Jurgis

Oil

If you're really sure company won't go BK (and won't dilute you to heck), buy stock. Otherwise, buy bonds or not invest at all. This year so far the right decision has been not to invest at all. :-X Of course, you can also make some kind of probability based spreadsheet calcs. 10% stock goes 10x, 90% it goes to 0. vs. bonds 25% goes to par, 40% goes to $.25 work out, 35% goes to 0. Probability guessing is hard though. Speaking about energy, in 2008-2009 the right decision was to buy stocks, since pretty much no company went BK. This year, it was to buy bonds or nothing. Distinguishing the two - V recovery vs. U or L - is hard. That's why a lot of people think commodity company investing is lost cause. :) Good luck. It is getting painful out there.

Market meltdown happened. Indexes down 1.5-2%. Weaker stocks up to 10%. Nothing to see here.

I lol'd at oddball, but your question is the relevant one. Like Morgan said, this kind of military style might work for some people and some companies. Wouldn't work for me, though I do see value in being more thrifty, more organized, more detail oriented, etc. There is recognized psychological value both for the person doing it and for the clients. As long as it does not blow back killing growth/innovation/etc. I.e. they might not have invented glass ceramic ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Donald_Stookey ). But perhaps they did not need to. :) Not a company for ScottHall, definitely. 8)

Ah, yes, Citi. Missed that one. I have Capital One and it's Visa. Maybe they offer both. Maybe they will stealth-switch either mine or yours.

Yeah. That's what a bunch of companies do now. Both positive and negative. Positive that they push out the maturities, which benefits both equity and remaining notes (that they'd have to redeem/refi before 2022). Negative is that you have even senior (secured) notes in front of you if BK happens. Interest costs might be a wash (or even lower) depending on which notes are tendered. Also shows how the company values its notes right now. I have some unsecured 2020's. Not buying more. Probably not selling now either.

Hah, you guys are just not worthy to be BH shareholders. That's what he said. This is for lolz in case someone takes this seriously. He did say it in shareholders' meeting though.

Haha, when I was reading the post, I was wondering what will Scott say about this. ;D Yeah, military way to run things baby.

Honestly, any binary outcome securities will be volatile like heck. They can only be valued based on success/failure probabilities and humans are notoriously bad in assigning probabilities. Ask on this thread - no actually don't, since it might raise a crap storm ;) - and if people don't see previous answers for anchoring, the probability distribution will be all over the place. Also, if market overall declines people look at their holdings and sometimes dump the binaries because it's not clear for them if continuing to hold makes sense. It's not like a business where you are getting incremental owner's earnings (well, you could argue that you do, but only in the case of success, so not really).

Fluctuations. :P

T-mobile. Global roaming for cheap FTW (edit2: I think Google fi uses T-mobile's cheap global roaming). I think I am paying ~$80 with all taxes/etc. included for 2 lines with very different plans (not family plan). I thought that the plans were $50 and $20 (that's limited minutes/no data), so I guess $10 is taxes or something. :) Google fi is great but they only support Nexus 6P (edit: and Nexus 5X) and you have to buy it. If you're in the market for new phone, it might be a good choice. Otherwise, not so much.

Anecdotally it seems that MC pretty much lost most US. I always try to have at least one MC just in case (haha) some place does not take Visa. Through years, pretty much all big US banks switched to Visa usually without even telling me. I've got Barclays MC, but that's pretty much it. There might be smaller US banks still offering MC. AFAIK situation is different internationally. It seems MC is more prevalent. I don't know if it will change now that Visa got Visa Europe. I've already written about AXP on AXP thread, so no point rehashing. I agree with rishig's opinion.

I tend to check google for higher priced items (i.e. >$150 or so), where for lower priced items I just stick with Amazon. Many times I end up buying from Amazon anyway, but sometimes I find a better deal elsewhere. I recently moved and needed to buy furniture and new TV's and some other higher priced or unusual items. I bought a lot of them at sites other than Amazon. For the exact model TV I wanted Bestbuy actually had a better price and I was buying two of them so it made a large difference. My wife found furniture using google and ended up buying some at Overstock and some elsewhere, Amazon is generally not too good for furniture. For all of these I never go through Google. Electronics: check NewEgg, Best Buy, Microcenter to price compare against Amazon Furniture: check Wayfair, Jordans, Ikea. Amazon is not that good. To be fair, I guess Google and Bing show some ads if you search for furniture.

And I was wondering what he was spending his time on this year. Apparently, he's doing a hands on job at Maxim. Next step is starring in pr0n movie as Mr. Big. 8)

There might be. We agree in general. :) Peace.

