Jurgis

In all other Liberties, C/K trade at 0-5% discount. IMO it's a great time to swap LILAK to LILA. But then I said that couple months ago when they were at same price. ;)

LILAK vs LILA reverse spread is 5%. This is rather nuts. Unfortunately I swapped to LILA some time ago.

Swapped DISCA to DISCK, over 5% spread.

We'll see how that goes. ::) Perhaps they should buy Jet.com :P

I don't like Mike Lewis, but this article is pretty good.

I won't argue with that. ;)

Although I hold TJX stock and we shop there, you should not seriously suggest that TJX, ROST, WMT, and COST cover clothing needs for middle-high income shoppers. It might be fine for some, but if my wife needs something specific, good luck finding it in TJX/etc. That's where M, JWN, 21 Forever, Anthropologie, Free People, etc. comes in.

So someone takes a loss on my 2% cash back card? The 1.5% fee is net to Visa though and there are other layers on top of that. I think merchants pay 2.5% of the transaction value on average, but I could be incorrect. Spek, please read the upthread of how the fee is split. :) ~1.5% does not go to V/MA. It goes to the issuing bank. If new entrant displaces V/MA, they would displace only 0.2% of the fee. They would need to displace issuing banks to get rid of the 1.5-1.8% of the rest of the fee (well issuing bank and the clearing bank, but you get the picture). Displacing issuing bank is another can of worms and it's hard. Who's gonna take credit risk, etc.? And if they are already displacing the issuing bank, then they should just displace the issuing bank and keep V/MA. ;) Why not pay V/MA .2% if you just saved 1.5% from getting rid of the bank? ;)

V/MA strength beyond their network effect is that they charge only ~15bps. That's peanuts for the convenience and reach. New entrants could probably displace V/MA only on basis of convenience/features, since competing just on price - even if new entrant goes 0bps - is likely to be losing proposition. OTOH, V/MA can't raise fees much. This would likely draw more antitrust attention and would raise motivation for competition.

I'm interested in what KCLarkin will answer. My guess is that CMPR could keep taking business away from small mom-&-pop businesscard/website/etc. design companies. Especially internationally (through EU). However, I haven't done deep DD through CMPR business segments, so perhaps there's something else that bulls expect.

@WhoIsWarren: What you say makes sense. I don't have anything more to add at this time. :)

Some musings from a marketplace business my relatives trying to start. It seems that unless you get a huge market, the fees are a significant hurdle, especially for international marketplaces. Paypal charges 3-7% for CC funded purchases including Paypal fees, currency conversion, cross-border fees. And that's assuming you can get your website approved for Paypal chain payments that splits the purchase between seller and your seller's fee (whatever percentage you charge for the marketplace). AFAIK getting website approved for chain payments is nontrivial (realistically month+ dealing with Paypal approval dept.). If you don't do chain payments, then the Paypal overhead is 3-7%*2 (not exactly, but possibly), since you have to do two transactions: buyer to you, then you to seller. Assuming you are running niche business and want to charge sellers a fee of 5-10% for using your marketplace, you get to total 8-17% seller's overhead for chain payments, or 11-24% without chain payments. That's very unattractive to sellers. Pelagic, if it's not a secret, how do deal with this on your BoatEasy marketplace? Do you charge sellers anything? Or is the business model to run on ads? You can private message me if you prefer. :)

My guess is that this year cloning results were probably not great. Of course, that's short term and all that.

I vote for Naked Fairfax Financial Shareholder's Dinner! 8)

BRK. FFH. Y. Perhaps RE. Disclosure: I own positions in MKL, BRK, FFH. No current positions in Y and RE.

True, I make a lot of purchases by going straight to Amazon and searching within their site without doing any Google searches at all. Still, stores like Amazon don't have the breadth that Google does. Looking at the keyword list from wknecht, I don't look to Amazon when it comes to things like insurance, loans, mortgage, attorney/lawyer, credit, donation, and degree. Skipped the last sentence of my post, didn't you?

Good article from Economist (par for the course - most of their articles are good). Although Softbank might be cheap based on SoTP, Sprint is a concern and so is Alibaba (to me - others might consider Alibaba great company). New investments are possibly made at inflated prices. Not counting Japanese telecom business, I don't particularly see what Softbank/Son provides. If I compare it to Malone, I see Malone's investments being 1+1 = 3. With Softbank, I see more of 1 + 1 = 1.5 at best... Perhaps I don't have long term view, but I am skeptical.

Sorry, but I think this is a huge fallacy. Oil can rise a lot and coal can still stay in the dumpster. They are not really closely connected. Nat gas is more connected to coal, but even nat gas can go probably 2x up in Americas without moving a needle of coal prices. On a related note, I think most people at CoBF don't distinguish oil vs. natgas enough. They are also not closely tied. Oil could go to $70 without natgas moving up much. (And possibly vice versa). Natgas pricing is energy/heating driven, while oil is transportation driven. So there are plenty of scenarios where oily companies prosper while natgas companies don't. And vice versa (depending on region, etc.).

Not a positive, but does not seem very bad.

What is the 2017 bond Cusip? Fido search only has 2018's and 2037s listed.

For buying anything tangible in US, I am not sure how many people use Google search. Personally, I look on Amazon + depending on product Walmart, BestBuy, Lowes, Wayfair, BedBathBeyond, etc. Searching for product on Google (or Bing for that matter - I actually don't use Google search at all) is a waste of time IMO. I think people look for services on search engines though. E.g. dentist, plumber, electrician, lawyer, mechanic, etc.

Bought a bit of 912656AG0 today.

This.

OT(?) Wow I did not know about all the games people play with points/miles-conversions and buying tickets. It sounds attractive and yet sounds like a lot of effort. I just get cash back at $.01 on purchase/points or gift cards at $.015-$.02 (not necessarily from AmEx). International business class travel might be attractive, but I'd have to hog points for long time and there's no guarantee good conversion rate would be available by the time I want to travel... or that seats would be available for my destination... just thinking out loud. Or perhaps I should just buy a Modigliani. 8)

Right. I shouldn't try to compare against two companies in one sentence. :)