west

I remember reading something somewhere that you could get a book with OTC/Pink Sheet companies in it, along with their basic financials. Kind of like the Moody books Buffett used to go through. Does anyone know anything about a product like this? Or some other way of reading about a lot of OTC/Pink Sheet companies in kind of a Valueline like format?

For what it's worth, "cognative dissonance" is, quoting wikipedia here, "a discomfort caused by holding conflicting cognitions (e.g., ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously." Quoting some more: "The theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions or adding new ones to create a consistent belief system." I think that's what you were referring to, right?

Hopefully I'm not bringing up something that's already been discussed, but what are your guys' thoughts on a BAC bull spread? Today (approximately) you can buy 2014 $12 LEAPS for $1.55 and simultaneously sell $15 LEAPS at $0.89. Meaning, you can setup a $12/$15 bull spread for about $0.66. Assuming I'm doing my math right, this means that if BAC gets at or above $15 in the next 22 months (likely, in my opinion, assuming Europe doesn't explode), you'll have an upside of about $3/0.66 = 4.5x, versus a gain of just 50% if you just hold the inderlying common, at today's price. Besides the obvious of "options may expire if the market doesn't get above $12 in that time" arguement, is there anything I'm missing here? Or is this really as good as it seems?

In my opinion, the standard survey is great. I can't imagine where my thinking would be today if I hadn't subscribed to it and read it religiously every week. That being said, I was underwhelmed by the small/midcap edition. There's nothing beyond basic fundamentals presented for all companies in it. I'm pretty sure you can get the same information it provides from gurufocus, with just a little bit of tweaking. I canceled my subscription after my trial ran out.

I can only speak for the main Value Line Investment Survey. Basically, every week you receive five categories of information: - Ratings & Reports - Selection & Opinion - Summary & Index - Std. R&R Cover Page - Std. R&R Supplementary The "Ratings & Reports" section is split into one page PDFs for every company. All the other sections are one, multiple page, PDFs. The formatting works pretty well on an iPad (v1 in my case. I'm cheap.) However, I still prefer my paper format :). There's nothing like sitting down with a cup of coffee and flipping through a Value Line, comparing companies, for a few hours. And you'll get fast at it. I don't think the whole one PDF per company format would lend itself to quick, multi-company analysis very well. (Also, you still have access to the online PDFs with the print subscription. So you can save off the PDFs if you want to.) That being said, the dead tree stuff does pile up fast if you're not good at managing it!

elltel, here is an (free) open source program, Free File Sync, that looks like it may accomplish what you're looking for: http://freefilesync.sourceforge.net/index.php I don't know how clunky it is though. If you want to give it a try and give me feedback about it, please let me know! There's also this, but it the website doesn't really inspire me to recommended it. (And it's not open source, which is generally a plus in my book, or from a reputable website like sourceforge, which Free File Sync, above, is.) http://allwaysync.com/ I am seeing a few good comments about it online though.

Ha. Great idea, leftcoast :). Ross812: I've always wanted to write a better stock screener. All the ones out there are lacking, to say the least, in regards to what I want to do (more statistical/historical, fundamental analysis stuff.) However, the little that I've looked into it, it costs a lot to get fundamental data, and even more if you want to licence it for software you're developing. This being said, if anyone on this board knows how to get real historical/fundamental data for cheap, and hopefully license it for cheap as well, let me know! We can do a quid-pro-quo thing, even if it's not for product development. I'd love to get my hands on a nice set of historical/fundamental stock data. elltel, could you go into more details about this: It sounds like rsync on unix would solve your problems. And there's probably a good windows solution out there. I can find one if you would like, if you do use windows. Ditto for mac. It would only take a few minutes. For what it is worth, my background is in networking and storage, so this would be up my alley. However, every time I get a good idea related to networking and storage, it seems there's always at least three other products already out there doing the same thing!

