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GaliPart

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Everything posted by GaliPart

  1. Looking this over, doesn't it seem like Tilson's double-counting? I mean he's making the assumption that Berkshire's $97k of investments are unrelated to the insurance businesses, and that the businesses would be able to underwrite the insurance that they do without the investments. (And it seems to me that excluding the dividends and interest from the investments to the businesses' earnings doesn't account for this....) Just a thought.
  2. Ballinvarsog, Actually, google finance just give you data aggregated over several minutes--not individual trades. For those, you want to get what is called 'tick data' or 'tick by tick data'. I would recommend doing a google search on 'tick data' or 'historical tick data' and see what you can find. We don't use this data, so I haven't looked into it, but my guess is that it will cost something. (Of course, another possibility might be to post what ticker and time-frame you are looking for, and if someone happens to have the data they might be willing to send it to you. But given the longer-term strategies used by many of us on the board, I think the chances of that happening are pretty slim.) Best of luck, GaliPart
  3. Parsad (and others), At the risk of taking the unpopular view here, I feel that Patrick Byrne has really undermined his credibility by comparing the author of the article unfavorably to those performing cheap sex acts and cooking meth. In fact, I stop reading at that point, thinking that (at least with me) the author is not rational on the issue--he has lost his perspective along with his credibility. And, to a certain extent, those who think that such over-the-top characterizations are dead on lose some luster in my eyes as well. I'm not taking any stand on the facts in the article (or the response), but rather its civility. And if Patrick Byrne doesn't understand that he is totally undermining his message by saying (and writing) such things, then I'm afraid that he won't be taken seriously by many people--even if he ends up being correct on the facts. I feel that he really does undermine his case with this type of behavior. Oh, and by the way, I don't think that I would want to see the CEO of any company that I owned a part of putting that type of language or behavior out there for public consumption. (Disclosure: I have absolutely no position in the company.) I'd much prefer someone who was both civil and rational, as are the members of this board. Just my $0.02.
  4. Obviously, the collective doesn't think so. And in this case I side with the collective. FFH is at its annual high for the year. If there is some sort of significant insurance event in July or August you would kiss the value of your options away. A round about way of saying that I wouldn't buy FFH at this price at all when I can likely get it cheaper sometime later. The collective may be right on this one, but it might not. I don't know about how others look at it, but here is how I would do my analysis assuming (a) relatively deep in-the-money LEAPs (so that there's no time premium) and (b) no tax issues (see more on this below). (I am also largely ignoring any decision on whether to hold or sell FFH--in other words, I am assuming that if you're willing to have a position in FFH then you are agnostic regarding whether the position is in stock or LEAPs.) I would begin by looking at the opportunity cost: If the LEAPs are something like $250 (I am assuming such calls don't have any time premium in them), and the dividend $10, I would look at things in terms of could I get a more than 4% return on that $250 if I did something else with it. Clearly the strike price has an impact on this. ($10 / $250 = 4%, but $10 / $100 = 10%) If I think that I can get a better return elsewhere, this definitely impacts my decision. I would also consider the insurance value of the LEAPs. Holding the LEAPs also give some downside protection--it limits the downside in two ways. First, it provides some protection by not going down as much (in dollar terms) as the stock if the stock plummets (because the time-value of the LEAPs will increase). Second, it limits the total loss to the equivalent of FFH at $250--if you were buy-and-hold and FFH ends the year / Jan 2010 execution date below $250, the most you would lose would be the equivalent of selling FFH at $250. Of course, if you're not planning on holding too long then this isn't too much of a factor. In terms of tax issues, obviously executing the LEAPs has two effects (in the U.S.). First, it give you the dividend which will have foreign withholding (in the US to taxable investors), and be taxed at 15%. It will also re-set (again in the US) your effective purchase date of the stock to the date you execute--potentially causing you to realize gains at the short-term rate if you sell the stock within a year from the execution date. (Of course, this assumes that you bought the LEAPs previously, and they would be subject to long-term rates at some point if you sold them--the date will depend on when you bought them and when you sold them.) Remember that long-term capital gains rates in the US will increase next year under current US law, so that may affect the calculation as well, depending on how long you want to hold things / when you execute or sell the LEAPs. Anyway, the bottom line is that, from my perspective, there are a number of factors that enter into the equation in additional to FFH's valuation, of which leverage is only one. GaliPart
  5. Ericopoly, Actually, the lower qualified dividend rate (in the U.S.) expires at the end of 2010--so next year your dividends will be taxed at your ordinary income tax rate unless the tax code changes. GaliPart
  6. Parsad, Two quick questions on your response. First, are you saying that you are a neo-classicist (at least with regards to the issue of stagflation in this instance)? And although I realize that this second question may be taking us somewhat off-topic, but what is your take on the criticism that people aren't rational (and utility-maximizing), but rather behavioral? Thanks, GaliPart
