Liberty

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In my case, he could have said exactly the opposite of what he said but with the same tone and it would have bothered me just as much. Maybe it's just me, though, I can only speak for myself.

I said nothing about the content of your comment or whether I agree with it or not. I simply pointed out - and maybe you don't see it - that the form can be problematic on this forum. I have no interest in getting further into this, though, so I'll drop it.

That's why people accuse you of trolling. You don't say what you mean, you just keep trying to play these oversimplified political "gotcha" games in condescending tones. Cut the artifices and speak plainly and in good faith and you'll get a better reception here.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-01/berkshire-mortgage-venture-weighs-acquisitions-after-hiring-finance-chief.html The new Berkadia CFO, Randy Jenson, was president and co- founder of private equity firm Ranch Capital LLC where he spent nine years overseeing about $2 billion of investments in financial services, energy and real estate and other industries. He’s a former chief executive officer of banking and lending at New York-based Leucadia. Buffett, the world’s third-richest man, said in May that the commercial property market was showing signs of strength. Non-distressed buildings in six major markets have recovered more than half of their post-peak losses, Moody’s Investors Service said in a June 22 statement. “The country’s expanding, the activity is expanding, households are expanding,” Buffett, 80, said in the May 1 interview. “Prices have been pretty strong if you start looking at particularly apartment buildings, but even shopping malls.”

Tentative deal? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-31/white-house-republicans-said-to-reach-tentative-deal-on-u-s-debt-ceiling.html

Yahoo Finance's "Key Statistics" section has short interest (on the lower right). f.ex. http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=WMT

Ok, I don't want to get involved in yet another politics debate, but I have to point out that a little something happened in 2008-2009 and it kind of changed a lot of things for the US govt's budget.

Well, maybe my initial answer gave you the wrong impression. I dont' live in a cave with stacks of 10Ks, avoiding everything about the outside world. I follow macro a fair bit, and try to analyze it. I just haven't felt the need to use that information to rejig my portfolio, because it feels like it's mostly a red herring, and I feel like the times that I was tempted to do it in the past, if I had actually done it, I would probably be worse off now. In short: Macro matters. I just doubt it's a very useful tool to actually make investment decisions most of the time (there are exceptions of course, and they get all the press, while on the other side all the money lost because of wrong macro decisions will never have books written about it, so there's sample bias).

Indeed, but hindsight is 20/20. What if this time Buffett and Munger are right? You can win with macro bets, but there are so many variables, so many potential black swans (negative and positive), that it's still just a gamble, and the people who turn out to be right are hailed as geniuses and those that are wrong are mostly forgotten. It doesn't mean the people who were right aren't geniuses, but it can mean that other geniuses were wrong.. As Buffett says, if every time things became uncertain and the future seemed cloudy people retreated, nobody would have ever bought anything during the 20th century because you're always just coming out of a crisis and there's always a crisis on the horizon. It's the normal state of things. Now, that doesn't mean that I believe the economy will grow or we won't have a double dip and all that. I don't know. It just means that I try to build my portfolio so that it does ok whatever happens, rather than making a big bet on one outcome or the other and risking being wrong.

I don't know, and I don't think anyone can really know (there are really smart people with all kinds of opinions on this). Best to keep doing what has shown to work: Buy good businesses cheaply, make sure they have solid balance sheets and perform well even in tough times. Historically, things usually start to turn around when everybody starts believing they won't, but who knows when that point will be reached...

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73202204/

All they're thinking about is how to have the upper hand on the other party in the next elections. They're politicians, that's what they do.

They're bulldozing houses now? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-27/bank-of-america-donates-then-demolishes-houses-to-get-rid-of-foreclosures.html Next they'll throw money from helicopters..

Interesting thesis. Not sure I would touch it, as it's too hard to analyze and it doesn't fit my investing criteria anyway, but I like reading about how Bruce thinks. http://www.gurufocus.com/news/139711/bruce-berkowitz-details-his-thesis-on-bac

There are lots of vultures like that. They seem to file these things by the boatload and hope that a fraction of a percent will stick, kind of like spam emails. They've also filed against EBIX. http://pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=830993&Itemid=32

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-26/republican-leaders-voted-for-drivers-of-u-s-debt-they-now-blame-on-obama.html

Just to show that it's all about political posturing and tactics: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-26/republican-leaders-voted-for-drivers-of-u-s-debt-they-now-blame-on-obama.html

Politics is the mindkiller.

Yeah, now that I've read it, it doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense for MSFT, and doesn't make sense for others to buy. I mean, Microsoft has made Bing the default search engine in the most popular (still) browser in the world (IE) and got all the traffic that Yahoo has been building over a decade (a falling share, but still high), and for a while they were paying people with gift cards for using their product, and they're losing a few billions. Not sure how anyone else can push Bing much harder than this... And it's not like Bing is brand new and just needs time to grow. Sure they rebranded it a few years ago, but MSFT Live Search was basically the same technology as Bing and they've been at it since 2006 (and since 1998 before that with MSN Search). It's not like MSFT hasn't been trying with search for a while... Interesting fact: "Counting core searches only, i.e. those where the user has an intent to interact with the search result, Bing achieved a market share of 14.54% in the second quarter of 2011 in the US." http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-us-search-market-share-2011-7?op=1 http://www.comscore.com/layout/set/popup/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/7/comScore_Releases_June_2011_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/business/bing-becomes-a-costly-distraction-for-microsoft-breakingviews.html?_r=1&src=rechp Haven't read it all yet, so not agreeing or disagreeing with it. Just posting because I figure others might be interested.

I'm curious to know how many hours per week the people here spend on their investments on average. This can include reading Ks and Qs, financial news, interviews, conf calls, thinking about ideas, polishing investment theses, reading this forum and posting, etc. I'm also curious to know - if you want to share it - what your routine is. Have you developed a particularly effective way to do things? Personally, I'd estimate that for the past 6 months I've probably spent an average of about 25-30 hours/week on my investments. Lots of reading on weekdays between 9 PM and 1 AM, and more on some weekend days. I'm probably not nearly as time-efficient as some investors (Buffett in 1 hour can probably do more than I do in a month), but I'm still learning a lot so I feel the time is well spent. Update: I guess I should have added that this is different for people who manage money for a living than for those who do something else. If you post with more details, please mention if this is your day job or not (I'll add an option to the poll).

Welcome to the forum! Hope you have a pleasant stay :)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-22/obama-says-republicans-walking-away-from-fair-deal-in-debt-ceiling-talks.html

Very interesting. Not sure it'll make money, but the social benefits (if the houses are safe and well made) could be huge.

Could it be that the CDSes are so expensive because people are fighting the last war? Everybody saw how much money Paulson & co made, so they now jump on CDS contracts as soon as something could be on the horizon? Just guessing.