S2S

??? It's no different than Buffett/Berkowitz/Tilson/(insert name of your favorite money manager here) publicly disclosing the investment theses of their holdings, be it in short form (media interviews) or in some details (presentations in investing conferences or the oft-leaked letters) either.

My (admittedly shallow) understanding of Pabrai's investing style is that he doesn't care much for cigarbutts. In his fund he often loads up on natural resource producers and other more cyclical stocks. There are many ways to skin a cat; Pabrai's way is different than Graham's net-net investing, hence the disagreement.

I agree. Deloitte Touche was Longtop Financial Technologies' auditors, yet at the end of the investors were still left holding the bag (see article http://nyti.ms/jVFDuO). I find it hard to believe the difficulty these "namebrand" auditors have can merely be attributed to information being lost in translation.

Some incredible stuff going on here. If you ever wonder pension fund managers get a bad rap, look no further. ::) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303848104576383973388441728.html

ORLY? TariqAli's post represents bullying behavior now? If a place exists where it is okay to spread blatant misinformation (that, in one way or another, all links back to the poster's long position in LVLT) yet calling out such nefarious action is not okay, I would question my own decision to stick around and contribute.

Skype HAS a group video calling feature; just that it is currently a premium service (for now anyway) at $8.99/month. Google, though, came up with a rather ingenious way to do video conference: the software automatically detects who is speaking and focus on that person's video stream.

^ Agreed, for the most part. However Fairholme's numbers this year (and likely the next) will NOT look pretty; and the fund outflow and subsequently forced selling or missed opportunities won't help. I agree http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Big-Bragging-Rights-For-indie-509845471.html?x=0&.v=1 Another thing (which might or might not be reflected in The Journal's calculation) about Ken Heebner is he changes his mind on stocks too often ;D and thus the fund consistently records very high turnover ratio (annual turnover currently sits at 363%). More often than not, the style leaves taxable accounts with outrageously high CGT bills.

^ Feel free to claim the same "high road" as many times as you like, but please be aware of the neat little feature that allows us to see your earlier posts on this subject. It's cool to decry others for "immediately jumping the Block's MW bandwagon" - all of us have thick enough skin to take some criticism, no matter how unfounded. But if your "homework" is solely done through (a) superficially comparing the reputation of Carson Block and the various sell-side analysts, who by the way have mostly withdrew their opinions, (b) even more superficially, suggesting a similarity in outcomes between the Sino-Forest and the Fairfax situations, I'd suggest you do some more homework.

It's not just you. A number of CEOs (Chesapeake's Aubrey McClendon and Quicksilver Resources' Glenn Darden) and sell side analysts have issued rebuttals/responses. More importantly, futures prices far out on the curve have barely budged since the article came out - Mr. Market has spoken, as some would say. The CHK letter: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150305143547565 The Darden letter (highly amusing, worth a read even if you don't follow energy): http://blogs.star-telegram.com/files/dardenletter.pdf

^ I understand there is history between John Hempton and Fairfax, as well as the emotional rollercoaster many boardmembers experienced back in those days. That being said, automatically going long in investments shorted by the parties named in the legal proceedings (Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital, David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital, Dan Loeb's Third Point, or even The Devil himself, he-who-must-not-be-named's SAC Capital) would have proven a disastrous (if not historically so) investment strategy over the years! ;D

John at Bronte Capital hit another one out of the park - definitely one of the more level headed take I've seen on the situation. Thanks for the link.

That's not what I said. XBOX is quite good, but SONY also dropped the ball somewhat in the same period, so the comparison between XBOX and Playstation isn't the same as Google Search and Bing, because Google isn't going the way of Sony right now. When your competitors shoot themselves in the foot, that has to be taken into account in the calculations... 20/20 hindsight and all, not many people were calling out Sony for "dropping the ball" or "shooting themselves in the foot" until the first details of the personal information leak surfaced a month or two ago... And XBox's market share gain had started years prior. By the time the hacking scandal occurred, XBox 360 already outsold PS3 in the US by almost 50%. As for the Q on a Microsoft's buy-and-build success over the last 10 years... Microsoft Dynamics. Or you can just take a glance over the Short Salesforce thread Sanjeev started a few weeks ago.

