oddballstocks

I get checks all the time, and write checks all the time. I also have direct deposit. Some businesses won't accept bill pay for my monthly bills (local natural gas company, preschool, local groups etc). Others want unlimited access to my checking account (CitiMortgage..no thanks), and so I write checks. My business gets checks all the time as well. Checks are the easy way to pay invoices, send an invoice, receive a check.

INTP ENTJ

You hit two salient points, the first is many/most (?) are unfortunately only looking out for #1 and will do anything it takes to satisfy that. The second is that Boards who are supposed to be fiduciaries have disregarded their duty and are enablers. What drives me nuts are companies where employees are paid peanuts and mistreated and yet the CEO is paying himself like a king. It's culture-rot to the extreme, and it starts at the top.

I built custom homes for a living and I would always try to save people money where I could. Contractors are usually beaten down on costs by the home owners, changes done without a change order document (in the end our own fault).....................The home builder rarely gets the quoted amount at the end of the job regardless of how many extra hours are put in above and beyond................... And then there are people who believe contractors are out to screw everybody. If I had a dollar for every time I heard, "all contractors will screw you" or "all contractors are crooks". I wouldn't need this board for investment wisdom, I be set for life. Good contractors get the short end of the stick. Poor contractors find ways to bilk money from customers any way they can. (And yes, I know there are more of the latter in this world) Rant over. Sorry, it's a very touchy subject for me. ;D The great thing is being honest and returning phone calls is a great starting point for building a great reputation in the business. I have a good friend who's brother is a contractor. He returns phone calls, shows up on time and is extremely professional, he has an enormous client base and is doing well. Another friend's father started a home building business. Same story, diligent, always honest and took care of customers, he now has a thriving company and is quite wealthy. There are customers who are attracted to those traits, enough that a sustainable business can be built. I remember calling to get quotes on having a driveway redone. I called 10-11 companies, three called me back. Maybe the others were swimming in money and had too much business, or more likely they just aren't versed in common professionalism.

Sometimes these things are hard to reconcile. You have public company CEO's taking as much as possible with little ownership. Then there are private company CEO's who build the companies themselves and pay themselves pennies and watch costs like a hawk. The private owner can 'take' as much as they wish without anyone raising a fuss, yet they don't. And the public CEO, who's a hired manager shouldn't be able to take anything yet they do. There are CEO's out there who do care about shareholders. A CEO of a small local public company I know is like this. He mentioned to me coming in on a Saturday morning to fix a toilet in the bathrooms that was leaking. He said replacing a toilet was simple and he'd rather save the money instead of hiring a plumber. Behavior like this is rare, but does exist.

Great job, it looks nice. Any reason you don't want to make money off of this? I think you could very easily mine this and tie footnote changes to declines or advances in stock price. Then you could take it a step further and then send out alerts when a new filing comes in that matches a condition that you've linked to a decline or advance. That could have a lot of value for active funds, the types of customers you want to court. Are you pulling from the real time RSS feed?

The landscape has changed for funds. The rule on who you can charge management fees to has changed, the bar is higher. So ask yourself, do you have enough people who are going to be qualified investors for whom you can charge a fee? Remember you're still allowed to charge them a performance fee on a separate account as well. Separate accounts aren't as "sexy" as running a fund. If you care about the swagger and being able to say you run a hedge fund pay the costs. Otherwise I'd say go the RIA route, it's cheaper and far easier to setup. For the few high balance accounts you can charge performance fees, and if your great aunt maude wants to invest with you you'll be able to put her in some index funds and get paid for it. This is where a fund makes sense, if you're dealing in esoteric non-liquid investments. If so it becomes really hard to allocate them to different accounts. In that case you want a single fund. You said you're going to be doing long only liquid investments so I'd consider SMA's seriously. Nate

Crown Castle was clearly a growth play. He was in that well before the crisis and was touted by management as a hedge fund who saw the same vision as them. I'm not sure if he doubled down during the crisis but if he did it was luck not superior insight. At the bottom of the crisis they were cheering and giving high fives for being able to obtain debt financing at 15%. If that hadn't come through the company would have folded.

Investing is no different than any other career path, it's not what you know but who you know. Many things are discussed on the phone or in person which never appear online. Picking up the phone is very underrated, it takes longer than reading but I think it's worth it.

