Jurgis

I should have looked before the spinoff. I did not expect 30% drops on the first day. Coulda/shoulda sold on open... Now I might just wait and do a valuation...

So, anyone keeping BATRA and why? Very superficially, I don't see a big point of investing in sports team... :-\ I am prejudiced against sports though and I am somewhat biased due to the sports team "investments" that are basically rich-boy-trophy-toys. Edit: did BATRA really drop from $36 to $20 today during the day? ??? Edit2: and LMCA dropped from $27 to $19? ???

But you personally prefer Fannie prefs vs Freddie prefs because of some (minor?) legal differences (different state law?)? Edit: I understand that what you wrote was for single company prefs only, I am not implying that you said that different company prefs are legally the same.

I believe what he said was Galilean ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei ) Einstein Relativity. I think the name of his own invention, i.e. I doubt you'll find more references to what he's talking about by searching using the name. The name is also not precise in realm of physics, since Theory of Relativity ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_relativity ) is not what he's talking about. He's actually talking about relative velocity ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_velocity ), which in everyday world is based on Newtonian mechanics and is only relatively :P related to Galileo or Einstein. ;)

One minor comment to organizers: water. I asked hotel staff for couple pitchers of water and they seemed highly in demand. :) Might be something to keep in mind for next year. Don't need bottled water if it costs, just pitchers are fine. :) Thanks

I mostly agree with coc. I currently don't use fitbit or another tracking device because I actually want generation++ which would do much more and would require less overhead: - Less overhead: I don't like wearing bracelet or something similar. Skin-breathable-patch would be acceptable though something in clothes/shoes might be even better. - More functionality: Don't only count steps, but measure pulse, blood pressure, etc. Overall, like coc says, these gadgets will continue to evolve and it's not clear if Fitbit has a moat yet. The risks are: if gadgets evolve a lot, who will capture the market with new iterations; if gadgets don't evolve a lot, they'll likely commodify and/or get subsumed by phones/watches.

Jurgis: Yes, I do have access to the online version, but it is not quite the same. I enjoy perusing the print. I find that I wind up reading many more articles in print than I do online. Many years ago, I was a paper delivery boy. I don't think they exist these days, the delivery is handled by adults. Barrons is also orders of magnitude more expensive than the paper was/is. I would try and get to know/tip the delivery person, but I've never got an issue in Detroit! Yeah, I understand. I also read paper version and barely glance at online. I was partly kidding about deliver boys. My previous delivery person left tipping envelopes with delivery, so I assumed they were somewhat independent party, possibly not well paid. :) Your issue seems to be with the deliver contract organization and not delivery person. Maybe keep reporting "delivery issue" in Barron's online portal. Maybe Barron's will hit their contract organization for your area at some point... Good luck

Thanks for the clarification. I think the point was more about the concept that your expected return will track the growth in the economic value of the business over the long-term more than the earnings yield. The 20% figure was just arbitrary but yes, it sure would be nice! :D Yes, right. But there are subtleties. It assumes you hold the stock long term and related to that the more you overpay, the longer you have to hold for return to be close to "growth in the economic value of the business". If you buy a 10% ROE/growth business for 10x book, even 20 years of holding may not give you 10% annualized return. That's where the percentages and prices in the examples still matter. You cannot use this argument to get good results by overpaying any amount. Also if the economic growth slows down, the return will drop similarly. BTW, you are pretty precise in your formulation. There are additional caveats for less precise people. You can't really use PE and ROE in same sentence and all that.

I'm getting printed version of Barron's. I mostly did not have issues with delivery. They changed deliverer recently in my area. Couple issues went missing. I reported it online and got the sub extended 2 weeks and no delivery problems since. They use third party delivery - Warren Buffett newspaper boys haha - that are presumably not well compensated. One possibility might be to get to know your local delivery person and tip them - if it's consistently the same person... BTW, you should have online version access together with your print subscription. That might not be much consolation, but you can access full print version online...

OT. In case of Malone companies, you just flip between the share classes as spread widens and contracts. Easy money if you hold shares anyway. For Malone companies I don't see any reason for spread to be there at all, since Malone has supervoting B shares, so A's and K's are really not much different. People talk about liquidity differences being the cause of spread, but it's pretty weak argument for DISCA/K, LMCA/K IMO.

I look more like Picasso's profile pic. 8) ;) :P

The short gist is that if you're sure that a company will grow earnings 20% for a long time, it doesn't matter if you buy it at 20PE or 25PE or 30PE. You still gonna get around 20% return long term. My comment on this: yeah, sure. Good luck being confident that a company will grow earnings 20% for a long time. Mostly does not happen. Even with great companies. Hope this helps. ;)

Thanks Norm for meta-organizing. :)

Thanks Trevor for organizing. Nice talk by Peter Kaufman.

Was great. :)

??

LOL. :) Thanks for vote of confidence Picasso. 8) ::) ??? :o ;D Thanks Sanjeev for great organization, great dinner, great speakers and overall fun. Best wishes with your company and with your ongoing charitable collection.

See you guys there. 8)

There are places in US (and I bet in Canada) where you can get similar property for $30,000-50,000. Possibly even in nicer neighborhood.

PFHO - They lost 13% client in June last year and then they lost 30% client in December: http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?FilingID=11289552-883-212659&type=sect&TabIndex=2&dcn=0001185185-16-004075&nav=1&src=Yahoo So much for the greatness of PFHO management that pushed it up 50x. I guess that's a great example of risk in doing concentrated nanocap portfolio and/or buy-holding nanocaps. The stock may look cheap even through most of 50x rise and then it blows a huge hole into almost complete roundtrip. Maybe deep DD on the ground can avoid this. Maybe. Will there be act II of this show? :)

::) Points ain't free. First of all, you can use them for other things including cash, so they have monetary value. Second, even if you get them for signup, it's not really "free". Do you do accounting this way too? :) Would you like your companies to do accounting this way? "Yeah, we give out options, but it's really no cost. It's free." ??? OTOH, if you can get everything for two signup bonuses, that's around $400 or so. So yeah, very cheap for a flight + 5 nights in a hotel + car rental. The hotel seems to be the biggest score. Great point juggling there - I don't do points, always take cashback. This is second time where I'm amazed how farther points seem to go. Not free though. ;)

If anyone wants to get together on the morning of April 13th, please shoot me a PM. Otherwise I'll probably hang out at Art Gallery of Ontario. :) Or if anyone wants to hang out at Art Gallery of Ontario... :) (Yeah I'm aware there's Graham conference, but I am not attending :) ).

OK. So this is being dealt with but the optimization is not completed yet. Understood.

That is a crazy long time... Yup. They gotta get rid of the passenger cars no one seems to want to buy... Maybe it's the wrong question to ask, but why FCAU is producing cars "no one seems to want to buy" on Marchionne's watch? Isn't he supposed to be optimizing this company? Thanks

http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/events/fairfax-lollapalooza-2016/ ::)