merkhet

Well, good. Glad that's settled then.

I believe that you're bringing some transference from west's response on the other thread to this one. My response was a joke. Get over it. And if you think you're gaining knowledge on something as complicated as the difference between nurture vs. nature from a few opinion posts based on what largely seems to be anecdotal information... well, more power to you.

Why discuss anything? Are we about to crack investing? Making judgements under uncertainty* is one of the most important skills in life. If every time we can't know something for sure we just give up, we'll do worse, not better. Personally, I feel like I've made progress by discussing these things with others and learning about their hard-earned lessons. If you feel you haven't, maybe you should still avoid being snarky. Here's a couple good books on that: http://www.amazon.com/Judgment-Under-Uncertainty-Heuristics-Biases/dp/0521284147/ http://www.amazon.com/Rational-Choice-Uncertain-World-Psychology/dp/1412959039/ Dude. Calm down. Also, weren't you the one who posted something a few days ago about avoiding discussing the "controversial science" for studying established science? No parallels here?* *I sometimes confuse you for LC. Must be the way my brain stores information. Anyhow, I wasn't aware that cracking jokes was no longer allowed on this forum. Have people stopped having a sense of humor because there were a lot of people invested in oil? Jeez. Lighten up.

There has long been a debate between talent and hard work. I feel like if we debate it a little bit more on the Internet, we should have this question wrapped up in just a few more posts. The lack of a control group makes the question difficult to answer with any real confidence.

I think the preferred might be the better bet.

http://www.schumer.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/schumer-applauds-fhfa-director-mel-watt-for-ordering-the-capitalization-of-the-national-housing-trust-fund Well that's interesting...

Lynchpin seems to be the "control" issue for claim preclusion. Hard to tell which way that falls.

http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/fhfas-permanent-conservatorship-ignores-the-law-1071687-1.html And yes, I hold FNMAS

Many of the non-FNMAS have always traded at a significant discount to FNMAS, and FNMAS is at around $3.50 per preferred share. I don't know if anything of use can be gleaned from the price action the last few days -- I suspect there is some tax selling going on. Actually, most of the preferreds are down -- I believe my prefs were trading at around $4 a share on 10/1.

Partly because of confirmation bias?

So that's why I asked you when you bought into various companies You've owned Conn's for less than 9 months. How would you know if it's a value trap yet? It might be too soon on IBM too. What if it's an AutoZone or something?

Indeed. Unless you're an entrepreneur, working 80-90 hrs a week because that's what the firm expects is a horrible idea. I'm of the mindset no one can really be productive working that many hours, and (particularly in banking) most of it ends up being wasted hours showing your face at the office because that's what is expected. I'll support this. Working 90 hours a week at an I-bank is one year I'd like to get back. Thankfully I didn't work I-banking more than one year. That said, I (personally, this doesn't go for everyone) am better off having been inside the beast so I could 'lift the veil' of Wall Street and see that the rainmakers, etc. inside the industry are just hard working people and not inherently smarter or better than anyone else. Though, they are willing to work longer hours than most. Same here but as a lawyer. I had the exact same veil lifting experience as BTShine. I'd point something out though. Even with the things I regret, I usually ended up learning something useful from the experience.

How long have you been in CONN & IBM?

There are many different ways to do a spinoff, and the new entities will need capitalization as well.

I'm going to add a few thoughts to what I posted yesterday. I was alerted to two interesting articles in the Journal yesterday. I'll quote the parts I find relevant. http://www.wsj.com/articles/fannie-freddie-to-begin-payments-to-affordable-housing-funds-1418316369 http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-fannie-mae-payday-1418344017 Now let's go to the source material. http://www.fhfa.gov/Media/PublicAffairs/Documents/FNM_HTFCMF12112014.pdf In the letter, Watt notes that the FHFA can suspend allocations "upon a finding by the Director that such allocations (1) are contributing, or would contribute, to the financial instability of Fannie Mae; (2) are causing, or would cause, Fannie Mae to be classified as undercapitalized; or (3) are preventing, or would prevent, Fannie Mae from successfully completing a capital restoration plan; 12 USC 4567(b)." He further states that this allocation will not contribute to the financial instability of Fannie Mae, because they have "suspended capital classifications for Fannie Mae during conservatorship and entered into the SPSPA with the Department of the Treasury to maintain positive net worth and avoid receivership," and that "Fannie Mae is not attempting to complete a capital restoration plan." Now, I have a certain amount of disdain for politics, but I am beginning to have a greater appreciation for the strategery (sic) involved. It seems to me that the Administration is pushing Congress towards having a conversation about the fact that the GSEs are undercapitalized. Of course, the Administration's response would then be to tell Congress to pass a bill knowing full well that they won't pass something that the President would sign because it would likely strip out exactly the low-income housing financing provisions that Watt just enacted through his regulatory position as FHFA Chairman. This, naturally, leaves the President open to enacting something similar to the Millstein plan that I posted above this one, leaving the nominal GSEs in conservatorship while spinning off parts of the GSEs into private entities -- all while staying true to their word that they wouldn't take the GSEs out of conservatorship without legislative action of some sort. The Administration can then say, look, we're dealing with the undercapitalization by doing a recap and taking action on protecting taxpayers, but Congress must do its part to deal with the remaining GSEs. (Think immigration.)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/tracing-oil-price-plunge-back-to-texas-1418404579?mod=e2fb&mg=id-wsj Another narrative.

Interesting slide I came across today from November 2014. 2014-11_Possible_Restructuring_Method.pdf

Why do people think this isn't true? It actually is -- though I don't know where people got the idea that it's "illegal." By law, if your funds were raised under a private placement, you're not allowed to generally solicit, and talking about your fund returns in an interview would count as a general solicitation. It's not that it would be illegal. It's just that it would place his funds under increased regulation.

I was just about to post the same message.

^ true, or there was once biotic life on Titan.

^ Liberty beat me to it.

There are judges that watch over the discovery process.

It doesn't seem material to me either. However, it's clear to me that the government seems to be feeling some pressure. They can't stop production of discovery unless Sweeney gives them an all-clear. She's yelled at them before for dragging their feet, and they clearly want to stop discovery as soon as possible given that they're unwilling to wait a month. I wonder if they've run out of innocuous discovery documents to give the plaintiffs. (In fact, the plaintiff's sealed response to their motion w/ discovery exhibits indicates that the government has already begun to turn over less-than-innocuous documents.)

Agree that it should be blindingly obvious. I think the problem is that things that are blindingly obvious to some are not blindingly obvious to others. I mean, look at Costco -- they have a pretty good secret sauce in the whole "treat employees well" strategy, and yet no one copies them.

I liked this one, actually. I don't think that he'd disagree with #2. It's just about Kleig-light syndrome. People have an intense focus on their goals to the exclusion of other things. Customer-orientation (or in the case of Costco, employee-orientation) leads to increased shareholder value -- whereas SVM leads to short-termism that defeats its own purpose.