Just curious, what laws are protecting Comcast from competition? Also, apart from regulation of abuses, another side to why free market isn't the best is, paradoxically, innovation. For example, current wave of tech innovation by free market is looking kinda lame in comparison to innovation of the 50s-70s fueled by the government, like space program. Or the Internet itself, which was invented by the government program. Good article along this tangent: http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/429690/why-we-cant-solve-big-problems/ How about the law that only one cable company is allowed per township/city? Cities and townships get to decide which single provider will be the company of choice for citizens. If the city council or township doesn't choose you then you can't provide services. Cable is notorious with this. They began this practice initially as a way by saying they could only run wire to customers in a township if a township gives them exclusive rights. Google "Cable Franchise Agreement" for more information, this is rampant in the Midwest and Eastern US.

Security Analysis - Graham One Up On Wall Street - Lynch Financial Shenanigans - Schilit Margin of Safety - Klarman

Maybe all the people with tens of millions are too busy swimming in their money Scrooge McDuck style to post. http://www.nerdspan.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Scrooge-Porpoise.jpg

Here's what I mean when I talk about short. I "researched" AS Company tonight. They're a Greek toymaker selling at 50% of BV. I've attached their annual report, it took about five minutes to read the whole annual report. Someone will reply that there isn't enough information to make an investment decision. That's possible for some, but for me value investing is a form of quick handicapping. I'm trying to buy where the odds of something better are higher than the odds of something worse. At 50% and below of BV the information I need to make an investment decision starts to diminish greatly. A retort to this is that you have to cycle these things, I agree. There are 2,000+ net-nets worldwide, that's plenty of ammunition for a portfolio! A second criticism is these don't grow or are bad businesses. I agree, there is no pride in owning a Greek toymaker. But there's the thing, the lower the valuation the less something has to work for a fantastic return. I own a company at 15% of BV, there's an awesome bear case against them. Peers are trading at 80-100% of BV. Sure, maybe the company I own isn't worth BV, but is it worth at least 30% of BV? If so that'd be a double. Figures_and_Information_for_the_period_010113_311213.pdf

This is why I don't invest in large cap companies. So many small caps have annual reports that can be read quickly. If it's taking me an hour to read an annual report I'm not going to be investing in the company most likely. I've invested in companies where I can read 10 years of financials in an hour.

It's the zero or near zero drop that's key. Adding a significant drop to our shoes has changed our running from a natural to an un-natural style. The key is getting zero drop shoes.

I've never read the book but had a co-worker who did and was obsessed with it. He convinced me to get minimal shoes, I have the New Balance Minimus road running shoes. I used to run about 1,800 miles a year on Asics, I never had a problem, but I was also young. I took a decade off and got back into running 3+ years ago, I reduced my mileage dramatically, I do about 4-500 miles a year running a few days a week. I run almost exclusively on pavement. Here's what I found, the transition took maybe two weeks at first, but that was for short mileage. I could go from running 3 miles in standard shoes to 3 miles in minimal shoes without an issue. Going farther or faster took longer. I initially started with trail shoes because there was less foam and I wanted to be closer to the ground. Big mistake, if you do any substantial running on pavement you need a little padding, even with zero drop. I started to have foot and tendon issues, getting the road running version of the shoe fixed everything. Also worth noting is that the transition if you live in a hilly area is much longer. When running in a minimal shoe you're using your calves and ankles more, and if you're going up hills even moreso. In Pittsburgh it's not uncommon to have 800-1000ft of elevation climb in a 4-5 mile run. At one point I tore up my calves due to not pacing myself. I had to change my style of running as well, I used to have a larger stride, I shortened it up, I also increased my cadence. I have no idea if this had any effect on anything. I know some people say they run slower in the minimal shoes, I have no idea if this is true. I run at about a 7:20 minute per mile pace which isn't that fast to begin with. I'll say this, the minimal shoes are awesome in terms of weight, they are very light, I almost don't notice they're on. I started out wearing them with socks, but now just wear them barefoot. The main attraction to the minimal/barefoot style for me was that my calves instead of my knees would take the brunt of the shock. This is attractive because I tore a meniscus back in 2009. I wanted to be active but limit the damage to my knees. I re-injured the same knee on a bike tour in 2012. Since changing my running style my knees have felt a lot better. It's also strengthened my muscles surrounding my knees so that when I bike and ski I'm reducing the impact as well. One last thought, when I was running and racing often I used to have a pair of race flats. They were essentially minimal shoes for races that were lighter than my daily shoes. So in some senses the minimal shoes have been around forever in the form of racing flats, it's just that most runners didn't train daily in their flats.

