Jurgis

Contradict yourself much in one paragraph? 2008-2009 was 50% drop. So was it a generational event or not?

I've said this on another thread: I buy season tickets for lottery. This is like voluntary tax. 8) IMO, they should give everyone lottery tickets with tax receipts. Would be a great motivation to pay taxes!!! 8)

Depends on which country's treasury this is, no? You seem to insist that there are only AAA+ rated companies and treasuries and they are the only ones which have "intrinsic value" . What if the treasury is issued by Ukraine or Zimbabwe or Palestinian Authority? Does it have "intrinsic value"? Is its "intrinsic value" higher/lower compared to "intrinsic value" of barrel of oil?

Just to be clear: so you are saying that a company that is not cash flow positive has no "intrinsic value" ? Edit: I'll add the following to this: So stocks are also a bad example of "intrinsic value"? I guess I am totally lost of what you are trying to argue. :)

@ni-co: You are twisting my words to get to your intended result. Any "intrinsic" (if you choose to use that term) value of stock or bond is based on your expectations of how the business goes in the future. If you take commodity, equivalent thing would be expectations on the future price of said commodity based on future supply and demand. Are you gonna turn around again and claim that this is somehow different from your "intrinsic value" expectations of a business performance? Anyway this discussion is pointless, since nobody here is investing in oil. People are investing in stocks and bonds of oil companies that you yourself said do have "intrinsic" value. Not that I care what you think. If you don't like investing in commodity companies, nobody's gonna force you to start loving it. Though I find it funny that you see no "intrinsic" value in oil, but apparently you see (non-intrinsic? :P ::) :o ) value in bitcoin.

Not picking on you, but... Nobody will remember to come back and revisit in 3 years. Nobody will actually care either. Most likely you will change your opinion about 5-10 times in those 3 years. (Not that anybody will care about this either). Again - I'm not picking on you - just illustrating that predictions such as yours are pretty worthless. (My predictions if I made them, would be equally worthless BTW). If you want to talk predictions, "Superforecasting" is the only way to handle it. Make prediction, get evaluated against others, then you can actually claim that in 3 years your Brier score is in 10th percentile or something like that. Otherwise, meh. And good luck with your prediction and position. I'd probably hope that you're wrong, but then I'm pretty sure you'll change your position in next 3 months or so (whether crash happens or not), so whatever. ;)

Running a business is very different from investing into stocks. Buffett might be correct that doing one makes you better at doing the other, but it doesn't mean that people have aptitude for both. A lot of stock investors are numbers/reports/etc. types and have no wish, interest or capability to run actual businesses. Power to the ones who want to do it, but let's not diss the ones who don't.

Oh, but noes, there's Elliot wave reversal and the core of the Earth stopped spinning ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298814/?ref_=nv_sr_1 ) and there's an Arquillian Battle Cruiser ready to attack ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119654/?ref_=nv_sr_3 ), gotta go, sell everything.

Yes, my prediction with ~74% confidence is that merger won't happen. What I wonder about: Malone should realize this too. So why is he talking to VOD for so long? For fun (and - likely no - profit ;) )?

I was going to suggest 2016 return thread, but then thought it was too painful for most here. Especially if you annualize the returns of last 10 days. ;)

I am sure there's a number of people on this board who are net short. :) As for me, I keep going long (actually I don't short period, but I'm not even raising cash, I am lowering cash). You can take this as evidence that market will keep dropping lower. 8)

LOL, nice switcheroo there. You realize that your new question is total turnaround from your previous claim that oil has no intrinsic value? The fair price of oil is obviously the price paid right now in open market. But that's again not what you really wanted to know, is it?

Can I have your stuff? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=can+I+have+your+stuff%3F

If Malone sells LBTYA to VOD without getting control, he'll negotiate very high price and open exit for himself and other shareholders. Of course, this means that there might be no merger.

Right.

That's not evidence. Go to Barrons.com. Scroll down to the 'Barrons Picks & Pans section'. Watch this over an extended period of time to see how often they are wrong. I read Barron's. I know what they pick and pan. What you are saying is still not an evidence. Have fun.

That's not evidence. I don't watch CNBC, so no comment. Seeking Alpha has a lot of crap, has some good analysis. Barron's publishes interviews with fund managers. It also has columns by its journalists about stocks. They do annual performance review. Unfortunately it's per-column and not really scientific, I admit that. Barron's has been subject to PE creep: in 2011 they recommended buys at 10-12x current earnings, while now they recommend buys at 15-18x future earnings. But this is something pretty much everyone is guilty of with the market runup. OK, I'll bite the bullet and say that Barron's is right more than CoBF forums. :) Now this should enliven the discussion. :P

Petec, for how long have you had this portfolio and did you manage to hold everything in it so far?

Netflix streaming doesn't. Netflix DVD/Blu-ray does. I'm not new release chaser though, so I don't know the timing vs Redbox.

That's how my portfolio feels. /nods ;)

This might be true, but you have to think about converse too: the cost of your time (and commissions - though they may be low) for the upkeep of your "own etf". Slippage cost if you make mistakes during upkeep. BTW, there might be even tax benefits in ETF vs your own solution. I'm not saying that your own solution won't work. I'm just not sure it will cost less and be better than ETF.

Not to pick on Uccmal, but do these studies include portfolio changes when dividend grower slashes dividend? It seems self evident that "dividend grower" will perform acceptably while it grows dividends. But what happens when it has a problem and slashes dividend. Won't you lose a lot of previous outperformance by switching to something else at the worst time?

I've heard this quip multiple times and I think it's hogwash. Supporting evidence please?

IMHO, divvie stocks performed really well post 2009 with low bond rates and people attracted to the "safety" and yield of divvie stocks. I thought that we'll get into divvie stock bubble and it's gonna implode at some point. So far, it seems not. But I think the possibility remains. FWIW.

If I had to invest in taxable account, I would have gone forever-hold or indexing long time ago. When you have 20%+ tax cost on gains, outperforming an index after taxes is pretty much impossible without forever-hold or similar. (I probably should have done this in my tax advantaged accounts too. No taxes encourage bad trading behavior unfortunately... :( ) To answer frommi: No, haven't tried what you are suggesting. I think ETFs would be simpler/less trouble, but your idea might work.