Jurgis

CoBF subscription. :P (though maybe that was past past year)

I'm getting it for my and relatives' crappy miles (that won't be used otherwise). But, yeah, that's probably not a bad offer.

Come on, house comes with Hef included. Can you imagine the Clash of the Titans ? 8)

$35 on Black Friday. ;) Use it as a coaster. just kidding

LOL. Of course oil has intrinsic value: without oil nobody goes anywhere. If you believe that businesses have intrinsic value - and I guess you do because you mention "cash flows" - then you should realize that without oil pretty much all your businesses have no intrinsic value either (there are few exceptions perhaps). It's amazing how for people with a single hammer ("cash flows") everything looks like a nail... ::)

FYI, I checked this on meetup and it's full. 6 person limit? Come on guys, there's more than 6 value investors in Boston. ;)

Dorsia, You are thinking about this incorrectly I believe. Take 255m cars. Let's say 16M cars enter the population, which means that 16M cars exit the population. The rest (255M-16M=239M) age 1 year. So you could do back of napkin computation (239M * (11.4+1) + 16M * 1) / 255M to get the new average. This is actually not correct in general, since the average will be affected by which cars exit the population. If really old cars exit, it reduces the average, if newer cars exit (through accidents I guess), this increases the average. However, we don't have that data, so we have to use this dirty method. Now, for average age to go down, you have to solve for X in ((255M - X) * (11.4+1) + X * 1) / 255M < 11.4 This solves to X > 22M So for average age to go down, you need at least 22M of sales in a year. This is quick and dirty, I know caveats, so likely you need less than 22M of sales for average age to go down. But likely more than 16M. ;)

It's good to be the King!

Screw content companies and their economics if they cannot figure out a way to function without ads. I've been "conditioned" not to expect ads and I won't watch 5-minutes-show-5-minutes-ads crap ever again. Would you rather pay more for cable or have ads? EDIT: You can still get free OTA tv because of ads. It's like the best value ever. I don't know anyone who likes ads! But at the end of the day the content needs to be paid for or it will stop getting made. The alternative to ads is HBO style which is like $10-12 for a single channel. There are not many channels that can get those kind of monthly fees as a standalone. It is why Netflix model longer term is challenged. Either they get older and crappier content or the price needs to skyrocket. And then you've got....cable. To answer to all questions: - I don't pay for cable and don't plan to in the future. (To provide context: we get Netflix, Netflix DVD/BluRay and Amazon Prime. Don't even have time to watch Amazon - there's way too much stuff on Netflix and Netflix DVD.) - If Netflix model does not survive - and I think both Zaslav and you guys are crying wolf way too much - then I'll consider the available alternatives. One alternative is just not to get the content at all. :) Another alternative is some kind of video on demand rentals. I think I agree with the underlying thread that Netflix is in tough spot as their content costs may be way too high for their cash inflows. If you add the valuation, it's not an attractive investment. But that's OT here. Content companies - that's where it gets tough. They are being squeezed a bit. They might get squeezed more. The valuations have contracted though, so there's some match of expectations and reality. Good companies will figure out how to deal with it. Whether they will grow at good rates and have good margins is a 64M question. I think DISCA will do fine even though Vaslav spreads FUD like there's no tomorrow. And BTW, there's definitely a content glut. Not much would be lost if companies closed half of the existing channels or even more. ;) But that's just IMHO. 8)

Screw content companies and their economics if they cannot figure out a way to function without ads. I've been "conditioned" not to expect ads and I won't watch 5-minutes-show-5-minutes-ads crap ever again.

I like Malone. I don't like Zaslav. Malone presents the situation as it is and looks for ways to win. He also respects his competition even if they are doing things he doesn't like. Zaslav is just whining about Netflix and about other content companies who sell their content to Netflix. Come on, the Earth won't collapse just because your competitors will sell their content to Netflix. ::) And OMG Netflix doesn't show commercials, the infidels!

I think you can call Fido fixed income and they might try to find inventory (seller). Not sure if this would cost you extra. If Fido has no inventory for e-trades, I don't bother. But if you think it's a great deal, a call to human might get you some. :) Good luck

No inventory on Fido. Not much motivation to do further DD. ;) Clearly this is far superior to the common. Whether bond is attractive by itself, I don't really know (I'd have to read this whole huge thread I'd guess ;) )

ATW: This probably reflects current situation: http://marketrealist.com/2015/12/atwood-postpones-delivery-drillship-weighs-heavy-stock/ ( see part 2 / part 3 about backlog and debt/etc. if they don't open automatically ). In short: 2017-2018 are not contracted. If they are not contracted, ATW will face significant issues coming into debt repayment. OTOH, are you sure that DO is in better situation? Looking at balance sheets, I don't see why DO is higher rated and yields so much less. Is that because of possible L backstop? Edit: I guess one argument for DO is that they might be able to repay 19's and 23's and then they don't have maturity until '39.

