buh-bye doubleclick!!  I take it all I have to do is feed it this URL:

     

    http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net

     

    Firefox has had similar technology available for 4+ years as a community add-on, and there is also a "filterset" available that will anticipate most advertising URLs. 44% of web users use Firefox now compared to 28% for IE, for reasons similar to this. Google Chrome (20% of browser market share) also offers this functionality.

     

  16. I think you'll get more value listening to audio lectures off of iTunes-U than an audio book version of Security Analysis.

     

    Do you have anything specific in mind? I am taking a long road trip over the holidays and would appreciate having some good lectures on my iPod. I often load it up with interviews from Youtube (or more recently with lectures from khanacademy.org , which is quite good).

     

    Thanks - Pablo

     

     

     

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