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Notes from the 3rd Annual New York Value Investing Congress by Marcelo Lima
Notes from 5 speakers: http://blog.valueinvestingcongress.com/2007/12/
Mark Sellers at the 3rd Annual New York Value Investing Congress by Marcelo Lima
Mark Sellers of Sellers Capital spoke at length about the Kelly Criterion (you can read all about it in the book Fortune's Formula). It's essentially a betting system that guarantees that (1) you never go broke and (2) you compound your bankroll at the fastest, most optimal rate possible.
Of course, because it's a formula that requires you to handicap odds and payoffs, it's subject to the to the garbage in / garbage out pitfall of any model, and can give seemingly ridiculous results – like "bet 500% of your bankroll on this stock" – if you make incorrect assumptions about the likelihood and magnitude of winning or losing on a stock investment. It could also mean that betting 500% of your bankroll is the optimal thing to do. The strength of your assumptions really matter.
To mitigate the risk of making mistakes in handicapping the odds and payoffs, Mark limits his purchases to situations where the expected return of a stock exceeds 20%, the upside is 3x greater than the downside, and the Kelly Formula tells him that he should bet.
Mark still likes Contango (MCF), quite a bit actually, since he's put 50% of his fund's NAV in the stock. He considers Ken Peak, the CEO of MCF, the "Warren Buffett of the natural gas industry." My favorite part of the story is that Ken owns 25% of the company, has never sold a share, and his ex-wife gets his salary. He's about $10m in debt – he borrows money to live – but since his stake is worth close to $200m, he's not so worried.
[Mark's] made quite some money on Contango, but with the stock at $47, he thinks that $42 is the worst case, $57.50 the base case, and $70 the best case. The company has recently hired Merrill Lynch to explore alternatives.
Mark's second idea, which is "only" 25% of his fund's NAV, is Lowe's (LOW). Mark believes that the odds of LOW trading forever at a forward P/E of 11 are essentially nil. Over time, one gets earnings growth plus multiple expansion. In his estimation, the base case for LOW is a value of $30 per share, with $20 being the worst case and $42 the best case. The probabilities for these scenarios are 35%, 50%, and 15% respectively.
Posted by Joe at 12/31/2007
Jean-Marie Eveillard & Peter Bernstein on WealthTrack
In a rare appearance, two financial legends join Consuelo Mack to discuss investment philosophy and strategy. Jean-Marie Eveillard, who recently came out of retirement to retake the helm of First Eagle funds talks about his lessons learned as one of the world's best value investors. And, in a television exclusive, financial guru, risk expert and best selling author Peter Bernstein shares a secret of the modern money masters: the most important question an investor can ask to achieve financial success.
Video (12/28/2007): http://www.wealthtrack.com/video_player.html
CFA Conference Webcasts - Mauboussin and Zweig
The Prime Directive, Sharks, and the Wisdom and Whims of the Collective
In this webcast, Michael J. Mauboussin discusses the following:
-The metrics of market efficiency: mean–variance efficiency and arbitrage opportunities.
-Necessary conditions for an efficient market: diversity, incentives, and mechanisms for aggregations.
-Diversity breakdowns and other market malfunctions.
This webcast comprises a 51-minute presentation and a 9-minute question-and-answer session.
What Can We Learn from Neuroeconomics? How the Investing Brain Predicts the Future
In this webcast, Jason Zweig discusses the following:
-The prediction addiction: Why do you think they call it "dopamine?"
-What happens in your brain when your expectations are confirmed — or shattered by surprise
This webcast comprises a 51-minute presentation and an 11-minute question-and-answer session.
Oakmark Select - Update
I wish I had better news to report, but The Oakmark Select Fund's investment losses have continued since I last corresponded with you in September. Given this weak performance, I thought that reviewing why we own what we own might be helpful since many of you use year end as a time to re-evaluate your investments. I'd like to address our holdings by categorizing them into four groups. Be aware that new information could cause us to quickly change our opinion on any stock.
