Liberty

Instead of looking at 'recent posts', just go to the boards and look at which threads have new posts and interest you. Problem solved. SHLD, BAC and AIG had a zillions posts a day too for long periods. Should they also have their own sub-forum? It's easier if each person filters on their side than to try to change the structure of the board, because there's no one-size fits all. I also don't think there's necessarily opposition between growth and value. Buffett doesn't see it that way, and Apple at 400s and Google in the 400-500s (when the thread was most popular) aren't exactly CRM and Tesla. The main difference is the news flow.

Agreed. Don't like something, don't click on it. Parsad can moderate when people go over the line; he's been a wise leader so far and has created the best investing community on the net. Creating some ghetto within the forum is pointless. Next we'll have someone who wants a separate board for banks and then telecoms and retail such and that'll just make discovery and cross-pollination harder (making life easier for the subset of users who use RSS and don't want to see tech isn't worth making life harder for the vast majority of users who come to the website and already have many different sub-boards to monitor -- and if we look at the number of views on the tech threads, there is obviously a huge interest, these views don't all come from the 15 people who post).

Thank you, very interesting. I had seen him say something similar in the speech, but it's much Easier to follow in this format.

Thanks for posting this. There's some info about what went one behind closed doors at Apple back in the day, but relatively little about recent years. For those looking for oldies but goodies, folklore.org is a great source.

Letter by Elon Musk about the accident: http://www.businessinsider.com/model-s-fire-elon-musk-2013-10

On the lighter side of things: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-04/twitter-look-alike-ticker-triggers-684-advance-in-penny-stock.html

Absolutely. Someone on another forum cites a very apropos Cialdini excerpt:

I use it too, and I know it would report buybacks for the common. But I don't think debenture buybacks would show when looking at "FTP", and I don't see a way to go check "FTP.DB" and "FTP.DB.A".

Is there a way to see if there are debentures buybacks before the next Q comes out?

Should we read this as: "I'll be buying"?

Reading some of the complaints in the forum makes me wonder if employees of variety stores would've written the same thing when Walmart and other discounters first came around. They were so used to big fat SG&A and now someone came around and cut it down because they had a more efficient model... To them it must've seemed impossible to operate a business without all those expenses! I also wonder if these employees and ex-employees are thinking about it in a "business-like" fashion at all. If your job is to screen compounds or operate a DNA sequencer in the lab, what do you care about increasing FCF per share? If you're in R&D, your dream is probably to work on the next big blockbuster drug, not figure out which unexciting products have the best IRR over the longest period... Not sure if it's a fair comparison, but it's a hypothesis that came to mind. :-\

Thank you for the link. I guess the question is, is buying other people's late-stage R&D (more D than R at that point) equivalent to doing all that in-house product-wise. For example, if they buy some small eye-care company and get B&L's big organization to brand its products and sell them worldwide, is it functionally the same as building something in-house (which might take longer, be costlier, and lead you up more blind alleys) and then selling via the same sales-force? They seem to think that it's a viable model... Good question, though. They don't cut R&D completely. Could it be they have enough to maintain existing products' competitive position, though not enough to build a whole new pipeline (which instead is acquired)? In other words, they keep the D and mostly outsource the R? Have you contacted their IR department about this? I bet it's a question they get a lot. One guy writes: The real question is, for the same results, is it cheaper to buy than to do R&D? These people are obviously (very frustrated) R&D people, so they are a bit biased. But in the same sentence he both says that R&D is very expensive and that acquisitions are expensive. So it's not like there's a free path; you have to decide where you get the most value for your invested dollars.

Thank you for the update, can you share the link to the forum?

Something a bit different from investing, but I found it quite interesting. http://www.orangecoast.com/features/2013/09/23/center-of-the-universe For the horrific background on Randy Kraft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Steven_Kraft Fact checking for the story: http://www.orangecoast.com/webexclusives/2013/09/24/a-factcheckers-journey-to-a-1980-afternoon

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/27/226891181/episode-488-the-secret-history-of-your-cable-bill Good planet Money episode on cable billing and bundling. Doesn't go very in depth, though.

If you hit a large metal debris and it gets stuck under the car and dragged along, chances are that'll cause quite some sparks. In a normal collision you probably don't have that.

Thanks :)

A search for "car fire" on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=car+fire&page=&utm_source=opensearch

Ha! You should have your own late night show ;) There were 187,500 highway vehicle fires in the US in 2011, and that's just on the highway. http://www.nfpa.org/research/fire-statistics/the-us-fire-problem/highway-vehicle-fires Unless they find something wrong with the car, I think it'll be a non-issue in the long run. Even the safest cars aren't invincible. If you cary around a lot of energy, either in a gas tank or a battery, there's potential for stuff to catch on fire.

