Liberty

http://www.ebix.com/pressrelease_text.aspx?artid=239

Hey Dazel, I totally agree. I might not have been around when Fairfax went through this, but I own a lot of EBIX and I've seen what unscrupulous shorts can do to manipulate a stock. Still, I feel that they are wrong and that in the end they'll have permitted me to buy into a great business at a very low price..

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ebix-acquires-planetsoft-for-40-million-and-adds-underwriting-claims-compensation-producer-appointment-epolicy-delivery-services-to-its-life-annuity-exchanges-2012-06-05 Raina had said that they had a strong acquisition pipeline, but I didn't quite expect 4 of them within like 6 months (Healthconnect, Taimma, Fintechnix, and now PlanetSoft). Knowing how they never overpaid for any acquisition in the past, how they always had strategic importance and allowed them to cross-sell tons of existing products, how they gave them important customer relationships ina conservative industry, how they can usually cut costs rapidly (though most employees here are already in india, so maybe less cost cutting, but an easier integration) and maintain/expand their margins, etc... I feel pretty good about seeing this bigger one right in their core area. This also explains why buybacks had stopped in the past quarter... Building up cash. Here's their website: http://planetsoft.com/index.html

New release by ADV: http://www.alderonironore.com/_resources/news/ADVNR20120605.pdf

I wasn't around back in the old FFH days, thanks for pointing that out. Can't say I find that post of his convincing, but he can short good companies all he wants for all I care, it'll just allow me to buy good stuff more cheaply and benefit later when the fundamentals eventually win out. :P

In the recent past, pretty much just more FTP and a little nibble on something else.

There sure is no love for ADV in there. Thanks for posting, good to hear some contrary opinion even if I can't say I'm very convinced by what they say.

A potential problem with reading just 10Ks is that if there's important info that isn't in them, how are you supposed to know? By that I mean, if you don't know you don't know, you can get stuck in a loop. That's why it can useful to look elsewhere. It's not always required or useful, but having a quick look can't hurt, and if you find useful stuff, you can dig deeper. To that some will say, "if you can't understand it just from the 10K, you probably shouldn't invest", which isn't a bad way to do things. But on the other hand, businesses that require a bit more work to understand (but are still understandable) can be a great hunting ground for those willing to put in the extra effort, because they can have an informational edge over investors who are too lazy to dig.

Your point is not specific to these, but rather a general one (ie. you always have to ask yourself if there's something better you could be doing instead of what you are doing now). I think it's very useful to have these around if you are looking for something that you aren't finding in your other sources, but the opportunity cost calculation must be made before reading any source at all. The question rather is: are those more useful than what you've been reading lately?

One thing that should be mentioned is that a weaker Canadian dollar should be good for FTP because afaik DP is priced in USD.

The frustrating thing is that there's something else that I really want to be buying right now, but I try to be rational about it and compare that opportunity to my other best ideas, and right now FTP is so cheap that it keeps coming on top. I wish I had come into this with 50% cash like Parsad.. :) Every time I resolve to start accumulating cash, stuff I like becomes too cheap to pass.. Oh well, it's not optimal, but it should turn out well in the end.

Bought a few hundred more at 17.05 this morning. I thought it was cheap at 30, so this is just a gift. Any problems they're having right now are more than priced in at this level, IMHO, and a patient holder who can wait a few years should be amply rewarded.

I'll see if I can find a pic, but I'm 6'1" and never had a problem with the stability of the desk. Feels solid to me.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-31/mittal-price-squeeze-in-960-billion-steelmaking-industry.html This was posted in the posco thread but it contains a lot that it interesting about iron ore producers.

Wow http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/wow-apple-turns-over-its-inventory-once-every-5-days/257915/ Guess they really don't want a big supply chain disruption, though..

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ebix-acquires-sydney-based-fintechnix-2012-06-01 Stock is down of course. It always is on days with good news (with that high a short interest, not surprising). But it sounds like a good strategic fit and should be nicely accretive over the long-term. EBIX is extremely strong in the P&C market in Aus. and NZ. Good to see them expand in Life and financial.

Thanks for posting, PlanMaestro. It definitely seems like the steel producers are losing pricing power to iron ore producers and their biggest clients. Very interesting. Def not good for PKX, unless it can be bought cheap enough (but even then, probably risky in the long term once it reaches back fair value). I'm not interested in it, in any case. It's an interesting company to study, though.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120531172522459

Trying to turn Buffet's position into some pseudo-conspiracy feels desperate and disingenuous to me. Can't gold bugs accept that he simply disagrees with them and doesn't feel strongly in favor of the gold standard - probably because it has its own set of problems - and leave it at that?

That's one way to read it, but I interpret it more as two halves (I don't think he was absolutely clear when he said it, but it's hard to be 100% unambiguous and punctuate everything perfectly when speaking on camera): -"gold is a great thing to sew onto your garments if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939" If you expect real trouble soon, it can be useful (though he would probably also say that a lot of goldbugs today who say that this is what they are doing are actually investing/speculating rather than just putting aside some portable currency, which is obvious when you look at the quantity of gold some of them buy and at the vague and far-off nature of the supposed threats they want to protect against) -"civilized people don't buy gold - they invest in productive businesses." If what you are looking for is an investment, it is more "civilized" to invest in productive assets than to speculate in gold. That's how I understand it. I can't call him up to ask for clarifications.. but knowing how smart and sensible Munger is, between two interpretations, I always give him the benefit of the doubt for the interpretation that makes more sense :)

If you put it back in the context of Munger and what he meant, I don't think it was a "bonehead" comment. I'm sure Munger would agree that some gold can be useful to bribe a border guard or whatever, especially in unstable parts of the world.. I think he was referring to investors like Paulson who will buy billions of the stuff and sit on it hoping to sell it back to someone else at a higher price later (more or less the definition of speculation). Munger said: "I don’t see how you become rational hoarding gold. Even if it works, you’re a jerk." I believe he was implying that allocating capital to good businesses "helps the civilization", as he would say, and that working hard to understand what makes a good business, how to value it, and how the productive economy works is a valuable skill. But that hoarding tons of gold and sitting on it waiting for someone else to pay more is not "helping the civilization" and kind of a waste of talent and resources. But that's just my mental model of how Munger thinks based on his speeches and interviews...

I still don't own CLF and don't plan to because there are other things I like more currently, but they're still on my second tier watchlist, and they just hit new lows. If you don't believe the world will end and don't believe China will slow down below the point at which iron ore starts to fall in price dramatically, this seems like a pretty good company to own for the long-term. P/E at 4.28 right now, dividend yield 5.2%.

That was a deflationary meltdown. In an inflationary meltdown, it would be the other way. I agree with you, but, just wanted to add this. Out of curiosity, what was the last big inflationary 'meltdown' and did gold do well when it hit?

I think he would if you were to hold both for the long-term, but he's not interested in either. For the short-term, cash is better because it's more liquid and you can buy companies/productive assets with it, and you don't have to pay to store it and it won't fall rapidly when everybody's hit with margin calls.

The most important things in life are free. Sounds like a Mastercard ad :)