The 2007 Legg Mason Symposium - Transcript
The 2007 Legg Mason Symposium
Corporate Speakers
• Chip Mason Chairman, President and CEO, Legg Mason
• Ken Leech Chief Investment Officer, Western Asset Management
• Patrick Tan Chief Investment Officer, Legg Mason International Equities - Singapore
• Isaac Souede Chairman and CEO, Permal
• Bill Miller Chairman and CIO, Legg Mason Capital Management
• Consuelo Mack Anchor and Managing Editor, WealthTrack
Buffett Buys Reinsurer; Bond Venture Rumored
The Oracle of Omaha is picking up a Dutch reinsurance business on the cheap.
Dutch financial services firm ING on Friday announced the sale of its NRG reinsurance unit to billionaire investor Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway for 300 million euros ($440.7 million), resulting in a capital loss after tax of 100 million euros ($146.9 million) in 2007.
The acquisition could have something to do with plans by Buffett to launch a municipal bond insurance company. The Wall Street Journal reported that Buffett will launch a bond insurance business Friday in New York, aiming to capitalize on instability in that sector.
If true, it could spell trouble for the leading bond insurers Ambac Financial Group and MBIA.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to Acquire 60% of Pritzker Family Company, Marmon Holdings, Inc.
This is Berkshire's largest-ever acquisition outside of the insurance industry.
Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett and Tom Pritzker, Chairman of Marmon Holdings today announced that Berkshire will purchase 60% of Marmon Holdings, Inc., a private company owned by trusts for the benefit of members of the Pritzker Family of Chicago.
The closing is anticipated to occur in the first quarter of 2008. Prior to closing, Marmon will make a substantial distribution of cash and certain assets to the selling shareholders. At closing Berkshire will acquire 60% of Marmon for $4.5 billion. The remaining 40% will be acquired through staged acquisitions over a five to six year period for consideration to be based on the future earnings of Marmon. The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.
Marmon is a private company that was acquired in 1953 by two brothers, Jay and Robert Pritzker, when it was a small ailing manufacturing operation in Ohio. In 2002 Jay's son Tom became Chairman of Marmon. He then recruited John Nichols to become CEO of Marmon and in 2006 John was succeeded by Frank Ptak who is currently CEO of Marmon.
Fat Tails and Nonlinearity - Mauboussin
• Avoid the problem of induction. Humans like to generalize about a system based on a limited sample. The problem of induction reminds us that falsification serves us better than verification. When an asset price is going up, the natural assumption is it will continue to do so. Indeed, prosperity can breed an unhealthy sense of security.
• Be mindful of diversity breakdowns. There is no simple way to measure the degree of diversity in the real world. But if a large group of investors seem to all be doing well pursuing a similar strategy, chances are there is a great deal of invisible vulnerability.
• Watch for the non-linear reaction. Critical points are endogenous to financial markets, as they are in other complex systems. When diversity levels are low, small perturbations lead to outcomes completely out of proportion with their size.
At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star
Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace.
Professor Lewin's videotaped physics lectures, free online on the OpenCourseWare of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have won him devotees across the country and beyond who stuff his e-mail in-box with praise.
Professor Lewin delivers his lectures with the panache of Julia Child bringing French cooking to amateurs and the zany theatricality of YouTube's greatest hits. He is part of a new generation of academic stars who hold forth in cyberspace on their college Web sites and even, without charge, on iTunes U, which went up in May on Apple's iTunes Store.
In his lectures at ocw.mit.edu, Professor Lewin beats a student with cat fur to demonstrate electrostatics. Wearing shorts, sandals with socks and a pith helmet — nerd safari garb — he fires a cannon loaded with a golf ball at a stuffed monkey wearing a bulletproof vest to demonstrate the trajectories of objects in free fall.
He rides a fire-extinguisher-propelled tricycle across his classroom to show how a rocket lifts off.
He was No. 1 on the most downloaded list at iTunes U for a while, but that lineup constantly evolves. The stars this week included Hubert Dreyfus, a philosophy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Leonard Susskind, a professor of quantum mechanics at Stanford.
