Jurgis

Yeah there's a bunch of parabolic moves in common of these highly levered oil/gas/commodity plays that is leaving bonds in dust. It makes sense: common is acting pretty much as an option. Swapping to bonds at the bottom for CHK (or DNR or others) was not a good move. Of course if they would have filed, it would have been. :)

No. This rally is for real Slim Shady. All you other Slim Shadys are just imitating. including the one one with orange hair toupe

Yeah, I might dump my unsecureds in the $30s area if I get a bid. Almost dumped them at $20s on the scare, but did not get a bid then - the joys of illiquid (at least on Fido) bond trading. I don't like holding notes junior to 2nd liens. So might exit completely or swap. I agree with Picasso that company still seems to be risky. The cash losses are high IMO. But if equity/bond markets in oil&gas come to some semblance of life, they might find ways to sell off assets or some other way to survive.

OT: SFY 2017s are being converted to equity in Chapter 11. Here is what I wrote when Chapter 11 plan was announced: http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=30388531 You can click on the message numbers that I replied to, to get the rest of the thread. The newest restructuring plan is at http://www.kccllc.net/swiftenergy/document/1512670160205000000000007 and seems to say that noteholders + rejection claims (not clear how big slice that is) get 88.5% of new Swift Equity. I still think that it won't trade at more than $200M, which would be around $.20 on note. I don't think my thoughts have changed much since I wrote the SI message. Honestly though, I'm no expert in valuing the new SFY. If you evaluate it and think it will be worth more than $200M, then notes or shares might still be attractive - if you can purchase them.

OT: Yeah, the crap oil debt has rallied a lot in last couple days too. I still hold some CHK 2020 and DNR 2021s - both could go BK though, so not suggesting to buy either. XCO - I thought XCO will be gonner by now too. I don't think FFH is great investor in this area, they have lost a lot of money on energy cos. But yeah, I've seen XCO bonds suggested before. I will look at them again. I also hold some SFY 2017s that are in BK now and trading at .03, so... I'm not an expert. :)

This has been a great idea so far. Bonds have rallied a lot in last couple of days. I am still holding but 2018s are closing on 12-13% yield and .90 handle. I may sell. Thanks to valuedontlie and others.

I dont think you have met Amazon or Facebook investors. :) Vinod OT. Unfortunately I have. Google, Apple and Netflix investors too. :/ Seriously though - (still off topic) - you look at this and say: OMG, this is so simple; it should be so simple; if only I bought any of FAANG 10+ years ago and held... (no really this is OT and should be moved out if we continue this ;)).

Do you have concrete examples of this or are we talking completely abstractly? Without examples, my reaction is that it might be obvious to you what x is, but it is not necessarily obvious to everyone and especially not necessarily at the time when stock is bought or sold. Assuming that x is obvious, people would not buy it at 2x, but they might sell at 0.5x if they believe that price is going to 0.2x or if they are scared or they see other opportunities at 0.3y or they need money for something else (like covering margin, paying mortgage, etc.).

Investing is hard. Outperforming is very hard. Good luck to them. You can see what they hold (held?) at http://chouamerica.com/

Did you ever look at oil co prices recently? ;) You sell because: 1. What you thought was cheap is not really at current oil price/economic conditions/etc. This applies not only to commodity businesses, but I won't give other examples not to stir hornets' nests. Check out some of the long threads. ;) 2. What went down 80% can go down another 80% and holding will just make you feel stupid. In worst case it can go down another 100% to zero. So selling at 80% down is not necessarily a mistake. 3. You sell because you just give up. No longer believe in value, in your analysis, etc. Might be mistake, might be not. But, yeah, we've been having a very nice scare recently. Not in US indexes though. Disclosure: I hold some oil company stocks and bonds. Some of them went to almost zero and are/will be BK. I have sold stocks/bonds in the past at 80-90% losses. I have held stocks that went down 80-90% and then went up 10x. I have held stocks that went down 80-90% and then went down another 100%. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe ... ... sorry wrong movie. 8)

You guys didn't get together for Oscars? Tsk.

And then Kernen weaseled into March Madness ticket. Some guys get everything it seems. :P ::) ;D

The most exciting part is before Buffett joins: JOE KERNEN: 06:02:38:00 ... So I said, "You know what? I can't-- I'm not gonna choose, I'm goin' to bed." And I went to bed before 8:00, so (LAUGH) I have no-- I have no idea-- what-- BECKY QUICK: 06:02:52:00 Well, I was with you. JOE KERNEN: 06:02:53:00 Huh? :o 8) ;D

As usual, great article by The Economist. A+++. I probably should subscribe (again) just to support them.

