Liberty

http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2011/10/05/n_buffett_full.cnnmoney/ Guess he did that one at the end of his media tour, because he seems a bit more tired, and CNN's crew just isn't as good as some of the others somehow (it seems a bit off -- the interviewer isn't that grew, camera angles.. I dunno, I don't like it much).

Thanks Tom!

Thank you for posting. I'm about halfway through, and I'm impressed. Very clear thinker. I wasn't too familiar with Ackman, but I now want to learn more. He doesn't really operate in the kinds of businesses that I like, but his mental processes seem very interesting. I've put a hold at the library on a book about him (I think the title is Confidence Game), and I was wondering if there was a good source of his investor letters or something of the sort..? If anyone has a few URLs or titles to shares, that'd be great. edit: Still haven't found archive of his letters, but found this Charlie Rose interview if others are interested: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9498

Are you putting it in quote marks? It seems to work here for =GoogleFinance("AIG+")

Yeah, I wish they added more, which they probably will do over time.

Here's an insightful comment that I saw somewhere else, and it said what I tried to say better than I could:

Very, very sad news. One of my heroes. :'(

Another under-appreciated quality of Jobs is that he is a total control freak. Sometimes it takes that to achieve a vision. Lots of other people have great taste, but they compromise, settle, there's a bit of design-by-committee going on, they give up when the going gets rough, they don't dare tell others that their ideas suck, etc.. Jobs has both the great taste AND the ability to bulldoze ahead until he realizes his vision.

I'm guessing that Alibaba will probably try to buy itself out of YHOO if it can and leave what's left to the others...

Hey, I'm curious to know what you guys use to keep track of your portfolios, watchlists, and to check out stocks. I know we have a wide range of investors here, so some are probably using Google Finance while others have Bloomberg terminals.. Still, I'm curious about the whole spectrum (particularly curious to know how Parsad does it, actually, because I really like the way he thinks :) ). Let's learn from each others' experience. So what are you using? I'm sure some of you have really polished workflows that others could benefit from. Thanks for sharing! Me: A pretty simple spreadsheet and some Google Finance portfolio watchlists. My main complaint is that the canadian prices are delayed (in practice it doesn't change much since it's not like I'm trading on short-term moves, but it would still be nice to have real-time without having to log into TD Waterhouse).

btw, for those who didn't know, you can get real time google finance info in your google docs spreadsheets: https://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=155178 Pretty useful to build watchlists and portfolio trackers and such.

Agreed, but what's that kind of moat good for if it doesn't help you preserve high margins and/or high growth? It can probably protect them from being put out of business, but it doesn't seem to lead to particularly attractive economics. But as I said, I just had a 2-minute look, so I might be missing something...

I had a quick look (very quick look) and what I saw was: small profit margins, fairly stable revenue over the past 5 years, not much cash on the balance sheet, and declining operating cashflow. That sector is pretty competitive without much competitive advantage for any store (they mostly compete on price), and at a PE of 14, it doesn't seem particularly cheap. Am I missing something? Why this when there are such great bargains right now? Is there a hidden asset that I'm overlooking?

Nailed it! 8)

Agreed. I can't wait to get my hands on Walter Isaacson's official bio of Steve next month!

ALS, FTP

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20111001/00365416161/patent-troll-says-anyone-using-wifi-infringes-wont-sue-individuals-this-stage.shtml ;)

I bought a little today, but I don't have much cash. I'm sure the businesses I own have been allocating cash to bargains, though. :)

Is this thread sinking because it has been determined that it's not okay to talk about this here, or because Parsad hasn't seen it..?

If it happens it won't be as crazy because they can't do the buybacks secretly and blindside the shorts, but with the amount of the float that is sold short, a short squeeze would probably still be pretty dramatic. I'd love it if it happened too!

Thanks! Good one.

You mean the part where Sorkin was trying to get him to give a yes or no answer to a very complex question where it wasn't clear exactly what he was asking him so that he would later be quoted everywhere in the media without much context as being "in favor of plan X" or "against plan X" or whatever? I think he did the right thing.

If you have a google account, you can go to your account page and change the settings so that your +1s aren't public.

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/76366076/

Out of curiosity, are you saying that you have shorted it? And if so, from what price?