Last week, Yale put some of its most popular undergraduate courses and professors online free. The list includes Controversies in Astrophysics with Charles Bailyn, Modern Poetry with Langdon Hammer and Introduction to the Old Testament with Christine Hayes.
M.I.T. recently expanded its online classes by opening a site aimed at high school students and teachers. Judging from his fan e-mail, Professor Lewin, who is among those featured on the new site, appeals to students of all ages.
Some of his correspondents compare him to Richard Feynman, the free-spirited, bongo-playing Nobel laureate who popularized physics through his books, lectures and television appearances.
This article relates to Charlie Munger's Mental Model approach to life and learning, of course. From Mr. Munger's 1994 speech:
You've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience - both vicarious and direct - on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You've got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.
What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you've got to have multiple models - because if you just have one or two that you're using, the nature of human psychology is such that you'll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you'll think it does. You become the equivalent of a chiropractor who, of course, is the great boob in medicine.
It's like the old saying, "To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." And of course, that's the way the chiropractor goes about practicing medicine. But that's a perfectly disastrous way to think and a perfectly disastrous way to operate in the world. So you've got to have multiple models.
And the models have to come from multiple disciplines - because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That's why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don't have enough models in their heads. So you've got to have models across a fair array of disciplines.
You may say, "My God, this is already getting way too tough. "But, fortunately, it isn't that tough - because 80 or 90 important models will carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly-wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.
Books Related to Physics:
Mr Tompkins in Paperback
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
What Do You Care What Other People Think?
Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman
Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher
Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time
In Search of Schrödinger's Cat: Quantum Physics and Reality
The Martians of Science: Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century
First Eagle reopens two mutual funds
First Eagle joins Longleaf and Third Avenue in opening previously closed funds recently.
Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder Advisers said on Tuesday it will reopen two of its First Eagle mutual funds that invest in overseas markets.
The $21 billion First Eagle Global Fund SGENX.O invests in a range of asset classes in the United States and overseas. That fund was closed to new investors in March 2005.
The $10 billion First Eagle Overseas Fund SGOVX.O invests mostly in non-U.S. stocks. That fund was closed to new investors in February 2004.
The funds will be reopened effective Jan. 14.
Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder, adviser to the funds, said the funds had been closed because of rapidly increasing cash flows at the time.
Jean-Marie Eveillard, fund manager of First Eagle Funds, said the current volatile market environment may offer significant investment opportunities.
Buy Bill Miller Now
If you look beneath the surface, Miller is doing the same things that he has always done. For now, they're failing abysmally, and they may continue to fail for some time. But, in my view, Legg Mason Value (LMVTX) and Legg Mason Opportunity (LMOPX), a member of the Kiplinger 25, are both keepers. Better than keepers: Indeed, this is an ideal time to invest in them.
A big deal: Poker is getting younger, cleverer, duller and much, much richer
At the highest level, decisions about betting, bluffing and folding are based on the complex juggling of probabilities. "What drew me to poker is that it is essentially an academic endeavour," says Ms Duke. She is one of a growing group of full-time players who came to poker through game theory and mathematics, not through any love of a flutter. (Indeed, she never plays craps or roulette.) Others include Mr Lederer (her brother) and Mr Ferguson, who has a doctorate in computer science and writes academic papers on probability theory with his father, a statistician at UCLA.
Thomas Bihl, winner of a recent HORSE tournament, in which players have to show mastery of five different styles of poker, thinks the game has more in common with finance than it does with basic forms of gambling, because it requires the constant pricing and repricing of risk. Mr Bihl, a former stock trader, says the move from his old job into poker was a natural progression. Though his £71,000 win was "a huge lift", he says that he is motivated not by money but by the chance to use his brain to outfox opponents. This is a common refrain among regular players. As Ms Coren put it in a recent article: "Cash is nothing more than chips, just the tools of the trade, like fishing rods to an angler. The game is all about money, and nothing to do with money."
