VAL9000

Isn't that obvious? The promise of an iPad and a PC in a single device. If they do a good job of executing on this promise, then I think it's a clear win for customers. People who want an iPad will get a PC for "free", and people who want a PC will get an iPad for "free". I say "free" because we don't know the price point yet, but clearly without competitive pricing it's not going to work.

Are you trying to say that you think Surface won't sell to business customers?

The software... and the hardware. - Windows 8 offers a touch-oriented UI and is designed with the tablet form factor and all of its particularities in mind. - Chipsets are much more energy efficient vs. "a few years ago". Both because ARM is now an option and Intel has made it an important goal. Helps: the market exists. Hurts: the market is dominated by a competitor.

Adding this article to the debate over the future of Microsoft (and the future of RIM): http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/why-windows-phone-8-means-the-blackberry-is-doomed/ The piece is a bit heavy on the doomsday forecasting for RIM based on a fairly insignificant aspect of the overall package (i.e. the device management software). I do agree with the overall thesis that with Microsoft hitting the enterprise market even harder with Windows Phone 8, RIM is further wedged between a rock and a hard place. It will be interesting to see how the market responds to Microsoft branded/built hardware. Microsoft has seen failures (Zune) and successes (Xbox) using this model. What I think is significant with the current approach is that Microsoft is tying in their flagship brand with the current effort. Windows 8 and Surface tablets are functional synonymous to me. That is, from what I've seen you need a Surface tablet to get the most from Windows 8 and vice-versa. I am interested in everyone's thoughts on two other aspects of Microsoft's developing Windows strategy: 1) Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT ( the low-power tablet edition of Windows 8 ) share significant code base. This is like a weak-form version of iOS for iPhone and iOS for iPad being the same OS. Not exactly the same but close enough for our purposes. Is this significant enough for Microsoft to draw many of its existing Windows enterprise customers into a pure Windows-based hardware strategy? Simplifying the question.. does the appeal of the iPhone exceed the appeal of a Windows phone assuming the Windows phone can run all of my enterprise applications and my iPhone can't? 2) Windows 8 RT looks like a new Windows code fork designed to run on a different processor set. I don't know if it's compatible with both ARM and Intel chipsets, but I do know that it is compatible for at least ARM chipsets. I'm going to assume that any software built on Windows 8 RT will also run on Windows 8 Pro. What I'm getting at here is, if all new software is built for Windows 8 RT compatibility, then wouldn't this present a significant risk to Intel's business? My understanding of the ARM chipset business is that it works like the PC business. One set of guys do the "software" and lots of guys do the actual manufacturing at razor-thin margins. Pulling Intel into direct competition with this market could be a disaster for their profit margins as they would be exposed to the same weak manufacturing margins while also keeping the cost of chip/tech development.

Read this: The Discipline of Market Leaders - This book gives an excellent overview of different operating models and how they compete in the marketplace. Executing extremely well on the operating model builds a business' moat. Then read these. They aren't necessarily the best examples, but I found that reading through the leadership perspective of how each company was run brought each operating model to life. 1. Made in America - Sam Walton of Walmart - Cost Leadership Model 2. Only the Paranoid Survive - Andy Grove of Intel - Innovation / Product Leadership Model 3. Straight from the Gut - Jack Welch of GE - Customer Experience/Intimacy Model

The answer is, if you're serious then you should speak with a lawyer who specializes in this work. A referral is best, but you can also search for them online. They will be able to advise you on the state-specific structure you need, the filing requirements, and other regulations that you will need to operate under. Beneficially, they can also introduce you to other people you will need to work with to get this going properly. e.g. accountants. Keep in mind that if you are unwilling to pay for legal advice, you should think deeply about how serious you are about embarking on this kind of thing. I'm all for keeping a low cost profile, but starting a partnership isn't something you can jump in and out of easily. It is something where you want to be certain that you have the requisite legal protection and that you don't run afoul of regulators and such. Just my two cents.

