leftcoast
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Posts posted by leftcoast
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“The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.”
- WEB
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If you're into stuff like Mad Men and Breaking Bad, then I suggest checking out The Newsroom. It's written by Aaron Sorkin, the same guy that created West Wing, and shares that show's intelligence and style of dialogue.
Watch the opening scene and if you're not hooked then move on:
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Interesting how nobody here feels they are impacted by their political views.
And yet the political threads are the ones where ideology consistently trumps rationality. :)
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First Marvel, now Star Wars. Disney basically owns my entire childhood.
I'm kind of surprised it went for only $4B, but I believe Lucas was the only shareholder and for him finding the right buyer may have been more important than maximizing the sale price. Kind of like the private businesses Buffett likes to acquire.
Also, episode 7 is in development.
Oh, and one last observation... it's interesting to see both Pixar and LucasFilm now part of the same company, since Pixar was started inside Lucas a long, long time ago.
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Realize that the US theory of justice goes far beyond the idea of punishment toward the object of true repentance and ultimately restoration as a reformed member of society. From what I've read, Rajat Gupta, appears to have led an honest life until recently, when he fell under the power of greed and envy. Thus, his crimes may have been a sad anomaly.
Therefore, his background and good deeds should be weighed appropriately by the judge in deciding the term of his incarceration because complete restoration may be likely as he does not appear to be an habitual criminal, unlike individuals such as Madoff.
If a person's previous criminal record (past convictions) can be used to help determine their sentence, I don't see why other aspects of the personal history and circumstances can't be factored in too. Ultimately, it's about figuring out whether they are likely to re-offend, and whether society is better off with or without them.
Ajit Jain said it pretty eloquently:
"I suspect that there are more meaningfully redemptive possibilities for Rajat than a substantial period of incarceration."
All that needs to be weighed against the benefit of making an "example" of Gupta to deter future offenders.
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Classy. What's even classier is that he plagiarized most of it from an anonymous internet chain mail:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/valuedemployees.asp
Those employees sure have some inspiring leadership.
http://forward.com/workspace/assets/images/articles/blog-davidsiegel-101012.jpeg
Nice gut.
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Sounds like it's actually more like $40k.
And unsurprisingly, this profession has the highest fatality rate of any job in the US. Its death rate is 10x higher than that of construction workers. The rollout of the iPhone caused a spike in fatalities 5 years ago, as AT&T raced to upgrade its network to keep up with demand.
I'll stick with making video-games.
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That was harder to watch than surgery.
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I was waiting for you to throw in a free set of steak knives. :D
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I found these 2 threads from the old MSN board archive to be the most insightful in terms of how people were analyzing the situation at that time:
- FFH and subsidiary price difference (June 16 - July 1, 2006)
- FFH option pricing (June 24- July 15, 2006)
You definitely get the sense that the LEAPS were not considered a slam dunk at that time. The call options were dirt cheap and FFH was terribly (or wonderfully) undervalued, but there was still a lot of genuine concern about the market staying irrational and those $140 calls expiring worthless before FFH recovered.
Starting in the fall of 2006, you start seeing some threads discussing financial independence and the "escape velocity" needed to achieve early retirement. :)
- FFH and subsidiary price difference (June 16 - July 1, 2006)
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Last week the VIX volatility index (aka the "fear index") hit its lowest point since early 2007. Sometime in the next few months we're probably due for another scare of some kind.
http://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/kaavio.Webhost/charts/big.chart?nosettings=1&symb=vix&uf=0&type=2&size=2&sid=1704273&style=320&freq=1&entitlementtoken=0c33378313484ba9b46b8e24ded87dd6&startdata-ipsquote-timestamp=8/21/2007&enddata-ipsquote-timestamp=8/21/2012&rand=625216843&compidx=aaaaa%3A0&ma=0&maval=9&lf=1&lf2=0&lf3=0&height=335&width=579&mocktick=1
That said, do you really mean that BAC at $8 is not cheap? Or just that you think it's going to get cheaper again soon?
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Hasn't Buffett said that he used to do blind valuations for practice/fun when he was younger? He would read several years of a company's financials and then try to guess the stock price without looking at anything else. He's also said many times that he gets most of his information on a company's moat from its financials. He can see in the numbers if a company has a durable competitive advantage or not, often without even knowing what industry it's in.
I've got to say the whole idea of blind evaluations is a bad idea and, frankly, bonkers. Do doctors get together and do blind evaluations? "Ok, there's a patient and he's got a fever and muscle aches. What does he have?"
Actually, I think they do exactly that, at least in med school. And we did something very similar in business school. They're called case studies. Students are given a few pages of factual information about a real-world company (often disguised) and a problem or bunch of problems facing a manager in that company. Then they sit around and talk about what decisions that manager should make and why. The most common complaint is of course: "But I don't have enough information to make a decision!" There are a couple of answers to that:
1.) You never get to make decisions based on perfect information. That's life. (The nice thing about investing, of course, is that you can always decide to pass and wait for the next one if you don't feel confident in your analysis. Most other professions don't have a "too hard" pile.)
