Liberty

Interesting. Do you have a vanilla individual account or a fancier pro account?

Until the fall of 2013, IB Canada didn't, they had a 50% overnight margin requirement because they had to follow some US rules because IB US was doing various services for them and was regulated with US rules. But now they offer the Canadian 30% overnight requirements. What confused me is that they haven't updated many parts of their website to reflect that yet...

I found this: http://canadianmoneyforum.com/showthread.php/16154-Interactive-Brokers-Canada-%28IB-Canada%29 Apparently IB Canada is splitting itself more from the US parent and so won't have to follow some of the US regulations that affect things like this. I'd still love to hear from anyone with a Canadian IB account about their experience and what they know about all this. Is it possible that they've updated the margin requirements in Canada and haven't updated the materials on their site yet, which still talk about Reg T and 50%? TIA. Update: Well, to keep this back and forth with myself going... I spoke to IB Canada on the phone and apparently they've done the switch and Canadians aren't bound by the US rules, so eligible stocks have a 30% margin requirement. Not sure why their website isn't fully updated to reflect that yet.

Hi. So I'm considering switching to IB Canada to reduce my fees and get a margin account. I've never used margin before, I've always been pretty vanilla for that kind of stuff, but I'd like to have as an extra tool in the toolshed to lever up a bit if there's some macro event (blood on the streets) or a salad oil scandal or whatever causing some of my watchlist to drop a lot and I don't have cash on hand. My question is about margin requirements in Canada at IB. Googling around, I've found many people talk about 30% requirements in Canada for stocks that are on approved lists and 50% for most of the rest. But here in the IB Canada FAQ it says: https://www.interactivebrokers.ca/en/?f=%2Fen%2Fgeneral%2Feducation%2Ffaqs%2FcanadaFAQs.php%3Fib_entity%3Dca And there's also this: https://www.interactivebrokers.ca/en/index.php?f=marginCA&p=stk This seems pretty clear to me, but I just want to confirm that the margin requirements for Canadians at IB is 50% except intraday and that I'm not missing something else that changes how this work? I suppose that the Canadians who are talking about getting a 30% margin requirement are at purely Canadian brokers who don't follow US Reg T..? 50% vs 30% makes a pretty big difference in how big your cushion is before you get a margin call (well, IB just liquidates apparently), so it's important, not that I think I'll ever get close to that limit... I just want to make sure I understand this correctly. Thank you in advance for your help.

Maybe this has something to do with it: http://www.valuewalk.com/2014/05/tiger-eye-capital-dumps-liberty-media-time-warner-cable/

The presentation was updated on May 6, 2014. Link above still works.

I'm also planning to read it. In the meantime, if you have Netflix there's a documentary titled ‘Hank: Five Years from the Brink’ that is basically an hour-and-a-half long interview with Hank Paulson that is pretty interesting.

Thanks for sharing!

What do they bring? Um, they're really good at what they do? Ahrendts -> Experience quickly building a huge high-end retail operation around the world, but especially Asia, where Apple needs to do more. Also experience doing luxury retail online well, which isn't easy because you have fewer ways to differentiate and make it upscale. There's tons she could do to improve Apple retail. In fact, that's not a part of the company that has been doing as well as it could in past years IMO, mostly because of the revolving door of retail leaders probably. They've been way too slow at opening new stores in Asia and the presentation online and offline could use a refresh (like iOS 7 did to iOS). Iovine and Dre -> Tons of contacts in the music and film/TV biz, which definitely helps a lot in these industries. And if the killer feature of Beats compared to other streaming services is curation, getting access to the best people to do that (through contacts) helps, and getting cooperation from artists for exclusives and such will matters. They got freaking Trent Reznor to run part of the show! But I think that Ahrendts was hired purely because of her skills and track record. I don't really see her as a 'celebrity'. And Iovine and Dre might be famous (I guess It's hard to make hundreds of millions in the arts and not be a celebrity), but they've also proved their talent as entrepreneurs and dealmakers many times over. They're there because they built a business that seems very fast-growing and very high-margin and well positioned for the music streaming-wave (and Iovine could be very useful to get more content for Apple TV), not because Cook is star-struck. In the Iovine interview I posted in the AAPL thread, he says something like: "In the same way that culture companies always get the tech wrong, tech companies will get the culture wrong." Well, Apple has always been more in touch with the arts and other 'soft' aspects of products than most, and this is just a continuation of that, IMO. It's a real competitive advantage when so many other tech companies are tone deaf to a lot of that stuff.. I have no doubt that Cook can control these people. Has he ever done anything that makes you think he couldn't? He fired Scott Forestall, the guy who was supposed to be the next Steve Jobs according to some, and he's resisted a lot of external pressure to do all kinds of things and hurry things out before they are ready, etc... So they're about on schedule, maybe a bit ahead, right? Look at the timing of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad... They don't have a quota of new categories to enter every decade. Making arguably the best, and certainly the most profitable phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops is already pretty good... I'm sure they'll do more soon, but they won't release stuff before it's ready. There's no real lasting glory gained by rushing to be first (Galaxy Gear anyone?). You can release software as beta and fix it later, but not hardware, and Apple is never first anyway.

;D

Well done!

http://basehitinvesting.com/some-thoughts-on-the-berkshire-hathaway-annual-meeting/ (sorry if this has already been posted)

http://studentofvalue.com/notes-on-the-outsider-ceos/ Some notes on the book.

Feynman actually used Brazil as an example of how not to run an education system (back when he went there - I don't know if it has improved since). So even more credit goes to Mr. Lemann for surmounting that disadvantage too (though maybe he was lucky and he went to good schools in Brazil).

Here is the link to the Henry Singleton episode I mentioned above: http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/315877-the-manual-of-ideas/30189-the-manual-of-ideas-on-business-leader-henry-singleton-founder-of-teledyne-audio There are links to the audio files in 3 different formats right in the middle of it, so you should be able to listen on any device.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101642613 From the May 5 interview.

Those costs flowed directly to BV. No artificial inflation of BV there! Gio I generalized what you said into "Prem won't overpay" rather than just on a GAAP/goodwill basis. Sorry for the confusion. IV matters a lot more than GAAP, and I'd rather see him pay 3x book for a business that is worth even more than that than 0.4 book for a business that is worth less, and I'm sure you'd agree.

What do you mean? He paid less than BV for those acquisitions, therefore no goodwill was recorded… Gio Prem should have paid even less than what he did for TIG and C&F. But, hindsight is 20/20. That's what I meant. Even below book value, fixing these rather low quality businesses seem to have cost a lot in extra money, management attention and time, and opportunity cost. I wonder what their IRR would look like... I doubt it's too high. I'm glad that Fairfax now seems to be focusing on higher quality insurance acquisitions (f.ex. Zenith). It seems very hard to change the whole underwriting culture at an insurer and make sure you catch and discount all of the skeletons in the closet when you acquire...

I'm definitely ordering this one, thanks for putting it on my radar.

Intro by Prem. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5Sa-T9nOxIk&feature=youtu.be Found via Crowdturtle, thanks.

I wasn't around back then, but wouldn't you say that Mr. Watsa overpaid for some acquisitions that turned out to be very problematic around the early 2000s (from memory: TIG, Crum & Forster).

I've just found out that there's a 8-part TV miniseries that exists based on The Prize. Has anyone seen it? Is it good?

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323330604578142990790347674 From 2012. Via Planmaestro.

I'll take that over the Corner of Berkshire & Sears ;)

Thank you for the compilation, much appreciated!