Liberty, The way that I figure out where I should be is to pretend that my portfolio is 100% cash and think through what I would buy if I were building a portfolio from scratch today. If you go through that process and discover the new investment doesn't get a significant chunk of the allocation, then you're right to wait it out. If you find you would put 10,20,30% into that single idea, then at least you know where you ought to be. You can start to take the steps to adjust your portfolio accordingly. Maybe sell things that you don't think will perform better than your new idea, or wait for a better price, or wait until you've put away more cash through savings/dividends/etc. I recently went through this same exercise and decided to sell my MSFT position. Tough sell because it's been a great performer, but I can't expect it to keep pace with other investment ideas over the next 5 years. Regarding selling below IV, there's no shame in selling a good investment if it allows you to buy a great one. Lastly, I have the same problem when it comes to purchase impatience. I rarely hold out for price. My rationale is that if an idea is worth buying then it should be cheaper today than it will be tomorrow.

An inspirational video featuring Google's self-driving car in action:

Can you fix this link? Thanks.

This is my whole problem with professional services-type businesses. The competitive advantage comes from the people doing the work. Once they become skilled, they become marketable. Marketable people can do the same job for another business in exchange for a better salary. Or they can renegotiate with their current employers based on new offers. The cost structure works against the business and it doesn't scale well. You can only keep your profit margins by constantly retraining unskilled/low-cost labour, or by pushing the prices up on your customers which is hard to do because there are so many competitors. This looks like Michael Porter's "bargaining power of suppliers" (labour) ruining the economics of the industry. There are some things that PHX is doing that does give a retention advantage, such as remote access directional drilling, but I doubt it's enough to justify a P/E of 16 in the long term.

I recently came across the NY Times archive search: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/nytarchive.html Probably not the most business-centric news source, but the search tool and archive are very well implemented. It's not that pricey if you are a digital subscriber of the Times.

I spoke with investor relations. The reason for much cheaper day rate is because they only provide the personnel and down-hole equipment. They don't supply the drilling rig itself.

Toronto, ON

I second this request as I'm thinking of heading down and am also a first timer. The Omaha tourism website looks pretty bleak.

You have to sign-in with your Google account. The link is at the bottom of the Google Finance page. Ensure cookies, etc. are turned on.

Touche! Well you can bet I'm taking notes on what not to do in the event of...

The only entertainment value I get from this show's glacial story line comes from yelling at the on-screen characters as they make consistently terrible choices. The show is just not realistic enough for me to tolerate... the zombie mayhem I can accept, but I can't suspend reality long enough to believe that there exists any random group of people who are collectively that stupid. For me, it's a toss up between Breaking Bad and The Wire for best TV series ever.

They provide the day rate ($11k), but the part I can't figure out is why that day rate is so low. I will take a look into those attributes and see if I can learn more about what's going on.

Thanks SD. I went through a number of financial statements this weekend. The PD report was certainly interesting. I dug a little deeper to find a pureplay horizontal/directional driller and came across Phoenix Energy Services (PHX). They have been growing very quickly and have an impressive operating history. For a while they played up the R&D angle but that has taken a back-seat in the past couple annual reports. The one thing I can't figure out, though, is the day rate. Their average day rate was about $11k at the end of the year. This is about half the price of every other day rate I came across. And they are still profitable. Any ideas on why this is? I can't tell if they've got a technological advantage and are using it to grow market share as quickly as possible, or if they can only win business because they're charging such low rates and therefore will always have to charge low rates because they are actually poor performers. Also they don't seem to have much investor support, which concerns me.

http://www.lloydslist.com/ll/sector/tankers/article394168.ece GasLog looking to go public. This is a pure-play on LNG tankers. Here is the current F1: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1534126/000093041312001612/c67840_f1a.htm They've got about $1.2bn in revenues chartered for 8 vessels (2 delivered, 6 to be delivered chartered, plus 2 more unchartered). This seems like a very high rate for an average 6 year charter life. Looks like LNG tankers is good business. Looking to pay a ~2.5% yield @ $17. I'll keep an eye on this. Total order book for LNG tankers is only 17% of a pretty small fleet of vessels and the demand picture is strong. JEast's observation of the pricing differences of NG by geography is educational in this context. For those who are interested, the F1 above contains some really nice market research. Here's the quoted article as LL tends to hide this stuff after a while:

This is more of an iPhone app, but my favourite app of all time is Bloomberg Radio+. I listen to it on the way to work every morning. It beats the pants off of local radio and the content is much more relevant.

