Liberty

Apple press release: https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/09/02Apple-Media-Advisory.html

Every time there's a bubble, people have a thousand reasons why it'll keep going. All the attention gets focused on these reasons and people lose perspective. A few thousand wealthy foreigners obscure the fact that tens of millions of canadians are the ones primarily owning, buying and selling these houses, and their incomes haven't kept up, their debts are ballooning, and a huge part of the economy is RE, compounding risk. Chinese princelings aren't the ones buying dilapidated 1960s bungalows for a million bucks...

As Churchill said, 'you shape your houses, and then they shape you'. The recent interview with Guy Spier where he describes his system to be patient is a great example of that. If you know yourself to be impatient, you can create an environment where it's easier to be patient (ie. a room with no electronic devices, don't look at stock prices during the day and only submit orders when markets are closed, move to a calmer city, etc). That is an interesting concept. I read about research done on the link between success and self control. It turns out that more succesful people make sure that they put themselves in a enviroment where self control is easier. They do not necessairily have more self control. Basicly, if you want to lose weight, do not buy cookies and do not go to the supermarket if you are hungry. And do not live across a really good bakery. I think Buffett staying in Omaha probably helped him a lot. He stayed away from all kinds of bad influences and from a whole lotta noise and time drainers.

Alternatives also matter. Even with this (the hole is almost certainly patched by now), iOS is still a lot more secure than Android, so if you care about security, you won't switch.

Look at the last line of what I wrote. I wasn't serious :)

As Churchill said, 'you shape your houses, and then they shape you'. The recent interview with Guy Spier where he describes his system to be patient is a great example of that. If you know yourself to be impatient, you can create an environment where it's easier to be patient (ie. a room with no electronic devices, don't look at stock prices during the day and only submit orders when markets are closed, move to a calmer city, etc).

Rumors of an ITV takeover by Liberty Global: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/11064518/Liberty-Global-positions-for-ITV-takeover.html http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4c51bc96-31f7-11e4-a19b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3CAesKj7t

That's counting the value of their houses, though. Look at their liquid assets and incomes and the picture will be different, I'll bet. I'm sure american investors all seemed a lot richer too at the top of the dot-com bubble, but it wasn't real value. I think it's crazy and circular to use house prices to justify high house prices ("see, people have a high net worth, they can afford these expensive houses. Oh, what's their net worth mostly composed of? Houses, of course....").

I kind of expected the market to react negatively to the hacking scandal. It was bound to happen someday -- who hasn't been hacked? No complex software is without holes, and if you're popular enough you have a target on your forehead. Microsoft's OS had been a swiss cheese for over a decade with hundreds of millions of PCs full of spyware and malware and viruses despite them releasing patches every 2 seconds and everybody running bloated anti-virus software, and pretty much all mobile malware is on Android... Apple's ecosystem is pristine by comparison. But it looks like what the market saw was: Hey, all those celebrities seem to prefer iPhones. That's a pretty good endorsement, I suppose 8) I'm kidding. Who knows why the market does what it does on any single day? It's fun to make up reasons ex post facto like the media does, though ;)

Some people will argue the same thing about the internet bubble (think of all the extra fiber that was laid out, etc). Doesn't mean a lot of people won't get creamed. RE bubbles are a plus for those who rent and wait on the sidelines or those who luck out and sell at the top and don't just turn around to buy a similarly expensive house. Not for everybody else. http://i.imgur.com/bTw60eA.png

Their reasons for borrowing money have been explained on various conference calls. They consider high yield debt to be very mispriced currently and decided to reduce their cost of borrowing and load up while they had a chance. They also recap every few years to keep their leverage on target (they're a bit above it now, but they delever quickly); they generate more cash than they can deploy in M&A, hence the special dividends (and sometimes buybacks). Part of how they create value is definitely leverage. It's up to each investor to determine if they think their businesses are predictable and resilient enough to support that leverage. http://i.imgur.com/r6AVRlR.jpg

Can't easily save local copy of the file most times, and a PDF looks fine without their UI around it so they provide no real added value.

Longest i've seen as this one: http://youtu.be/lUMQylUxbsg Just 1 hour, though.

http://recode.net/2014/08/31/apple-9-9/ This mentions American Express and Visa. If true, doubt Mastercard would want to be left out, so that's basically everybody.

Congrats on the pick, snowball.

Sequoia fund meeting transcript, with some studf about Valeant (many parts about it, do a search for 'valeant' to find them, but it's all interesting. Some stuff about IBM, GOOG, PCP, etc): http://www.sequoiafund.com/Reports/Transcript14.pdf Found via Wellmont on twitter. Go follow him (@well_mont)!

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/PH00962.htm I did some work on Middleby a little while ago, and that bakery stuff can have great ROIC if done right. Hopefully that's what the Markel subs are like.

Don't they have special amazon dropboxes/mailboxes in some locations? I can imagine those being used for returns. ie. You go to the site, say you want to return something. They give you a code and the address of a drop point. You go there, open locker B32 with the electronic keypad, put your item to return in and UPS comes pick it up later. Meanwhile, Amazon has already shipped you a replacement if you're a Prime member, and if not, you have to wait a few days for them to confirm that you did return the item.

http://bovinebear.blogspot.ca/2014/08/s-500-triples-in-5-years.html Putting the past 5 years in historical context.

Very good interview, thanks cubsfan!

I'm sure people thought that automated teller machines (ATMs) sounded like they couldn't possibly work back in the day ;) I'm not sure how many ATMs have killed people. What do we do when a robot driving a car, or an automated car with no robot, causes a fatal accident? With humans you lock the guy up in jail. Will we lock up a robot? No. We'll have lawsuits galore for the creator of the robot. And I'm pretty sure we'll have more than just a few fatal accidents. I brought that up as a joke, but fact is, today there are many things that are automated and used to be done by people. Many are in critical functions that could have serious consequences if there was a problem. But over time, we've come to trust those things and think of them as banal because they just work (I bet people didn't trust the first traffic light, because they were afraid of getting T-boned by a malfunction). Someday, I wouldn't be surprised if we came to that point with vehicles and some types of robots. I have no idea when, and it's certainly not my reason for not buying Sears stock.

I'm sure people thought that automated teller machines (ATMs) sounded like they couldn't possibly work back in the day ;)

Self-driving delivery trucks + robots?

Good point. Although the free $3 in points each month is pretty cool and makes SYW max effectively free: Annual MAX subscribers earn Double Base Points on qualifying purchases online and in-store. Annual members also receive $3 in points to use on purchases during the first part of each month (a $36 value!) starting your first full month of membership. With a Sears Credit Card it gets even better: 3% points at Sears and 6% at Kmart. It only looks free if you don't count that you're paying more for stuff on average than you would at Amazon. And if you think of it this way, Amazon Instant Video (or whatever they call it) saves you money on Netflix and/or renting/buying movies, so Prime can be free too.

Keep in mind Amazon Prime is $99/year while SYW Max is $39/year (both include "free" 2-day shipping). $60 over 360 days is $0.17/day that you're paying Amazon over and above SYW. Jenga at Amazon is $1.63 cheaper... so if you order nothing else from Amazon over the next 10 days ($0.17 * 10 = $1.70) then ordering Jenga from Amazon is a bit more expensive than SYW. With that said, the average consumer never thinks this way and, as a result, they'll take Jenga on Amazon over SYW any day of the week. Not to mention that Amazon Prime isn't just shipping.