This assumes that price is the key competitive dimension. I would argue that for many customers who are spending $100/year on printing, pricing is mostly irrelevant. They will go with the company they have heard of. Vistaprint's scale let's them outspend their competitors on advertising and marketing. I suspect that this realization is what caused VPRT to shift their strategy. Shipping out crappy, free business cards gets you scale but doesn't build your brand. The key metric I'm watching is Net Promoter Score. Customer satisfaction is going up, which should be a leading indicator. I have a small business and spend >$100/year on printing. The best quality at lowest cost is my objective. I've used Vistaprint, they were ok. I've used other printers as well. If someone is offering a deal I will always take it, there is a lot of competition in this arena. There's no lock in. None of the sites I've used let me save designs or upload a portfolio. I have to start from scratch each time. Since that's the case why wouldn't I shop on price?

I second everything Tim said. The best thing you can do is contact the company and see what their policy is. I have a collection of small positions, sometimes as small as a few dollars just to receive annual reports.

One other thing, clone without hesitation. Download a number of equity reports that you like and take the style and formatting aspects that you like and incorporate them into your report.

I would second racemize, the data is great but the layout is distracting/confusing. There is a LOT of data that you're trying to show. I wouldn't try to show less, but think of more innovative ways to show it and reduce the clutter. For example you have a graph on the second page. Why not have under each year in a smaller font tangible book value, net cash etc. These are great data points, but probably not as important as other data so it can be smaller. This also frees up room. Maybe combine the two graphs on the first page. They're cool graphs, overlay them on each other with scales on both sides. I think it'd be cool to see the P/B trading range on top of the EV/EBITDA trading range. There could be some useful information in there. Here's how I'd think about this, step back and ask what story the report is trying to tell. If you had that tossed on your desk what would you think? I'd think it's about revenue and EPS, the two items at the top. Are those the most important? Once you know the story then you know how to organize it. If someone were to look at the report for 15s what would they want to know? What should they see? Make sure that's up front and visible. I'd use thinner fonts and duller colors too. Shrink the text size, you can fit more on a page. Hope this helps!

Depends on the company. I usually email the CEO/CFO and ask. Sometimes yes, other times no. If you want experience attending annual meetings here's a great avenue. Open a few small accounts at mutually owned banks. You are now a shareholder at the bank. The bank will have an annual meeting that you're allowed to attend. This can be a great time to ask questions of management. In Atlanta I'd try to attend the CZBS annual meeting, it's probably right around the corner. If you go to OTCMarkets.com and run a screener for your state you'll get a list of all the small companies. I'd say 85% of listed companies per state are small banks, you'll probably be attending a few bank meetings.

After reading this thread last night I ended up staying up way too late reading about tax sales in Pennsylvania. Here are some details for anyone interested. In PA there are two types of sales, Upset sales, and Judicial sales. An upset sale is one where the property is sold for the tax amount due, but liens remain outstanding. A buyer who purchases at an upset sale pays off the outstanding taxes and fees and receives the deed to the property, but all liens (including mortgages) remain. This is the type of sale that someone losing their house would want to be purchasing at. My impression is that banks are often the bidders here. If a property doesn't sell in the Upset sale it's moved to a Judicial sale. A judicial sale removes all liens from the property. Purchases made at a judicial sale are free and clear with a few exceptions. If someone enters into a mortgage between the announcement of the sale and the sale date that's not eliminated. Neither are mortgages on mobile homes. Lastly there are repository sales. These are places that didn't sell at the Judicial sale. They are held on a repository list and buyers can bid on them at any time. I've been browsing some lists of properties, there are some interesting properties out there. Some PA counties post lists of properties online. Others will mail them to you if you pay a $5 fee. Some others require a small fee in person, something like $8. The rules are all over the place and vary from county to county. From a few hours of surfing the best properties seem to be the ones that are rural. There isn't the money or interest to purchase some of this stuff. A lot isn't worth purchasing either, lots of small lots, side yards etc.

Great details, the mechanics sound very similar to what the guy I talked to said. He said most of the time you get the interest and fee income, but here and there you end up with a million dollar property that you paid pennies for.

I talked to someone recently who has done this in a BIG way. He said you need to learn the mechanics for each state, but once you get it down it's just a matter of going to the sales. The one takeaway I had from the conversation with him was that you're better buying bigger liens verses small ones. Buy liens on hotels and restaurants instead of small single family houses. There is less competition and it's easier to get paid on the bigger ones. If you don't then you own a very valuable commercial property for almost nothing.