That's a pretty balanced and level-headed article compared to most that are agenda and emotion laden.

Of the companies/leaders in the book GD is the one that I remember the clearest of a less can be more strategy. I think the speed and aggressiveness with which he went about it was what left such a strong impression on me. It's an important point, so maybe that's part of why he chose that example. Yeah, OK. But. :) It seems rather messy as a lesson for investors. :) What is exactly the lesson here? - Bet on a CEO who comes to do a turnaround, sells a bunch of businesses and improves efficiency in remaining ones? Wouldn't you have ended with Chainsaw Al Dunlap with this strategy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_J._Dunlap - Get rid of the CEO who does the turnaround as soon as turnaround is finished? (In 3 years) - Bet on the next CEO who comes after him? - And then the next one after? ;) BTW, looking at Buffett's behavior is a bit instructive here. He bought when Anders was on the turnaround way, so he either knew/liked Anders and/or saw the results of what he was doing. He sold when Anders left - so he was not sure CEOs after Anders will do well. So it seems that Buffett also bought into Anders-as-outsider-CEO figure (while kinda dismissing CEOs who came after). But that's still tough to learn something from. In other words, if you see a company that brings Joe Ceo for turnaround, how do you know if he's Bill Anders or if he's Al Dunlap? Note that you don't have 10 or 5 years to decide, since he's gone in 3. Doesn't that sound like "too hard" situation? Anyway, just my thoughts on this. ;)

LOL. +1!

Is that very important/useful? He hasn't bought anything in open market, which means he doesn't consider anything super cheap. ( see http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000937797&owner=exclude&count=40&hidefilings=0 ) He hasn't sold anything in open market, which does not mean much, since a lot of his holdings is supervoting which he won't sell. And he's very rich, so he doesn't have to sell even if he thinks something is overvalued. You could look at where he got rid of his supervoting shares, but he only did it for LTRPA/B, so that's not very interesting either. You could argue that he likes LBTYA/B/K and LILA/K since he's gonna take the shares in C&W merger. Does LGF purchase by Discovery/LBTYA indicate that LGF shares are very cheap? I don't know. IMHO, you just go through the Liberty soup and pick what you like. Or just pick everything and mix it up like he does. ;) I doubt his proportions are "best" in terms of future returns. Probably someone will answer your question directly though. 8) Take care

OK, so somebody explain Bill Anders and GD chapter to me. Anders comes in. Engineers turnaround by selling divisions, reigning in costs, returning cash as divvies. Retires in 3 years (4 if you count a year as a chairman). How the heck is he considered an outsider CEO and responsible for 17 years of outperformance? OK, I get it, he did a great turnaround and I applaud his work there. But isn't the book about CEOs who had outstanding long-term performance? Hand waving that his successors were picked by Anders is not the same as him having the record himself. Anders wasn't even involved with the company after 1994. If we allow for "outsider" CEOs with 3 year records, this book would be 10 times thicker (and less interesting I'd say). Also what about acknowledging Mellor and Chabraja - how do we know that they are somehow "lesser" because of the Anders' shadow (although Mellor's tenure was also short; Chabraja might be the only one who would stand as a real "outsider" CEO with 11 years longevity). I understand the attractiveness of writing about Anders. There's the Army/NASA fighter pilot angle, there's the Buffett angle, there's the turnaround angle, there's the cold war angle. I'd salivate when writing this chapter too. But isn't consistency more important? ;) 8)

Looking at the first chart they provided, there are dots that are same price or cheaper with similar results. There are dots with better results but at a bit higher prices. Depending how you look it might be in cheapest quartile. OK, so I'll go with "cheapest quartile" vs. middling. ;) It looks "cheaper" in second chart, but debt/cash-flow is not really a valuation metric. It is only an issue at extremes. So I don't think second chart is very useful. Is that more in line with your thoughts? ;)

Way OT, but having fun responding to potshots: No, not always. Had great returns in 2008-2010. 10x+ on GPOR. And in the end all of us are dead. 8)

So it looks middling. Which seems right based on the unexpected dilution hit, no?

This thread suffers from the fact that most participants do not clearly distinguish their attitude towards Amazon as a retailer (from customer POW), as a business, and as an investment. For example: - Great retailer. A+. Hope it continues to be one and adds more products/areas. E.g. groceries/food selection and prices are crappy (I don't get Amazon Pantry/whatever it's called though). - I think it's strong business. Lot's of discussion on this thread why this is the case. - Too hard/too expensive as investment for me. Honestly, some other threads suffer from the same issue... ;)

Wasn't me. 8)