Jurgis

Disclaimer: I am not a CPA/etc. Is the gross profit of the company negative? I think you are confusing operating profit and gross profit. Not sure. I believe it depends on whether holding company holds something that produces passive income. But you'd need someone more knowledgeable to say for sure. (You may know the following, so skip if so) The idea behind PFIC is to make it more difficult for US investors to get into non-US listed investment companies (funds) and escape taxation through investments that are not taxed in the foreign country. Otherwise, you could buy into a mutual fund in SomeCountry where cap gains are not taxed at corporate level, the fund invests in stocks, buys/sells, but you never pay short term taxes - you only pay when you sell out of the mutual fund after twenty years. It's not that you are prohibited from owning PFIC. It only hurts you in tax reporting time. If you are small investor, I suggest not owning potential PFICs or owning them in tax sheltered accounts where you and IRS don't care. If you are not small investor, hire someone to do your taxes - just make sure they know about these things. If you are small investor and you screw up with reporting, the likelihood of IRS auditing you is very low. I doubt many holders of GRVY, for example, reported according to PFIC. I doubt any were ever audited. :) GRVY was the only PFIC that I owned I believe. Although I am sure there were other edge cases with cash-rich net-nets... I wonder how many Japanese net-net investors file taxes with PFIC accounting. :)

Bruce, welcome to the board...was wondering what your handle would be, Picasso, makes sense with the art collection ;D..... so you're having problems dumping your warrants eh? Just donate them to the city of Miami as encouragement for zoning decision.

I owned very few shares for popcorn entertainment value for couple years. I bought a bit more recently on sum-of-parts undervaluation. Not much because I think that CBRL is overvalued. If I wanted to buy CBRL cheap, it would be over 30% down from here, so then BH is not undervalued anymore. However, as I said before, there's a swath of "fair value" for CBRL from current price to undervalued price, so there's also a swath of BH undervalued-to-non-undervalued. With the current developments I might go to popcorn value again. Regarding the "If not enough for a serious investment, then why invest in it at all", I am not concentrated investor like most (?) people on this board are. I hold ~60 positions. Some of them small, some of them bigger. I could expound on this more, but I don't think this is the place for it. :) If you really want to know, point to some relevant board and I'll answer there.

Thanks for the updates. I bought some recently - after voting cut off date. Keep us posted on how things unfold.

I'll +1 on this. I think he might be that thin skinned. Or at least that egotistic to have a retaliatory response and bid up the shares of competitors companies regardless of the price. I also have a feeling that Groveland guys might have just baited him expecting something like this. And the bait worked. I've said that this is a popcorn stock in the past. I might have to keep my position at popcorn levels, since I am not sure even the Mr. Big discount is enough for serious investment.

If someone wants to invest into oil price recovery without too much work, XOP might be a good choice. It is not overweight in XOM/CVX like most other sector etfs. And you are removing a lot of per-company risk. If you can deep delve and pick a company that is very cheap, yet not overlevered and will have a good resource progress, you might do (much) better. It is not very simple though. I don't advocate ETFs and I know that investing in them has its own issues, but there are some pros too. :)

I prefer to pick my own stocks, but XOP might work as well or even better.

I have to say I did not understand Ericopoly's suggestion. :)

I bought some APA, some GTE, some PWE. I hold positions in DRAGF and SPND and very tiny one in CVX. I also hold position in NOV and a tiny position in PGN (there is a BK risk for that one). I am looking at some distressed debt as well as prefs and equity. I am not an expert in deep diving into oil cos (i.e. figuring precise cost of production, reserve valuation, reserve replacement, debt maturities, etc.) so please do your own diligence.

Personally, I take a political stance on Russian companies and I won't buy any single one of them if my investment has a chance to support Putin's regime. My country has suffered Russian occupation in the past and there's a high likelihood of another one coming. From investment point of view, the likelihood that Putin will nationalize or otherwise usurp foreign investor holdings is more than 30% IMHO.

He only googles and answers to Mr. Big. ;D

I would buy BP, but I won't because of the Rosneft holding. This could blow up anytime.

They read this board and said "screw it, we're not talking to these curmudgeons". ;D

Sears - a closed store is worth more than an open one. Sears - the customer satisfaction rises when store closes. Sears - we can retain a relationship with Shop Your Way members by letting them shop elsewhere. Why would we force them to shop at Sears?

by selling shares under the intrinsic value... sure.

Off topic. I like the Fairholme mansion museum office. I ROFL at "rethinking thinking inside the box." :o No, really. WTF was he thinking But I don't judge his investing abilities based on that. Well, maybe a little. 8)

It was pretty likely not Buffett. :) My guess it's merger arbitrage with possible intention to hold T. Weschler//Combs trade much more than Buffett, so you can't infer if they will hold and how long.

I have owned MMT in the past and sold because of the shutdowns, delays and oil theft. Investors should apply a large discount to MMT because of these issues. At the current price it might be cheap even with discount. I have to relook at it. I am not an oil investing expert although I made some money on 2009 collapse and recovery. My current E&P investments are APA, GTE, DRAGF (DGO.L), SPND. I am looking for more buys if oil continues to drop. I will sell if we runup from here.

I looked at it and I think it is overvalued. I don't assign specific intrinsic value to it though. If I was looking to invest into CBRL, I would look for at least 30% lower from here, but that might be crossing both overvalued and fairly large "fairly valued" area. Note that CBRL has been a value trap for decades until Mr. Big came. The current attractiveness might be just management trying to look good. We can get a variety scenarios for the future that don't work out well for BH. For example, people assume that "if CBRL stock drops a lot, BH gets elected into BoD and fixes things or takes over the whole co.". This is not given.

More like defending from franchisee lawsuits. (See link above).

Freudian slip. Mr. Big, Maxim and all that. 8)

You forgot two things: he made reservation through deep-discount site and then expected red-glove treatment; he used his status as celebrity to go directly to CEO. Honestly, 90min line at rental counter sucks. I can blame customers and shareholders. :) A lot of companies are optimized for profits and cheap pricing. Keeping extra staff for busy times cuts either into profits or into cheap prices. If you want great service, get NetJets and limo... :-\

CBRL is overvalued here. As is most of the market. My anti-Big question is: is Mr. Big one trick pony? So he rode CBRL purchase up from the bottom of financial crisis. His pre-CBRL results are very so so. Stake and Shake results also benefited from climbing out of 2009, so he's comparing apples to oranges when he compares to pre-BH results. Why does he keep diluting shareholders via rights offers if he thinks BH is such a great company? Remember that even if you exercise the rights and buy the stock, you don't have more of the company. You have the same slice, but you just gave cash for free to Mr. Big. I wish I could be in a racket like this. Heads I win, tails you lose.

US stockholders who have contacted Tessenderlo IR should have received the US Investor Representation letter from IR. The letter has to be returned by November 27 to participate in the rights offering. If you have not contacted Tessenderlo IR, your mileage may vary.

Anecdotal and personal experience. I love Amazon for most things. In terms of food though, their offering is pretty atrocious. I wanted to buy a specific brand of cereal. Not something super-rare, but something not stocked in my local store anymore. Amazon only has it from 3rd party vendors at 2x store price + huge shipping. Walmart.com has it at normal store price. Who do you think got my business? Walmart.com. Twice in the last year. I mostly don't comparison shop and buy on AMZN. So this is great for AMZN. For big purchases though, I still comparison shop with Walmart.com, Newegg/Microcenter, Lowes depending on purchase. For me Amazon has some lock in of convenience and familiarity. Apart from books it's not a big lock in though. I have no stock holdings in AMZN or WMT.