Morgan

Agreed that it is harder to move up in society now than it used to be. If I remember correctly, social mobility is now less frequent in the US than in Britain. From what I have read, the legal profession is the worst for the type of situation. High education costs and limited jobs. I'm sure other industries have similar issues, but just not as extreme. I had a similar issue with finance when I graduated in 2011. Applied to 70 job openings and didn't get anything. I was fortunate to have my little company which has grown nicely since then, but other friends have been less fortunate. If the higher ed system could pump out well educated people but with way, way less debt it'd be easier for graduates to take risks and be entrepreneurs. With 100k debt load and zero hope of debt relief from bankruptcy people can't do anything. It's a tough situation. I don't know how to change it really. Even if the answers were obvious, I'm skeptical the political system would actually make meaningful changes. So who knows.

This is so cool. Musk and his team are absolutely changing the world.

That's a pretty cool calculator. Thanks for sharing!

The Beats acquisition by Apple has gotten me thinking about "celebrity hires". Celebrity's or near celebrity's that are hired by companies for various reasons. With Dre and Iovine coming to Apple and Angela Ahrendts (Burberry) already there it makes me wonder what kind of value can they add? Obviously they are a brand name that can be useful in the correct context, but Apple needs basically no help branding. What benefit do these people provide to Apple that Apple isn't not capable of doing itself? Is Cook trying to surround himself with "cool" people? What can Ahrendts do to Apple retail locations to make them better? If I remember correctly Apple stores have some of the highest sales per square foot anywhere. What can she do to improve this? Dre and Iovine. Presumably they were acquhired to lead up the streaming service. People say Iovine will be able to use his connections and sway to put together deals with record labels for the service. What can Dre bring? A younger image? He's not particularly young. Wouldn't it have been better (and probably cheaper) to build a streaming service themselves and hire them to promote it? Why is Apple making these changes? This combined with a the departure of a number of long-time execs, I think, will change Apple. Will these three new celebrity hires be able to function well at Apple? Presumably they all have huge egos are very used to calling the shots. Apple seems to have a strong leader, but Cook is not as strong and all powerful as Jobs was. Can Cook control them? Or will different camps emerge and slow the company over the coming years as infighting potentially increases? Apple hasn't put out a significant new product since the iPad in 2010. Just upgrades on the same stuff. Will the iWatch or iTV be as big as previous products? Maybe, but I'm sort of skeptical. I am a huge Apple fanboy, but some of the actions the company has taken in the last few years have made me wonder if the company is going to do much significant innovation. I hope they do because I love my Apple products.

On first glance this seems like an odd acquisition. I'd be very surprised if Apple bought them for the headphone technology as it is frequently mocked for being quite low quality for the money paid. Not to mention Apple has more than sufficient capabilities to create marvelous products. So then why does Apple want their streaming service? From the news the service isn't doing too well. Low six-digit numbers for paying subscribers. I think I read that iTunes purchases are declining slightly so getting into the streaming arena could help. But is this really the best way? And for $3.2 billion?? That's a lot of cashola (I know Apple has ~$150bn). Couldn't they build their own for less?

Sorry Sanjev! We were talking about a list of industry primers in another thread and thought this might be a good place to create the list.

Wow thank you for the great response Valueguy134 and for the OCC info Oddball. I'll check out the OCC stuff first, but add the book you recommended to my list. Some day I will get it! I'm interested in the list. It doesn't need to be anything special. In this thread is fine I would assume.

What specifically did you like about the book? It's $135. I understand there may very well be excellent information in it, but that is pretty expensive. Do you have any more details about the books you'd like to share? I checked the index on Amazon, and it looks like it does cover a large amount of material. From analysis, to regulatory regimes, to a briefing of crises, etc. It looks quite expansive. How does it read? Is it dry like a college textbook? Or better than that? It does look very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

Just finished reading Sam Walton - Made in America and it was excellent. His story is incredibly inspiring. He started with some savings and loan from his folks to buy one franchised variety store and eventually turned it into WalMart. He wasn't from a wealthy family and didn't have tons of connections or advantages. He (and his team) earned it. If he was half as hard working and competitive as the book makes him out to be, he was workhound. it's very impressive.

Another great book. I made fairly complete notes on it. See them posted here: http://bottomupanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/06/value-investing-from-graham-to-buffett.html As for Competition Demystified, it's sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. I only hear good things about it.

Thanks for the suggestion. Another that is on my list is The Frackers by Gregory Zuckerman. The Frackers was good. I just finished a month or so ago. The story about the original fracking guys is awesome. They are serious entrepreneurs, who took huge risks and were rewarded very, very well. The only thing that bothered me was I noticed a number or grammatical errors in the first quarter of the book (not that I never make mistakes). The author is a NYT writer I believe. Those kinds of mistakes shouldn't be in a published book.

Very amusing book and seems pretty much accurate unfortunately. It's totally worth the read at 100 pages or so.

