Liberty

Congrats, Eric! I don't get car lust, except for Teslas. I'll probably be waiting for the next platform in a few years, which should be closer to 30k.

Slide 14 is interesting, I had not thought of it quite like that. Hopefully it's true that there are all kinds of good surprises that will come from reserves.

Hi Eric, I love how you boil down your investment theses to a few important things and never lose track of those, even if you also keep track of the stream of details. It sounds easy, but in practice there's always the danger of drifting away from something important. I know that over time you've been invested in FFH, ORH, BAC, AIG, MBI. Are others missing from the list? If so and you want to share, can you write a few words on the reasons why you invested? Thanks

http://www.whopperinvestments.com/ebix-merger-arb-does-the-risk-outweigh-the-reward

Thanks. Caught the last 20 minutes.

That's would be awesome! I'd pre-order it. :)

Sadly, I think these mainstream media outlets probably do all interviews for the lowest common denominator, regardless of whether they are interviewing someone that everybody knows or a cult figure. Did you ever see Bloomberg or CNBC interview someone and get into really in depth stuff that would be over the head of the average viewer? Or not even complex stuff, but go in depth into philosophical and process stuff? I can't really say that I have (except maybe once in a while in a special feature program or the uncut version of an interview online, but rarely). It's always "how about what the market has been doing lately? What about this political bit of news? What about this stock you just bought? What do you think about precious metals? Your thoughts on how much regulation in needed in sector XYZ? What would you recommend that our viewers do in this situation? Last year you said this, have you changed your mind since then? This other famous guy said that, do you agree or disagree? Tell us about your recent philanthropic projects and/or plug your latest project."

CEO and CFO recently bought some shares: http://canadianinsider.com/node/7?menu_tickersearch=EGD Not huge amounts, but AFAIK pretty much all of the CEO's net worth is already in the company and he's not super wealthy.. Don't know about the CFO's circumstances, but it was a bigger buy.

http://ir.teslamotors.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=762317

Thanks for the link. Man, Joe's as annoying as ever. The only time I ever watch CNBC are those interviews; is he like that all the time? Crazy how he's been talking to Warren for years and still asks questions that show that the has no idea how Warren invests.

Welcome to the board! Thanks for the recommendation, I'm adding it to the list :)

But as long as valuation isn't back to normal, buybacks provide a pretty easy road to bvps growth, so that's not as bad as it might first seem.

Or she knows that the vast majority of people who will watch the interview will want to hear about the economy and job reports and such, so she's doing exactly what most of her audience wants her to do. It just happens that it isn't what we would want her to do.

Agreed, but sadly, we're not the main demographic these TV shows are going after..

Thank you! Charlie's great as always. :)

I think it'll probably depend on his health. He does seem to enjoy the job a lot.

Thanks for the links.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-03/buffett-bets-on-business-insurance-big-time-.html

The problem is the massive chemical experiment we're running with our planet's atmosphere by pumping billions and billions of tons of CO2 into it year after year. I don't believe this can be hand-waved away. That'll be a big problem way before we run out of gas/oil/coal/etc. IMO the way the price of renewables is dropping and batteries are improving, at some point it hopefully won't make sense to burn anywhere near as much of the stuff... Might not be for a while, though, but we could accelerate that transition by removing subsidies (direct and indirect) for fossil fuels and pricing in some of the costs of burning it that aren't part of the current price mechanism (so called "externalities"). The sooner the better IMO. It's also way more elegant from an engineering point of view to use power from sources that don't cause much damage and use that energy at very high efficiencies in electric motors than to dig up hydrocarbons and then burn them with thermal efficiencies in the 20-30% range (for cars) and 30-60% range for power plants, letting most of the energy go unused as waste heat. Someday our civilization will look back on this and see it as a necessary but wasteful and destructive phase of its development. http://i.imgur.com/31nlKsT.jpg

Anyone knows what warrants they are talking about?

It's obvious that some very deep pockets are attacking EBIX, so they probably have a lot to lose and will fight to the bitter end.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-02/buffett-further-trims-moody-s-stake-as-shares-surge-21-.html

I think he could have blocked external takeover offers if he wanted to, but in this case, maybe he's the one who approached GS and so he didn't have the best bargaining position to ask for a high price? Or maybe this is just going private and Raina retains his equity in the company. Not a bad deal for long-term shareholders I suppose.. Someone who held EBIX for 10 years has made about 62x their money...

Wow, that really sucks (except for those who bought at the recent bottom). I guess GS probably does pretty good DD, so it probably invalidates the short-thesis that it's all smoke and mirrors and fraud, but the price seems really low to me. Makes me glad I sold out months ago and plowed the proceeds into BAC and AIG warrants. I'm guessing that all the recent short attacks and drama just really, really hurt Robin Raina (the attacks were so personal), and he decided that being a public company wasn't worth it anymore. He'll no doubt stay on with a nice set of incentives and keep building the company for GS..