matjone

I had an account on stockscreen123 that I would use to screen for companies that had met specific profitability criteria. For example, I had one screen for companies that had earned at least 15 % on equity for 15 years. Then I'd go through them and read a little on the internet about them to see if it was anything I'd have a hope of understanding. Ss123 is worth checking out if you are into screening. You can make about any screen you can think of on there.

I keep money that I haven't found a place for yet in short term treasuries . I see that some people are worrying that u.s. debt might not be safe with all the financial problems the U.S. is having and with the debt ceiling issue. Is there any reason to be worried about this money? I don't think I am smart enough to figure it out, but maybe some of you are. My gut is telling me that the odds of them defaulting on this are slim to none.

Oh, i wasn't disagreeing that there are things that look cheap. I bought some Wmt this week. I have also thought about buying some of the tech stocks that you are probably talking about.

Examples, please. :)

Looking at it really quick it seems like the PE when you take out special items would be about 12.

The taxes you'd save by having them invest for you vs. paying you a dividend could make it a good idea, if they got someone who had investing skills, no? Over time this could make a big difference.

I don't understand how he can say inflation is going to 10 % and then say that the place to put your money now is cash.

If you think your stocks are worthless why don't you just give them to me?

It's funny because I was just going to post this same question and see what the board thought. I asked my accountant about it once and she said it was possible but extremely unlikely. I decided to add some to 401k and max out the roth every year, in case my tax bracket is higher when I retire. Can someone explain in layman's terms how the VAT would work?

Robert Shiller's excel spreadsheet has the s&p at 24X earnings. If that's not time to reduce your percentage in stocks I don't know what would be.

I'm assuming you already tried s&p's website. It always takes forever to find anything on there but they might have it. You could also do this on stockscreen123 if you had a subscription, and they have a free trial period so you could get out of paying.

I check shillers pe10 excel file from time to time. I think it was 24 last time I looked. I also look at what other value investors are doing and saying, and they mostly seem to think the market is pretty high right now. I am at 25% right now, but i really wonder if this makes any sense when you take inflation into account. The only thing I know for sure is that I'm not buying any long bonds.

If you are going to try to follow the graham 25%-75% stock/bond allocation policy for defensive investors (I think I am the only one on here who does this), you have to try to decide whether the market is over or undervalued. At what ranges of price to book value would you consider the s&p to be undervalued, fairly valued, and overvalued? Or would you even consider it a good valuation method? I was wondering about this while re-reading the essay buffett did on inflation where he explains his equity coupon idea, and I also remembered reading that buffet's valuation technique is to discount cash flows at a constant rate based on historical average bond returns, 7% if I remember right. If I understand the theory, then theoretically you could take these 2 numbers, along with the payout ratio, and come up with a fair price/book multiple for the s&p by discounting the dividends. I decided to try it and made up an excel spreadsheet to calculate the fair price to book value. At 100% payout the fair price/book ratio would be the same as what a 12% bond of equal safety would sell at which would be 12/7=1.7. At 2/3 payout it is 2.6. At 50% it is 6 and it gets ridiculous from there, jumping to 200 when you reduce the payout to 40%. Guess this will have to go down as another situation where theories and excel spreadsheets aren't going to take the judgment aspect out of it. If only ben graham could come back to write another edition of the intelligent investor, or at least the 1st part where he talks about current market levels.

Well I looked through all the brokers that were mentioned on here. Every one of them said that I would be charged an extra fee in the range of $50-$75 for trading foreign stocks, except for TD ameritrade. I am thinking about opening an account so that i can avoid the fee for foreign stocks. Anyone here have anything to say about ameritrade, good or bad? Thanks,

I was kind of surprised no one had ever mentioned them before. Is anyone a customer or investor?

Is there any way I can find out if Francis Chou has his own money invested in the fund, and if so, how much he has invested? Is this required to be filed? Has anyone seen it in anywhere? Thanks,

I think if you get into trying to repair your own appliances, cars or whatever you'll see that a lot of things are built to break. I was helping my brother in law replace a piece that held the strut on my sister's car last year, and it looked like it was made out of some material that was slightly stronger than paper mache. Where's the incentive to make something that lasts 100 years if you are trying to make money selling it?

Right now it is hard to figure out what to do if you are a defensive investor which is what I would consider myself. Buying anything longer than 10 yr bonds seems pretty dangerous when the yield is this low. On the other hand buying stocks when the 10 yr ttm pe is at 24, according to Shiller's website, doesn't seem too safe either. I do remember a part in one of the editions of the intelligent investor where graham says that in a low return environment you should still be fully invested and not to sit in cash earning no income waiting for opportunities. One question I have had and haven't had time to research - what is the longest term bond that you could have always bought without seeing it decline in price by more than say 5%-10%? Maybe I should just go 50-50 and forget it.

Does anyone still follow Ben Graham's advice for your stock/bond allocation? I do and I sometimes wonder what he would be recommending at today's stock market levels. What do you think? If you do follow the rule, what is your current allocation?

Thanks for clearing that up Parsad. What do you guys calculate for the current price to book, taking into account everything that has happened since the filing?

I have a couple of questions about fairfax, which are probably dumb ones but unfortunately that's the only kind I'm qualified to ask. What is the price to book ratio? From the statement on SEDAR I'm coming up with 7761.9M equity divided by 20.436M shrsout gives me $379.82 equity per share, and price is quoted at around $350-$360 on yahoo, which comes out to around 92% to 95% of book value depending on whether I use the price for the OTC or the TSX shares. The only reason I am doubting it is that morningstar has the price to book listed at 2.8 for the OTC shares which I am pretty sure is wrong. What is the difference between the OTC shares and the ones traded on the TSX? The price quote on yahoo for FFH.TO is $351.47, and the one for FRFHF.PK is $361.11. Is there any difference between the two other than how/where they are traded? The OTC shares have the same ownership claim with the same voting rights, correct?

Thanks for the offer on the book, SmallCap. I bought a small amount a few years ago when I was living in Louisiana. Didn't really do any research on them, just bought some of the smaller ones. One of the guys there was an old farmer who went in and bid on every thing that the courthouse had a record of the owners having a homestead exemption on. His reasoning was that this would increase his chances of getting paid. I did notice that the person in charge of the sale seemed to favor certain bigger money bidders who were obviously regulars there. What kind of research do you guys do on yours? For most of them it didn't seem like it would be worthwhile to do too much because a lot of them weren't more than a few thousand dollars if I remember right.

I got an information packet from Lee county in Iowa that stated their rate was 2% per month. The rate is not compounded monthly though, just simple interest. And that return is before any costs that you incur on research of course. Still a pretty good return.

Anyone on here ever invested in real estate tax liens? Where I live they pay 1.5% per month, which is pretty interesting for a small investor, especially with the current low stock and bond yields and possible high inflation coming in the next couple years. Just wondering if anyone has experience they can share about tax liens or can point me to some good study material. Most of the books I see about it remind me of infomercial get rich quick schemes.

Has anyone looked into this? Positive earnings every year last 10 years, averaged about 16% ROE last 10 yrs, no debt, and insiders own about 12% according to morningstar. Market cap is about 33M and net current assets are about 29M. TTM PE is only 7, but they had a temporary earnings spike due to sales of masks during the swine flu scare so income might be headed down.