oddballstocks

Confidence is key, absolutely key. Random story that is related to this: I had a friend who needed a guitarist for a band, they performed every week to a decent sized audience. I asked what he looked for and this is what he said "I want someone confident, I'd rather have someone who isn't that great and acts like they are verses someone who is insecure and reflects that." Granted there are caveats to everything, you need to have a proficient level of ability, but given two people with the same ability level the confident person will win out.

Never tried it, but I'd guess it's probably too small.

I use my iPad, and MacBook in that order. I much prefer to read on the iPad. I have never noticed any eye strain from it, maybe I'm used to it. I'm looking at screens all day long.

Why don't you think you can make money on this? Maybe you're a fund with hundreds of millions or billions under management, then point taken. If you're an individual, or a small fund you can absolutely take advantage of this. Say you can buy a 5% or less position so you don't have to file, that's $250k. If you prefer to hold 10 positions or less (like most on the board) then you're priced out at $2.5m in assets. If you hold 20 positions or more you're priced out at $5m in assets. Here's another way to think about this, if the position could return 7-8x do you really need a 20-30% position? If you allocate 5% and it really returns that much you'll be sitting pretty. One last point, the bid ask is worthless on illiquid stuff. No one is actually paying that, place a GTC order at what you'd pay somewhere in there and you'll probably get a fill. There is a lot of phantom volume. I have purchased stocks with a bid $10 ask $500 for $10-11 without issue over and over. People put in goofy asks on these things, market makers ignore them until some unlucky soul places a market order and market makers pounce and then promptly go buy themselves an expensive steak dinner. Curious as to the name. Shoot me a PM, I'll keep it confidential, just curious. Might be worth building a stake and working with management to go private or work out a buyout.

-Anything [amazonsearch]Curious George[/amazonsearch] -Anything [amazonsearch]Thomas The Train[/amazonsearch] -Anything [amazonsearch]Richard Scarry[/amazonsearch]

Great comment! I use multiples, but they are best used in context. Often something might appear to have a high P/E, or low book value, but upon a deeper look it becomes obvious that the multiple is wrong because of some obscured or hidden variable. What's best is when you realize this variable, and management is also very aware of the variable, but the rest of the market isn't. Banks are interesting right now, there are a lot of dynamics at work in the industry. Yet some of these can be taken advantage of, for example there is a sweet spot of banks that are very cheap, and given the regulatory change will either be forced out of business, or will be forced into an acquisition. It can be very profitable to buy these potentially extinct ones cheap and wait for them to be acquired, but Sharper's point is very relevant, one needs to understand the dynamics and what's at play.

I remember reading that self-dealing is illegal. Do I have it wrong? I believe the spirit of the law is to keep people from manipulating the share price. Isn't self-dealing when someone in a position of power takes advantage of that position over shareholders? Based on the definition I've found online there is nothing wrong with a retail shareholder placing a buy order in one account and a sell in a different account. It's up to the brokerage to fill the buy with the same person's sell. So no, this doesn't appear illegal. Here's what Webster says about it: Definition of SELF-DEALING : financial dealing that is not at arm's length; especially : borrowing from or lending to a company by a controlling individual primarily to the individual's own advantage

Not directly answering this, but I have attempted in the past to sell an illiquid stock in my Roth to my taxable account, it didn't work out unfortunately. I tried to put in an odd sell order, then put in a matching buy order. I expected a crossing transaction between accounts, but nothing triggered. What happened was my sell went through and then about a day later my purchase when through, not exactly what I was expecting.

That's the hardest part to connect. It's easy to restring fiber, it's connecting to homes that's the problem. In my area we have FIOS, so I have fiber straight into the house. They used a wire hanging from the air, but when I signed up in 2005 they said they might need to dig a trench to run it, which I was fine with for the speeds they said they'd give me.

I'm late to this thread, but this is an awesome comment, you clearly have two feet in the real world.

