Liberty

Not about investing, but I know a lot of people here follow Musk: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-0801-morrison-musk-spacex-20120801,0,3336380,full.column

Wondering why you don't see your name on that list? ;) :D

FTP was their "top pick" at $50+ last year... The first of February it was their top pick with a $58 price target. Dresden and Landqart were worse than they are now, only DP pricing was slightly better and Thurso seemed to be ramping up faster. What where their thoughts on DP prices 16-18 months ago? Wouldn't give much weight to it. But it's great to read more bearish thoughts nonetheless. Those were pretty much my thoughts. It's good to read the doom & gloom and test your thesis against it, but I don't give these analysts any predictive power. A year ago they were predicting something totally different, and chances are that in a year things will again be totally different. They are only good at telling you were you were in the recent past. If they really had any predictive talent they wouldn't be analysts, they'd be hedge fund managers (and we know that even hedge fund managers, on average, aren't that good when it comes to predicting the future) :P What I'll be curious to learn about in the next few quarters is how much Thurso is getting for its non-pre-sold DP. These analysts always talk about the spot price, but my understanding is that these spot prices are sometimes arrived at in trades of small quantity during low volume periods, and at different grades from what Thurso will produce. So they might not always tell the whole story (though I also don't expect a huge premium).

We'll find out when it's available. If you had told people a few years ago that average consumerw would have terabytes of storage, gigabytes of RAM, video cards with hundreds of cores, etc, in their home, it would have sounded pretty far-fetched and overkill... Once the capability exists, entrepreneurs figure out ways to build things that use it.

I think they're trying to be a catalyst and don't really want to have to do it all themselves. Same as how making the Chrome browser lit a fire under the whole browser field and improved things for everybody. Providing fiber in some places will make other telcos move much faster than they would have otherwise. Their bet is that the faster and more useful the net is, the more ads they can sell via search and adsense. I don't think they plan on making much money directly as an ISP. iirc, they bought a lot of dark fiber pretty cheaply after the dotcom crash. They've no doubt used a lot of it internally, but they've probably figured that they can use some of it too as a ISP. Might as well do that instead of leaving it dark; chances are that the long-term benefits (including indirect benefits, such as other ISPs offering better fiber options at cheaper prices) will more than pay for what they're investing in that project.

http://alderonironore.com/_resources/media/2012-07-31-ResourceClips.pdf

Of #4, no exit strategy ;)

I think you can use Wordpress for free, though if you want your own domain you'll have to pay a few bucks for that. http://en.wordpress.com/features/

If you excluded California, Arizona, Florida etc the US didn't look too bad either, that didn't prevent prices from falling everywhere. Some of the Rust Belt was the worst, no appreciation and large price drops, Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland. I hope for your sake there is no bubble in Canada, but if there is it's unlikely other areas will escape especially if all the major metros are affected. That's my thinking too. Real estate is such an emotional investment, when things go south, it'll go down way past "fair" in the panic. And I live in an area that is generally not considered one of the most overvalued places, yet that's only a relative term. Prices still went up by almost 100% in the past decade, while incomes have stayed almost flat and the price of everything (food, fuel..) has gone up. Yet everybody I know's buying a house with very little down... How do people make the difference? Debt, of course. That's not sustainable.

What data do you base this on?

Almost done reading this one and it's great. Highly recommended. We need more books like this that call what is too often un-challenged B.S. in the business world...

The book sounds interesting, but kind of expensive and the local public library doesn't have it. Would also love to get feedback from anyone here who has read it..

I don't short, but I rent. That's my way to play this one. We'll only look at buying a house after a significant correction in prices.

I don't think he would have doubled-down if he wasn't (which doesn't mean that he's right about them..), but I think he's a bit afraid that all the media attention could mean that Fairfax gets punished for something that is proportionally not that huge a deal for the company.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/facebooks-slide-deck-explaining-its-so-so-second-quarter/260388/ The serious slides are here. #9 looks like it's giving investors the finger.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/07/a-letter-from-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-stock.html ;)

[amazonsearch]The Halo Effect:...and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers[/amazonsearch] Just started, but I can already tell it has potential. Mostly debunking delusions and cognitive biases that affect business people. A lot of it I'm sure I know about, but as I always say, it's a good idea to review the obvious once in a while. No need to get too esoteric...

Tesla might be overvalued, but I wouldn't put it in the same category as the others.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-26/buffett-3-billion-dow-stake-may-be-repaid-after-kuwait-case.html

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ebix-to-announce-second-quarter-2012-earnings-on-august-7-2012-2012-07-26

Number of days to cover pretty low...

Indeed, and the recent debentures are soaking up demand that might otherwise have gone to the common. Could take a little bit of time for that effect to pass... It sucks to have missed the bottom, but I know I'll never buy the bottoms and sells the tops. That's just not how it works. All I can do is buy things that I believe are worth more than I pay and that have a good runway in front of them, and then be patient. I'm not in the "be patient" part of the deal.

Just for fun, here's a piece but someone who has no idea what he's talking about: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/07/24/warren-buffett-great-investor-lousy-insurance-salesman/ ::)

Steel production strong: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-24/china-to-flood-steel-market-hurting-arcelormittal-commodities.html

That makes sense. Thurso isn't that far from where I am. Maybe I should drop by and say "hello" ;) 8) :P That reminds me. At some point I should contact IR and see if there's a way to get a tour of the plant. I doubt it (if only for insurance reasons), but you never know..