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I say again that if this is standing still and BING only adds minimal or nothing more from here anyone looking at these would not say this is a dying company. Or if you took out the name Microsoft and just looked at what this company has been doing money wise "Most" value investors including Warren Buffett recently, in an interview recently with Reuters which I posted previously, would say this looks undervalued. I don't want to start a new debate, but it's obvious from those numbers that higher EPS doesn't contribute to shareholder value. Instead of wasting time with capital destroying actions like buybacks and earnings growth, MSFT should pay out 100% FCF immediately. Hi; What do you think their shareholder value is?

I say again that if this is standing still and BING only adds minimal or nothing more from here anyone looking at these would not say this is a dying company. Or if you took out the name Microsoft and just looked at what this company has been doing money wise "Most" value investors including Warren Buffett recently, in an interview recently with Reuters which I posted previously, would say this looks undervalued.

Watched two videos of Buffett and Ajit ? while they were in India on NDTV where they were being interviewed by a bunch of students. Like he told them. "Be Rational", and "Study the business and numbers and ignore the noise"

LTM LTM March 2006 March 2011 % Change --------------- ---------------- ------------ Revenue (bil) 43 69 +60% EBIT (bil) 17 28 +65% EBIT Margin 39% 40% Avg Shares (bil) 10,578 8,562 -19% EPS $ 1.26 2.52 +100% Dividend $ .42 .61 +45% R&D (bil) 6,387 9,000 +41% Share price $23.00 $25.82 +12% Net Cash/share $ 3.17 $ 4.15 Price less net cash $19.83 $21.66 + 9% P/CF 8.3, FWD PE 9.3 , ROE 44%, , No debt, Curr Assets 2XLiabilities, PEG Payback about 6yrs EPS growth, 3yr Avg 13.9%, Rev 3yr Avg 6.9% If it's name wasn't Microsoft I'd bet a lot of people would be interested.

Vish_ram Reuters: You’re always looking for value. What about Microsoft? I know you say you don’t do tech. But given that it has a forward P/E right now that’s below 10, it seems like a value play. Buffett: Yeah. I agree with you. I regard myself as precluded from either personally or having Berkshire buy Microsoft because if something good happened the following week people would think Bill had told me. So I just see no way that we can ever buy Microsoft and be sure that we won’t look like we had some kind of inside information or something. So it’s off limits. It did look pretty cheap.

Ben Graham and rijk. Thanks for those links. I would never have had the pleasure of listening to those particular ones without your posting them. They were great. Ron

And Buffett says he thinks it's undervalued. How long until the market realizes? Who knows. How much to reproduce something like MSFT and at what cost. Most people bad mouth this companys stock. They did the same to Wash Post, KO, etc while Buffett was buying and waiting then.

Thanks Myth. I own and have read many investing books. Grahams' Klarmans, Greenblatts, Templeton, Whitman, and many many more. I've gotten good ideas from all of them but have only developed a general procedure in investing from them. I'm not a good student I guess. However I have learned to gut invest from their ideas and for the most part have been successful except for the 2008 selloff where I tried adding to my positions as a general rule but was way too early this time. But at least have gotten that back. So saying that I guess one question would be would using Leaps, Calls, and Puts, be more of having a view of where a stock might be headed one way or the other down the road and using less money for leverage or like a hedge to lock in your future prices? Thanks

Curious what people would recommend for one or two good books to read for someone who wants to learn about options or advice on using them. I have bought and sold stocks for a number of years. But it seems quite a few people use options in their investment approach. I'm not great in math but have invested successfully. Just want to expand my knowledge and see if I can understand options and use them in my investing. I use shorts very infrequently. Don't use margin. Try to use a value approach but have trouble figuring a clear intrinsic value to sell at. Own many of the stocks mentioned on these boards. Some of the holdings include holdings in a taxable account. Also holding about 30-35% cash at this point in time. MSFT, L, JNJ, CSCO, LRE, ABT, ADP, MCF, INTC, MDT, RLI, UHT, VOD, WMT, WLP, and ATPG, BBEP, PFE, WRLD, AWH. Have profits in all, some long term some short term. Thanks for any help or suggestions. Ron

ourkid8; I agree. This is one I own also. Thanks, Ron

Myth; Concerning Corelogic. Curious what your thoughts are. Making money now in the default business which somewhat protects if things get worse but when things get better will go away so now it's providing a bit of a hedge until re-fi's slow. Data and Analytics are about 44% of revenues and mortgage processing about 56%. One question is apparently whether management will try to try expanding by using more debt. I guess the CEO has good experience. What do you see? Being sprung off allowing them to grow faster? Thanks, Ron

Myth, I almost bought ATSG when it was first spun off. I thought I remembered that one. Good advice on the rest. I agree

Please do elaborate. I'm going to study this

Myth; Both ends of the spectrum. Was ATSG the cargo carrier that was split off from one of the big shippers a few years ago? Thanks

Question. If you could only choose one stock to buy to hold for the next five years what would it be? Straight out buy. Any market in the world that you could purchase through. Any industry.

