Liberty

Thanks for the link, ECCO. That's an interesting site. They also cover Altius, but not some better known companies like WRB, MKL, RLI, etc. Do you know of other sites that have message boards/mailing lists that cover companies like the aforementioned or other favorites of this board like FTP, ALS, etc?

http://video.pbs.org/video/1907176086

Have they ever mentioned something like that explicitly or is this more of a guess?

Does it really lock up? I just had to disabled my pop up blocker for that site and it works fine.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/05/19/donald-mackenzie/how-to-make-money-in-microseconds found via: http://io9.com/5800577/the-stock-market-depends-on-how-algorithms-are-interacting-with-each-other

I found this pretty negative piece about Ballmer, thought it would interest some people here: http://brooksreview.net/2011/05/ballmer/ When comparing to AAPL and GOOG they don't take into account dividends, but the qualitative arguments against Ballmer do right pretty true.. MSFT is doing well, but it could probably do better with a better leader.

You're right, that's why I own lots of Berkshire :) But with LUK, I would be a bit concerned that they buy really troubled assets and then are gone and succession isn't clever enough to fix the assets, and so you are left hanging... But that's not a huge problem and the probabilities of that happening and having a significant impact on valuation are relatively low, so not the end of the world.

Another thing I forgot to add is that paper currency wears out and must constantly be replaced (that's why you rarely see a really old bill still in circulation). They probably also periodically retire old bills that are still in good condition but have fewer security features and replace them with new ones.

That's one thing I worry about with LUK. Berkshire has been buying great businesses for a long time and so it bought a lot of good managers, but when you mostly buy troubled business (and something they don't buy them whole), you have a much smaller intake of good managers. I'm no expert on LUK, but I haven't seen anything so far that really eased my mind about succession. But afaik, they're healthy, so it's no an immediate problem.

They ask that question to Chad almost every time, and his answer is that they haven't found a country where cash levels are going down. This seems counter-intuitive to me too, as I almost never carry cash, but I think in Europe they carry a lot more cash and even in other places, economies are growing and while cash isn't growing as fast as electronic currency (Chad has said that cash grows 3-4%/year), it is still growing.

Old video from Fortress' youtube account:

Writeup about Markel's acquisition of FirstComp: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/05/12/markel-and-firstcomp-a-marriage-made-in-heaven.aspx

I wouldn't touch this culture. I don't believe in most conspiracy theories about GS, but the system seems to be set up to reward bankers, not shareholders, so it's not for me.

Hey Biaggio, I definitely recommend that you do NOT put a lot of weight to what I'm saying, because compared to most people here, I'm a beginner, and I'm still more qualitative than quantitative in a lot of ways.. But with that said, here's what I see with FTP: -A manager owner of high integrity and talent at capital allocation. What some here call a jockey stock -- it's the only thing I invest in, because I don't think I'm good enough to identify the best ways to allocate capital and make macro calls, so I've been focusing on becoming good enough at identifying good jockeys. I have 8 stocks in my portfolio, and all of them are what I consider high-quality manager-owners. -I like the strategy. They operate in an industry that has seen better days, allowing them to pick up quality assets at deep value prices and convert them to make high-margin niche products. High-security bank notes selling for something like $45k a tonne shouldn't be compared with making toilet paper... Much higher barrier to entry for competition. The dissolving pulp plant seems to be very well timed to take advantage of the rise of China and India - countries where rayon is better adapted than cotton because it breathes better and it's cheaper - and even at half the current rayon prices, they would still make a profit because they got the asset so cheap and they're going to be a low-cost producer. -Pretty conservative with debt, reducing the chances of a blowup if the economy goes really bad. -Like Altius (another of my picks), the value strategy means that if the economy goes down, they might be able to pick up more assets that will provide good value in the next up cycle. I like companies that win when things go well, and win when things go badly with the economy. -I try not to pay too much for growth, but in this case, it's hard to totally ignore. Chad seems to be constantly looking for new deals - dollars to buy for nickels or dimes - and I wouldn't be surprised if there was 1 or 2 more deals like the Thurso plant over the next year or two. And looking at what they did with Thurso, I trust that they know what they're doing and are only going to pull the trigger if there's a margin of safety. I also think there's a good chance they'll be able to leverage things like the $750k security technology that they purchased from the bank of canada into good value (even if only by widening of the moat of their security banknote business). -They seem to be dedicated to keeping costs low and squeezing efficiencies from existing assets. No big management team, no expensive offices. And while they're increasing capacity at the banknote plant, they're reducing the number of employees and management on the payroll. -I don't have all the numbers on hand, but when I looked at the potential earning power of the Thurso plant once the conversion is over, even with the conservative scenario, this made FTP look pretty cheap, with a PE way under 10. Of course, there are risks there: execution, cost overruns, labor disputes, market for dissolving pulp tanks by more than 50%, etc. So there it is. Not a very fancy analysis, but good enough for me right now. I'd rather be approximately right than exactly wrong :) and I like quality stocks that I should be able to hold for the long term rather than cigar butts that I'd need to time an exit strategy for..

Got some FTP today. Hard to resist after a 42% drop from their peak. I think they'll do very well over the years..

I would question why you even type the name of your main search engine. You can set it as your browser's 'home', so that pressing the home button brings you there. You can put a bookmark in the bookmark bar that is always visible.. Most modern browsers have a search field or a URL address bar that can be used as a search engine field (you set it in the preferences), or they auto-complete URL (so that you just type G and maybe O and it'll suggest "www.google.com"). Personally, I have my Chrome set up so that I can search from any search engine from the address bar with one prefix letter; so "g something" is google search for "something", "a something" is on Amazon.com, "i something" is on IMDB.com, "b something" is bing, etc.

What are the main theories on why it's dropping so much? Natural resources in general? China overheating? Random Mr. Market mood? Something material going on with FTP that I haven't heard about?

That sounds like potentially great news. When they say: "The goal for the updated resource is to delineate 800 million to 1 billion tonnes at a grade between 28-32% iron ore." Those tonnages are huge. Can you explain a bit what they mean here? Is that just what they're looking for, or do they have some confidence that this is what they can find based on those early results, but it's not yet a sure thing?

They had many one-time costs from digesting a big acquisition, but IMO what will matter in the long term is that they're maintaining their high margins (iirc, 39% now, but would've been 43% without the one-timers), they're not losing clients (highly recurring revenues), signing big new ones, and making acquisitions that allow them access to new clients to whom they can cross sell existing products. They're also retiring debt and buying back shares are very low costs... That they're doing this well in a soft insurance market is a good sign. They should do very well in a hard market when insurers have lots of money to throw around to upgrade their back-end systems...

Thanks Parsad. It wouldn't be a Munger interview without some Costco reference... anybody here own it?

I think he was quoting Mae West. Great quote.

I see it as a great buying opportunity. What truly matters to me - unless the story changes a lot - is what the stock will be worth in 5 years, and so far it looks like they have great potential.

Whoa, Mr. Market is in a bad mood wrt Ebix today. Down 9.2% right now, after being up almost 4% in the morning.

X2

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110510005690/en/Ebix-Q1-Revenue-Rose-27-Record-40.1M