Hi cofabmd! racemize is right. Something for small website clips already exists both for Mac and Windows machines. They're called Web Clips and Web Slices respectively. If you use a Mac, it's pretty easy to set up Web Clips: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEkIo2wWi_0 http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/9046.html Otherwise, if you use Windows, Internet Explorer 8 has something called Web Slices. I've never used them myself though: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/cc956158(v=vs.85).aspx Is this what you were thinking of? Otherwise, there are also things online called "One Page Aggregators" where many websites and website clips can be combined on one website. I haven't used them myself. (Doing some basic searching doesn't show anything that promising... it could be a potential product!) Hope this helps!

Hi guys! I have a small question for the forum. I'll try to keep it short. Let's say you have a friend who's a software engineer. He recently approached you and offered to write a custom piece of software for you for next to nothing. He's pretty smart at software (he just left his high paying software engineering job). And he's decently smart when it comes to investing (he just took and passed the Level I CFA exam). He's just a one man team (at this point), so he can't, say, write a better version of Windows or Outlook for you. They're way too big! Also, regretfully, he can't write software that fixes hardware problems. Beyond these two restrictions however, he can write most small to medium-sized programs, even more technical ones, with relative ease. What software would you have him write? If you're not 100% sure what you'd have him write off the top of your head, he offers two things to think about: First, what's something that you'd love to have automated for you on your computer, either when dealing with investments or otherwise? What are some tasks that you'd happily pay, say, a nice meal or two to have set up for you so that you'd never have to worry about doing them ever again? Second, what "damnits!" occur for you on a regular basis with your computer or your software? What problems do you have that seem to pop up regularly, maybe even daily, that you would kill to have go away forever? Since this is an investing forum, he says he's definitely looking more toward developing investing-related software products. However, if you have ideas that aren't investing related, he's not afraid of listening to them! For full disclosure, yes, this "friend" would be me :). I'm currently doing market research for small to medium-sized software products to develop. I hope my commercial intentions don't bother anyone too much though! After all, this could be your chance to have that one piece of software that you've always wanted written for cheap! :) Thanks for your help! west PS- For what it's worth, I did get the OK from Sanjeev before posting this since it's somewhat commercial in nature.

There are few skills that can't be helped by deliberate practice, and this isn't one of them! Break down what clear speaking means to you into very clear, distinct components. Then take each of those components and break them down into subcomponents. Analyze each component of clear speaking and each component's subcomponents. In your analysis, what do you see as being the key skill or way of thinking for every component and subcomponent? What can you do to practice that key thing? Write this all down - each subcomponent, their subcomponents, and the key thing for every component and subcomponent. Then, with that list, figure out what you can do to practice every key thing. Then practice every key thing, one at a time, deliberately until you're perfect at each one. Then bring every subcomponent together into their components and practice them as a whole. Then bring every component together into the whole of clear speaking and practice everything together as a whole. It's just like a golf swing or skiing. As a whole, it's complicated. If you can break it down into parts, practice those parts, and then bring those parts together, it may get a lot simpler, and maybe even natural!

Something has to preserve the phosphoric acid! ;D

Does anyone follow this (very good) blog? Any idea why it's suddenly gone private?

I think Lampert has a slightly different investing style than most of us, due to the amount of money he's dealing with. For most of us, I'm guessing, we both have no control over the companies that we invest in, and it is fairly easy for us to get in and get out of our investments. If one of our investments becomes fairly valued or overvalued in a short period of time, there's no reason for us not to sell. I don't think Lampert has that privilege. That's why, I think, he's arguing that for large institutional investors the best strategy is to find a decent company, hopefully at a discount, buy a controlling interest, and then manage it for the long term. Chances are you'll probably outperform the market better that way than any other way (if you're managing billions of dollars.)

According to Schroeder's Snowball, when Munger ran his partnership and had a really good idea he would not just put in all the money he and his partners had, but all of the money he could borrow as well. I would've never expected that myself :).

So, dumb question. With so many editions out, which one do you guys recommend :D ? I've looked into getting Of Permanent Value before, but I've been just overwhelmed by the number of editions out there.