LC

I agree with you, I think if one can't find any suitable investments, then don't invest in anything. Seems pretty simple, and I'm pretty dense so I have to keep it simple otherwise I'll throw all my money at silly things. And if I "underperform", well that's ok. I think the fear of "underperforming" leads to people buying things they shouldn't just to keep up with whatever benchmark they feel they need to beat. Much better to stick with absolute goals that are individual in nature to each investor IMHO.

I'd love to, count me in.

utilities are the obvious example.

Klarman's Margin of Safety Buffett's Partnership Letters Greenblatt's "Genius" series Graham's Security Analysis Also I enjoyed Mandelbrot's book as well, for the "pure math" argument vs. the brownian motion assumption embedded in MPT.

C, after all is said and done, will probably grow in line with GDP. But it has the near term undervaluation. AAPL gives you a free call option on any future mass-market consumer technology. Not sure which is the better option, but that's how I see it.

I'm more concerned with the make. GM? Cmon Mohnish, treat yourself to a Maserati :)

i've only been following it passively and haven't come across anything...i assume it was general microcap illiquidity.

Of course we shouldn't assume anything. Their history on executive compensation, accounting honesty, and other issues relating to the long-term health of American corporations does count for something, however. Seriously, I cannot think of anyone else who I would, ex-ante, give better odds to successfully design a succession plan. If you can then I would love to hear it, and I'm sure other Berkshire shareholders would as well.

If you could choose anyone in America to design a major corporate owner/operator succession plan, who would it be and why? Until I can come up with an answer better than Buffett/Munger, I'll remain confident in Berkshires future.

Realistically, quite a while. In the month range before really committing, but I take small starter positions as I like the company more and more.

I try to do as much research outside of what is presented in the sec filings as possible. Google goes a long way, as does talking with company sales reps and wholesale/retail distributors. Then I pretend I'm a customer of the industry and see if I would use the company vs a competitor, and why. Supplement that with the Ks/Qs/proxy and conference call transcripts and I think it's a decent approach. I also run through a checklist to make sure I haven't missed anything obvious. My checklist combines fisher, buffet and munger, and then all the reasons past investments of mine failed.

Maybe I jumped to an extreme conclusion ;D. Buy two Maseratis instead and hire more people :)

Branded marijuana. Who will be the Marlboro of Marijuana?

Why is that a joke? The existence of the Ferrari offers the person washing it an opportunity that they didn't have before. Well, it's fine but if this master/servant model is what drives society than it creates a huge wealth disparity. IMHO a strong middle class with more 40k cars and a few car washes is preferable.

Agree. Hate that business. Do you feel the same way about niche branded cars such as Ferrari, or does the fact that it is part of the Fiat family kill the idea for you?

I agree, it's why I'm too afraid to touch GM. Fiat I like due to Ferrari and Marchionne, the rest of their ops are not exciting one way or the other in my mind.

Yes very eyebrow raising. I took a bite. A potential dividend cut doesn't concern me, perhaps they may have to cut the divvy as you suggest and some of their institutional holders want out. Bares Capital's stake has been growing as of their latest filings in February, they now own >15%.

Yes but if that is the case I believe the market is being overly pessimistic. As you say it is the nature of the business, if the investor is not prepared to deal with that then this is not the business for them.

Backing out cash the company trades for like 1.5x earnings? :o

Wikipedia has a list of assets, not sure how up to date it is: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftBank They own stakes in yahoo japan and sprint among telcom assets. I think there was a bloomberg article recently exploring this angle

Looks interesting. Buyers today should do their research on the progress of competitors. Last I checked Cupid was capacity constrained.

I agree and have some general rules of thumbs...if a company is trading at a substantial discount to my judgement of IV, say greater than the majority of my current holdings, then it obviously has merit to become a big portion of my portfolio. Let's say it has the potential to become 20-30% or so of the portfolio. But I don't buy it all at once...I leave room to average down. So I'll buy a 2.5% position, think, ponder, relax about it because I own some so even if I "miss out" on a chance to buy at lower prices I can still participate on the way up. But it leaves me a lot of room to average down. I did this with Fiat when it was in the $6-7 range. Bought an initial position around $6, the price would increase to $6.75, I'd buy a little bit, it would fall back to $6, I'd buy more, etc. as it bounced around...buying tiny amounts when it increased to ~$7 and larger amounts when it would fall closer to $6. I got the idea from someone here who mentioned placing three orders in a position: your initial purchase (33%), a portion to trade (33%), and a portion to double down if/when the stock tanks on its road to IV (33%). So let's say we're a real diehard value investor and our timeframe is 5+ years. And the stock trades at a 50%+ discount to IV. That is quite a bit of time to both average down and buy on the way up to when it trades at 80-90% of IV. I learned the lucky way not to fill a huge position all at once. Lucky in that the price went up after I purchased and didn't offer an opportunity to average down, but it made me feel stupid realizing I needed to improve that skill because I gave up all my optionality at once, right off the bat. I learned to be more thoughtful about it. Buffett as well "buys on dips" or so I've heard, slowly accumulating a position. No need to fire off all the bullets in the elephant gun (potato launcher in my case) at once. So as for now, I'll take a tiny tiny bite again and see where it goes from here.

I second DTEJ's comments, I went to a top undergrad school but the friendships were worth more than the tuition. At 18+ I think experience pays more than classroom lectures.

The counterpoint may be that refined behavior is simply a way to form collusive relationships, whereas tech entrepreneurs know they can "disrupt" or "be disrupted" at any point.

short CRM: why? are there no other attractive uses for your capital which offer a safer risk/return? it seems like a stock like that has so many non-fundamental issues which may or may not drive the stock price that you open yourself up to a lot of pain while waiting for fundamentals to adjust. additionally, the SAAS business model has very attractive characteristics which you are fighting against. i think the jist of this argument is not whether CRM is a good short candidate or not on an absolute basis, but rather one of relative attractiveness.