InelegantInvestor

Fascinating book. I would love to see a small utility(say MCPB) become a model for smart grid.

I'd look at purification, flow control, etc. Making water potable and transporting it will be critical. Much of the world, as he points out, does not have 24/7 on demand water.

Consolidation allows for larger effective inventory and lower cost of floor plan financing. Large enough rollup can raise equity or debt with much better terms, not secured against specific vehicles on lot.

The dealer isn't financing, they are getting paid to originate loan.

As long as dealer laws exist, there is still some value in the dealership. It is increasingly difficult for independent dealers to survive, especially as interest rates on floor plan financing have risen. New car sales are essentially breakeven. Profit is on financing, add-ons, used cars/trade-ins, and service. There are still a ton of independent dealerships. Consolidation among those is inevitable.

What are you trying to find out? That's an awfully broad question.

I'm really cool with this attitude. It means that those pink sheet, unlisted companies that are worth buying will trade at a deeper discount then they otherwise would. The better for me to buy, my dear. Only so long as it doesn't BK next week! SD I've had a number of bankruptcies in listed stocks. I cannot remember any in unlisted. I'm certainly not suggesting buying indiscriminately, but information can be found, and it is all the more valuable when it takes some digging.

I'm really cool with this attitude. It means that those pink sheet, unlisted companies that are worth buying will trade at a deeper discount then they otherwise would. The better for me to buy, my dear.

The site was broken for me basically all day. Sometimes it would return a 500 error, and sometimes it would return just the beginning of the page with no stylesheet.

Meaning that most investors will have lost money by being in his fund.

Is there a period of time for which the fund did not underperform the index? Also, interesting that he does not mention Consolidated Tomoka, one of his largest holdings, and where he is amidst a long fight with management(that he put in place).

Perhaps it was his decision, but I think someone else did the convincing... http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/business/diverse-mix-of-investors-in-airline-deal.html?_r=0 Wow, so Warren did have some sort of input into buying the airlines.

Should be stockspinoffs.com with an 's'. We fell a bit behind in updating, but we're trying to catch up. Any ideas or suggestions are always welcome.

With that particular stock, management seemed promotional(which may be why the pipeline looked great). Things like liquidity and burn rate were not easily found, if at all, in earnings press releases. Pipeline is years away from approval. Definitely in too hard pile, IMO.

You need to look at cash position and burn rate. If they can't cover the cost of getting a drug to market you will get diluted or it won't get to market. You want to see a pipeline with multiple promising candidates because you can't accurately predict which will ultimately be approved. Management that has experience getting drugs through the approval process is a big deal. Even after all that, I would advise buying in a basket to spread the risk.

It's really remarkable. If he spent half as much energy running the company as he did on his self-enriching machinations... he'd be twice as rich. Classic narcissist.

cute.

As a longtime ASI shareholder, I'm very happy to see the deal, though it feels like FFH is getting a bargain. Can anyone recommend another insurer to put the cash in? Only other one I'm in is KINS, and I don't want to add to it right now.

He also cancelled tomorrow's special meeting late tonight. Guess he still doesn't have the iron control he wants.

I suspect that a large part of the Hostess problem was that Wonder Bread forced them to have a ton of bakeries and a distribution network, whereas the snack foods(with longer shelf life) could have been serviced from a handful of plants and sold through wholesalers. Wonder Bread should be asset-lite, licensing the brand to regional bakeries. I'm ready to give running this a try if someone will back me. And I won't triple my own salary after filing bankruptcy.

Thanks for mentioning stockspinoffs.com, eclecticvalue. We try to keep the spinoff tables up to date and post at least a brief blurb on every spinoff, but it can be tough with the current rate of spins! Please let us know if you find any incorrect or missing info, have any content to submit, or any other suggestions(generic@weneca.com). We couldn't find a good, free list of spinoffs, so we decided to build one.

I still own a few shares, though I sold most, and received a call tonight urging me to vote my shares, and offering to do it for me. Anyone else getting these calls? Is Sardar getting nervous about his proposals passing? My share count puts me pretty far down the list of people to call, I would think.