augustabound

Good stuff Packer, thanks for the explanation. I think your example is what I couldn't get my head around. I've heard people say that per share earnings, cash flow etc increase with buy backs, "you get a bigger piece of the pie", but to me that was always just playing numbers games. Like I said in my post above as to why I liked the Trinity letter, he spelled out why he felt the buy backs were great for shareholders and it made sense. And I read the Costco letter, not much there.

Well I know the theory behind it, have read Buffett's view on it etc, I just can't get my head around why it's such a great deal for me as a shareholder. I'm by no means saying it's wrong, I just don't see it. Not knowing much about Teledyne, is it safe to say the share price followed his buybacks to the positive?

I like that line too. :) Buybacks are a grey area for me though. Most investors and management love buybacks but I don't always see why. I read that Charlie Munger loves Costco, does anyone read their letter?

I'll check that one out, thank you. Of course I left out in my O.P. LUK, Sequoia, Tweedy and Third Avenue. This past letter for T.A. I read Ian Lapey's letter for the first time and I though it wasn't bad considering he's in the shadow of a master. 8) I agree about his reasoning for the buybacks is important, but more importantly he spells it out number for number why he believes it to be a great deal for shareholders. Most management who announce buybacks vaguely state that their shares are trading at an attractive level and this would be a smart way to return money to shareholders, blah, blah, blah, heard it a thousand times....... I agree that buybacks need to be done below I.V. like mentioned above. I've read a couple of the Trinity letters today, before Notre Dame thumps Michigan State of course. ;) He's pretty candid on their goals and their failures and they're small enough that he welcomes phone calls and emails to him directly. My only question for those better at the financials that I am, what is the 12% that he refers? ROIC? I can't seem to find that number for the quarter he was talking about the buybacks.

I could have sworn we already had this topic going, but I can't seem to find it. I thought of this today after being led to Jeff Harp's letter, CEO of Trinity Bank, from The Frog's Kiss blog. http://www.frogskiss.com/2011/09/how-to-think-like-businessman.html There's a link in the post to Harp's letter and he seems candid and intelligent. Other than the usual's like Buffett, Watsa, Marks, Klarman (if you can get your hands on it), Dimon etc., who's letters are a can't miss? I found a post from Sanjeev on Vito Maida's letter, anyone else have a must read list?

I think they stopped that one a few years ago.

Yeah, pretty soon "seasonal" shopping will be year round.

I used to work for HBC and each building had a team of at least 2 people and in some of the larger ones I believe had 4 that spent new years eve 2000 in the stores/buildings with a contingency plan for "the end of the world". In hindsight, if the world ended, nobody gives a shat about a retailers computer systems. ::)

The distillery district in Toronto is also a cool place for lunch or a drink. The Royal Ontario Museum and Ontario Science Centre are also popular if you're into that. Smazz, I went to Hill Park and I'm a '92 grad. How close am I to your lady friend? 8)

I am born and raised in Hamilton. I grew up at East 14th and Queensdale, about 10 minutes from Limeridge Mall. :) I've done many drives/GO train trips and I know sometimes the 1 hour is if you're lucky. I would say that a Jays game would be worth it to a baseball fan, especially if a top team is in town. It's not just about the Skydome, that was state of the art until the day it opened, then it was seriously out of date. 8) Harbourfront is pretty nice, especially after dinner when the sun it going down. The Toronto PATH system is pretty cool, but you may very well get lost down there. And really, it's only underground shopping. Still kind of cool though, especially if you're a people watcher.

