Liberty

This is unrelated to the current discussion, but the other day I was wondering if Fairfax/HWIC would have a better track record over the past 25 years if they had just bought Berkshire stock whenever it was selling close to a fair valuation (or better, of course) for the equity portion of their portfolio... They've had all these amazing investments and trades and deals, but in the end, was it better than buying Berkshire juiced with float leverage over 25 years? As Munger was saying, there's no bonus points for difficulty in investing. If you Eric can compound at 70% by specializing in a handful of companies, I don't think that necessarily makes you a worse investor than someone with a much larger circle of competence but lower returns. The question is, how would HWIC do without the constraints of being in an insurance company/investing OPM...

That's such a brilliant way to look at it, thanks for the insight Eric.

I know a lot of people here liked House of Cards. I enjoyed it a lot too, but I think I like their new series Orange is the New Black even more. It's not for everybody (fair amounts of lesbian sex, so if that's not your kind of thing...), but it's extremely well-written, well-acted, and well-produced. Big win for netflix, at least critically (not idea how well it's doing viewer-wise).

Exactly. They're hedged, yet people often talk as if they were net short.

Thank you, much appreciated!

So TWC is down, but Cablevision is up 7%. Is this the market predicting that Cablevision will also be gobbled up? Not that the market has to make sense, but would a Cox deal increase the probability of a Cablevision deal? Is it simply that if CHTR and COX tie the knot, CVC will be too small to compete and the logical conclusion is for it to join up with a bigger player?

Thanks, I was looking for what caused the stock to jump $6. "Cox Communications is the third-largest cable television provider in the United States, serving more than 6.2 million customers, including 2.9 million digital cable subscribers, 3.5 million Internet subscribers, and almost 3.2 million digital telephone subscribers, making it the seventh-largest telephone carrier in the country."

Elon Musk answering questions for an hour in a town hall format: Eric, did you attend? 8)

Big volume on the debentures today.. Almost looks like someone sold their dbs and bought the common with the proceeds.

I never remember exactly what the pre-earnings blackout periods are, but could it be that they can't talk about anything material before Q2?

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-01/can-marissa-mayer-save-yahoo

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/ed6a985c-70bd-11e2-85d0-00144feab49a.html#slide0 Piece on working conditions in an Amazon warehouse in the UK. (Sorry if it's a repost)

Actually: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-30/einhorn-trades-bullion-for-gold-miners-on-stock-free-fall-1-.html “Overall, we modestly increased our exposure to this area, and our view towards gold has not changed.”

Another video from inside the NUMMI plant http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/07/the-window-tesla/

;D

I take it this means you had it delivered? Was it everything you hoped? Any negatives?

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2298292 Abstract: We propose a global and morally mandatory heuristic that anyone involved in an action which can possibly generate harm for others, even probabilistically, should be required to be exposed to some damage, regardless of context. We link the rule to various philosophical approaches to ethics and moral luck. The mathematical appendix shows risk hiding in the absence of such a heuristic

Up another 6.5% today to 74. In a month it went from just under 60 to 74 while the common's up about 5%.

Something that I learned and that I think is pretty big: until the spin off of Liberty Media in the 1990s, Malone had almost no equity in TCI. 'Less than 1%'. Crazy how much value he created for Magness and other shareholders in something he had so little of. Of course, that changed quickly once he decided he wanted a bigger piece of the pie...

So I'm about one third of the way through and finally Capital Cities and Malone have crossed paths*. I was looking forward to that. :) *Malone came out on top in the skirmish over ESPN fees.

Ok. I'd rather keep that extra leverage for extra acquisitions rather than a special div, but I suppose that to convince shareholders to support a deal, bribing them with their own money can work :)

But if the dividend is financed with debt, how is it better for TWC shareholders than staying indendent and raising debt to pay themselves a special div? I must be missing something.

Looked at them a couple years ago but passed. Maybe I shouldn't have :-\

Bmichaud, I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind the $40 special div. Could you elaborate on it a bit?

He actually signs "Greenlight Capital" ???