Jurgis

For BRK: a lot of railroads sold off Yes. And also IBM/AXP underperformed. But look at MKL: it's a (re)insurance company in soft pricing environment, at a time where we haven't had supercat for 3+ years, at a time when the equity valuations of market (and their portfolio) are elevated and it's trading at elevated P/book. Not only it's at high P/book, its book is possibly "too high" due to elevated equity valuations. So possibly double whammy coming. Would you seriously say that MKL is/was more attractive than BRK/FRFHF now or in the beginning of this year (Jan 1, 2015)? The only attractiveness I see is that MKL is smaller and its CIO is way younger. Not sure I'd pay 1.5-1.7 p/b for that.

Well, just curious to know the credit limit for this card ! :) It doesn't have credit limit. In fact it's not that tough to get a CC with no credit limit. However, "no credit limit" is not really true. The CC company will still block your card if it goes over some number in their system. Your people just have to call CC company and persuade them that you're good to pay gajillions so the company would raise that number up there. It's a bit surprising that Christie's would eat 2%+ AmEx fee. They might have a special deal with the buyer or AmEx though.

Got the sofa. On time. Shipped Fedex ground. Looked like it shipped from Wayfair, not 3rd party, but not 100% sure. Product as expected. Quality possibly not great, but that's something that's tough to evaluate over Internetz. That's one reason brick&mortars will be alive for a while.

Nah. Everything is replaceable. I would not miss any companies mentioned if they disappeared overnight.

OK, let's say I agree. But that would apply to (m)any (re)insurance cos. Not many (any?) trade at 1.7 book. Edit: Y not Y then? Or RE? I somewhat stopped following a bunch of other (re)ins, but with time I can probably find bunch more candidates. Edit 2: FRFHF would probably qualify too, no?

If I had a very large position, I'd probably cut it here. As it is, I continue to hold. I do not expect a great return from current prices though. As I mentioned in other places, I couldn't have guessed the huge divergence of MKL vs. FRFHF/BRK performance this year. I can't explain it fully post factum either.

OT: http://www.thync.com , http://pavlok.com and https://nootrobox.com/ mentioned in the article sound interesting. Might try.

Of course Spirit bait and switches. That's especially true if you buy tickets on Orbitz or some other 3rd party and haven't seen their website at all. You might get a note about baggage fees, but might not know about boarding pass fee at all. The rest of this is customer PoW, might not be relevant to investors. Overall Spirit experience might be OK if you know their system inside out, can stand their FUD and mind f*cking, are young and flexible (or old and cheap :P ), etc. For example, if you're flying with family/friend, Spirit will tell you to pay extra for assigned seats if you want to sit next to each other. They are somewhat bluffing - you'll get adjacent seats if you check in early / there are bunch of seats available. But there's a risk that you won't. Best solution for trips where Spirit competes with legacy carriers is to buy legacy at their cheap "Spirit-buster" prices and enjoy the perks there (omg did I just call legacy cattle class a "perk"? what next - being happy for free on-plane toilets?). In Boston airport Spirit has currently pretty zero signage, so if they change the gate - and they do - often - you'll be lucky if you hear the gate announcement over PA. Otherwise... well it's cheaper for them to fly with empty seat you know. ;) On the positive side, if they change a gate they might not give a damn about your carry on - I mean "personal item" - size and you might get lucky to save that $100 or whatever they charge for carry on. They just saved the fuel on the guy who did not hear the gate change announcement, so it's a win-win, right?

Lot of people here like Interactive Brokers for their low commissions. I prefer Fido for a bunch of reasons ( search for IB thread if you want to read old discussions ). I don't DCA with small sums though.

I wonder how much this is due to the fact that we had very few cats in recent years. You average over 10 years, but last 4 years are still .4 of the weight... OTOH, few cats kinda equals soft pricing, so it's still good that they dropped below 100. :)

I think that a lot of people take that view: Watsa/Whitman/Icahn made mistake investing into X, it does not matter that they subsequently bought senior debt/recapped/etc. These are unrelated and "actions going forward have nothing to do with the mistake he made plowing into the equity". I think that's a shortsighted and incorrect view. Of course, they did not put money into equity to lose it. But they likely considered the fact that if their equity share goes bust, they can make a lot of money via second phase. Contrast this with Joe Shareholder who has no second phase available. Then tell me if risk for Watsa/Whitman/Icahn when taking equity stake is not lower or more attractive. It is heads we win, tails we win in second phase game for them. It is not unrelated at all.

