arbcon

was someone I knew well. We taught a class at Villanova" The Philosophy of Value Investing" for 7 or 8 years and he was a frequent speaker. We also saw his attendance at our Annual Dinner(hosted by Ben Auger) down here. He will be missed.

I like thi service a lot. I've recommended it to several friends. However, I found that the company files page was slow to update to current filings which I was able to get. Hopefully they can fix the lag.

I would seek advice before doing this. The famous"access" case was a family in New Canaan who had a very small home in the Hamptons for his wife's parents and who worked in New York. Even though the Hampton home was 120 miles away they were deemed to have access. I think it cost them 500,000. Be extremely careful here.

how quick is bamsec in terms of transcripts? I have a call into them so will post response if I get one.

looking at koyfin as an alternative to bloomberg. It's keyboard layout is similar. It' doesn't have transcripts and analytics are not at bloomberg levels, which I'm fine with. Any thoughts on a good place to get transcripts, sec filings etc, other than gurufocus or seeking alpha? What does everyone use?

I taught a night arbitrage in nyc for 5 or 6 years. i had him do the bankruptcy and restucturing sections and we would go out for a late dinner afterwards. A true gentleman- Max heine, Bill Ruane, Marty Whitman- an age is passing.

I haven't met Mr Chou but I sympathize with him. To me, the crucial question is whether the last ten years are a valid test of investment performance given the heavy hand of the government in monetising everything under the sun. I wonder to this day how many securities they bought from the banks for which they paid 100 cents on the dollar were worthless at time of purchase. The money went into the stock market- you know the rest. But,to me, saying a period of negative rates is a valid investment strategy is not something I will ever understand. Fortunately I don't have to. To the very thoughtful commenter with the 5 year horizon, I remember well the 1969-1974 period where people who were Buffett partners sold Berkshire back to WB after 1969 using exactly that test. Many of those who sold were personal friends of mine. Of course they didn't understand the value of float,or, more specifically, the value of that float in the hands of WB. I'm talking about sales from 90 to 300 per share on the A stock. But, as I get older, i tend to just pick the highest combination of honesty and talent that I can find and make more of a lifetime investment, with the sole exception of now where everything i look at is overpriced, at least to me.

Hi Daniel..this is John Constable writing. Good to see you are well after all of these years!

Did anyone see the reddit thread where someone admitted making up the story? I think the thread is something like the greatest troll in history? And everyone bought it? I did see the thread . For those too old to visit redditt, The troll was started last summer, was forgotten in the election, and resurfaced with cnn in the lead and buzzfeed publishing the document. The guy who did the troll has now hired a lawyer. All this is searchable. To me, i remember Baldwin in Hunt and think he's down a long way from that role.

Just from memory, does anyone remember how he effectively sold Berkshire's stock portfolio to General Re through the share swap?

I have not met him but sent him a nice post. One of the things which distinguishes a great investor from a good investor is class, ie., the ability to empathize with someone else who is younger and has learning ahead of him, as we all do. I hope others send him a nice note. He'll recover and do fine.

I was actually written up in his publication a few times. He lost his mother and wife within a short time period, and their loss hurt him deeply. I hope he resurrects his publication. He is a very smart guy. No one should have to undergo what he went through.

"Liability is borne generally"-Interesting statement by lew.

I'm not a lawyer and not giving investment advice, but I wanted to go into Meritor a bit. It may not be useful but here goes: When Meritor was taken in the early 1990's by Sarah Hargrove Commissioner of Banking State of Pa on behalf of Fdic as receiver, Steven Roth of Vornado tax- lossed his huge position after the taking but prior to year end. When it looked like money would be coming back from fdic due to Frank Slattery's suit some decades later, Roth filed in the Court of Claims the argument that shareholders who were owners at time of taking were the only ones eligible for proceeds. Judge Loren Smith was the presiding judge, and decided, I think because the stock continued to trade,even though in receivership, that current shareholders were entitled to receipts. This is a conservatorship not a receivership so the argument for current shareholders might be stronger.

I find the unread function helpful as well. Given the high valuations of this market, in my view, currently, I'm surprised to find as many situations on this Board as I do.

One of my favorite managers. No one, but him, could have turned around AIG. Truly up there with the very best.

run ccleaner and spybot and problem should disappear.

yes Slattery. I was very involved in Meritor at one point. Sweeney is key.

This may not be applicable, but don't the takings rulings in some of the thrifts, specifically Meritor, have some value here( Court of Claims-Judge Loren Smith if I recall correctly)? I think there was even an attempt to argue insolvency because of the low stock price at the date of the receivership. Meritor took 20 years but was successful. My cursory view of this is yes, with a BIG exception, and that is in this case the opinion seems to be an attempt to rewrite bankruptcy law by muddling the relationship between a conservationship and a receiver, which I did not see in Meritor. Some questions I wonder about: 1. Is this an attempt to nationalize the final mortgage backstop(because fre/fnm are the recipient of loans from the banks.ie., is there a political element here we are missing?, or 2. Is this an attempt to grab the future cashflows because it was clear that the cash buildup was much larger than anticipated? I'm still thinking this through so thoughts appreciated.

Gio- I was actually trying to help you think through the economic goodwill calculation to help you frame out your investment in fairfax intellectually. Feel free to disregard my comments and no worries.

gio....deciding whether you have paid or overpaid for a business is a decision made after you work through economic goodwill, not before.

Gio...possibly another way of thinking this through is to say that eric is doing an invested capital analysis to better understand the sources of returns, or, if you will economic goodwill.

Wamu not Nygren's finest hour. I think: 1. It was a safe place to hide, and 2. It would eventually be a deal(perhaps with his "help". Problem is, anyone looking at the income staement could see they were booking negative am as cash profits. That was the warning, but went unheeded. I remember Cramer talking about using the Wamu dividend as a safe harbor....ummm.really?

For me, there is no question that we are in a bond bubble, and it's eventual repricing , to say, 3% overnight ,will have consequences. However, the key for me in stocks is whether companies can price with inflation, or not. The sustainability in this will depend on wage growth. I'm watching Hershey/Mars now to see whether their price increase sticks. In general, I look less at the tree than the new growth on the tips of the branches to determine future value,but that's me. To Bmichaud, I know three or four of the guys in the article. When it was written, all were watching banks implode and wondering whether the resultant damage would spread through the economy. So, we all bought Wells Fargo and did well.but had a rough ride for a few years.

twacowfa...for some reason I did not see your message.....at the time warren had the deal with smith barney, you could leave securities with them and have the hedge as margin. reg t 223-3 permitted a long hedge of 10% of the long side as cover for the spread above parity. If the position was at parity, no margin was required. So you could create deep out of the money puts for zero.