Liberty

Have you read the Economist's feature report? I didn't find it convincing because of the authority of those writing it versus the authority of the Barrons piece, but rather because of the arguments themselves. I'm also pretty sure that for special reports they often get contributions from all kinds of experts, including on the ground and in the industry they cover, and not just from their regular journalists.

For the opposite view, check out the special feature on China in a recent Economist issue. I tend to be more convinced by the Economist's position because they tend to address most - if not all - of the major points in the bear arguments, while most of the bears don't address the Economist's points and obviously aren't digging as deep. The only thing I know is that when everybody becomes bearish on a place, there are bound to be some bargains related to it (I wouldn't buy chinese stocks, but there are indirect ways). But as with all that macro stuff, who the heck really knows what will happen? I'll just keep buying good companies cheaply and hold them for a long time...

I think that's correct. Einstein said, among other things, " Imagination is more important than knowledge". But what we need to remember is that extremely smart people aren't always the best judges of how smart they are and how smart the average person is, and the sympathetic ones among them tend to be humble and downplay their achievements. You shouldn't always take them to their word...

[amazonsearch]Hidden Champions of the 21st Century[/amazonsearch] I think this one is pretty well known already, so not much that I can add. But I thought it deserved a thread for discussion here.

[amazonsearch]Billion Dollar Lessons[/amazonsearch] Billion Dollar Mistakes sucked, but this one - despite having almost the same title - seems much better. I'm only a few dozen pages in and already it's a whole other animal. Well-written, well researched, insightful and useful to both businesspeople and investors. I can't recommend it yet because I haven't finished it, but the signs are good so far.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/hunter-harrison-tapped-as-canadian-pacific-ceo/article4379406/

Interesting web site. Thanks for posting. If you want to explore it, the best way is through the Sequences: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences

http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2012/Jun12/06-25MSYammerPR.aspx 1.2 billion for Yammer..

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8985409/Mark-Sellers-So-You-Want-to-Be-the-Next-Warren-Buffett-MBA-Talk-2007

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-21/microsoft-s-surface-tablet-said-to-be-wi-fi-only-in-first-models.html

He wouldn't be a true Bond villain without a volcanic island.

Thanks for posting!

Indeed. Sometimes that's because it's an unpredictable or bad business/industry/management/etc, and sometimes he just doesn't have the specific technical knowledge to really understand the products and competitive dynamics deeply enough to be comfortable.

Yeah, I guess it depends what kind of business we're talking about. I had in mind someone like my wife who sits in the same cubicle all day and for whom a tablet would be a big step down in practicality.

Ah, if you mean this tablet as opposed to other tablets rather than as opposed to desktops/laptops, then yes, that sounds more plausible.

We were talking about corporations, where I think the desktop still makes most sense. But even the laptop would make more sense there than a tablet, IMO (you can have a docking station, a bigger internal HDD and plug in external storage and peripherals more easily, etc). If you're sitting at a desk all day, the last think you want is to spend your day typing on a pancake keyboard attached to a smalls screen. But maybe it's just me...

A lot, actually, but it's not the only thing used... For example, there are some businesses with really nice numbers that I won't touch with a ten-foot pole once I learn more about the management or about the industry or whatever.

What will the incentive be? Isn't a laptop or desktop a better choice for most businesses since most employees are sitting in the same place all day and a desktop is much more ergonomic and probably leads to higher productivity? And it's not like laptops aren't portable enough for most business use, and they tend to be more full-featured than tablets.

You get a gold star. :) And I wasn't being facetious. :) That's actually what too many people miss about Buffett and other super-investors. They are so good not because they have special tricks to crunch the numbers, they are so good because they make sure to really understand the business not only on a quantitative, but also on a qualitative level, and to stay away as much as possible from things they don't understand.

Notice how the kickstand is in the landscape direction? one can imagine that most people will use it in landscape mode? I've never been a fan of the 16:9 format. It's annoying to have so much horizontal space that never gets used... it makes sense on a 24" monitor where I can stack 2 windows next to one another, but to have it on a tablet or a laptop doesn't make that much sense to me. After you look at the menu, the title bar, the toolbars, the ribbons, then the headers for most websites etc, everyone makes use of the vertical space, squishing whatever is left into nothingness... I'll stop my rant now... That's the thing.. If you use it in landscape mode for things like PDFs and webpages, you have very little vertical space. If you use it in vertical mode but it feels like you're holding a miniature-TV on the wrong side or a legal document cut in half vertically, that won't feel quite right... Guess I'll have to wait and try one out in store when they are out (who knows when).

I wonder how a 16:9 screen ratio would feel vertically in the hands as a tablet. I think there's a reason the iPad isn't 16:9.. Intuitively, it seems like it would either feel too tall or too narrow..

Stepping away from the specifics a bit; the best way to value a business is to understand it and it's competitive position very, very well.

And one more, looks like the full version of the speech: I'm not a precious metal bug like him (though to be fair, he does seem to hold those more as a cash-replacement while waiting for opportunities to buy equities than as an investment, which I don't think is a bad idea, despite it not being my preference), but I do like his contrarian value approach.

It always depends on the company and one what you need to feel comfortable (some techniques are inherently more conservative). Basically you need to learn about all the different ways until you have a good grasp of which is appropriate for each situation and why. There's no silver bullet. But for those companies that are valued more with cashflow than assets (ie. not banks or insurance companies), I now like EV/EBITDA. Here's some of the reasoning behind this: http://www.gannonandhoangoninvesting.com/blog/one-ratio-to-rule-them-all-evebitda.html