Yes, my wife can attest to sticking with the vegetarian option at Schwartz Deli. She had the chicken and regretted it for a couple of days. I had the Montreal smoked meat on rye and it was pretty good, but just know you'll be herded in like cattle and placed at a table with other people. Get the sandwich to go and sit in a park. ( If you're into smoked meat sandwiches). You can't beat Old Montreal for the atmosphere and old world charm. Rue Ste. Catherine is the modern trendy street and has loads of good restaurants too. My wife and I have done the double decker tour bus in Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver and loved it. It's a great way to see the city and get some insider info from the tour guide, as long as you don't mind looking like a tourist sitting on the double decker bus. 8) As for Toronto, Yorkville's a good suggestion,especially around the Toronto International Film Festival, but be prepared to spend more for dinner. Sassafrass is the trendy spot and during the festival, you may even spot some celebrities. You have to go up the CN tower if you haven't before. Bloor street and Yonge street are decent spots to walk and see other tourists................walking. ;D Hey Smazz, I'm also about an hour outside of T.O. where are you? I'm in Newmarket.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has that problem. I'll start a 10-K and "need" a break, so I'll start my cycle of website visits for the umpteenth time today. I've got a backup hard drive full of ebooks, reports and papers that I want to read, but the cyber pile just keeps adding up. I have books from 3-4 years ago that I downloaded and haven't opened the file since the download. I'm a procrastinator with everything though, always have been. If anyone else here has done the Kolbe testing, usually around the University years, I'm an information gatherer and my follow through is poor. Surprise, surprise. I've read some books and articles on procrastination, but it's all just the same motivational mumbo jumbo with the odd useless catch phrase thrown in. I'm sure that stahleyp is right though, it's all about passion. Thinking about it now as I write this, I think my biggest problem is common to most, information overload. I get as much info as I can about something and then just file it away. Then when I do go back I guess I just don't know where to start. I've been trying to purge myself from the useless shat but it takes time. I have to force myself to go and look at blogs I follow or forums I visit to see if I'm really getting anything out of it, or if I can actually add anything for others. Then, like everything else, I forget about it because........................I do it later. ::)

Right click on the back arrow on the top left. The last option is history. Which wouldn't be any faster. Still two clicks. :D For a "one touch history button" you can go to history (chrome://history/) and then add the page to your 'bookmarks bar'. :) Still 2 clicks, one for the bookmark menu and another for history. ;)

Hm. I was just frustrated with the slow speed in Chrome and I googled something like, "why is Chrome slow?" One of the hits was the Chrome forum where the suggestion was to disable that command. It worked for me. I didn't really find any suggestions that were helpful, this just happened to help me. A common problem in Firefox is an addon or extension slowing down the browser. Maybe try the same with Chrome, disable all addons or extension and bring them back on one at a time to see if one of them is the problem. I know for me with Firefox, I had to uninstall it then download the newest version rather than just updating the current one. A new, clean install worked wonders over an update. The speed was huge in comparison. Just remember to backup your bookmarks if you do it with either Firefox or Chrome.

Right click on the back arrow on the top left. The last option is history.

I found my problem. If you have "Predict network actions to improve page load performance" checked it can slow down your browser. I unchecked mine and have noticed a big improvement in speed.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who see's slower load times from some websites.

This is the only forum I've ever been a part of that doesn't have someone that I may potentially want to ignore. It's a great group here.

I'm in Newmarket and had friends feel it in Waterloo. They're paving our street so I may not even have noticed with all the big boy toys makin' noise. :)

Well, I'm full on Chrome now. I've got ad blocker plus on, like I had with firefox, but have noticed that Chrome bypasses splash pages. That's awesome. I used to have to click "Go directly to Morningstar" since they use a splash page for ads (of course with ad block all I had was a blank page). Now it goes right to the home page for MS. I switched to Chrome because I was having a problem with FF hanging on me and not responding for about 30 seconds. Even after disabling all the extension and addons, it still happened. I uninstalled FF, downloaded and re-installed FF version 6. I have to say it's pretty fast. I didn't realize the UI was a bit different with a new, clean install. When I updated to version 6, it was identical to V5, but the new install is different. Might be different enough for me to use FF full time again.

Love the new look, nice and clean still. :) Smiley's look better on the new board too.

Congratulations Tariq!

Tried clicking a couple of links in my bookmark folder and got an error message from Rogers saying the website doesn't exist anymore. Anyone know why? Come to think of it, I think Tariq is a board member here. Just hope everything is OK.

Good stuff, I didn't know that. I've dragged and dropped tabs into a new window by accident, but I may just need to play around with Chrome some more.

That is fantastic. Isn't it? Hard to go back. It will be now that Smazz mentioned using a folder under the address bar as my favourites instead of the drop down that Firefox has in the address bar, I may not go back. We'll see how Firefox 6 goes tomorrow.