ERICOPOLY

More "out of curiosity" questions: What color did you pick? Do you live close to Supercharger stations (not that it'll be a problem over time.. check out their future expansion plans: http://goo.gl/OoqGg http://goo.gl/CD39O )? Do you have a delivery date yet? There is going to be a Supercharger station in my garage. Otherwise, no. I'm in Montecito. We were offered June for delivery date, but we opted for July because we're traveling in June. This is my car's design: Model S Performance Silver Metallic Paint All Glass Panoramic Roof Carbon Fiber Spoiler 21" Silver Performance Plus Wheels Grey Performance Interior Obeche Wood Matte Decor 85 kWh Battery Performance Plus Package Tech Package Sound Studio Package Active Air Suspension Rear Facing Seats Parcel Shelf PaintArmor Twin Chargers High Power Wall Connector Supercharging Destination and Regulatory Doc Fee $108,420 (price with $7,500 Federal Tax Credit and $2,500 California Tax Credit)

I doubt it's a problem. I mean, how hard can running A/C be compared to accelerating a big sedan from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds? Tesla is claiming 4.2 seconds 0 to 60 for the one I'm buying. That's awesome The 911 Carrera S is 4.3 seconds. And that Porche costs $98,900 MSRP. The Model S is faster, cheaper, and it's a family car (room for 7 passengers with two kids in the rear folding seats which I'm buying as an option). I bought all of the options. What the hell!

I had to throw FFH overboard in order to pick up MBI. That was a short holding period! I'm not a kind lifeboat captain. Beautiful women first... then we'll see what room is left for others.

I doubt it's a problem. I mean, how hard can running A/C be compared to accelerating a big sedan from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds? Tesla is claiming 4.2 seconds 0 to 60 for the one I'm buying.

The claim is 10 years on the battery life. According to Franz von Holzhausen: Of course, they don't warranty it for 10 years so they're not all that confident perhaps in that number. However, once you replace the battery the car is good for another 10 years presumably (if 10 is the number). It's not like you have to worry about how many miles are on the engine though. So at resale perhaps they ask you how old is the battery? Instead of what is the milage? Putting high miles on it shouldn't depreciate it the vehicle in the same way as putting high miles on a gasoline vehicle.

Actually there is no premium. This car may be 10-20K$ more expensive than the comparable BMW, but you are paying 5-10 times less for fuel (electricity vs gasoline). So do the math :) Yes this is the point I was trying to make. The naysayers are saying this about average Jane. I agree completely with your statement. Average Jane doesn't buy a Porche, so that business is going bust.

I wound up changing my options to the Performance model. Fully loaded, every single option. Might as well do this well if it's going to get done. Decided to go with paying cash instead of financing it -- keep my debt/income low for when I shop for a home mortgage. Crazy week. Up 20% in 3 days and now this impulse buy.

Out of curiosity, are you buying, leasing, or using the new 'Tesla Financing" which is kind of a hybrid between the two? Financing.

Bernanke appears to be right about the wealth effect of stock prices. MBI and BAC go up and I order a Model S.

I've bought more complicated things like HPQ that I lost a bit on. And I held DELL which I sold to buy more BAC. And on, and on, and on.... I have learned that I can only stick it out if I have some grasp on a highly predictable earnings future that presents me with a nearly certain massive earnings yield. The trick is finding things really cheap that have highly predictable and stable/growing long term earnings. Without taking big risks from competitively driven declines in those earnings. I think that's why Buffett claims they don't come around very often. Every time I've lost money it has been because I didn't start off with a company with a highly certain future earnings stream that offered a gargantuan earnings yield.

Last night Tesla got a $5,000 payment from my PayPal account. Looking forward to getting it in July (the earliest delivery date was end of June, but I'm traveling then).

Eric, I am not sure I have understood your comment… You really see opportunity costs today?! ??? Well, even if there were some opportunity costs today (Hey! They are very well hidden!! ;)), FFH is trying not to incur opportunity costs that will be 4 times higher in a 1 or 2 years time! That is obvious, so I must have missed the true meaning of your comment… giofranchi The unrealized loss on the hedges is the opportunity cost of the cautious stance. I bought more puts myself today.

No, I didn't like the premiums -- too high. Today I've been writing puts as well as far out of the money covered calls because I believe the volatility premiums are going south very quickly with the settlement in the rear window. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Today the stock rose but the calls were declining rapidly as implied volatility plunges. These are for June expiry: mbivol.tiff

So if a book is put out, how many people flood in here?

