Evolveus

Here is East Coast's Q3 letter. I have always enjoyed Begg's writing style and his ability to draw investment insight from seemingly unrelated areas. http://moneyinstereo.blogspot.com/2012/10/east-coast-asset-management-q3-letter.html

If that first link doesn't work then this one does: http://www.valueinvestingworld.com/2012/10/warren-buffett-on-cnbc.html Blogger is giving me fits

http://moneyinstereo.blogspot.com/2012/10/warren-buffett-on-cnbc.html two things about CNBC - I wish they didn't break the interview into so many parts and secondly, use a format so people can watch on an iPhone (or Apple should buy Adobe). Enjoy

Interestingly Fleckenstein sits on the board of Harris Kupperman's Mongolia Growth Group.

Wealthtrack continues to deliver good value guests Link: http://moneyinstereo.blogspot.com/2012/10/steve-romick-of-fpa-on-wealthtrack_19.html?m=0

I have only seen the Eron one so far, which i thought was very good, but some of these others may be worth a spin as well. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-14/top-15-economic-truth-documentaries

Thanks for posting. Gotta love the 'swimming with the sharks' intro animation :) Yeah - wealth track animations are so bad they are good!

Here is the web version: http://moneyinstereo.blogspot.com/2012/10/bruce-berkowitz-on-wealthtrack_12.html

Did you get any oversubscribed shares at all? I sure did...1 share. Needless to say, that was a bummer.

Never mind - the over subscribed distributable rights were prorated based on number of hares owned and number of folks over subscribing which was apparently a lot according to Fidelity.

Just got my shares today thru fidelity. I don't see my over subscription shares though. Anyone else have this issue?

Interview with Romick over at gurufocus. He doesn't sound terribly stoked about their HPQ purchase, understandably. This interview took place before the 13% drop follow HPQ's investor day. I am curious if FPA would chalk HPQ up to a loss and cut the position, ie, do they feel the story has fundamentally changed or the company permanently impaired in the competitive environment going forward. http://moneyinstereo.blogspot.com/2012/10/steven-romick-of-fpa-interview-via.html

Today is cutoff day for voter reg for 17 states: AZ, AR, CO, D.C., FL, GA, IL, IN, KY, LA, MI, MT, NM, OH, PA, TX, UT https://register.rockthevote.com

In regards to coke consumption, I definitely hear you on the obesity issue. A 2010 study by the CDC showed that 35% of American adults are obese and 17% of children. Its a daunting problem with no immediate solution, and it impacts society on numerous levels. Even though that is clearly the case, I don't foresee is a big decrease in coke consumption. It's like Munger's example of the frog that stays in the pot until its death when the temperature slowly increased until it was boiling and too late. It's such a slow acting agent and second order negative effects aren't noticeable for years, so I can't see what impetus people would have to immediately curtail coke consumption. I remember taking a pass many years ago on the Philip Morris spin off & Altria when considering how smoking was on the decline in the US because of the gravitation towards healthier living. Boy was I wrong - those co's still print money. But that being said, I'm not personally aware of the capex involved in Coke distribution, as I'd prefer the pure play syrup maker. More color on their positions would be an interesting read. I'm not plugging these guys - I just found the interview interesting and they have some pretty cool articles on their website. I realize the record is much to short to judge, and as Rimm_never_sleeps said, starting a fund at the bottom, you would expect higher results maybe similar to Oceanstone.

These fellows are pretty young, but its a good interview (as usual with MOI). They seem to be pretty focused on process, and there were more than a handful of Munger-esque responses from the two of them. I also like their extreme concentration (for a mutual fund), and a their value orient. http://moneyinstereo.blogspot.com/2012/10/cook-bynum-another-young-fund-doing-all.html they seemed like the opposite of these guys from earlier http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/look-out-klarman!-watch-your-back-dalio!/

The most recent Graham and Doddsville Fall Newsletter with Joel Greenblatt, Royce Associates and Jim Tisch http://moneyinstereo.blogspot.com/2012/10/graham-and-doddsville-fall-newsletter.html

I've always liked Zell's interviews as he typically pulls no punches. He's got the 20,000ft view of the economy, which also makes his outlook intriguing. (Un)fortunately there is a good bit of talk that involves politics, but how could it not considering that government decisions, or a lack thereof, play such a big part in the US economic outlook. I'm posting the zerohedge link with all 3 clips on one page. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-02/sam-zell-class-warfare-crap-qe3-unreality-and-why-everything-mispriced-due-fed

This is not related to EMH, but in 2009 around the bottom of the market and peak pessimism, I remember Klarman being quoted as saying "It's a great time to be a Value Investor, the competition seems to have gone away."

let me know what you think. I thought it would be fully valued + that the run up is do to the shorts scrambling to buy stock that is in short supply (am assuming if they are short SHLD then they are also short securities that are spun off i.e SHOS) I still don t see rights in my account. I use TD Waterhouse. Any SHLD holders here receive SHOS into their accounts? I'm wih Fidelity and I got my SHOS rights today.