Great analysis Sanjeev, very clearly explained!

That's fine. I still wouldn't call it guessing in this case, or at least not just guessing (mix of knowns and unknowns, which is what any analysis of a company is), but your opinion is fine. I just don't want you to give the impression that because there's more discussion of product stuff, that it means that I believe that it's the only thing that matters or the centerpiece of my thesis. It's not, but fundamentals and product news in the consumer electronics space work on different metabolic rates, so of course there will be more discussion of product news than discussions about buybacks and bond issues and capex. Doesn't mean it trumps everything else, just that it's also important if you want your model of the company to have decent predictive power (I'll go back to my example of RIM; those who only looked at the numbers missed the product problems, and shortly thereafter, the product problems became the numbers). If Samsung was to spin off its consumer-electronics division and people started a discussion thread about investing in it, to know how the company is doing I hope they would take a close look at the products and potential expansion markets and not just read the Ks and Qs every few months, thinking that's all they need because "it's the fundamentals"... Can we get back to Apple?

That's kind of a strawman, though, because that's not what is being done here (at least, I don't see it as equivalent at all). Reviewing the quality of the products of a consumer product company and looking at where they could go next tells you if the company's worth anything. This isn't a slow changing mature enterprise business (and i understand how that turns off some) where products are bought on price or spec lists, with the buyers and users being different people. Some of the crap the enterprise does to its users would be fatal in a consumer market.

You mean if you can invent a scenario in your head about how a company might expand, you feel more confident about their prospects? I feel like that's an oversimplification of you process, but I'm not sure I see the difference between what you're saying and what I'm saying. I mean that if I looked at Apple and they had the exact same financials that they do now but had Blackberry's products, technical capabilities, market opportunities, and design philosophy, it would change my view of the company a lot. Saying you shouldn't talk about products in a product company discussion is like saying you shouldn't talk about retailing and logistics in a Walmart or Amazon discussion. It's what the company does and it matters. Too many investors in RIM forgot that (there are ways to make money with the cigar butt approach, but what I'm looking for here is great company at fair price -- i think Apple's a good deal with no growth and just buybacks, and growth in new and existing categories is a nice option on top, which I'm trying to better understand). Edit: also, it's not quite just 'inventing a scenario in my head'. They already have Apple TV and partnerships with many content companies (both on itunes and apple tv), iOS is already one of the biggest gaming platforms out there. Now they have a 'desktop level' SOC that can address more than 4 gigs of RAM and brand new GPU cores, STeve Jobs was known to have been working on the TV (not alone presumably, and i doubt that effort stopped when he died), and one of Apple's core competencies is human-machine interfaces (a gaming controller wouldn't be out of character). On top of that, the tv is one of the few consumer markets big enough to be worth making a new category at Apple (maybe along with the car) and John Malone is predicting debundling. I'm just putting the pieces together after analysis, not pulling it all out of thin air. Heck, it's so not speculative that it's not even that different from microsoft's strategy with the xbox. I just think apple can probably once more put together a product that is significantly better than the competition even if they weren't first in the space.

I think where the issue lies for me in these discussions is.. even if you are 100% correct or 100% incorrect in your guess, would it even matter? This applies to all of the theories that are floated on these threads. Specifically, this example, if you knew definitively that Apple will move into the living room and make Apple TV a priority, would you buy more stock today? Or sell? Given that answer, what are you going to do? Nothing, because you don't know. In general the feeling I get is that Apple investors are quite content to let Apple move at their own pace, with little-or-no foreshadowing on what the next move may be. Given that baseline, I am vexed by all the time spent guessing about how Apple will execute its next moves. You've already thrown in with Apple, so whether they pick the living room or the laundry room, you won't know anything until everything is already in place and the product is 3 weeks from launch. Then it's time for discussion. Yes, it can have an impact on my confidence in the company, how much I invest, whether I hold or sell, and what are the signs to look for to tell me how things are going.

The finances of Apple are well known. What there is to analyze is their products and market position, and where they could go next to keep growing, both with existing products and new ones. It's a consumer product company, not a bank or an insurance company, so a Phil Fisher approach (on top of other mental models) makes sense. The living room entertainment system centered around the TV is one of the biggest markets in the world and certainly big enough for Apple to be interested in. Thinking about how they could go there is definitely not a waste of time to me. If it is to you, feel free to skip posts about it.