ShahKhezri Am reading a new book by Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management where he talks about combating negative influences." The biggest investing errors come not from factors that are informational or analytical but from those that are psychological." This piece by Fleckenstein is right on. It has been a long time but I wonder if there has been so much negative talk for so long about MSFT it"s like the swing of the pendulum and this might be coming to the point where it starts swinging the other way. Buffett also thought it undervalued and I doubt would have commented if he thought it might implode. I like Apple but how long can they keep hitting nothing but home runs? MSFT with all their so called problems keeps making lots of money. Ron

Concerning housing. In the area that I live in central CA in an area that is usually pretty strong because it's on the central coast and in demand. However this time there are still a lot of short sales, foreclosures and such. Because of the extra inventory there is very little home building and lots of commercial space vacant. It's hard to see any strong turn around here between here and the end of the year. Microsoft. Seems like quite a strong endorsement from Buffett.

Harry; The ultimate proof of the merger model will have to await the detection of gravitational waves -- ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted by relativity. Is this related to the "Black Hole Theory"? Thanks for the guide of something new to study. Ron

[ Harry; I'm very new to this board and I've really been learning a lot. Thanks to all of you. I've got some really great ideas from you and others. Some of which I've already taken advantage of such as LRE. I've learned more about how to value insurance company's here than I have in many years of prior stumbling around. I agree with Bronco however. Let's talk stocks. Whether you are right or wrong when you are arguing with some of these people. It doesn't really help me learn. It takes up time that you could be helping me learn. I would love to hear more insights like this one you posted. I'd like to hear more about your thinking about how you analyze these. I'd of course really like to hear some more stock picks and how you chose them so I can learn from those. Some of us don't have your intuitiveness and procedures down for picking out the best. Intuitiveness comes with time but if I could have help more with procedures I could really start maybe with better habits. In fact that goes for many of the people who have great records and stock picking abilities. Thanks Harry and everyone else for the good stock discussions. I'm on this site reading 3-4 times a day. I'm also re-reading a lot of the older posts and getting a lot of good ideas. Ron

Results for Owners BUFFETTS STATEMENTS Unfortunately, earnings reported in corporate financial statements are no longer the dominant variable that determines whether there are any real earnings for you, the owner. For only gains in purchasing power represent real earnings on investment. If you (a) forego ten hamburgers to purchase an investment; (b) receive dividends which, after tax, buy two hamburgers; and © receive, upon sale of your holdings, after-tax proceeds that will buy eight hamburgers, then (d) you have had no real income from your investment, no matter how much it appreciated in dollars. You may feel richer, but you won’t eat richer. High rates of inflation create a tax on capital that makes much corporate investment unwise - at least if measured by the criterion of a positive real investment return to owners. This “hurdle rate” the return on equity that must be achieved by a corporation in order to produce any real return for its individual owners - has increased dramatically in recent years. The average tax-paying investor is now running up a down escalator whose pace has accelerated to the point where his upward progress is nil. For example, in a world of 12% inflation a business earning 20% on equity (which very few manage consistently to do) and distributing it all to individuals in the 50% bracket is chewing up their real capital, not enhancing it. (Half of the 20% will go for income tax; the remaining 10% leaves the owners of the business with only 98% of the purchasing power they possessed at the start of the year - even though they have not spent a penny of their “earnings”). The investors in this bracket would actually be better off with a combination of stable prices and corporate earnings on equity capital of only a few per cent. Explicit income taxes alone, unaccompanied by any implicit inflation tax, never can turn a positive corporate return into a negative owner return. (Even if there were 90% personal income tax rates on both dividends and capital gains, some real income would be left for the owner at a zero inflation rate.) But the inflation tax is not limited by reported income. Inflation rates not far from those recently experienced can turn the level of positive returns achieved by a majority of corporations into negative returns for all owners, including those not required to pay explicit taxes. (For example, if inflation reached 16%, owners of the 60% plus of corporate America earning less than this rate of return would be realizing a negative real return - even if income taxes on dividends and capital gains were eliminated.) BUFFETTS STATEMENTS One question then is what rate eventually will inflation get to. The major dip in most stock prices during the recession have eventually come back so between dividends and re-appreciation your maybe holding even. If (when) we get to high inflation it maybe doesn't look so good. MY STATEMENTS

A review of Buffetts 1980 Annual Shareholder Letter discusses the inflation portion. It doesn't look good. Unless they are in tax free accounts which gives a little help.