2.) The process of sorting through the available information, figuring out what's important, piecing it together, and discussing it with peers is still extremely valuable from a learning perspective.
http://www.bu.edu/ceit/teaching-resources/in-the-classroom/using-case-studies-to-teach/
So I say keep going, racemize.
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It's both. You've had some luck, but you also created a lot of luck through initiative, hard work, and integrity. Being smart and humble enough to recognize the value of the opportunities you're being handed helps too.
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China is slowing too, and it was mostly Chinese and European buyers pushing up prices. As well as those that made money in the Oil Sands and other commodities. The hot money isn't flowing as briskly these days and prices are falling. I just sold my house and there were few offers...sold it for about 12-14% less than it would have gone for last year. Cheers!
Are you cashing out of the market, or buying a new place?
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Flash forward a year, and it looks like the Vancouver real estate bubble is now in the early stage of bursting. Even with mortgage rates still at record lows, it seems the party is finally over. There's just nobody left to buy.
Normally June is the start of the busy summer season, but this year June property sales hit a 10-year low, down 28% from last year and 17% from last month. Inventory of listed homes is swelling rapidly. And 38% of listed homes have now had at least one price drop.
With much tighter government rules on mortgage lending coming into effect next week, it seems like this will only accelerate. If so, the next 2-3 years are going to be very painful for a lot of Vancouver homeowners, especially recent buyers who took advantage of now-extinct 40-year amortizations and cash-back down payments.
Will be interesting now to see if this spreads to the rest of Canada, particularly Toronto.
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This thread reminds me of a scene from The Office:
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My problem getting on Tiger's case is that what huge sports star has had a flawless character? Michael Jordan? Lord no. Lebron James? No. Kobe Bryant? No. Peyton Manning? No. Etc... Etc...
Gretzky.
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What products do board members pay up for in order to have A better quality item and something that will last several years? Basically to save money in the long run.
I have gotten more comfortable paying up for blue jeans. A pair of Levi's normally last 18 months max. Mavi jeans cost 2x as much but so far has lasted 5x longer. They actually still look brand new. Guess I should send a thank you card to an ex girlfriend telling me to not be such a tight ass.
Things I've reluctantly learned to pay up for:
Clothes that fit properly. As an oddly-sized dude, this is often more of a time investment than a $ investment, but I will also happily spend more.
Home renovations. Our first couple of renos, I did all of the work myself, and selected materials largely on price. I wouldn't do that again in any place I planned to stay in for a long time.
Healthy food. This is mostly my wife's doing, but we now buy almost everything organic.
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Warren's letter to the newspapers:
http://dataomaha.com/documents/warren-buffetts-letter-to-publishers-and-editors
Man, he's a good writer.
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Wait... I want in with the "cool kids crew/world travelers"
Bujumbura, Burundi ----> Dallas, TX ----> Phoenix, AZ ----> About to relocate to London, Ontario for Business school
(Currently sitting in Amsterdam and beer really does taste better on the old continent)
I relocated from California to London, ON for b-school. Good luck at Ivey!
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Vancouver, BC
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I'm not sure if MS Paint gives you the option, but you can usually set the compression level when saving as JPG. If so set it higher or as others have said just save as BMP.
What I usually do when I want to create something simple like this is use MS Word (or even the free OpenOffice.org).
You can insert a photo, right click on it and under "wrap text" select "in front of text" or "behind text" then you can move it to any where you want on the page and you can resize it to any size you want. Next in the "Insert" menu click on "Shapes" then "text Box" You can then draw a text box anywhere on the page to put text into and reshape it or move it wherever you want. When you have it just right, right-click on it, hit format shape, then line style and set it to no line. This will make the box around the text invisible.
To me MS Word is easier to use and print from than MS Paint, but then again I don't think I've even opened up MS Paint to do anything since I was running Windows 3.11 for workgroups on my 25MHz 386. It is possible that Paint isn't as bad of a program now as I remember it to be.
RKB you are correct on that as I have used both Word and Excel for this need because they have different/additional options that can be used. Ive never used that wrap text in Word though but I like the idea and will have to try it.
I have used WORDART for different shapes of text and then copied them into my Paint file but the text comes out all.. how to describe??.. not crisp/clean or distorted after copied.
I cant remember how PAINT was back in the day (I too was on a 386 AND A 286! :o haha..)
but I did view see some youtube vids on PAINT functions recently and there are quite a few things that can be done which are not really evident to the casual user.
If you have PowerPoint installed on your PC, I'd suggest you use that instead. It's much easier to manipulate and combine text and graphics together in PowerPoint. That's basically what it was designed for.
I Worry About "The Shot Heard Around The World"
in General Discussion
Posted
I don't know... draw a straight line through that chart, and you actually get a "fair value" for the S&P 500 today around 1,000. (Assuming that you're modeling fair value by assuming a constant growth rate over the past ~140 years.) See attached.