The other books I ordered: 1. The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family - Ron Chernow 2. How to Lose $100,000,000 and Other Valuable Advice - Royal Little 3. The Art of Profitability - Adrian Slywotzky I think all of them are recommendations from CoBF too. ;D PS - I love Feynman's work too.

I hope you enjoy it. Please share your thoughts here once you've read it, I'm curious to know what you think of it. Will do. It may take a little while though. Just ordered a few other books too. ;D

Thanks for sharing! Just ordered it!

You can eat at Sushi Nakazawa instead! http://www.sushinakazawa.com/ He is a disciple of Jiro. And from what I hear Nakazawa is way more livelier. Also it is cheaper. ;D Yea I think his place is ~$150 and Jiro's is ~$300. Both pricey, but I'd give them both a go if I have the opportunity.

Quite an interesting read. I can see how $78m could inflate to be $7.4 trillion now. I wonder if the author did the calculations for Dutch Guilders to something to dollars and then did the inflation jump or just forgot about the currency changes and did "78 million dollars in 1650 is how much now"? Anyone know how much 1 Dutch Guilder is worth today? I can very easily imagine the founders of the company were stupendously wealthy and powerful, but I'm rather suspicious of the size. 15x more valuable than the largest company on the planet today?

Wow! What a surprise to see this on here! It's really, a great movie. Such an awesome amount of dedication to his craft. Someday soon I hope to eat there.

I really don't need your or anyone else's sympathy. I'm better off in life than most. yeah but not even willing to buy furniture on the cheap for like 1500$ seems indications of some mental illness. Are you a robot or something? It just seems that even if you have some sort of emotions, sitting in a empty apartment would just be depressing as hell. You can make your place look nice for pretty cheap, so it doesnt seem that money is really an excuse here. I dunno yadayada. I have built most of my furniture (3 bookshelves, desk, shoe stand, tv stand, bedframe) for under $100 or have gotten things for free (sofa). I don't think I'll be spending $1500 on furniture for a long time. There are many ways to live life. Doing it on the cheap to invest saved cash is generally the theme here. He's just saving more. If ScottHall is happy and content with his setup let him be. There is no need to knock his style.

The 2% number does not surprise me at all. I've noticed that I generally look over news websites (and other sites) very quickly, whereas I'll spend quite a bit of time purusing and reading articles in a physical paper. It's much more rewarding depsite getting the same information. Humans are fascinating.

Pier 1 Imports (PIR) had a ton of troubles leading up to the crisis. Management made mistakes and in 2007/08 they were finally replaced. The new management changed the product line up from less big expensive pieces (furntiture, beds, etc) to smaller knick-nacks. This strategy worked quite well as the stock went from $0.11 (yes, eleven cents) to ~$25.00 a share. I was so close to buying on the day it was eleven cents, but passed becuase I thought they were going to go bankrupt. Needless to say, a 225x bagger is hard to forget, but is a good lesson. I guess. To cut myself a little slack, I think it's quite likely I would not have held until $25 and maybe not even $1. I may have just taken my profits and ran.

This is just food for thought, but has Buffett ever said to sell stocks? Perhaps limit buying (1969-73? When he closed his fund?). Buffett always says the US will be better and richer in the next hundred years. Unless this Russia issue becomes WWIII Buffett is probably right over the next 10, 20, 50, 100 years. On the other had, Watsa may be thinking the next year or two, or maybe three, in which case he may be correct.

My understanding is that it isn't worth it in terms of accounting fee's unless they are large properties. It would get unruly I think to have 20 LLC's for 20 duplexes or something like that. If you have two large 100 unit complexes then yes, I could definitely see having multiple LLC's. In terms of pure liability, yes, a LLC per property will minimize the damage done in the event of a lawsuit. You should find the balance that makes you comfortable.

Hi Txlaw, This has happened to a few people in the last couple of weeks. Please clear out the cache in the phone, tablet or laptop. Sometimes stored pages or info won't update as they continue to go to the same stored page. If it still happens after clearing out the cache and history, send me your IP address for you phone, tablet or laptop? Someone I banned was using hundreds of IP addresses…some of which belonged to other boardmembers. Not sure how that occurs. Let me know if that works. Cheers! Great thanks! I was having the same problem!

I'm of a similar mindset as you. The amount conspicuous consumption and essentially total lack of saving is really amazing in the US. There are people around me who earn far more than I do, but are in near dire straights financially. So we talk about what they can do, they see the problem (silly spending) and continue as they always have. One or two bad months they'll be in big trouble. It's only useful to say "stop spending" so many times. Eventually it becomes unwelcomed, so I just say ok good luck. No wonder the average NW is so low. This is sort of a side note, but does anyone else here think about how much an item would cost in terms of how many hours they'd have to work to earn the money? Sometimes I do and then realize I don't want item X nearly that badly lol. :P