Liberty

Ok, I don't want to get involved in yet another politics debate, but I have to point out that a little something happened in 2008-2009 and it kind of changed a lot of things for the US govt's budget.

Rather long and detailed interview with Robin published today: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/07/29/ebixs-ceo-chats-with-the-fool.aspx On buybacks:

I hear ya, brother! The sooner the circus ends, the better. Can't wait to be back to a more boring news cycle about white women being missing and celebrities overdosing.

Well, maybe my initial answer gave you the wrong impression. I dont' live in a cave with stacks of 10Ks, avoiding everything about the outside world. I follow macro a fair bit, and try to analyze it. I just haven't felt the need to use that information to rejig my portfolio, because it feels like it's mostly a red herring, and I feel like the times that I was tempted to do it in the past, if I had actually done it, I would probably be worse off now. In short: Macro matters. I just doubt it's a very useful tool to actually make investment decisions most of the time (there are exceptions of course, and they get all the press, while on the other side all the money lost because of wrong macro decisions will never have books written about it, so there's sample bias).

Indeed, but hindsight is 20/20. What if this time Buffett and Munger are right? You can win with macro bets, but there are so many variables, so many potential black swans (negative and positive), that it's still just a gamble, and the people who turn out to be right are hailed as geniuses and those that are wrong are mostly forgotten. It doesn't mean the people who were right aren't geniuses, but it can mean that other geniuses were wrong.. As Buffett says, if every time things became uncertain and the future seemed cloudy people retreated, nobody would have ever bought anything during the 20th century because you're always just coming out of a crisis and there's always a crisis on the horizon. It's the normal state of things. Now, that doesn't mean that I believe the economy will grow or we won't have a double dip and all that. I don't know. It just means that I try to build my portfolio so that it does ok whatever happens, rather than making a big bet on one outcome or the other and risking being wrong.

Well, duh. I think you're taking this light-hearted comment of mine a bit too seriously. Value investors can have fun too, can't they?

I don't know, and I don't think anyone can really know (there are really smart people with all kinds of opinions on this). Best to keep doing what has shown to work: Buy good businesses cheaply, make sure they have solid balance sheets and perform well even in tough times. Historically, things usually start to turn around when everybody starts believing they won't, but who knows when that point will be reached...

Looks like Apple has now more cash than the US government: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14340470 ;D

Google bought patents from IBM, and might still buy InterDigital. This might be enough for MAD (mutually assured destruction) and keeping patent suits away. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904800304576475663046346104.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/73202204/

Looks like I was wrong about my previous call about timing, it appears that the debt issue in the US has spooked Mr Market and FTP has good down pretty significantly. Seems like a screaming buy to me right now, with Thurso on track and a very probably new acquisition soon... Heck, Thurso alone would more than justify the current market cap if it can start producing without major delays.

Do you mean me or someone else?

All they're thinking about is how to have the upper hand on the other party in the next elections. They're politicians, that's what they do.

My evaluation of RIM has nothing to do with their share price. I would think the same about their strategy, products, and corporate culture if their shares were selling 10x what they are now.

They're bulldozing houses now? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-27/bank-of-america-donates-then-demolishes-houses-to-get-rid-of-foreclosures.html Next they'll throw money from helicopters..

Impossible. These guys are in a league of their own ;D

Software patents are such a mess.. everybody infringes on everybody because there are tens of thousands of really obvious things that any skilled practitioner would come up with on their own that are patented (usually in legalese that has to be interpreted), and there's no way to really know if the code you're writing is patented somewhere.. Anyway, the saga continues: http://www.dailytech.com/Judge+Finds+Apple+in+Violation+of+HTCs+Newly+Acquired+Patents/article22275.htm

I'm not sure I understand what you're implying that you "must" do, and what the link is with Eric Schmidt. ???

lol. But probably doesn't mean much. A lot of uber-techies have 2 of everything and use them in turn to be really familiar with all the different techs on the market. There's an interview with Sergey where he says that he uses Bing and all other search engines.

Interesting thesis. Not sure I would touch it, as it's too hard to analyze and it doesn't fit my investing criteria anyway, but I like reading about how Bruce thinks. http://www.gurufocus.com/news/139711/bruce-berkowitz-details-his-thesis-on-bac

There are lots of vultures like that. They seem to file these things by the boatload and hope that a fraction of a percent will stick, kind of like spam emails. They've also filed against EBIX. http://pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=830993&Itemid=32

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-26/republican-leaders-voted-for-drivers-of-u-s-debt-they-now-blame-on-obama.html

Just to show that it's all about political posturing and tactics: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-26/republican-leaders-voted-for-drivers-of-u-s-debt-they-now-blame-on-obama.html

Politics is the mindkiller.

Yeah, now that I've read it, it doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense for MSFT, and doesn't make sense for others to buy. I mean, Microsoft has made Bing the default search engine in the most popular (still) browser in the world (IE) and got all the traffic that Yahoo has been building over a decade (a falling share, but still high), and for a while they were paying people with gift cards for using their product, and they're losing a few billions. Not sure how anyone else can push Bing much harder than this... And it's not like Bing is brand new and just needs time to grow. Sure they rebranded it a few years ago, but MSFT Live Search was basically the same technology as Bing and they've been at it since 2006 (and since 1998 before that with MSN Search). It's not like MSFT hasn't been trying with search for a while... Interesting fact: "Counting core searches only, i.e. those where the user has an intent to interact with the search result, Bing achieved a market share of 14.54% in the second quarter of 2011 in the US." http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-us-search-market-share-2011-7?op=1 http://www.comscore.com/layout/set/popup/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/7/comScore_Releases_June_2011_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings