matjone

Has anyone bought or considered buying Best Buy? They are selling at under 10x earnings right now but I have been working too much to look into it.

I tried buying some FRFHF and it is saying that there is a possible $75 fee for the order. The customer support at tradeking said that this is because it is a foreign stock and isn't listed on the major exchanges in the u.s. (I live in the u.s.). He also said that there was no way for them to know if this fee would be charged or not. Does anyone know if I will have to pay this fee? Is there any way for me to buy some fairfax stock without paying it? I'd like to buy some but I'm not looking to buy enough to make it worthwhile with a $75 fee. Thanks

I got the 1962 edition of security analysis from the library and it went into pretty good detail about methods for valuing stocks. If I remember right they eventually came up with a standard equation for valuing going concerns that was based on a multiplier applied to estimated average earnings for the next 5-10 years or so. The formula took into account dividends, capital structure, and of course the expected growth rate.

Maybe the logical way to make this decision would be to take a look at your performance over the last decade or so and see how your picks have performed. Then if you made assumptions about 1. what percentage of your picks are losers, and what your average loss is, and 2.what percentage are winners, and what your average gain is, and 3. average amount of time it takes for market to correct to your valuation you can get a feel for what you can do on your own vs. what the owner/manager can do. I've also thought about this. I remember reading that Watsa said he thinks he can compound book value at 15%/yr. As long as the price/book multiple doesn't decrease, which most of you seem to think is pretty unlikely, then 10 yrs from now you can turn a dollar into four with fairfax. I've also wondered if Watsa is being modest or intentionally setting the bar low with his 15% assumption. After all he has done quite a bit better than that in the past, albeit on a smaller base. What do the more experienced board members think about this? If you had to bet, what number would you pick for fairfax's cagr over the next decade?

I was looking through the funds offered in my 401 k and I came across this fund. Up until now I've just held the s&p 500 index. RS have performed very well over the last 10 years and they say their approach is to look for undervalued companies. The other two that I was looking at were t rowe price mid cap value (TRMCX) and columbia acorn (ACRNX). Anyone have any knowledge of these funds/management teams that you'd like to share? Thanks,

My thinking was that the main advantage of the CFA program for a novice would be that it lays out a plan for your learning, as opposed to the meandering path that you tend to take trying to learn on your own. The disadvantage, from my inexpert perspective, is all of the unnecessary information that you have to weed through to get to the important stuff. Maybe the thing to do would be to get the books used on ebay and just skip over the parts about ethics and efficient market theory. The time commitment isn't as much of an issue for me because my work schedule only keeps me occupied about half of the year. I don't mind reading about this stuff for several hours a day and I actually kind of enjoy it. My only question is whether there might be more quicker and more efficient ways to learn.

This is how I feel. I got out of college in 2001 and for the first time had money to invest. I did a little reading on it on sites like msnmoney, cnnmoney, etc., and also talked to a broker at Edward Jones and I came up with my plan, and of course I spent 10 years buying and holding mutual funds and waiting for them to go up. After 10 years of pretty low returns I started to realize that maybe this wasn't the way to go, and I saw Warren Buffet say somewhere that if you wanted to learn how to invest you needed to read Ben Graham. Now I've read Ben Graham and while I feel like I've learned a lot about the basic attitude you need to have as an investor, I don't really have any idea how to value a company. This left me wondering where to turn next, and I thought the CFA program might be a good next step. Thanks for all your replies, and if anyone else has any other advice for me I'd love to hear it.

What study materials would you recommend for someone who is considering starting an investing program? I majored in engineering and have no training in investing other than reading a few editions of The Intelligent Investor and Security Analysis. I have considered getting the CFA materials and studying them but I am wondering if it will be worth the time spent. A lot of the material that I have browsed through seems to be concerned with theories and formulas that don't seem to have much practical use, scenarios to teach me ethics, alpha, beta, etc. I don't think any of this will help me make investment decisions. Any advice or suggestions you have would be appreciated. If anyone has completed the CFA program I would especially like to hear their thoughts. Thanks in advance for your help,