Liberty

http://investor.siriusxm.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=890000 At today's market cap, SIRI is selling for 14.7x 2015's FCF. For a company growing this fast... And they usually raise and beat guidance. Gotta love those big buybacks.

For those interested, here's Mike Fries speaking at the Citi conference. Some good stuff in there: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ozh7h9sy02vhl2q/2015-jan-LBTYA-citi-conf.m4a?dl=0

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2015-01-06/charter-cisco-said-to-unveil-cloud-cable-tv-service.html Charter, Cisco Said to Unveil Cloud Cable TV Service

It's up to each of us to decide where we draw the line (I'm not investing in cigarettes either), I was just telling you where I draw it with HLF, and that I didn't find what you had written above ('there are other pyramid schemes..') convincing. It doesn't mean that you don't have other, better reasons for acting the way you do. In any case, best of luck.

Cigarettes (eventually) kill people, but by now pretty much everybody knows that. Cigarette companies were a lot more problematic ethically back when they denied and suppressed the evidence for harm. HLF is kind of at that level. Pretending to be one thing while being another so they can take advantage (money, time, energy) from some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Personally, I find it despicable and will celebrate when they finally go bankrupt. In any case, I don't find the argument that "yes, they're bad, but others are bad too" comforting. Should I act badly as a person because other people do bad things too? Where does that thinking lead?

I know. I was directly quoting the article linked in the original post:

No benefit if the market prediction is correct. But if it isn't, you might get some oversubscription shares. So if they are trading for exactly the same implied price, you should always go with the rights as a free option. Also: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/937797/000122520815000613/xslF345X03/doc4.xml

Did you end up buying at 38?

yadayada, you might be interested in this: http://www.raptitude.com/2015/01/how-to-disappear-completely/ Have you tried it? $45-60 for 90 minutes. That was an interesting read. Thank you. Now I want to try it for myself... Here's the Robert Wright piece : http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/self-meditating/

Maybe. But we always have to be careful when assuming that markets are acting rationally, especially in the very short term. The speed of the oil decline can easily have caused some panic among market participants (many of whom care tremendously about momentum, TA, sentiment, etc). Couple that with margin calls for those invested heavily in the sector (who then sell indiscriminately and affect people who aren't invested in the sector...), and you get a lot of babies being thrown out with the bathwater, including companies that will benefit from lower oil prices. To me the macro is entirely confusing, as it usually is. Some places look weak, some places look strong.. Then you have everybody looking at this landscape and reacting accordingly, so the outcome will vary depending on perception (reflexivity)... Who can know? So I buy good businesses that should do well and deploy capital well regardless.

Probably the same people who just figured out that Berkshire is "more than just a portfolio of stocks". I mean, it's good to not follow the market minute-to-minute, but let's at least all be on the same decade... ;)

Murray Stahl has covered this topic a lot, with great insight. I think you'd find his essays and transcripts interesting.

Good post, txlaw, thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Not sure if anyone is still watching this, but down 12% today. (never been a company I liked, but I know this thread was very active for a while...)

http://www.valuepodcast.com/417 Kevin Byun on John Malone’s Financial Brilliance

http://www.valuepodcast.com/417 (will also post in Liberty Media thread, but based on a previous experience just posting there, I'm posting in general too because I know some people who are interested might not see it otherwise)

I liked this piece: https://fundooprofessor.wordpress.com/2014/12/08/who-will-bail-shale/

Very nice, Gio. How did your investment portfolio do? 20% Liberty... Not as good as you, but not bad either... As you know I hold a large percentage in cash! Cheers, Gio Very good, thanks. And don't feel you need to explain yourself compared to others, especially at 20% which is excellent by any standard. It's not a competition, we're all working together to get better art this and learning from each other. One year is too short to judge anything much anyway, some years I had bad results while you probably had very good ones (but I feel I learned a tremendous amount from my mistakes so they were still worth a lot)...

Very nice, Gio. How did your investment portfolio do?

