matjone

I see they went from 40% to 63% ownership. But nothing comes up when I search for them on the TSE website.

Was anyone else invested in Tomen Electronics, 7558? Toyota Tsusho tendered for all their remaining shares at 1650 (http://www.toyota-tsusho.com/english/press/detail/140822_002679.html) last year, but IB never said a word about it and they still list it as a position for me. From what I can tell the tender went through because now I can't find it quoted anywhere.

My accounting knowledge is at the 101 level so this is probably a dumb question, but why shouldn't there be a corresponding liability against a deposit if the work good/service hasn't been delivered? Isn't that a pretty basic rule?

Scott, let me steer the discussion to investing. Can you talk about your philosophy or technique, how it came about and how it evolved, how you have performed, and any other points you'd like to discuss regarding investing?

Yeah hopefully they all go to zero after pulling nonsense like that. Is there some reason why they allow those squeeze outs?

A while back someone posted a site that tracked the performance of the investment ideas on this site. I've been looking around for it and can't find it. Can anyone point me to it? TIA

Thus far I have made all investment decisions with tarot cards and have done poorly. If I understand your post from the other day, these cards are a sham and I need to switch to regular playing cards. Please expound on this. Do I leave the jokers in? Does my horoscope have any influence?

The low p/b low debt/capital strategy was the best performing strategy in that tweedy browne paper if I remember right. However, in one of his recent articles Norman Rothery mentioned a study that showed that low p/b stocks only outperformed the market by 1% over a really long time span. Ben Graham wrote an essay on this question of low p/b vs. high ROE companies. His conclusion was for an investor to focus his attention on the middle ground of stocks with decent earnings histories and prospects and reasonable p/b ratios. I'm sure most of you have read this essay but it is in the Intelligent Investor edition written in the early 70's. Also in that edition in the section on comparisons of companies he would generally favor I was running through a total return calculator a few months ago. Unsurprisingly one did well holding businesses w/ high returns on equity over long periods, such as brown forman. But the interesting thing to me is that a basket of

DTE that is insane. I was paying 420/yr to Erie to insure my truck till I got rid of it. Considering the level in poverty in Detroit I wonder how many people are driving uninsured. Any idea what caused it to be so high? Is it just high if you get full coverage to pay claims for theft? Or maybe uninsured/underinsured coverage is high since no one can afford insurance?

I'll make an alternative suggestion to look into Graham's defensive investor strategy. I've not seen as much performance data as I'd like, but here is a little bit: http://www.forbes.com/sites/investor/2012/12/18/ben-grahams-60-year-old-strategy-still-winning-big/ . My trouble with this type of investing is I think you are making a pretty vague case for your investments and you could get shaken out of them. During a crash a vague sense of what the world will look like in 2045 is not going to keep me calm, but a strong balance sheet and a good history of profitability along with a low valuation will. If one of these got cheap enough it would be different, but everyone knows these are great companies so that almost never happens. Also, I think that if you went back 30 or 40 years and got the answers to this question you'd find a lot of the companies aren't doing that well anymore. Of course we think we'll pick better than they did. Anyway, I don't really know what I'm talking about here, but I'll go ahead and weigh in (I've considered making that my signature) railroads adm McDonald's Diageo dr. pepper fedex Coca-Cola clorox nestle google Fair Isaac Procter & Gamble ups Brown-Forman Hershey WD-40 Equifax starbucks Colgate-Palmolive mondelez anheuser Ebay water companies

If you are a man then don't get married. I'm sure you've heard them before, but if you want I can tell you some horror stories to illustrate why. Losing half your assets isn't even the half of it.

Thanks, this device looks neat. I like the fact that it's not made for browsing. Reading on a computer with internet access really tests my willpower. I'll wait until they are out for a while, that way I can wait for the reviews to come in and talk to people about them and maybe try them out, and the price will probably come down too.

When you guys say following do you mean with a reader or something? Just asking cause I tried to do that once and couldn't figure out how.

Obviously that type of dedication to a field will have costs and is not right for most people. If you are an Einstein or Bach then maybe it's worth it to devote everything to one thing and to hell with the rest. The rest of us could devote everything to one thing and probably be in the 95th percentile. In other words an also-ran. Not worth it. Also, there are many other examples of people doing better than Buffett %wise with smaller money and less effort. I saw somewhere that someone had calculated the returns from Buffett's stock portfolio at berkshire and it was about 14%. From what I can tell Walter Schloss probably substantially outperformed Buffett percentage wise after Buffett got really big, and he only was in the office about 35 hrs a week. Of course he was running less money but you probably are too.

yeah, that's why I use IB for the IRA, but it has access to fewer markets than fidelity

Kraven, is there a particular area you are looking at in o&g? Offshore drillers, E&P, pipelines, or maybe something else?

rpadebet - can you provide a link to an explanation of what you are talking about wrt ctcm?

it would be nice if people put as much effort into learning to write more efficiently. Half of the fight in reading is compensating for bad writing. Sometimes it is intentionally misleading in this field so that makes it twice as tough.

here is another one related to what you are saying, rkba http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/17/texas-wants-to-execute-man-who-killed-ho

\ this is my thinking. I work in O&G at a service co. which dominates its field in the gulf. If it comes down enough I'll buy it in my 401k.

Thanks. Apparently the market is expecting it to go and is not expecting the offer to be raised. If what value edge says is true then selling seems to be the move here. Especially since it is such a !@#$ business.

what is the offer amount

Hey guys, where are you seeing anything about a tender for Co Cos? I had not heard about this until I saw it here. Thanks

here you go BuffettPartnershipLetters_1_2.pdf

Thanks for posting. I added your blog to my feedly.