Here's something I've thought of, why not a hybrid system. A containerized system where you drive your car to a train terminal, the car is loaded into some sort of crate thing and you ride in the train. The trains would have to be very high speed and for long distances. But I know I'd prefer to have my car on a trip verses renting a car. The key to a system like this would be very quick load times and very quick travel times. The downfall of plane travel is the 45m drive to the airport, the 1.5 hours early I need to be and then the extra hour after I land to get my luggage and rent a car, sometimes longer if there are lines. In all there's an extra 2.5 hours or so added to each plane trip. New York is six hours from my house, if you take that 2.5 hours, plus the hour flight, then another 45m for transit from the airport into the city it's starting to get close in time. If a train could travel across the state at 200mph and carry my car it would be much faster than air travel, and I would have my car at the end. I've thought about this with busses as well. Imagine a network of busses that get people from suburbs and drive to a hub, the bus drives straight onto a train and is secured in place. Then the train drives off at a high speed. While in transit passengers would switch to the bus that would take them to their final destination using a hub/spoke system.

Interesting post, I'm just going to throw a few things out there: 1) You might need to wait for a generation to die off, owning a car and independence is a fiercely held belief of the boomers. 2) I'm guessing you live in the city? I live in the suburbs, my wife would go nuts if she had to plan to use a car, there are many days where on a whim she'll say to the kids "we're going to the library now!" and they hop in the car, maybe habits change, but it would suck to have to wait 30m for the car to drive from the lot. 3) Imagine if there was a traffic jam and you called for a car and instead of arriving in 30m it arrived in 2 hours, it could kill a business meeting or a wedding or whatever, a few incidents like this and people would buy cars. 4) It would be nice for a computer to drive on a long trip, I'm looking forward to this. Hopefully I can program it to speed in certain empty states. 5) What about towing? We have an RV, I know people with boats, rental companies don't let you tow with their vehicles, I guess I'd always need to own something? I have this sense that you're accurate but early. This is the type of post that seems so strange right now, but in 25 years will seem so forward looking. I think you're probably right on the direction, but will end up being wrong on the details. But if you're looking to invest the details don't matter as much as the trajectory.

For me, part of the title of this thread makes little sense. U.S. healthcare (and most modern healthcare...many of the ideas we benefit from started in Germany some many decades ago) has been AMAZINGLY effective. And, that's the "problem" -- one for which there is not a good solution. In my mind, the "solution" that is being pursued is limiting supply. Beginning about 100 or 150 years ago, healthcare began to make advances in the West which -- to this day -- have been unending. Once a medical problem is solved -- like, say, kidney dialysis -- decent people naturally feel compelled to provide it for everyone no matter what the cost. Decent people don't want to play God. But, many of these procedures are simply incredibly expensive -- particularly the ones which start as advances (even if they eventually become commonplace...that's the pattern, of course). Healthcare simply can't eat of all the wealth of even the most prosperous of nations. No one thinks all people deserve to live in palaces but almost everyone feels that most people deserve to have life saving treatments whatever the cost. That makes sense. Looking for solutions to things that aren't the cause of the problem won't work. The irony here is that this insight was the beginning of the century (plus) of advances in healthcare that have been so incredible. This is another depressing situation. As someone who has a lot of experience looking at claims history for a large insurer I can assure you that the expensive high profile procedures are not what's sinking the ship. It's the death of a thousand cuts. You only have a few people that have the expensive procedures or expensive medical devices, unfathomable amounts of people are on medications for high blood pressure, depressants etc that seems cheap ($10-60 a claim) but when you add up the sheer magnitude of these claims it's huge. After my experience with this client I have a conclusion for what will solve health care costs in the US, Americans need to: 1. Lose weight 2. Relax Obesity related drugs/procedures/problems and stress related drugs/procedures/problems/ailments are expensive. Unfortunately to solve these people need to take health into their own hands, this isn't something some company or government can force down from the top.