SD, I'm on board with looking closer at this. The upside theory I'm working with is based on my knowledge of PetroBakken (PBN). Their business model depends on constantly opening new wells all over the formation so that they can produce a long-tail cash-flow annuity across many wells. Last I read in their annual report, securing services to open these wells has been a challenge. I'll have to check, but I would guess this need is common among all operators in the Bakken and similar formations. If the new normal has oil > $80, lease holders are going to want to move as quickly as possible to bring wells online. Plus the P/Es of many of these operators are pretty attractive. Not sure if I'll land on PD as well, but I'll be sure to let you know if I come up with anything compelling. If there are any resources you can share with me to accelerate my learning this business, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Hi all, I got curious about the different securities that have been discussed at length on this board and did some analysis. I'll state up front that this is mostly meaningless and that the methodology is weak. I still thought it was interesting enough to share. I took a look at the 14 most active threads on the board (the first screen in Investment Ideas if you sort by replies). I grabbed the return information from the date the thread was started to today, and then I took the average return to see roughly where we, as a group, would have landed relative to the S&P 500. A couple of notes on my method: - I used the return for BAC instead of BAC warrants because I am lazy. - I completely ignored dividends on both sides. This is purely capital gains return. - I made some gross oversimplifications when comparing/computing the average return - I assumed an equal investment in the annualized return of the idea to date. Clearly this is meaningless in a real-world context, but I was just curious how it turned out. Here are the results: TickerThread StartedReturn To Date Years "invested" Rate of Return LVLT10/24/201082% 1.39 53.54% RIM1/5/2011-79% 1.19 -73.04% ALS.TO1/8/2011-10% 1.18 -8.93% BAC-WT10/19/2010-25% 1.41 -18.51% CLWR5/13/2011-45% 0.84 -51.28% GOOG5/16/201119% 0.83 23.00% FTP5/9/2011-30% 0.85 -34.18% SSW1/5/201090% 2.19 34.15% SD11/30/201057% 1.29 42.10% EBIX5/9/20119% 0.85 10.39% MBI12/18/2010-1% 1.24 -1.06% JEF10/28/201125% 0.38 79.67% ATPG11/8/2010-49% 1.35 -38.89% AAPL1/18/201173% 1.16 60.65% Average: 1.15 5.54% S&P Return:8.03% 1.15 6.92% It doesn't mean all that much, but I thought it was interesting how many of these investments were either knocked out of the park, or were absolute dogs. It'd be interesting to follow up this cursory analysis with an understanding of which of these threads/ideas were more one-sided (i.e. "group think") and which were more controversial - both can jack up a thread's reply count. I also found it interesting that the average return was so close to the S&P's return for that period. I guess that shows the power of diversification (for better or worse).

In BC: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/bcs-kitimat-lng-terminal-wins-export-licence/article2200412/ So probably not until 2016+ for the first phase.

One of my investing "meta-strategies" involves two major steps: 1) Find a macro reason to invest in a sector or type of business. The main elements are: - The sector is out of favour. Recently home building, US manufacturing. Currently, the oil tanker segment has caught my eye. - There is an unstoppable, significant economic trend that will benefit that sector in the long run. Household formation is a good one for housing. The one for the tanker industry might be the shift in crude oil demand from the US (more domestic supply) to China (less domestic supply) - I'm not sure, I'm still doing the research. I've got some more learning to do on the economics of the tanker market to learn what macro trends may be at play. This first part can take forever, or it can take a couple of minutes. Usually it's the result of generally always being on the lookout for a good idea. 2) Once a macro investment theory has been established, I look for the right basket to put my eggs into. I look at 10-20 businesses in the target sector that pass the basic tests. Then I go to town on financial analysis and market analysis (usually 5-10 companies at this stage). I like to understand how the industry is put together, who are the likely winners, who is in the strongest position financially (narrowed to 2-3 here). Sometimes I look at the upside, but usually I just look at the downside. The macro picture is what I am counting on for the upside. The downside is best quantified as, how long can this business lose money for before I experience dilution or bankruptcy? Eventually I whittle down the competing investments and decide on one business that I invest in and then watch like a hawk. This half of the process usually takes 20-40 hours of real work and doesn't always result in a buy.