I purposely left out comments about valuation, as I am really curious about the mechanics and scenarios of when/if value investors would use a trailing stop loss. That's also why I put a fictitious ticker symbol. In this case, I was looking at my estimate of fair value around $22-24 and the stock got there a lot quicker than I thought. In light of that, I wanted to lock in my gain as it approached my estimate of IV while still giving it room to run if that were to happen, as many times the market can overshoot in either direction. 'Cutting losses before they become big losses' is something that is hard for me to wrap my head around. It is impossible to know which way a stock will go in the short term. I never start with a stop loss order, bc as Eriksen mentioned above, if I can buy something cheaper with a margin of safety, then I would welcome the opportunity. Immediately putting a stop loss under a new position seems more like locking in a loss than letting the market be a weighing machine. The book "HF Market Wizards" definitely has a trading slant to it, which is not my bag, although it did have several interesting chapters/interviews with value folks like Kevin Daly and Joel Greenblatt. Slightly different version of the question: if a stock hits your estimate of IV, does anyone use trailing stops to capture any unforeseen upside (even if irrational) and put a floor on the downside to existing gains?

I was curious if folks here on the board use trailing stop losses, and if so, how do you decide how tight to put them. Selling is clearly very difficult, and I found that the trailing stop loss can be helpful in that regard. I wish I would have known how to use them when in '06 I sold my AAPL @ $85.00. I have toyed with different setups and I'll use my most recent experience as an example. I would be curious to hear from others if I am am thinking about this correctly. Ticker: £¢§ profit: +56% I wanted to lock in my gain because the price had run a good bit in a short amount of time. I have only owned the stock about 9 months. The stock has been pretty volatile, with regular moves of 1.5-3%. My thinking was that I'll set the trailing stop loss at 6% under BID. First, I'd lock in a 50% profit (barring a major gap down overnight) and secondly under BID as opposed to ASK since the BID price is the lowest of the two. Since then, the stock is up another 11% and the trailing stop loss has moved up accordingly. In this case, it seems to have worked nicely, but I was curious of other risks that may be inherent with using such a strategy. I know I've been stopped out of things that I didn't want to be out of, and I think that may have been a function of having the trailer too close to the stock price. My most recent investment read was "Hedge Fund Market Wizards" by Jack Schweger and a recurring theme in the book is to cut losers before they become big losses. The book does have a lot about trading, and that's not in my DNA, but I have had small losses become big losses before bc I sat idly simply thinking, 'it's ok, because I'm a long term investor.' I am seeking to remain truly long term oriented while locking in profits and mitigating any losses from becoming bigger than they should. Curious of the board's thoughts on that.

+1 Good slides. Thx for posting.

I tend to agree with that because I learned the hard way. I still remember vividly having a limit order on MA at $224 a long time ago. That day it got down to $225...but not $224. It basically never came back. I still could have bought it all up through the $200's but my anchoring bias to that price, using a limit order, and only buying stocks on the way down kept me from doing so. Im not suggesting to chase prices, but that was obviously a huge mistake and I've tried my best to remember and learn from that. "I'd rather be roughly right than precisely wrong" -Charlie Munger

I recently was on the receiving end of a presentation from a major fund company with billions of dollars under management that many here are probably familiar with, at least in name. Their whole premise and strategy is based on the market being totally efficient. I think it is to an extent, but not to the degree that they do. they hold between 800-1000 positions. I believe in diversification but not to the extent they do. They have funds based on an efficient market theory with a "value" slant. If the market was totally efficient how could there be a vast existence of "value" stocks? I spoke to another local money manager who gave me a few book recs on EMH and suggested that evidence shows that zero managers have out performed indexes past 20 years. He was a big proponent of ETF's which can play a part in overall portfolio strategy, but he was adiment about the Efficient Market Hypothesis and the lack of value provided by any active manger. The point of my post is that I was shocked to still see such large pools of money strictly adhering to EMH. Like most on this board, I believe in a value philosophy as defined by Graham and Buffett. I read value blogs, boards, websites and publications on a daily basis, so as naive as it may sound, I was shocked to still hear folks trumpeting the unquestionable efficiencies of the market place. Is EMH as alive and well as it seems to be?

I saw this a little while back and I thought it was one of his better lectures to students on YouTube. Buffett was also making a couple of jokes in the beginning. He's got a pretty good comedic delivery.