Actually, Icahn can still outplay both shareholders and bondholders in a number of ways. For example, he could persuade CHK to float secured notes to him that would be senior to both shareholders and bondholders. Of just buy bonds and push for a recap on terms favorable to him. He can play this similar to Marty Whitman or Howard Marks or Prem Watsa - he thinks couple steps beyond just equity-will-recover-and-I'll-be-rich. Small shareholders don't have these kind of opportunities. See XCO - Fairfax bought a bunch of secureds that were floated to soak underwater unsecureds. ;)

Grocery stores. That's where I always get my pr0n. 8)

That's somewhat a fallacy since there's no way to take money out of the game. It's a one way conversion. And some Eve ships cost thousands of real world dollars... ;)

The reason I began investing in stock market was that I thought about all the time wasted to win in computer strategy game(s) and said "Screw it. Let's do it in real life. At least if I do it there, I'll have real money to show for it." 8) And the rest is history. :P In short: no time to play, especially not strategy games that eat time like there's no tomorrow. ;) I play some MMOs (GW2 currently). Markets there are very inefficient. But if you take into account time cost, it's just not worth it. ;)

165167BU0 165167CC9 165167CF2 165167CG0 165167CJ4 - in case someone wants short term paper that goes to 3/2016. Lower yield, likely lower risk too. Some of these are at >24% YTM, but might be tough to buy. Make no mistake: CHK is risky.

CHK bonds are currently trading at $.54 on a dollar or so. YTM 20% or so. Equity is a lottery ticket at this point. You might as well buy bonds. Disclosure: I have a small position in CHK bonds.

It hits either their margins or the margins of merchant actually selling the sofa, since AFAIK Wayfair just transfers the order to actual 3rd party merchants. AFAIK they don't fulfill the order themselves. I don't know who eats the cost of shipping/coupons/etc. Possibly it depends on their agreement with the merchant. Will let you know when I get the order how it was shipped, whether it was fulfilled by Wayfair and what possible cost it was... :) Looking at Wayfair 10Q, I see where ScottHall is coming from. I wouldn't buy the stock here - I can't predict how it's going to unfold. It could work out for bulls ... or for bears. ;)

No. Free shipping.

Anecdotal: We just ordered sofa on Wayfair. Good/great prices, large selection. Used 10%-off new client coupon, got rebate form for another $20. We'll see how the product is. I doubt we will buy anything else from there soon though - we don't buy furniture often. Also this does not tell if they are making any profit on the sale. :) The losers on this? Neighborhood furniture store and BRK's Jordan's. Both had worse prices and worse selection.

+1 to you, SmallCap, Palantir, etc. Peace.

Possibly OT. Let's say you are CEO of a company with weak economic fundamentals. You hire a management consultant and they tell you "your industry sucks". Two questions: 1. Is this really useful to you? How did you become a CEO and not know your industry fundamentals? 2. What would you do differently after learning this? Suggest to the board to liquidate the company? Why? The fact that company makes poor returns on capital might be a concern for shareholders, but it's really their decision to invest or not to invest into the company. As a company CEO you have more stakeholders than just shareholders (although this is anathema to some of the people on this board 8) ). The company might make economic sense even though it does not make great returns to shareholders. If we took opposite view, you'd probably have to liquidate over 80% of companies out there. Sure, some companies might benefit from shifting from crappy industry to one that is a bit better - like currently Alcoa is doing. But there will continue to be need for retailers, oil&gas E&Ps, etc, even though majority of them make crappy returns. I guess as a CEO I'd ultimately prefer a consultant who says "your industry sucks, but assuming you want to stay with it, you can do X, Y, Z.". ;)

I think we should be careful to diss intelligence. There are examples of superintelligent people who did not make great entrepreneurs and became professors or whatever - that's fine. There are examples of superintelligent people who became CEOs and blew up their companies. But there are also examples of superintelligent CEOs that are super successful entrepreneurs and/or investors: Buffett, Munger (in investing), Malone, Singleton (outsiders), Gates, Musk. Taking anecdotal info and saying that optimism is more important than intelligence is dangerous. In some cases the optimism and can-do attitude will achieve huge success, in other cases they won't. I'd rather see an analytical study that shows correlations across a big pool of business leaders. Edit: btw, superintelligence+optimism/can-do does not guarantee success or failure either. Most of the positive and negative examples above had both. Edit2: arrogance + superintelligence does not guarantee success or failure either. In terms of success, I'd say Larry Ellison is an example.

To keep this on topic: Nobody seriously believes death of IBM within 10 years or so. However, it might have negative growth that makes IBM subpar investment.

This is hyperbole and not helpful. Nobody seriously believes death of HDDs. However, it might have low or negative growth that makes WDC/STX subpar investments. I could write more, but this is not WDC/STX thread.