Ross812

I thought 'Looper' was the best film I've seen so far. Batman was pretty good but kind of drawn out. I haven't seen Argo, or Les Miserables yet. Also if you are looking for something to watch with your significant other I thought 'Safety Not Guaranteed' was a really good light hearted film.

I choose to buy individual companies. Bidvest has operations in South Africa, Chile, Europe, and China. Look for good foreign operators who can grow they're business in rapidly expanding economies.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/intercontinentalexchange-buy-nyse-8-2b-134719377.html Lets see if regulators let it happen this time.

I believe this is the same fund aggregated by mffais: http://mffais.com/stock-owner/harris-associates-investment-trust---oakmark-select.html

I'm at about 10% right now. I usually buy in steps and dollar cost average in every time it goes down 10%. I start with 2.5% -> 5% -> 10% -> 20% (I hope not with Intel, at $18.30 its going to get really nerve wrecking!)

I bought three times as much Fairfax as I wanted at $346 and then $340 becoming a first time Fairfax shareholder. I have since sold the extra 2/3 of my position because I'm not ready to leave that much money in Fairfax when Intel and Chesapeake preferred are going back on sale! My experience with FFH has been phenomenal thus far; no wonder this board is named for them ;).

Compared to 30 June 2012: BAC - Bank of America Corp. 7,502,000 7,502,000 0% C - Citigroup Inc. 1,807,510 1,807,000 ~0% GS - Goldman Sachs Group 506,130 198,863 -61% GM - General Motors 2,237,000 2,283,650 +2% CHK - Chesapeake Energy 1,005,000 2,983,817 +196% ZINC - Horsehead Holding Corp. 1,840,100 1,840,100 0%

Precious metals is a game of the greater fool. You buy a pretty piece of metal and hope someone else will give you more fiat currency for it later... Rather than buying a pretty piece of metal and hoping to convince someone later that it is even prettier and worth far more than you paid, you could own assets that are essential for day to day life. Railroads, real estate, high tech commodities, water, and land are going to be much more valuable than silver if the fiat currency unravels. If it makes you sleep better at night to have a truckload of silver bars in the basement, have at it. If the fiat currency goes up in smoke, what is silver worth? If I am the bank that owns your house I think your mortgage is now... 16 ounces of silver a month... The whole premise of precious metals is flawed. Any future money supply will have to have an electronic form. Banks are not going to send trucks of silver back and forth to pay debts. The prospect of a commodity currency is further from reality now than anytime in human history. If controlled inflation comes about in the next 10 years, silver will be worth whatever someone who thinks the inflation will continue for another 10 years is willing to pay for it. If precious metals revert to the mean, like they always have, you lose your entire investment. If the fiat currency implodes you have no idea what your silver is worth. I would expect gasoline, natural gas, and water will be far more valuable than a bar of shiny metal…

Fortress reminds me too much of another company I invested in, Imperial Sugar. I bought it for $8 after they received $14 in cash a share from an insurance settlement after a plant explosion. They ended up paying roughly $3/share in damages. They had $11/share in cash plus a second productive sugar mill, all of their corporate headquarters in Sugar Land (suburb of Houston) Texas, and 50% ownership in a natural sweeteners company growing at 30% (heard of steviacane/truia) . I watched them burn all that cash rebuilding the destroyed plant only to discover there was not a profitable market for refined sugar. I watched a 40 cent dollar destroyed by poor management and legacy pension obligations (about $3 a share I had not accounted for, always watch for an underfunded pension!). Louis Dreyfus just bought them for $6.35 a share ($210 million). 210 million for what is now 40 million worth of the Steviacane company now growing at 20%, a new 250 million state of the art sugar refinery, a second fully depreciated refinery on the books for 90 million, a 25 million dollar JV with Cargril, and 15 million of corporate HQ (397 million total). Shareholders were happy for the offer when IPSU hit $3 a share. You can do everything right, and get screwed by poor management. You may think you are holding a 50 cent dollar only to discover a private bid is only going to be for 50 cents on the dollar. I would only touch another one of these situations if you showed me a 25 cent dollar, and I would really have to think about it.

I've owned some PRIS.B for two years. It's not exclusive to commodities... 6% position now worth ~1%

Intel's strength is in a four year process lead over the competition. Their moat is just as strong as Microsoft's on the enterprise segment because full windows runs only on x86. Now we are seeing declining pc sales because of mobile. The casual user no longer needs a pc. The server market is still growing for them. Windows 8 is Intel's first real foray into tablets and the jury is out on how that will go. I addition to they are two years from having their own flagship cpu's in mobile phones if their current ticktock program progresses at the same rate it has the past seven years.

I really want Brown Foreman to come down to a reasonable P/E...

