Jurgis

Cramer is a smart guy. It's somewhat worth listening to what he says. It's not worth following him though.

You cannot treat index fund as 1 position. Of course, based on that logic, conglomerates like BRK come closest to being attractive as 1 position - they are almost funds.

+1 Another TL;DR: capability of human societies and organizations to prioritize issues mostly sucks.

But your selling threshold in tax deferred account would be much lower than in taxable one.

Grouping: I think I can do that if by grouping we mean "here's a bunch of stocks/companies that are attractive based on my criteria and here's a bunch that is not so attractive and here's a bunch that are no-nos". I have no issue with that although clearly there are some stocks/companies on the edge of groups. It helps that in grouping I can wave away companies/stocks via "I am not certain about this one, so I'll just not consider it at all". Ranking: This is much harder for me than grouping. Yes, you are right, the issue is judging a priori the outcomes and therefore rank. Also at this level I cannot easily wave away anymore: the company is already grouped as attractive, I have to rank it to decide if it should be part of my portfolio and how big a part. Thanks

Perhaps I should split off a thread on this. Let's do this if people want to continue talking about this: "How to rank ideas". I have trouble ranking ideas discretely - not sure what you meant by this - or not. I guess it's possible to rank them by expected return. But expected return is a range and usually overlapping range. Plus there is a risk factor and yeah the business-line-diversification factor. How would a person rank, let's say BRK, FFH, AAPL, SFTBY, LMCA, JPM at current prices? For curve balls that might be more difficult to rank (or less difficult for some?): FRMO, Fannie/Freddie lottery tickets, any oil stock. Assuming you can rank, the next question is what position size do you assign to each rank.

I have trouble committing 20% of my portfolio into 1 position. I doubt there would be situation where I'd commit 100%. 1 position is a bit extreme. I have a related question though. Some people argue "why would you put money into your 25th best idea instead of putting it into your 1st best idea". If you follow this line of thought, how come you have more than 1 position? ;D I never could do it, because I never know what is my 1st best idea. ;) But I wonder what others think.

Like people above said, there is some market for this mostly around events and less affluent people attending such events. I know that students post about sharing hotel rooms when they go to scientific/research conferences. Participants usually prefer to stay in the conference hotel for networking and convenience, but rooms there are usually expensive. So sharing works. OTOH, conferences usually get hotel discount, so it's not clear how 3rd party site could facilitate sharing and still get the conference discount. Anyway, good luck. :)

Yeah, your premise is wrong. The goal of debate is rarely to change minds. It's entertainment and a tiny bit of learning. I've accomplished both those goals. I think that the risk of introducing politics into this board is that people start fighting, split into politics-based camps and discussions in other threads deteriorate because of attached political labels. It is a real risk, I know another board where this happened. Of course, as long as it is entertainment and learning, it's fine. But beware These show up a lot in political discussions. This being said, I have to +1 RichardGibbons and I liked/learned quite a bit from Otsog's and yadayada's posts. Peace

BRK and FFH have no chance then... ;) Although I wonder if they have 800 pages combined across all threads...

If you run firecalc, it does modeling that includes worst bubbles of the past. With that said, you can get ~100% solvency for 40 years at 3% withdrawal. If you go with 4%, you get 95% chance to survive for 30 years. If you really believe we are in a bubble, you can adjust that 95% chance downwards. I'd also feel much more safe if I had portfolio/spending that matched 3% withdrawal.

I have not used "Fulfillment by Amazon" when I sold books/etc. on Amazon. Hope you get some answers from customer support.

Actually, you might be right. I seem to remember that as a seller you mark some boxes that allow international shipping or not. This was couple years ago. I don't know if Amazon changed anything since then.

Both numbers are very aggressive IMHO. Personally, I'm concerned even about 4% withdrawal rate. If I could be sure that I'd get 5% after-inflation return and 4% after-inflation withdrawal, I'd retire tomorrow. 8) (This is a bit exaggerated for making a point ;) ).

Can you be more specific? I went through your last 100 post history and all stocks mentioned there have a lot of discussion. For example, yesterday, ItsAValueTrap asked if anyone was interested in AAMC/RESI. I explained why I was not, but no one else chimed in with an opinion. AAMC is down 85% from peak and RESI is at 77% of tangible book. Even though I have my issues and reservations with both, I would think someone else would at least have an opinion. I tried to get people to look at Forestar ( an owner of energy assets, timber, and lots of real estate that is down a lot at a decent discount to book and undergoing activism), but there didn't seem to be much traction. I personally find it compelling but am waiting for a little more clarity and progress to size it up. No one cares about ACAS, a BDC at 70% of book (75%) after adjusting for full dilution, it will split into parasite co and host co (asset manager and yield pig BDC) this year. No one cares about Tetragon, 50-60% of book (undiluted and diluted), 6% dividend, decent mix of assets, No one cares about Equity Commonwealth, cheap office REIT chaired by Sam Zell The reality is that several of these are either not spectacularly cheap, have shitty or greedy (or both) management, and there isn't a ton to discuss about them so my expectations should be low. I just think the 1/10 of posts on BH and SHLD (which i still read and sometimes contribute to the problem) should maybe make it to other ideas. I will say I often don't have much to say about small cap australian companies or this or that so it's not like I'm part of the solution. EDIT: And there are much better more interesting ideas posted by others that get little discussion, didn't mean to make this a personal rant Thanks for your answer. It was a nice clarification. I thought that Altisource had a ton of discussion. I am not personally interested, so perhaps I am wrong. Other companies you mentioned are also not interesting to me. This does not mean they are bad ideas, just not my circle of competence or interest. OK, let me comment on one company just to clarify why perhaps there's no discussion: ACAS. I am very skeptical about BDCs after last crisis, Einhorn's book, etc. I think that like REITs, management has wrong incentives to grow, does shady deals, blackboxes, so it's tough for outside investor to evaluate and know that you're not throwing money into a dark pit. However, I don't consider myself an expert on BDCs, so I would not go to ACAS thread and say the above to people who may know the company much better than I do. So, I opt for no response. :) The above is just one example of why I - or people in general - might not answer on a thread. Take care.