I would agree with that. I think arguing about concentration vs diversification in the abstract is a bit like asking "winter coat or hawaiian shirt?". What's best for you depends on other factors.

Oh boy. This is kind of what I meant about text easily leading to miscommunication. If we were all sitting with a beer, my meaning would not doubt come across better. Disclaimer first: I'm not attacking Kraven or saying anything bad about him. He's a great investor and a great guy and I've learned a lot from him. Nothing that I wrote is personal or intended to have an ounce of malice. My default mode as a person is always to discuss ideas as being separate from people, so if I do something stupid, it doesn't mean that I am stupid, and if someone does something that I disagree with, it doesn't mean that I disagree with that person as a whole, all the time or won't find their next idea utterly brilliant... Here's more context: I've been on this board for a few years. The first time Kraven posted about not liking smileys and wanting people to stop using them, I thought it was tongue in cheek and light humor. The 15th time, I was genuinely curious to hear his thinking and figured I'd ask him, and also explain why I thought they were useful because maybe he would agree with my arguments, or maybe I would end up agreeing with his arguments. Why ask? Because as someone who uses emoticons and other markers of context/tone, I was starting to feel a disapproving gaze at the back of my head every time I used one, and that wasn't a nice feeling. These things have been around for decades and they only seem to improve communication, unlike, say, texting/leetspeek (I C U have lotsa fun brah, Y U so... whatever, I can't even really write like that, but that does degrade clarity and I can understand the argument for not using that kind of writing on a forum). So I wrote what I thought was a light-hearted message last night asking my question and explaining why I thought smileys were useful. It was obvious to me that I didn't mean the "you suck" part - I was just looking for something that could mean extremely different things depending on the tone - and I'm sorry if anyone thought I actually meant it. See, text being ambiguous again. Around a beer, it would've been a lot clearer. So West, I don't mean this to be a flamewar or anything, and frankly, it doesn't have anything at all to do with Kraven being a good investor and a good contributor here. I just wanted to ask him why he hated emoticons so much, which doesn't seem like such a taboo question to me. See, no emoticons in this post so far. They were not needed this time :)

As an aside, what Warren actually said is that if someone had a punchcard and could only do 20 stocks, they'd almost certainly get better results, because it would make them research them like crazy and really understand what they own and think long-term and trade less for no good reason. People often take away the wrong thing from what Warren says. Here everybody remembers the 20 slot punch card, while the actual message was "You have to know really really well what you buy and think about it long-term and not trade around too much". 20 is just a number to make a point. Some people might be able to understand hundreds of things, others 5, that's not the point. It's the process behind the metaphor that matters.

You've brought this up again and again over the years. I'm now genuinely curious why you seem to be bothered by them so much. I can understand someone not liking them and not using them, but I don't get why someone would be riled up enough to periodically lobby for others to stop using them. The only reasons I can think of are of the "damn kids, get off my lawn" variety, or "things weren't like this in my day and I don't like change, so if I don't like it nobody should like it, like kids and their damn rap music and snapchat", or maybe some form of snobbism, because what kind of discourse could possibly be elevated by cartoonish pictures, right?. It's short-hand. They prevents all kinds of misunderstandings that happen all the time with text-based communication (without tone of voice, body language, comedic timing, etc). Everybody except a few face-blind people immediately understand how they modify a statement, and since few of us are Hemingway types who will be consistently great at perfectly writing out the nuances of what we mean, they are a very useful tool and safety net. They also encourage economy, because you can get the same thing across with fewer words (imagine how much longer my crap would be!). So basically, this: You suck Kraven ;) :D Is very different from You suck Kraven >:( or You suck Kraven :-[ :-\ So what's the deal? Did a smiley kill your parents when you were but a boy? ???

That's why keeping an investment journal where you write down exactly what you're thinking before doing anything is so valuable. Memory plays tricks on us, and this is a good way to mitigate that.

*roll eyes*