But the writer is not a bulge bracket analyst! Kidding aside, this weekend's Barron's did a nice piece on how amid the epidemic fraud that is Chinese RTOs, even the shorts (the oft-demonized profiteers who do all the hard work) can lose out as trading gets halted. http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111904113704576383892664177456.html?mod=BOL_hps_mag TRE wasn't included as the situation is still unfolding before our eyes, but it's an impressive laundry list (table copied and pasted below). As always, remember to read the small print, or you'll miss the punchline. ;) http://i53.tinypic.com/2najk1t.jpg

Dell might have "paid up" for Perot Systems, but Hewlett's own 3PAR acquisition mere months later made it look like a value buy. ;D My biggest concern with HPQ is that whenever I see how much effort the company put into building out its Service businesses and yet how much more ground it still needs to gain to effectively compete IBM and ORCL, I can't help but wonder when management will cave in and go after SAP.

Ben, you said it better than I could. Thanks,

Again you're grabbing at straws. If access to management is so great, then why numerous publishing investors (Peter Lynch, Seth Klarman just off the top of my head) attributed this very factor (sell-side analysts' keeping good terms with management teams in exchange for access and investment banking deal flows) as the one reason why they don't trust Street reports? Many forum members are familiar with this interview: http://www.valuewalk.com/videos-with-text-summary/bruce-greenwald-david-winters-tom-russo-and-bob-olstein-on-bloomberg-tv-part-iii-of-iii/ At [6:40] Bruce Olstein dropped the bomb that he intentionally avoids talking to management. Does that make him an amateur? And even the manager who favors the method, Tom Russo, expressed some not insignificant caveats in applying it to emerging markets companies, at [5:35] And since when are Dundee and RBC "bulge bracket"?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-13/berkowitz-leads-top-stock-pickers-hitting-bottom-as-growth-slows.html Wow. My takeaway, I suppose, is two-fold: (1) extreme concentration will come back to bite you no matter how smart you (think) you are and (2) now might be a good time to buy financials. Cheers! ;D

Funny - you're not the first to jump on Hester for that. I guess when attacking the messenger doesn't do it, attacking opposing board members is the natural next step.

a piece on TRE is also on the TOP NEWS page on Bloomberg terminals... People are out for blood on either Sino or MW Latest update: Sino office temporarily closed: http://is.gd/ggN2Rw

I suppose it's a lot easier to "outsource" the research process than doing it yourself.

given2invest, I think at this point we just have to agree on the power of confirmation bias. We talked, talked, and talked some more (to be fair my humble contribution, mostly reply #21 and #43, does not stand up to yours), yet few listened. Perhaps the fault lies with me.. "what we've got here is (a) failure to communicate" Back to topic, I saw a few members citing sell-side analysts' (thus far) support of TRE. Let's not talk about how such argument sets a double standard - investors, here and everywhere, love to make fun of analysts' when they happen to hold differing opinions. Well, I happen to have decent access to sell-side research, and here are the latest updates from two leading of the biggest shops: http://tinypic.com/r/sz7d5l/7 http://tinypic.com/r/10ne4om/7 People can talk all they want about Carson Block's "ill intention" (again, as you have pointed out, there is financial motives to every stock report), but what about the substance of MW research? I too work in the industry (though likely not nearly as long as you have), and I would have to admit that from the look of things, MW put in significantly more work than 95% of what passes for equity research at institutions, on both buy and sell-side. Last but not least, scorpioncapital's post below is worth quoting. There is certainly money to be made here for traders, but if one is to buy and hold TRE at this point, caveat emptor

I didn't know Sheryl Sandberg is David Einhorn's cousin. Dang.

Both liquidity and price ;) haven't been quite what they used to be since it moved to trading on pink sheets. http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.aspx?PT=7&compsyms=&D4=1&DD=1&D5=0&DCS=2&MA0=0&MA1=0&CF=0&D7=&D6=&showtablbt=View+price+history+with+dividends%2Fsplits&nocookie=1&SZ=0&symbol=US%3aCCME

If I were long TRE (which again I hold no stake of, either long or short), I'd be very concerned that all of the support thus far has come via attacking the messenger, instead of actually tackling the allegations MW brought up.

To add to what given2invest has already said, while I understand the obvious connection some have made to the roller-coaster that was Fairfax vs. the shorts, viewing Chinese RTOs under the same lens you used for a reputable local company (Fairfax) is a dangerous, dangerous idea.