Kraven

Very impressive, congrats! Thanks, congrats to you as well. Your year was fantastic.

+26% Dozens of positions. No position started at larger than ~1% of portfolio. I invest like my investing idols, Graham and Schloss. I buy when things are very cheap and sell when they reach IV. Cash never less than ~30%. No leverage.

Happy new year to everyone. May 2013 be filled with health, happiness and prosperity.

That is a great line. I have a good friend who is a stock broker at one of the major brokerages. He isn't a big fish and has a stable of regular clients. Much of what this article says actually mirrors to some extent what he tells me. He has hundreds of clients and he says the vast majority want nothing to do with stocks. He says the financial crisis meltdown scared them to death but that the flash crash was the nail in the coffin. After that he said almost all his clients backed away from stocks. Most of his clients are typical retail clients of a full service brokerage (I.e older) and are content to roll their bonds.

I have no idea, but note that the $12K/yr (I think it's $13K/yr now, but not sure) gift limit applies to the level at which gifts may be given without having to pay gift tax. So the gift can be given, but gift tax would need to be paid on the amount in excess of that level. Note too that the people making the gift can each give that amount, so a couple could theoretically give to one person up $26K. If this property is being donated to multiple people then you can see how this could be increased. So for example, say the property is being donated to 3 children. Each donor could gift up to $13K to each person, so that's $78K. This is just my understanding. I have no idea if it's correct or not. You definitely need to consult with an estate planning attorney in your area. If you don't know of one, just ask around for a couple of recommendations. Usually an estate planning attorney isn't terribly expensive (relatively speaking) depending on the size of the assets and complexity of the matter. I would advise, don't be like most people and balk at paying the $1000 or $2000 or whatever a good estate attorney will charge. That falls into the category of being penny wise and pound foolish. Good luck.

I think it should be more than fine for that. That's my opinion anyway.

We have a Fire. Thanks for the info. Do you have the new Fire HD or the original one? Sure. I think it's just the original one. It's a good device for what it is. It's just too small (in my opinion) for filings.

We have a Fire. It's nice enough. For things like books and such it's great. It has a nice function where you can print from your computer and the document will pop up on the Fire(maybe all Kindles have that, I have no idea). I find though that for many filings the screen is a little too small. Since you're essentially printing as a pdf you can't expand the size of the text. That is, you can expand the page to fill the screen, but that's it. I have to read using it only horizontally as vertically most any kind of filing is way too small. We use the Fire for the kids and I'm probably looking actually to get something bigger. But if you just want to read books and stuff that you buy from Amazon and that kind of thing I think it's a good product and not terribly expensive.

Methuselah?

That's pretty funny. I had a car that had XM in it. Post merger between Sirius and XM I sold that car and got a new one that had Sirius in it. So I signed up for Sirius and called to cancel XM. They made a huge fuss about it and kept transferring me and asking me why. I explained that I love the service it's just that I have a new car and no longer have XM in the car. They finally cancelled it, but kept calling me and asking if I wanted to restart it again. Apparently, at least at the time, even after the merger the 2 houses were kept separate. I said what difference does it make, you still have my business and I don't have that car anymore. They explained that it was separate for their purposes and maybe I could access it in the house. It was really annoying.

I quickly peeked at a few of these. Worth reading for anyone starting out or unsure how to even begin the process. One point I don't think gets mentioned enough is that once you do find a position, take ownership for anything you do. Obviously you need to work within the parameters of your job, including approvals and the like. But take ownership. Don't view a project as doing something for your boss. Treat it as if it was the most important thing in the world to you, as if you owned the business and everything depended on it. Don't just take a stab and blast a half assed copy of to someone or dump it on their desk. See it through to the end. Take criticism for what it is. Not everyone will do it in a constructive way and sometimes (many times) it will be unduly harsh. Develop a thick skin and find the ability to take from each interaction something of value. If someone is an asshole, you're not going to change that and it doesn't make it right, but learn what you can.