In theory doable, but extremely difficult, especially since 2008. The reason is the regulators don't want to see any non-standard securities. It's generally frowned on when banks own securities, I've heard numerous stories where the regulator has forced the bank to sell stock on the open market regardless of price because they don't want the risk. If you want to own a bank to gain access to float to invest in debt then you have a fighting chance. There are a few bond funds disguised as banks, although not many. The last factor is the difficulty in gaining control of a bank. If someone without formal banking experience tried to start a de novo bank the regulator would stop it, if that same person tried to purchase an existing bank the regulators would most likely stop it. So to gain control you need to have years of executive experience in a bank. Best of luck!

I graduated in 1999, so I was a year short, he graduated in June of 95 and I started HS in August of 95.. OU...I went to Miami..

Buckeye, I have looked at Value Line maybe twice in my life, so I'm probably not that qualified to give an answer. I'd say if you find it useful, and you think what you gain from it will improve your investments, then go ahead and purchase. Where are you from in Ohio? I grew up in Bay Village (a suburb west of Cleveland), live in Pittsburgh now.

There was a New Zealand Yearbook published by IRG: http://www.intelligentinvestor.co.nz/products/2011%252d2012-New-Zealand-Investment-Yearbook-.html I have that edition, I went through each company and ended up purchasing Guinness Peat Group which worked out exceedingly well. I purchased the book on that site about a year ago, somehow I got free 2nd day air shipping when I ordered, not sure how I swung that. I have inquired about a book like this for the AIM, no luck. A book with European companies (especially small caps) in English would be awesome as well. I've gone through three books start to finish, the Walkers, New Zealand and the JASDAQ portion of the Japan Company Book. In all cases the investments from those sources have been excellent. In writing this post I'm wondering why I'm not buying books for all markets.... REALLY interested in the response to this thread.

Just something to think about with regards to interconnectedness. At the start of WWI Europe was as interconnected as now, there was a common expression at the time that war was impossible because of all the tight business relationships. As an example most German ships were insured by English insurers. I've heard similar things said now, that the US could never get into a conflict with China because we rely on them so much....what's old is new again....

Haven't read the report yet but after my experience in the tower industry I'd say you could replace AMT with CCI or SBA and the thesis would hold. Most do not understand the way this industry works. A major overlooked problem is the duration mismatch. They take on long term leases and mortgages for short term antenna contracts. A few non renewals or an industry merger and any of these companies has a problem.

We just switched to Erie Insurance, they were significantly cheaper than Nationwide, who we had in the past. I'm not sure if Erie underwrites outside of Pennsylvania, but they're worth a look. We have a lot of friends who've been satisfied with them for decades, finally their nagging paid off (literally!). I found Geico to be extremely expensive. I was paying $150/mo for one car when I had them. I switched to Nationwide and was able to insure two cars for $110/mo. This was about eight years ago, maybe their prices have come down.

What was the nature of your work there? I believe Conduril is building government projects, and as far as I can tell they have been paid for their ongoing work. They operate in the former Portuguese colonial sphere of influence in Africa, although I believe they've started to branch out. They also have some projects coming on line in Spain.

I'm not, I took a SWAG and figured that 92m tons of coal is worth more than $10m. But the company has stated it will be 10 years before it's potentially mined. In one filing they said it might never be mined, so I passed. Your estimate seems the most scientific, if I'm reading right you'd say it's worth $300m or so, which is still 30x the current market cap.

Stopped at the Carnegie Business Library at lunch today and looked at some of the old books they have. I can see sitting down and plowing through the Mergent books in an afternoon and finding a few gems. The really old books were cool, lots of information on these companies from 100 years ago.

Where did you get the 10-11 year timeframe? In the annual report they say the lease was extended by 40 years in 2009. This is what the CEO told a friend, the coal could be mined in 2023 or 2024 (I don't remember which, just that it's about 10 years away).

More on this, the spot today is $67.27 a short ton, that works out to $6,188,840,000, guess my estimate was off by $2b.. It all depends on the quality, Powder River coal is only going for $10 per ton, meaning this would only be worth $1b. I don't believe this is as easy as getting in an activist to shake things up, don't you think current management would have tried to monetize it already? They sure have a heck of an incentive, I believe they own most of the company, plus they could pull some incredible benefits. Kmukul, I'd encourage you to look into this or call the company, maybe you'll have luck where others have failed.