Liberty

I've tried almost all of them including Opera and Lynx. My fave right now is Chrome.

I'm curious to know what makes you think that this kind of growth will continue in the future? What's special about their strategy? What is their competitive advantage?

Indeed. I didn't write the article, so it's not my choice of words. But I thought the part about their strategy and why it could be nearing some stable state was insightful.

Good read. Here's their first semi-annual report: http://www.goodhavenfunds.com/media/pdfs/GHF-Semiannual-f.pdf Here's video of the interview: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73004342/

As long as the other functions are separate from the forums and optional to members here, they shouldn't clutter things too much or overload servers. But if everything and the kitchen sink is thrown at a single page, it could get bad. Agree to some extent. Keeping it simple and effective is best way to go. Adding some fundtions will be a good idea but it should provide biggest bang for buck in terms of utility else it better to not add many things just because we want to add.

Some food for thoughts: http://www.cultofmac.com/ipod-iphone-ipad-why-apple-is-done-inventing-new-devices-2/108753

Shift-Spacebar also can also help you navigate around. Spacebar in a browser is the equivalent of page-down, and shift-spacebar is page-up.

What's the URL of his website? Thanks.

They probably wouldn't make unfriendly takeover bids, but it doesn't mean that they wouldn't do deep value investing on the secondary market (cigar butts). This is one way to interpret "vulture investing".

What I'd like to see is a preference setting somewhere that allows you to change how many topics threads you see per page, and how many comments you see per page once you are into a thread. It would be particularly useful on the investment sub-forum so you don't have to drill down 5 pages to find something.

As long as the servers are always fast and responsive, I'll be happy! ;D As you said Parsad, any other changes have to pass the test of "will it positively affect the community here?".

What matters is not just the number of shares in a vacuum but how much value each of these shares has. The ADAM acquisition has, IMO, brought a ton of net value because each ADAM customer is much more valuable to EBIX than it was to ADAM (because of cross selling in both directions (EBIX stuff to ADAM customers, and ADAM stuff to EBIX customers), especially with the very lucrative and sticky exchanges; because of how it allows them to enter a new area; because EBIX acquires mostly to get relationships, not technology, and not to run the business a it was run pre-acquisition; and because barriers to entry are very high in this slow-moving, relationship-based industry, and sometimes it can be cheaper over the long run to acquire rather than to grow these organically), and EBIX's model can drastically reduce ADAM's costs (move coding to india, strict cost controls, f.ex.). The buybacks aren't just buying back what was given up if you believe that ADAM was worth more to EBIX than what was paid for it, especially since part was in stock that they're now buying back at 16.. Time frame matters. Obviously it depends how many things he tries to do at the same time and how long it takes to get to that level of buybacks; right now it wouldn't be surprising if he believed that cash is best used for buybacks because there's more value there than in acquisitions, but if a good acquisition opportunity came along or if share priced went up significantly, buybacks might slow, or debt might be raised, or whatever. But EBIX generates quite a substantial amount of cash for a company with the level of revenue and with so little debt, and that gives it many options. They've probably only really started the big buybacks at the very end of Q1 after the big drop, and so they've only had about 1 full Q of them and they've already bought for over $46m. Since Raina bought shares for his personal account at $17, we can safely assume that they probably consider the shares very undervalued at the moment and, if anything, they will probably accelerate the rate of buybacks if prices stay low a while longer. I doubt they'd do a dividend any time soon. Raina was asked the question, and he said it's always a possibility that must be rationally examined, and that's the correct answer, but right now it just doesn't make sense. Buybacks are a much better way to return capital, and spending on additional accretive acquisitions to enter and consolidate new markets would make more sense since they benefit from a pretty substantial network effect (I'd like to see them keep pushing hard into P&C in the US, and open more offices in South-America, Asia, and Africa to be on the ground level for exchanges there). They're doubling the salesforce and have stated that they're reinvesting any margins above 40% into that area, so we shouldn't expect margins to grow over the next few Qs. Any benefits from this will lag by at least a couple quarters, so we'll have to wait and see if it paid off with more than $1 of benefit per $1 invested (but the track record is good there, and I like how they incentivize their sales force). Margins would probably be closer to 45% if they hadn't decided to do this.

I agree with Hester. This is just the political side trying to manipulate the market for their own ends.

I've put a hold on it at the library. Thanks for the suggestion guys!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903918104576504490858882546.html

Saw that. Not too much to comment about... He seems to be sitting in cash and way for big corrections to jump in a couple of big positions.

I was wondering if Dazel or any of the other Altius fans had taken a look at Cliffs (CLF)? After a quick glance, they seem fairly cheap, though they are much bigger than Altius (and thus probably more efficiently priced) and have more capex exposure because of their model. Just trying to learn more about them, not necessarily thinking of buying some.. Curious to know what others who've had a look think. Thanks.

Seems about right. By my count, it trades at about 1.02 BV today.

Great idea! It might be a bit hard to see for people who aren't looking for it, but I suppose we can bump up this thread periodically to raise awareness with new members ;D

Wow. I wonder if, on its own, the message that this sends could be enough to help the market drop further.

Thank you, I somehow missed that thread. Seems to be more about audio books than podcasts, but I'll dig around a bit and maybe I'll find books I want to read. thanks.

Off topic, but nice avatar berkshiremystery. I LOVE that book (Godel, Escher, Bach). One of my faves ever.

I have a lot of experience with this kind of thing. A fee of even 50 cents would dramatically cut down new members. Heck, you just add a few fields or a few screens to click through on a registration form and you'll cut down on the number of people who join. There's a huge psychological chasm between free and paid services, and even friction that might seem like it wouldn't matter does make a difference over time. I know it can sound counter-intuitive, but that's how things work online.

I've been going through the archives of Geoff Gannon's old podcasts and interviews lately, and I was wondering if any of you knew of other good podcasts on investing..? I usually prefer reading, but sometimes it's a nice change of pace to sit back and listen to someone...

I would pay the membership fee, no problem. What I worry about is that closed forums tend to stop attracting new members because with most forums, you have to be part of a community for a while before you realize how valuable it is, so few people would be ready to pay just to join. Who knows, maybe the best contributors have yet to join, and it would be a shame to keep them out. Maybe Parsad could set up a donation/tip jar? Maybe - as someone offered - he could move to a donated servers to bring down expenses? I just think we should be very careful about doing something that could make the quality of the community plateau or degrade over time.