Agreed. I can't get my girlfriend to update her SGS2 to ICS because she likes it the way it is. I think most people like a phone that will just work. If you really want the latest and greatest, root your phone and install any number of custom roms. I think most of the complaining about fragmentation is coming from bloggers and sudo developers who use/make custom roms and can't enable new flavors of android without phone drivers spoon fed to them by the phone manufacturers. The technically inclined may cry the loudest, but I have never seen a facebook status from someone complaining their phone is not getting the latest google update.

3.15% expense ratio!

Individuals who used their homes as ATM machines got us into this recession in the first place.

I would have gladly paid much more than $10 for a membership. Thank you for all your hard work Parsad and I'm sorry spam has become such an inconvenience. This board has been invaluable to me and has helped me learn a lot about wealth management. I am looking forward to meeting many of the board members in person at a future Fairfax shareholders meeting pre-dinner.

I really like IB, though I don't pay for any of their services aside from commissions. I pay $10/month or commissions which ever is higher; I make 2-3 trades a month. Commissions are usually a $1 for common stock a 70 cents for an options contract. Quotes are something like $10 a month and I honestly don't need them. Investors were around and made money a long time before level II quotes updated every tenth of a second where available at all times.

Bidvest - 23% CHKDG.pk - 11% BAC (common, warrant, options) - 18% INTC - 5% JEF - 3% LUK - 5% ALS.TO - 8% POW.TO - 4% PBG.TO - 3% MCD - 2% UPS - 2% RLI - 2% Cash committed to Secured Puts - 7% (no margin) Cash - 8% I'm building INTC right now selling cash secured puts. I will be ~10% in Intel by Monday.

Groupon doesn't have a moat but what did people think of Priceline's moat in 2001 or even Amazon's moat? At what price does Groupon become a "value" or can it never have any value if it doesn't have a moat? Wouldn't that eliminate all newer Internet stocks that may build a moat when value investors aren't looking? Without a moat it is impossible to predict the future cash flow the company will produce. Will Groupon build a moat and become the next Priceline? It could, but that is speculation. What is it worth? I have no idea. It has a 3B market cap right now. How much would Google or another competitor have to spend displace Groupon? I'd bet much less than 3B.

The highest margin of safety I've found in the past year was on bac preferred l shares which where selling in the 600s last September. At the time their yield was 11% which meant they could be bought on margin and the dividend played the borrowing costs. Chk recently had a similar situation with chkdg which i still believe is undervalued. There are still undervalued companies out there but you have to have a catalyst to realize a good return.

I tend to agree with that because I learned the hard way. I still remember vividly having a limit order on MA at $224 a long time ago. That day it got down to $225...but not $224. It basically never came back. I still could have bought it all up through the $200's but my anchoring bias to that price, using a limit order, and only buying stocks on the way down kept me from doing so. Im not suggesting to chase prices, but that was obviously a huge mistake and I've tried my best to remember and learn from that. "I'd rather be roughly right than precisely wrong" -Charlie Munger Bac's fundamentals are improving, but the market is not going to reward shareholders until bac shows its earnings power. I agree that bac could run away from me and I may never get my price of 7.5 but I don't see a lot of positive catalysis in the near future that could cause a further run except for further extension of this overvalued market rally. I am still very heavy on bac with warrants a leaps and a big move up will still benefit me very much. The market is hard to time, but it is almost certain their is going to be a pullback given the negative macro environment. Cash is king and in this environment; I like to have enough to take advantage of fat pitches that come along. Bac is a large cap fat pitch, but by no means is it the only fat pitch out there. Chk, olympus, and pbkef have all far out performed bac in my portfolio this year.

I think BAC at $8 is cheap, but I think it will trade down with the market. I think the chances of this rally continuing for another 3 months with the Eurozone Central Bank resuming debt crisis talks this week and the fiscal cliff resolution relying on a lame duck congress is less than 50%. I still own all of my BAC warrants but selling Sept. calls on the common for .50 today made some sense to me with the S&P at a four year high and the previously mentioned negative catalysts.

The market has been rallying since the beginning of June and I have been selling on the way up. I've found myself trimming core positions (Bidvest) and selling completely out of Google, Olympus and Petrobakken. I sold ITM options on BAC common 8's and JEF 14's today. I'm 30% cash right now with and could get up to >45% cash if the options expire ITM. I have a short list of companies to buy at the right price. UPS, RLI, MCD, BAC at $7.50, JEF at $12, GOOG back under $600... The only thing I still think is cheap right now is CHKDG.PK and DHR on a historical P/E basis. I'm waiting for Mr. Market to realize he is still upset about Europe before I get back put too much back in.

I use series I bonds at treasury direct as a savings account. If you move in slowly, you have a steady stream of maturing I bonds that can be rolled over if/when interest rates increase. I've got the majority of my "cash" savings earning .5-1.5% + Inflation (currently 2.2%). The high yield checking seems like a lot of work if you do not currently use a debit card and the 25k cap may not work for some people...

I use this board as my indicator. Whenever the gentleman with the handle munger posts, I know its time to start buying. I can ignore what all the professionals are doing! I haven't seen a munger post in a while...