So let's not make it political. Make it near impossible for 20-year old retards to obtain any sort of gun, so fewer parents have to go through what these people are now going through. Not only those parents but that entire community will never be the same for at least a generation. I can't imagine anything worse than a parent finding out their child died a horrific death, and not having the opportunity to protect them, console them and say good-bye! Is it really a matter of guns? How about that an animal is going to find a way to do what an animal is going to do? So instead of a gun they'll buy the Anarchy Handbook or something and build a bomb out of a paper clip and baby powder. I don't see the issue right now as pro gun control or anti gun control. This country is too tolerant of animals. The status as a human being has been lost. They should be treated accordingly.

For anyone who wants to make this political, now's not the time. For those of us with young kids in school, I can't imagine anything worse. To imagine some kid who went to school on a Friday just thinking of the nice weekend with the family. Maybe they'd watch some cartoons, play in the yard, go out to eat with the family. The terror they must have felt knowing a bullet is coming towards them. Now they will never know what it's like to grow up, hang out with their buddies, go to college, get their first car, have a girlfriend/boyfriend, get a job, have a family, etc. I really can't imagine anything sadder.

It was his wife that was the real talent there. He used to call her the "Trading Goddess". But yes, before Cramer became Cramer and became a caricature of god knows what, he was a successful hedgie.

I am not sure why things get jumbled up. Paulson was a good money manager until the time of the "big short". He had good results. Steady and solid. He then reached spectacular levels of performance as a result of the big short. AUM ballooned. So at that point, call it, 2008-2009, he has now had 2 distinct parts of his money management career. The first is with relatively manageable size in merger arb. The second was the shorting of the housing market. He now has too much AUM to continue in merger arb so he needs to look for something else. All he can come up with is macro calls. Because he made billions he is accorded guru status. Yet one call does not a guru make. The facts are clear, he has not been able to sustain either the solid or the spectacular. I am not sure why this is so difficult to understand. He is not being criticized, he is just simply has not been able to maintain the level of performance that he previously enjoyed.

benefiting from the great short makes him a great manager. he was one of the very few to not only see it coming but to make himself a billionaire because of it. cheers! To me that says "lucky" rather than great. Kraven, I agree with your thoughts and analogy. he became a billionaire because he thought of an idea and executed perfectly on it. i call that being "good". I call inheriting a billion being lucky. cheers! He also was a competent, successful money manager before striking gold. double cheers! It's hard to disagree obviously about someone who became a billionaire doing anything. We do seem to have different definitions though on what "good" means. To me it entails a level of performance that is sustainable. He is a bit of a one hit wonder. Doesn't mean his other music wasn't good, but people weren't buying it. I agree with what you said that he was a "competent, successful money manager". If that is "good", I agree with that. I would disagree that he thought of the idea. That is factually incorrect. Paolo Pelligrini brought him the idea. He was smart enough to direct Pelligrini to execute on it and had the fortitude to stick with it.

In my view, Paulson was a very solid investor in his "original" area of merger arbitrage. He put up good, if not spectacular, results. He was smart enough to take full advantage of the opportunity to short the various MBS deals, etc. However from that AUM spiked incredibly and he changed his investment approach. He no longer was doing merger arbitrage (impossible with the billions he now had to manager), he became a macro investor. He simply is not able to do it, at least to the level he had performed at before. He was like the 280 hitter with 25 homers and 85 rbi. He all of a sudden puts up a 340 year with 40 homers and 130 rbi. He gets the big contract and of course is not able to perform at that level. It was an outlier.

You have to love the prognosticators. The best I heard on this type of thing was maybe a year or so ago. Jim Rogers was being interviewed and "called" for a recession in the next year or 2. The interviewer practically shouted "so Jim Rogers is calling for a recession! You heard it here folks!" Rogers kind of laughed and said something to the effect that "on average there is a recession every 4 or 5 years or so. The last one was around 3 years ago, so the next one will probably be in a year or 2. No magic to it."

