LC

Yes you're absolutely right, I just read that (see Pa, I'm learning!). It changes my expected return to 6.66%, which granted isn't anything spectacular but nice enough to get my feet wet in terms of participating in non-market driven events.

Just bought a little at 2.95...Figure the free 8.5% was worth it. And as a newbie investor I don't have much experience in actually going through a process like this, so I'm looking at is as a lesson as well!

For most people, the name of the company, probably... Oiye...I don't want a story I just want an undervalued stock :)

I just don't see an iWatch being commercially successful...I see it as crossing the line and having customers say to themselves, "Okay, this is too much".

Conference call transcript: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1205141-zix-corporation-ceo-discusses-q4-2012-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=2

Took me about a week of confusion before I figured it out. ;D Happy 11th!

You did not need to know BRK's value when it was trading at BV to know it was trading well below IV and a great buy. This. I agree, but only in very selective circumstances. In this case yes, for two reasons: 1. BRK is a huge company, and estimating an intrinsic value would be very difficult. 2. We're all value investors here. We know about Warren's life, his character, his ethics. It's easier to read stories and letters and assess Warren's character as a business partner than it is to value his businesses. So when you have a partner you trust telling you that IV > BV, and he's also telling you he's willing to buy back shares at 110% or 120% of BV, you can trust that moreso than a lot of the other uncertainties in the stock market. So in this unique case I think it's OK to invest without knowing an IV range.

Or tollbooth company

onyx1, where did you find the info on the preferred. The few links I've read don't mention it or have any detail. Pieced together from these links: "Berkshire and 3G will each contribute about $4 billion in cash to pay for the deal, with Berkshire also paying $8 billion for preferred shares. The rest of the cost will be covered by debt financing raised by JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo." http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/berkshire-and-3g-capital-to-buy-heinz-for-23-billion/?partner=yahoofinance "Berkshire will spend about $12 billion to $13 billion on the deal for the maker of condiments and Ore-Ida potato snacks, Buffett told CNBC. The deal will also be financed with cash from 3G affiliates, plus the rollover of existing debt, and is valued at about $28 billion including debt, according to the statement." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-14/berkshire-joins-3g-capital-to-buy-heinz-in-28-billion-food-deal.html?cmpid=yhoo Buffett really likes these preferred deals! Any reason why? My guess is they provide a nice midway point between bonds and common equity for Buffett's insurance reserves.

I didn't look into it but Bollore (XPAR:BOL) might be an option. David Marcus from Evermore Global Value Fund has invested in it. In this interview he talks a little bit about Bollore: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/evermore-global-value-fund-portfolio-235900501.html What about Lancashire, they're popular around these parts as well...

http://brontecapital.blogspot.ca/2011/12/sears-holdings-liquidation-sale.html I absolutely agree. Liquidation value can be a theoretical floor for the stock price if that makes you sleep better at night, but WHO KNOWS what prices they will incur if they ever attempted to liquidate. Additionally, imagine all those properties coming on the market at once! First, only a few retailers can buy them up all at once. So if you can't sell them all to Wal-Mart, you're looking at splitting them up and selling them piecemeal. In that case they would get horrible prices for their "average" building and be left with properties that just would not sell! In my opinion anyone who says SHLD can be liquidated is simply trying to rationalize using a certain price as a "floor" for their investment. (For what it's worth, I think they should franchise their smaller properties. Then chop up their other, run of the mill stores into a Sears half the size, rent out the other half to another non-competing retailer or restaurant or local biz. Keep the high-performing ones doing what they're doing now.)

Will Rolex put out an app for it that will allow it to tell time?

I did a double take on that too! Back when Larry Auriana had some hair!

Well, let's rationalize it by saying that he didn't invest in "newspapers", but branded and trusted information providers.

I have followed them and read them since the late 90s (shareholder for a small portion of that) but in the last two years the quality seems to have gone downhill. Marty's section seems more like an old professors rant then as educational as it use to be and the others have become more mainstream and less candid or informative. Am I missing it and they stayed the same but maybe I have changed. You know, I think you are right, the quality has gone down in recent years. However I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for a while given Marty's history.

How could we forget Marty Whitman's Third Ave Funds? http://www.thirdave.com/ta/shareholder-letters-mf.asp

Oh jeeze, don't get me started on sports fans... Can we add sport teams and tech co's with market caps over $X00 bln to the list of things to avoid talking about at the office?

The S&P500 earnings are around $105 and it's at 1517...so roughly about 15 times earnings. Neither cheap, nor expensive historically. It won't provide you returns larger than growth in GDP and inflation plus dividends. You also have no boost from interest rates, nor profit margins, which are at historical lows and highs respectively. Cheers! Sanjeev a question for you...do you attempt to do a rough calculation of the free "call/put option" of cash? It seems to me that this cash option has an inverse relationship with the market P/E. To state the obvious, when prices in the market are high (on average), cash's option is more valuable because the market has more downside. Do you think along these lines at all in terms of holding cash, or do you just say to yourself, "well, everything's expensive, and I wouldn't buy some of what I already own at these prices...so let me sell a bit and wait until things get cheaper"?

This is what Sanjeev is saying in the "how much cash are you holding" thread. My view? We're looking at a sideways market for a while.

I won't touch the hedging discussion but I will say that Amazon is a great company for customers due to the value proposition as Cardboard said. It's a great company for employees (well, those who don't work in distribution centers). Can you imagine better resume padding than "logistics manager - amazon.com"? I think not. But it's a terrible company for shareholders. Simply put, the margins suck and there's not enough volume in the country to justify it!

I wonder what brand chocolate-chip cookie that is...

Do you think there is? I think they do provide value but I'm not sure how investors will utilize their rating system in 5-10 years. Will investors still just see AAA and trust them, or has that lesson been learned? Then again, laziness is a part of human nature. Will people always see the benefit of doing the due diligence themselves? Or will memories of this past crisis fade...

shameless plug for the co I know most about, FHCO. Has one competitor who isn't nearly at the scale FHCO is in terms of production to satisfy global demand. demand which has been all but guaranteed at the London Summit by the Gates Foundation. not a Micro cap ($213m market cap) though.

I mean, let's be honest here: the business model violates the "spirit" of the law. Ethics aside, local insurance regulators would probably not allow such an entity to do business in their locality.

I passed on BOLT because I didn't (and still don't) have a clue about the Oil & Gas industry. Interestingly I found the company when looking for "Bolt Bus".