Jurgis

Not sure what you call active, professional traders. Day traders? People with 200-400% annual turnover? In any case, as much as I can call myself "active" trader, I do care much more about customer service than I do about pricing. The only reason I would consider IB at all is their access to markets Fido does not provide. And yeah IB is probably the only viable smallish SMA platform. But the fact that most SMA advisors use it, doesn't mean I should fall in love with it. IB is crap. But you are right: I was on Fido before and I will only be happier on Fido now. If I decide to have someone manage my money, I'll weigh whether I want to endure the account on IB.

Do you mean you can't buy stocks that are trading in the OTC? Fido does not allow you to buy OTC stocks with No Info and some other designations (Grey Info?). You can buy OTC stocks with current financials. Some OTC stocks may fluctuate between the two as/when they file financials with OTC markets (I guess).

Go Fido! Screw that other firm that should not be mentioned. 8) And just when I got a distribution of past bankruptcy in stock ~$90 value and I was thinking whether to waste $7.95 to sell it.

No symbol anymore. Arm Holdings sold to Softbank last year. Previously traded as ARMHY, ARMH, ARM (London).

7% boundary in the poll was not chosen accidentally, you know. 8)

My mistakes similar to yours: buying at cheap (or somewhat expensive) price, selling within a year or couple for wash or minor gain, then watching X-baggers roll in: GOOGL, AAPL, ARMHY, FB (at IPO), Tencent (somewhat - I think I got out with ~2-3 bagger out of 200 bagger). In case someone wants non-tech example: HANS that became MNST. ARMHY was possibly the most egregious one, since I bought it really cheap close to bottom in early 2Ks. Long term similar mistake: BRK in the 1990's. What make these possibly worse than yours is that I "knew what I was doing" when I bought and sold.

Yeah, it's not business as usual, but as others have said, he's likely still buying. Or negotiating a full purchase of LUV? So he won't say anything until that's resolved... Overall, don't expect him to mention any investment that he's still actively changing (buying/selling).

We should probably move further discussion to General and start new thread. So, please teach me how to make better decisions in selecting investment managers. My goal is to beat SP500 after fees (preferably by x%+). I am willing to pay fees for that. What's next?

This is effing great. :-* Better deal than $3.4M lunch with Warren. ;D In 2015 Charlie ran away immediately after the meeting. I think to DJCO board meeting. Maybe they decided to let hims meet the cultists this year. Wonder if this will continue. Probably will depend on his health ... and annoyance at all the selfie takers. :P ::)

I'd rather buy this house for 13.5M rather than lunch with Warren for 3.4M. 8) We are talking relative value though... ;D

At the risk of inflaming this thread to another 400 pages, here are couple things that Mnuchin can probably do that won't make current shareholders happy: - Stop NWS as of now, but not roll back past NWS. Yeah, this is not a quick solution and I know everyone criticized me when I suggested this as possible step. - With weak legal situation, perhaps Mnuchin can settle for sub-par conversion of prefs to common plus huge common dilution with govt position, etc.? The argument against this is that this would be "Obama/Clinton" thing to do, but why not? Yeah, his buddies are screwed... but shareholders might take scraps now that legal situation is weak. Anyway, I'm not arguing the above solutions are high probability. But IMO between this and potential Congress "input", there might be some not-so-great outcomes for shareholders. Let's ask this differently? Who still thinks that par-solution has higher than 40% probability?

Well, apparently legal expertise was either outcome biased or the dice just fell on "low probability" scenario. ;) I mostly agree with you. :) I still hold position, but might trim/sell depending.

Cause obviously Warren fans will plonk down $XXX per night to stay in a house Warren owned. ::) Even if you got $1000 per night 365 days a year, your yield is something like 2.7% without any costs accounted for. IDK, maybe you can rent this as a posh vacation rental... but not because of Warren connection. The house is huge to get a high rent, but otoh the location and neighbor overlook does not really make it a posh high price rental...

This as always been "coin toss type of investment". You made some kind of estimate of probability of court win and/or administration settling/etc., you calculated market-assigned probability and you compared the two for investing or not investing. Edit: For prefs Kelly's threshold probability has now dropped to ~0.25.

Wow, so pretty much a single court opinion changed the tone of this thread from "100% illegal" to "obama administration may have had power to do what it did with nws". I thought you guys had way more arguments for legal victory. OK, so now the investment is at Mnuchin decision only?

Hah, I guess I should have followed my own suggestion and lightened up. ;) Well if you guys loved the prefs at ~35% par, you should buy by the bushel at ~25% par... 8)

The Omaha house next to Buffett was probably a better deal...

People are talking about the 1993-2002 ::) 2002-2015 is available even through Amazon both Kindle and hardcover...

Re ordering, let me Bing that for you: WSJ: http://www.djreprints.com/framed-reprints-descriptions/ - IMO crappy website, not clear what's available, crappy prices NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/search/archives/archives.html - much better ;)

Munger is being a bit disingenuous when he says that BRK, Costco and Li Lu's fund ::) is just three stocks... Clearly Li Lu's fund is not a single stock. And BRK is not really a single stock either ... hey it's more like a fund that has over 50 stock positions by now plus what 20+ operating businesses? It's almost the same as saying, "I just hold a single stock and it's called SPY". ::)

Prem stated the same goal in last year's AGM.

LOL ;D

Great story.

AFAIK you cannot do stock buyback from cash from abroad without triggering US taxation. It doesn't matter whether you buy on market or from your friend in Zimbabwe.