That is funny. As someone whose grandmother always called the kids meshugana, brings back some memories! He's got that old lady from Brooklyn (or in his case Boston) accent. A great investor though and one of the best at giving honest, clear answers. Cheers! It's a distinctive accent for sure. In a grandmother it calls out to make sure everyone eats a piece of fruit. He is a wonderful investor, one of my faves. I love his tenacity and his ability to present a thesis in a simple and easily understood manner.

That is funny. As someone whose grandmother always called the kids meshugana, brings back some memories!

I think I can explain. Value investors are like the guys in high school who play Dungeons & Dragons. They say it's more fun to play than go out on Friday night. Often there will be one girl who likes to hang out too and each of the guys secretly hopes she'll be his girlfriend, but outwardly says she's just one of the guys. That one girl? She now hangs out on this board, but doesn't post. So where are the women? Check out a growth and momentum type board. Ladies love a macho growth guy.

lol. At least it looks like they had buckles :D It was refreshing as well to see that he felt comfortable enough to have his shirt untucked and even open up a couple buttons. I am sure it was quite a treat for the ladies of value investing (or, more accurately, lady).

All of this has been hashed over on the other threads, but I suspect we are nearing the endgame. I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about this litigation. The results of litigation can never be known in advance. There is always the possibility of a result that one didn't predict. That being said, I continue to maintain that BAC is getting some strange advice here or not following the advice they've been given. I don't see how they can expect to win this. In the Article 78 matter they need to essentially show the insurance commissioner was crazy. Tough to see that happening. In the plenary matter, MBIA Corp clearly was not left insolvent. Forgetting the results of the consent, they had sufficient funds to carry on their business at the time the transformation took place and have continued to survive. There are no incipient claims outstanding that change that. On top of that BAC needs to prove intent to defraud. That's tough too. So they need to prove intent when there's not even an insolvency. I just don't see how this goes anywhere. In the R&W matter, it doesn't matter what MBIA knew or didn't. R&W are purely risk allocation mechanics. The risk was shifted to BAC and they accepted it. There is no sharing of it. The rep is breached, game over. Obviously given all the surrounding circumstances perhaps it isn't unfair to expect MBIA to incur some of the pain too, although I don't believe they have to. It's just a timing issue. I suspect they will have to take a haircut to get their dough sometime before everyone is a senior citizen. With the consent though, to paraphrase Marv from Wall Street, it just made BAC's job that much harder.

I like the last bit: "Are there other investments out there? Yes. Better than what's in the fund today? No." Do you think settling with MBIA may have negative consequences for BofA beyond the billion or two in extra money they will have to hand over to MBIA? I wonder if BofA will have to revise up their loss estimates for a lot of other outstanding litigation and add to reserves significantly. That was a good line indeed. I personally don't think it will have much if any negative consequences for BAC. I am long both BAC and MBI and think it's one of the rare cases where it's a win win for both. It's not often that you find such a David and Goliath situation where a loss by one party is such a gain for the other, but doesn't really cause damage to itself and in fact may help by delivering some "clarity" (to the extent that ever actually exists). I'm not really the right person to be asking this question though in terms of the specifics of BAC's loss reserves. I don't focus on the precise numbers. While a billion here or there is real money, in terms of the "story" it really doesn't matter to me. BAC is, in my view, in a relatively unique situation in that they just need to put these matters behind them. Whether this matter or some other matter costs them a little more doesn't seem to matter. The key to me is that the wagons have circled around the problems. It's not like it was even a year or 2 ago when the problems seemed endless. In general, they have their arms wrapped arond it and it's just a matter of executing. That's a big change. They seem to be on the path to clearing up their issues and moving to the next phase of things.

Short interview with Berkowitz in Fortune. Interesting article. He briefly speaks about AIG, SHLD, BAC and MBI. Says he's emailed Moynihan and told him to "settle!" and move on. http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/11/26/bruce-berkowitz-fairholme/?source=yahoo_quote