Liberty

Be careful not to confuse the absence of a mention of buybacks below IV with the absence of the consideration itself. For example, I will often write about buybacks without putting the disclaimer that I like them because they are under what I consider to be IV, but it doesn't mean that I don't think about it. For me it goes without saying, but I can understand how some people (mostly on other boards) will cheer any buyback, at any price.

Down almost 20% today. http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/15/technology/netflix/index.htm

About health, have you looked at standing desks? Recent studies seem to show that sitting too much is pretty bad for your health, so that's a nice solution: http://www.geekdesk.com/default.asp?contentID=613 You can also set up an alarm on your computer that reminds you to take walks outside once or more per day.

Very good points. It's one of the reasons why I like the study of heuristics and biases.. Best to learn how to fail and figure out how to avoid it.

Thanks for the recommendation. unfortunately, the public library here doesn't have it. Do you think it's good enough to be worth buying, or is it just nice if you can find it, but not worth paying for..?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/44504271

I like how fast and clean it is. Looking forward to the Canadian version.

Thanks. Interesting take on Google on p.3

Ha! I just never heard Comb describe how MA did a deal with China Unipay while Visa got itself pretty much locked out of China ;) I always kind of had V and MA and AXP on my peripheral radar, but this made me take a second look. About this Manitoban Oracle... After some digging, it looks like this guy might not be quite as clean as it first seems (look at the comments in the link below). Not sure what the real story is, maybe just people stupidly complaining about losing money in the market crash of 2000-2001 and nothing unethical took place on the broker's side, and I'm not sure it means that his analysis is worth any less, but it doesn't look entirely good.. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0616/068.html http://www.investorv​oice.ca/PI/031.html

Done listening. I like that guy. He made me want to dig deeper into Mastercard :D

He's pretty eloquent, so it's worth listening to the audio, which contains more details. I'm not yet all the way through, but it's interesting so far.

http://abstrusegoose.com/strips/mr_market_is_a_drunken_dirty_old_man.png

Thanks for posting, I've added it to the pile!

Dundee (DC.A) just announced a pretty big buyback plan, shares are up around 10%.

I was considering getting it when I bought Charlie's Almanack, but found some negative reviews that turned me off. I'll give this a second look.

Exactly. ideally, BRK would end up with a small group of superinvestors like Fairfax.

That's absolutely ridiculous. There is a mountain of evidence for macro evolution, and just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't there. We can track species and their evolutions and where it split in time very clearly in DNA and in fossils and there are dozens (if not hundreds) of independents hypothesis that can be empirically tested that confirm it. Nothing at all makes any sense in biology without evolution, and you can't separate marco and micro, they're the same thing. I suggest you read Adaptation and Natural Selection by George C. Williams, and then you can graduate to almost any textbook that is written by an actual biologist. Or even this is a starting point http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ Or even this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution Ever since we could sequence the whole genome of multiple species, arguing against our understanding of evolution is about the same as arguing about our understanding of the law of gravity.

There's a new writeup on the VIC from July, claiming its cheap at 36.5. Now selling at 28. Not a company I'd buy these days, but I know some here were interested and might want to check out that writeup.

My impression is also that Obama almost always tries to include something typically republican in his offers, while I don't remember the last time I heard a republican make a proposal and claim that it contains "positions usually favored by democrats, and that risk angering some in my own party", etc. Hard to have a working relationship when the other side isn't even trying.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904103404576561020226498738.html

That might not last long. If Goog + Motorala creates a patent pool for Android phone makers, chances are some will sue MSFT for amounts similar to what they're paying. Software patents are mostly worthless, it's just extortion and counter-extortion... Hopefully when it gets bad enough we'll see some true reform.

Biggest drop today is NATL -4.95% I don't own any, and it's not on my shortlist. But it's on my extended watchlist.

I haven't followed this at all, but do we know this isn't survivorship bias? Do we know the returns of that guy's who portfolio? Maybe he invested big chunks of cash in all kinds of stuff and we later just heard about the biggest success. I'm not saying it's the case, I don't know. Just throwing that out there.

Interesting, but still just anecdote.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14851455