Personally I think opportunity costs are real. That's okay though, we just live with them. They don't feel as bad, which is probably what has led to the traditional of not thinking of them as real losses. Gains don't feel as emotionally important as losses, so I think people are relatively comfortable with losing by missing out.

So it's almost at tangible book now, albeit 5 months late for Sanjeev's playful forecast.

Can you point me out to this post? Eric -> Have you had any large losses to date? or just simple small losses on rolling over options? My portfolio has been down 50% off of peaks now a few times since 2008. Most recently in 2011. Actually, it was down 30% last summer off of the highs hit in March. During those times I have sometimes booked large losses and moved the proceeds into something I liked better. When I was really young I lost some money in the tech bust but that was before I found Buffett, before reading Graham's book, and essentially before I realized that one could estimate a value for a stock and then do buy/low sell/high relative to that value. So I don't really count that loss :D

I haven't thought enough about Sears to comment. I've been partial to BAC because there is a money maker if they just cut expenses -- and that looks to be on track. I think MBI is the same (except not needing to cut). But I feel like Sears is more of a mystery because I've been to a couple of their stores. And more recently I used their SearsPartsDirect website -- yikes! I had to call their customer service and the woman on the phone couldn't even tell me what manufacturer made a given part number. I mean, talk about incompetence. But perhaps I extrapolate too much from that anecdote.

Bizarre. GAAP strikes again. Anyhow, this means MBI will take the charge in Q1 too. I'm often right for the wrong reason, but I'll take it.

This is the part I misunderstood. I thought the language pointed to a Q1 settlement, but apparently they are forced to report it in Q1 because they hadn't yet filed their Form 10-Q when the settlement was reached. As the settlement occurred prior to filing the company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended March 31, 2013, generally accepted accounting principles require Bank of America to apply the additional charges to the financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2013.

They mentioned in their settlement announcement that the conference call would get moved back, but no word on change in the timing of the Q1 earnings release. Seems to suggest to me the settlement will hit Q2 like it should for any sane company. ;D I vote for Q1. The deal was struck in Q1, and that's when I think it should hit the financials.

I also noticed your silence in the last weeks, because you did post less frequently, thus somehow I felt you are just lazy taking some days off or your brain is working on something big. And finally yesterday was some incredible opportunistic day,... comparable with the short sale bans in financial stocks and also that special ORH opportunity. That was partly because my wife and I divided our forces and I took one child and she took the other (visiting her mother with the one child). Then this past weekend I took one child to my parents and she kept the other one behind. I volunteered as t-ball coach assistant and had to spend time on YouTube figuring out how to organize t-ball drills. I'm also in negotiations to get a purchase option for the home that I am renting. So, a lot going on the past couple of weeks. MBI (to me) is another of those "insider trading" plays similar to ORH. Now that there are two such home runs I'm going to call that the "insider trading" bucket. In one case it was a settlement telegraphed, in the other it was a privatization telegraphed. In both cases somebody else on the board divined it, and then shared the info with all of us. Quite happy to take no credit for any of this!

He is also a good cheater -- he didn't even notice the silence over the MBI/BAC settlement. That was somebody else's keen perceptions that pointed out the deafening silence. He just treated that like insider information and made the purchase. Meanwhile Raj rots in jail...

I am glad you didn't hold back -- you got paid. Thank you for sharing information on it with the board. The last thing you posted helped me buy this morning -- you dug up some BTIG research arguing that they only needed additional $1.4b or so to be made whole (for National to get going) in the settlement (with BAC and all others cumulative). I reasoned that if BAC had already offered (as rumored) $1b, then they only needed another $400m or so. They'd get that in part from the rest of the parties, but even if they didn't the stock would still be worth $13 (based on your $22 estimate) if they had to raise the rest of the money via dilution at $5. So it seemed pretty safe. The worst case was still not that bad, assuming they really did have that $1b offer on the table as rumored.

Word problem: This morning I bought 80,000 MBI shares at $10.19 average cost in my wife's RothIRA account. First purchase today was today at 10:12:57 EDT Last purchase today was today at 10:46:34 EDT At the time of last purchase, it was 53% of her account. Shares were at $14 less than 1.25 hours later. How much does she owe me?