Liberty

http://basehitinvesting.com/buffetts-petrochina-investment-finding-large-gaps-between-price-value/

Long-term owners who sell are no longer long-term owners. If they sold, it's probably because they know AGN isn't worth what it's going for now as a standalone, so that also tells you something.

I think you're absolutely right. Unfortunately, not everyone looks at things pragmatically/rationally and at the actual results of policies versus the alternatives. People who see the world through a moralistic lens will take the wrong decisions every time as long as they can claim good intentions and purity.

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/08/04/dealpolitik-allergan-throws-complex-road-block-at-valeant-pershing-square/

New 52-week low. Looks like this might be the problem: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/04/new-york-ocwen-financial-idUSL2N0QA0YY20140804

How did you arrive at the Braves value estimate? I can't be sure what the Braves are worth, but at an annual meeting someone asked Maffei if it made sense to value them around $1billion, and Maffei said jokingly that if that person had another Braves for sale for $1bn, he should come to him.

I don't think this claim has a factual basis. For one thing, you do get to invest at book (retained earnings). Over the life of a great company, the retained earnings will be much higher than the initial book value. There are all kinds of structural factors too. Murray Stahl has tons and tons of pieces on owner operators explaining why the market constantly undervalues these companies.

Unless I'm misremembering, they've already raised what they want to put in the Gigafactory and the rest should come from partners.

You're absolutely right, I see it happen all the time when I'm not doing anything. As soon as I decide to buy or to wait or whatever, things go against me everytime... Maybe it's just my curse :-[

http://blogs.wsj.com/pharmalot/2014/08/01/allergan-claims-valeant-and-ackman-violated-insider-trading-laws/

Now would certainly be a good time for the company to do a sizeable buyback... Oh, wait :P

Good piece by Nate on 'bull market thinking': http://www.oddballstocks.com/2014/08/bull-market-thinking.html

That's the difference, dividends. But even without dividends, I think your point stands that these companies haven't exactly been crushing it in the market in the past 10 years. The question is, have they beat the market in IV creation and will that be recognized at some point with higher valuations?

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/937797/000122520814017678/xslF345X01/doc4.xml

What don't you like about it?

The gloves come off, Allergan is suing: http://agn.client.shareholder.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=863704 http://www.cnbc.com/id/101860781 Wow, the nerve on these guys to claim that Valeant was intending a tender offer from the start when Valeant clearly said that they'd been trying to talk to Allergan for months and their management would never engage and never did any due dilligence on Valeant with a NDA, and even after valeant went public with the offer they repeatedly offered to sit down with them and answer any questions and negotiate, but they never did, eventually forcing them to go the tender/special meeting route. You never know with the legal system, but I'd tend to trust the quality of the legal advice that Pershing Square and Valeant has been getting...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/prem-watsa-fairfax-probed-by-quebec-in-insider-trading-investigation-1.2725043 Prem Watsa, Fairfax probed by Quebec in insider trading investigation

True, though Endo also had results yesterday and it wasn't nearly as bad, and the commentary on twitter and elsewhere seemed to highlight the lower guidance as the main thing that came out of yesterday rather than the actual operational results. But it's definitely a mix of things. Won't matter in the long-term, but it was a good buying opportunity IMO (though of course now that I've said this it will drop below 100 any moment...).

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. 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. -ERICOPOLY

Congrats, looks like you timed things right, but be careful with those kinds of manoeuvres if it's a company you really like that you want to hold for the long term. If something had happened that had suddenly made the AGN acquisition very likely to happen, you might have missed your window.

One quarter does not mean much, but still, nice combined ratio, kudos to the guys & gals at Fairfax.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-4CW8X0/3368904070x0x772849/0cdad2cf-0497-41a3-ad2a-788f57412777/Tesla%20Q2'14%20Shareholder%20Letter.pdf

I think Mr. Market is completely missing the forests for the trees, which is great! I bought more today, and will consider picking a few more over time if it keeps going lower. The company has basically confirmed they're firing on all cylinders, with a bunch of new sizable launches (expenses show now, revenues will come later), solid organic growth all around, big generics are starting to fade behind and no big ones coming in the foreseeable future (though I wouldn't mind as long as the runoffs are profitable), expansions in sales and marketing, more bolt-ons in big new developing markets, promised synergies are happening and costs falling, said in Q&A that while they can't close big deals now because of AGN, they're still in discussion and have a good pipeline of mid-sized and big deals, etc. But all the market seems to see is the lower than expected guidance. Well, we need to look at how they arrived at those numbers, no? While Allergan is pulling all the stops and promising the moon and saying that they're going to start doing all kinds of things they haven't been doing for the past decade, Valeant is building a conservative forecast based on the mid-point between a scenario of no-acquisitions and just paying down the debt and another of relatively small capital deployment (no AGN deal, smaller amount of deals than what they did in the past year). Basically, under-promise so they can over-deliver later. And then they model the AGN-VRX merger, but use these conservative models as foundation too. Does anyone really think it's realistic that they would make zero acquisitions in 2015 and 2016? Or that they would deploy only 5bn and 10bn in 2015 and 2016? Just B&L was 8.7bn in 2013 and they had tons of smaller bolt-ons too... Yet Mr. Market seems to have just skipped to the end, saw the numbers, and thought it was too low.

Here's the audio of the conference call if anyone wants it: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x66iutv3u5016i9/2014-Q2-CC-VRX.m4a

Charter Q2: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=112298&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1953619&highlight=