  7. Alex, For people without access to services like Bloomberg, I think that the best way to get current market info for US bonds is to get the TRACE data from FINRA: http://cxa.marketwatch.com/finra/MarketData/Default.aspx You can select the company name / ticker and then voila. For example, to see the LVLT bonds, look at: http://cxa.marketwatch.com/finra/BondCenter/SearchResult.aspx?q=LVLT You can click through for more info on each bond, and also get trading history. You can also set up watch lists.... Enjoy! GaliPart
  8. Parsad, Please don't take this the wrong way, but just because you haven't met them doesn't mean that they don't exist. In fact, I think that a number of people, let's say Jim Simons as one example, would certainly disagree with your second sentence. GaliPart
  9. Kawikaho, Others are correct, the data can be expensive. Price / Volume data aren't too expensive, and you could probably get that (relatively) survivor-bias free for less than $10k, depending upon how far back you'd like to go. See some providers like CSI Data (where you can put together data that includes closed companies, as well as things like dividends) or Norgate (cheapest I've seen, but does not include information on regular dividends, may have a data series that does so in the next year or so). Fundamental data is much more expensive. Not just because of the time / expense involved with putting it together, but it gets much more expensive if you are trying to do it correctly in terms of knowing when the data became available. For example, many of these databases (not the point-in-time ones) will report, for example, that current assets were X on 3/31. Great. However, an investor wouldn't have known that until the 10-Q was released (or possibly the quarterly earnings release, depending upon what is included in the release) which may have been more than a month later. Thus, you have to make sure that these fundamental data are properly time-aligned as well. Quite expensive. Both CompuStat and CRSP can do what you'd like, at least for part of it. As I recall, CS provides about 20 years of data. The point-in-time is monthly, and as a small investor a license probably costs about $40k - $50k for a year for both (p-i-t only goes back 5 years for each data point [i.e., you can see what they reported on that date the financial info was going back 5 years], but you can query it going back about 20 years). They have a new point-in-time database that might be better. They provide you a downloader that will populate an MS database for you; you then query it yourself for the data you want. The CRSP info can go back farther, but I'm not familiar with the p-i-t- aspect of it. You can gain access to it fairly cheaply if you are a student / faculty member. In fact, some large universities have essentially a site license for it. You have to form your own queries, but that would likely be the most cost-effective option if you are a student (and, I believe, not using it for commercial applications). Good luck.
  10. When you say 'reliable NYSE stock market information', which type of data are you talking about? Dates that certain issues traded on the exchange? Volumes on certain days? Price information? Other Information? Do you really mean to limit things to the NYSE, and not some other US Exchanges? If you give us more information concerning the type of data that you are looking for (or potentially what you hope to do with it), we may be better able to answer your question re: where to find the data that you are looking for. (I will note that neither source of data that you have mentioned is particularly inexpensive; in fact, their data can be quite expensive, depending upon what you are looking for....)
  11. All, While I am relatively agnostic wrt the questions, I do think that it is somewhat unfair to blame Matthews for them, especially the tone of #10. In fact, reading the linked article reveals that he neither came up with the questions nor determined which ones were the 'top 10'. In fact, he explicitly said that he does not endorse the tone of question #10: "While the AIG affair is, nevertheless, a business issue, and worth asking about, Question 10 is phrased in a personal, accusatory fashion that I didn’t endorse. When the sender refused to restate it in a manner more likely to generate a response, it stayed as it was." Anyway, just an observation.
  12. I happen to disagree with the way that Congress is going about getting the bonuses back. There were opportunities to address this without changing the tax code; while it is true that the executive branch really botched their oversight on this one, this is an issue which should have been resolved in other ways. We are talking about a $14 trillion economy, and Congress is focusing on passing laws that penalize a handful of people? I can certainly think of better things for them to do. I am also afraid of the unintended consequences of this. First, it applies to all companies accepting money more than $5 billion, including some (like WFC) that didn't even want to take the funds. Second, they are giving all institutions that took TARP money a significant incentive to pay back the funds quickly--resulting in shrinking their balance sheets and cutting back further on lending--just the opposite of what we want them to be doing. Third, they are retroactively changing the rules (again), giving people additional reason to hesitate before taking government funds (or even trusting the government to follow through with the programs that it says it will implement). We'll see what ends up happening with the Senate, but I do agree with the assessment of Mike O'Rourke (the chief market strategist of BTIG) that "this is nothing more than a short sighted, knee-jerk reaction to popular opinion which demonstrates that Congress is missing the forest (the economy) for the trees (bonuses) and the worst part is that the forest is on fire."
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