Liberty

More on Apple Watch Edition pricing: http://daringfireball.net/2015/02/apple_watch_pricing

You are correct. I half-consciously knew there was something wrong when I typed that name, but I didn't inspect that feeling more closely. There's a lesson in there :)

I expect such a huge party among insurance people when the market finally hardens. There must be so much pent up expectation. I remember in 2011 (when a hard market was already considered overdue) I was listening to Bill Berkley talk about how he was starting to see a turn in the market, and how he thought a hard market was coming...

Apparently Marc Faber said on CNBC that VRX was close to a deal with Salix, which explains the price movement in both today. Update: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/20/salix-valeant-pharms-idUSL1N0VU16H20150220

http://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2015/2/19/apple-is-on-track-to-buy-back-20-of-itself-by-2017 Also, Guber makes a good point here: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/19/9to5mac-apple-car Why poach Tesla’s lead recruiter unless you were building an electric car?

I won't be getting one, but I bet they surprise everyone both by how much they cost and how many they sell. $10K could be a low estimate. Agreed. If you're the kind of person who buys a solid gold watch, more expensive is better, not worse.

Why the Gold Apple Watch Edition Must Cost $10,000 http://grail-watch.com/2015/02/16/gold-apple-watch-edition-must-cost-10000/

Slides from a presentation that MMM gave a couple years go in Equator. Good stuff: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/happiness_vs_riches.pdf?6d6156

Because a shareholder who likes it can buy more of it, thus making it big enough in their portfolio to move the needle, unlike when it was inside of LBTYA. I think the reasons are multiple: Having a stock currency, better targeting buybacks only at European operations, sharing the balance sheet yet allowing shareholders to concentrate more in one or the other, etc.

I don't remember the exact quote, but I think he said that they had very different risk profiles, and that since LILAC was so much smaller than the European operations, inside Global it wasn't moving the needle, but on its own, it might be something that some people looking for that different profile might want to invest in directly. That's how I understood it, anyway. It's a bit like splitting QVC from the small Liberty Interactive e-commerce businesses (though obviously that's not a perfect analogy).

IMO their advantage in rolling up the region would be that as a tracker, they would benefit from Global's balance sheet and scale. …and thereby using LiLAC shares as an acquisition currency. I couldn't come up with any other rationale for the LiLAC tracking stock. Probably some of that, but their cost of debt would also be much lower because of Global.

IMO their advantage in rolling up the region would be that as a tracker, they would benefit from Global's balance sheet and scale.

I think he did not regret selling TCI for a high price. He mainly regretted not being able to sell his AT&T stock and losing billions when it collapsed. So in a future deal he might make sure that he is not locked in like that. That's my impression too. If he sells, it'll be at a really high price, for a mountain of cash or unrestricted very liquid stock. Otherwise, I think he'll be the one doing the buying.

Some good stuff here: http://overca.st/Bihn3Stfw

Thanks for sharing. Reading the introduction made me realize that my Apple position is probably too large. I would hate to wake up to the press release of Ive's retirement. "In recent months, Sir Jonathan Ive, the forty-seven-year-old senior vice-president of design at Apple—who used to play rugby in secondary school, and still has a bench-pressing bulk that he carries a little sheepishly, as if it belonged to someone else—has described himself as both “deeply, deeply tired” and “always anxious.” He is now one of the two most powerful people in the world’s most valuable company. He sometimes listens to CNBC Radio on his hour-long commute from San Francisco to Apple’s offices, in Silicon Valley, but he’s uncomfortable knowing that a hundred thousand Apple employees rely on his decision-making—his taste—and that a sudden announcement of his retirement would ambush Apple shareholders. (To take a number: a ten-percent drop in Apple’s valuation represents seventy-one billion dollars.) According to Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’s widow, who is close to Ive and his family, “Jony’s an artist with an artist’s temperament, and he’d be the first to tell you artists aren’t supposed to be responsible for this kind of thing.” Indeed, but make sure to read the whole thing and keep it in context. Most of this interview was done around the time of the Apple Watch release, with Jony working himself very hard (pneumonia), right before going on vacation. Chances are he's feeling much better now. The man is clearly in love with what he does (or rather, he is what he does), he'll never stop designing things, he's just 47, and he couldn't do what he does anywhere else than Apple (scale, culture, technology, breadth of projects). So maybe he'll retire tomorrow, you never know, but I wouldn't give that risk more weight than it deserves based on a journalist catching him at a very hectic time when he's tired and sick.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come

That's a dumb comparison. How do you say that Ackman knowing he himself is buying the stock is insider information? Should he buy it without knowing he is buying it? Should he tell his broker, go buy something but don't tell me what it is cause that would be insider information? Yeah, that's like saying Buffett shouldn't be able to buy stocks because when it becomes known that he's bought them, they usually go up (so he's insider-trading against himself?!).

Yes, because nobody made electric cars before Tesla*. Apple is not truly innovative, sure, I can agree with that if you just redefine "innovative" in such a way that it doesn't include all the literally world-changing innovation that's been coming from Apple for the past 35 years, and voilà ::) * http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle#Early_history I'm sorry, did I hit a nerve there? Is that really how you want to play it?

Yes, because nobody made electric cars before Tesla*. Apple is not truly innovative, sure, I can agree with that if you just redefine "innovative" in such a way that it doesn't include all the literally world-changing innovation that's been coming from Apple for the past 35 years, and voilà ::) * http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle#Early_history

Y tu, Endo? http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/13/us-endo-m-a-salix-exclusive-idUSKBN0LH2C020150213

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/01/apple-ranks-as-chinas-most-desirable-luxury-brand/

You're right, of course. However, I must point out that Ackman does run a sizable short book as well that wouldn't be exposed via 13Fs. Just short Herbalife and that's probably 95% of his shorts by value right there ;)

2.2bn FCF is still 25% growth (including Ziggo), so nothing to complain about. Listening to CC now, but so far am very happy with what I see. Update: Good that they're filling in the easy gaps in the UK, that should be nicely profitable. I like how they're going about it, building it modularly, pre-selling, already doing trials. Seems the most low-risk way to go about it. Fries: "When this program is done, we'll have bought back nearly 16bn of stock since started company." Increased current buyback program by 2bn.

Shire might jump in: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/12/us-salix-m-a-shire-exclusive-idUSKBN0LG33820150212