I got a rather cryptic Fido message about the card replacement process. Since I don't care much, I did not dig into the details. It appears that there will be "mandatory" replacement of the card sometime later this year.

Can you say who you consider to be current Outsiders and invest into? Thanks Sure, Mark Leonard of Constellation Software, Selim Bassoul of Middleby Corp, and Brian Jellison of Roper Technology. Thank you.

Not true in general. Our dept has tons non-CS majors and our group at one point was 50% non-CS. Of course, candidate's chances go up a lot if they have engineering/math/physics major and they know programming well. Specific situations may wary.

OT? ATWOOD OCEANICS INC NOTE CALL MAKE WHOLE 6.50000% 02/01/2020, B1/BB, 26% YTM. Too distressed for you? Atwood had a pretty good fleet but I think they levered on top of the cycle. Still their fleet should be (much?) better than DO. I have to relook at these, since I only glanced through some time ago.

I don't remember: is the college-saving vehicles tied to particular kid? If they are, then tough. (If not, then it's easy for you: save for 1.5 kid ;) ). What else can the money be used on? What are the penalties if you don't use it for college? Edit: also what's your other tax advantaged account situation? Are you maxing everything else?

Re: Heartland. Yet another QQ against indexes. The problem with most of these complaints is that the authors are just underperforming. And not just against the "overvalued" (perhaps, perhaps not) market weighted indexes. And not just last year. http://www.heartlandadvisors.com/Products/Mutual-Funds/Heartland-Select-Value-Fund - they compare their performance against Russell 3000 Value Index. That's a crappy index. And they don't even perform well against that. Compare their fund against RSP (hey, I don't want to compare against overvalued SP500, I give them an edge by comparing to not-market-weighted index) - they suck. Compare it against PRF - they suck. It doesn't matter that their arguments make some sense. Ultimately, customers withdraw money because funds are not performing. (I did not review every single fund they run, they might have better funds, etc.) It's also annoying that complaints keep coming even when SP500 is flat. Active managers complained 2012-2014 because SP500 was running up too fast for them to catch up. Now they complain even in the year when SP500 was flat. So is the conclusion that they can only outperform when SP500 tanks? What if they don't? Will they say that they will outperform during next bull? Look, I underperformed SP500 last couple years too. It's not my fault, it's those pesky evil index chasers, just give me your $$$$ now, I'll manage it based on "value investing" for next 10 years, I swear, KKTHXOK?

That is correct interpretation.

I've become much more relaxed since I started driving a tank. ::)

That's possibly true. I was not writing about costs. OTOH, IMHO the costs are often unoptimized by kids (and parents) the same way majors are unoptimized. Like you said "don't study art history", I can say "go to instate public school, live with parents, get part time jobs" to optimize the costs. A lot of people don't do that. Edit: clarified sentence above.

WEBs opinions about politics are not outside his circle of competence. Considering that he is wrong everytime he opens his mouth to talk about such things I would disagree with you. Oh, yes, I know that you would disagree with me. I did not expect anything less. And actually WEB was not wrong about anything in politics so far. :) Hey Jurgis, you have to admit..., well anyway, I will admit that if the situation was reversed my opinion of his circle of competence on the matter would be reversed. If WEB was an anarchist and always said everything I agree with when speaking of politics, I would be saying that he was some kind of genius and that we should all listen to him. I suspect you would be questioning his competence on the matter and saying that he should just stick to investing. Possibly. :) IMO, Buffett has a good understanding of the political situation, he offers pragmatic solutions that have a chance of going through and working, he acknowledges the difficulties for even pragmatic solutions (from both sides of the bench). This in my opinion marks him as competent in the area. However, you are right that I might consider him incompetent if most of what he proposed did not agree with what I consider to be reasonable solutions. I might even consider him nuts if he supported some irrational beliefs that some wildly successful politicians (who obviously are "competent" by the definition of being wildly successful) do. Take care

I think the generalized-university-education vs. focused-needed-for-profession-knowledge is neverending discussion. :) There are arguments on both sides (and usually neither side changes their minds). :) Where I have worked ( in CS ), we had zero people who never graduated. IMHO, a lot of self educated CS people have giant holes in their knowledge (e.g. algorithm complexity) that bite them and their projects. Good ones figure out the issues and self educate, bad ones... well. Regarding writing - actually I was going to post that this is something that "worthless" humanities degrees teach, which is actually valuable: reading, analyzing, writing, communicating with others. Even in investing you may get people with humanities degrees that do well because they know how to read, how to analyze, how to write. My advisor has said that writing proficiency may affect your career more than your thesis topic. I don't agree with him totally, but there is some truth in what he said.