55 sold! Looks like a great business! ;D Sorry to Canadians and Europeans and Asians. Amazon does not love you. :'(

Can you be more specific? I went through your last 100 post history and all stocks mentioned there have a lot of discussion.

I take a look at every single company that gets a new thread or gets new posts on a thread. However, I usually don't post there saying: "took a look, not interesting to me, thanks". So I appreciate people posting a thread about lesser known company, but I don't necessarily reply, which means that original author does not get motivated to post more. Not sure how to solve this.

I will +1 that the following features would be helpful: - Shortcut to mark a thread read without clicking on its last post and clicking back. My OC self spends a lot of time doing this for every thread that I don't plan to read. :( - Subjectmarks - following specific threads - Peoplemarks - following specific people. I don't use this, but I +1 for others. Possibly useful, but not clear if necessary, so lower priority: - Ignoring posters. This is somewhat available but a bit hidden? Also not sure if it works since I never used it. - Post recommendation that is internal to forum and not Facebook "like", which does not seem to be working correctly anyway?

I don't do screening a lot, but IMO FT has pretty good screener and underlying data for international stocks: http://markets.ft.com/screener/customScreen.asp They support P/CF and ROE as filters. They don't have custom calculations. Last time I looked in 2014, there were some cheap German stocks with highish ROE and low valuations. At least one of them almost doubled since then... Anyway, good luck

+1 Grok it. 8) I think others covered the methods, I don't have much to add. I'd really love to have insta photographic memory, recall both in access and in synthesis. It really sucks to forget things, to remember only parts, to have to reread things again and again. I'd love to be able to remember the growth curve of Starbucks twenty years ago, the margins, the issues encountered; or the cost of the barrel of oil in Bakken vs GOM and exactly what goes into the cost, what companies are involve and so on. But you pretty much have to do what vinod1 is doing to achieve that: write, write, write. And for me this is often too much like work to write tiny details and revisit them and so on. It's nice if Munger internalizes things by reading once (?maybe?) and Buffett can recite See's sales for last 20 years, it's competitors and their sales and their margins and so on. I can't.

OT. I don't want to get into long discussion about ethics and morality, but overall these are much more complicated subjects than "Utilitarianism is stupid" proclamations. For people interested in current professional thoughts on the subject, I'd suggest Coursera course - there's at least a couple ( Edit: this: https://www.coursera.org/course/practicalethics and this https://www.coursera.org/course/moralities - unfortunately, neither is currently running, perhaps they will schedule new sessions. ). They usually have reading lists with newer papers too. No, there are no easy answers and universally accepted truths. At best, you can see how complicated the subject is and perhaps pick up some things that click or just raise questions in your mind. Peace.

I am not imposing my position on you at all. You are welcome to hold any beliefs you want. The only thing I said is that others have different beliefs that may be as valid or invalid as yours. Claiming that your philosophical point of view is right as a fact - which you did - does not make it so.

I'm such a Luddite that I don't have one. Might you suggest a model? Sorry, this was a bit tongue in cheek. :) I am paper-book-luddite too. I usually lug books with me on airplane and swear at the weight. :) From my limited experience, don't buy Kindle just before you go somewhere. You might hate it and then be stuck with it and with no paper books. Try it beforehand, preferably borrow from a friend. In regards to actual model, I think it's personal. There are Kindle apps on tablets, so some people just use iPad or whatever Android tablet. There are actual e-ink black-and-white Kindles, then there are color-lcd Amazon tablets they call Kindles. What you will like will depend a lot on where you read (inside or on beach), how long you want the power to last (e-ink is much longer), will you want to do other things like Internet on the same device (e-ink Kindles do not work well with that). Other people might have their suggestions. Take care. :)

That's a philosophical and possibly ethical position you hold. You may think that your position is universal, but it's not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism Edit: In my opinion most of Northern European socialistic countries are pretty close to the best systems and places to live. If not for the weather and need to integrate into society, I'd love to live in Finland, for example. But that's just an opinion. :)