I would. But it would depend on the government - and that's clearly your chance to say "Aha, EU is not the good government" - and I may partially agree. :) And, yes, I might be biased, because I believe that EU government is better than Lithuanian or Hungarian governments. In case of UK, my guess that there are parts of EU rules and regulations that are better than what UK has had, there are parts that are bad and negatively impacting UK. IMO, pro-exit'ers are closing their eyes on benefits and perhaps some pro-EUers are closing their eyes on negatives. I don't know exactly what the balance is for UK, but even if the balance is somewhat negative (not overwhelmingly negative), I'd stay with pro-EU. BTW, I may be exaggerating, but a lot of arguments for Brexit sound like arguments that could be used to argue about splitting USA or Canada into pieces. I don't think that would be a great idea either. ;) Edit: BTW, I should acknowledge that there is some reason in your 2 counterarguments. I don't think I agree with them completely - my counterargument to a) would be USA, my counterargument to b) is that I am not talking about bailouts but rather about rules/laws and moral/ethical/philosophical influence. IMHO, young generation of Eastern Europeans benefited a lot from the EU values, rules and laws, even if sometimes there are countermovements against them.

And that's the nationalist egoistic argument to exit. "We would do better without EU". Maybe - although I think ni-co is right and you won't. But then let's split England from Wales, London from the rest of the England, and so on. Cause why support those less rich and less productive regions? They just benefit more from you than you from them. ::) The whole reason for EU is that it improves Europe on average. There are some benefits for rich countries, there are some benefits for poorer countries. There are benefits for well (or OK) governed countries, there are benefits for less well governed ones. But yeah, the benefits are not equally distributed and some of them are not even acknowledged as benefits by some (like internal job migration). It's an easy and wrong solution for rich country/region/etc. to leave just because they are presumably getting less than they are putting in. In my opinion both sides lose from this decision. But even if only the "poorer" or "more bureaucratic" side lost, the decision would still be wrong.

Possibly OT: IB amended their 1099 on Feb 22. I was lucky that I did not file last week. Amendments suck. Hopefully they are done. I'll probably wait couple more weeks though.

+1 to what ni-co said.

"Why" questions about short term price movements are rather meaningless, but if I had to guess, it would be oil price rebound. Also market rebound.

EU is the best thing that happened to Europe in the last century. Seeing it fall apart is very sad. IMHO every effort should be made for more integration rather than less.

JBTC, that's a good way to look at things.

There are consequences.

As I've said somewhere else, investing is a very bad field to work in. You have a no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer baseline that outperforms >99% of investors and probably over 90% of smart investors. Think what would happen if we had this in other fields. You get sick and there's no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer approach that outperforms 99% of doctors. You want food and there's no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer approach that outperforms 99% of chefs. You want a haircut and there's no-effort, no-cost, no-brainer approach that outperforms 99% of stylists. Would anyone go to become doctor, or chef or stylist or whatever? So to paraphrase Buffett "when an investor with a reputation for brilliance tackles investing business with a reputation for being very hard to outperform, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact." And yet so many people continue trying. Me, myself, and I included. :-\ But perhaps this is OT.

Great question to ask here. My feeling about CoBF modus operandi is that "you need great research to have great returns". I somewhat agree. :) But then I also come from the fields where great research is rewarded. You don't get a name in math or physics or theoretical computer science without doing great research... ;) Not sure if this applies to investing though. Personally, I don't do great research, but my returns are also not great, so ... There are people who disagree with "you need great research to have great returns". The ones I know somewhat have had better results in the past than in couple last years though. .... There is also an issue that last 5 (or more?) years have not been kind to value investors. So you can look at a lot of "great" investors and they have been underperforming. Almost (?) irrespective if they did great research or not. Related to above the "easy" solutions for outperforming without research: buying BRK or FRFHF/FFH - these have not worked well recently. .... Edit: Arguments for in depth research: - You have to know the industry well. You have to know company well. You have to know the sales, the products, the margins, the capex, the nuts and bolts, etc. to understand where company is and where it is going and what kind of sales/earnings/FCF/returns it will offer. This requires in depth research - You have to know management well. Same as above Arguments for shallow research: - "Buffetty" argument. Selecting a good business is more important than details. If you get the gist of Google, buy it while it's small, then hold forever, done. Don't sweat the details. Being able to hold is more important than being able to do great research. - "Quantitative" argument ("Grahamy"?). Just look at valuation, don't bother much about business, buy cheap, sell when not cheap, repeat. --------------------- So no real answer to your question. Let's see what others will say. :)

It also communicates to the market that the company believes its shares to be overvalued at the price at which they are selling them. Otherwise, why sell? Yeah, sure there are some somewhat valid reasons given in this thread, but these reasons also smack of rationalization. It's not as if they just got an incredible deal and had to come up with cash at moment's notice. They knew for a while that they will need cash and they decided that the best way is to sell equity - and since they have other options, this seems to mean that they don't value their equity or consider it overvalued. Also, if some people are getting equity for $735 in private deal, then why should other people be paying more for it on market?