Doyle Brunson's Super System: A Course in Power Poker
No Limit Hold 'em: Theory and Practice
The Theory of Poker
Simons at Renaissance Cracks Code, Doubling Assets
Certainly not the Graham/Buffett/Munger type of value investor (Renaissance is all quant), but an interesting story nonetheless. What is also interesting is that if you search for RENAISSANCE TECHNOLOGIES CORP on the NASDAQ web site, it appears Renaissance's biggest purchase during the third quarter was Berkshire Hathaway (when you add up the A and B shares)!
Renaissance is on fire: Its Medallion Fund -- which uses computers and trading algorithms to invest in world markets -- returned more than 50 percent in the first three quarters of 2007. It had about $6 billion in assets as of July 1.
Medallion's returns are no anomaly. The fund, which trades everything from soybean futures to French government bonds in rapid fire, hasn't had a negative quarter since early 1999. From the end of 1989 through 2006, it returned 38.5 percent annualized, net of fees.
In quant funds, mathematicians and computer scientists mine enormous amounts of data from financial markets looking for correlations among stocks, bonds, derivatives and other instruments. They search for predictive signals that will foretell whether, say, a palladium futures contract is likely to rise or fall.
"There are just a few individuals who have truly changed how we view the markets,'' says Theodore Aronson, principal of Aronson + Johnson + Ortiz LP, a quantitative money management firm in Philadelphia with $29.3 billion in assets. "John Maynard Keynes is one of the few. Warren Buffett is one of the few. So is Jim Simons."
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon
One of the greatest and most influential books of social psychology ever written, brilliantly instructive on the general characteristics and mental unity of a crowd, its sentiments and morality, ideas, reasoning power, imagination, opinions and much more. A must-read volume for students of history, sociology, law and psychology.
The complete English text is available for free in PDF format HERE.
Or (for $8.95) on Amazon: The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
Mark Sellers: Rational investors should rejoice
Two months ago in my Financial Times column, I listed some of the things I have learnt about the stock market over the years. I likened the market to a game of online poker, with anonymous opponents and continuously evolving probabilities. I received some good reader feedback, so this month I've decided to revisit the topic. Here are a few more things I've learnt about the stock market.
Death, Taxes, and Reversion to the Mean - Mauboussin
Analysts modeling future corporate financial performance should use past return on invested capital (ROIC) patterns, including a strong tendency toward mean reversion, as an appropriate reference class but rarely do. Full consideration of the difficulty in sustaining high returns should temper the optimism inherent in many models.
Some companies do post persistently high or low returns beyond what chance dictates. But the ROIC data incorporate much more randomness than most analysts realize.
We had little luck in identifying the factors behind sustainably high returns.
This analysis has concrete implications for modeling. We unveil some of the common errors in discounted cash flow models and offer some thoughts on how to improve them.
Tulane 2005 Commencement Address - Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis, esteemed columnist and author of such bestsellers as "Liar's Poker" and "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game" delivers the Tulane University Class of 2005 Commencement Address.
"Do what you love before you figure out how much what you love is gonna cost you."
Value's Day Once More
The stock market is falling, or is it the sky? At this writing the answer's debatable. Treasury yields are collapsing, the price of gold is soaring and oil keeps closing in on $100 a barrel. The U.S. dollar is under siege, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are on the skids and the economy-stopping word "no" is on the lips of our formerly fearless lenders.
Is anyone happy? Well, value investors ought to be. To their way of thinking bear markets are heaven-sent. Of all people, the disciples of Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd understand the investment appeal of everyday low prices. They like it when stocks and bonds go on sale. They are the Wal-Mart shoppers of Wall Street.
Mark Sellers, Intelligent Investor - Motley Fool Interview
Emil Lee: How does your firm go about researching an investment idea?
Mark Sellers: The first thing we do is figure out what the problem is. Ninety percent of making money in stocks is not losing money, which has to do with knowing what the problem is and how it can be solved. Every company we buy has a problem with it, otherwise it wouldn't be cheap.
We read sell-side reports, SEC filings, and talk to management. Within one or two days, we decide if we're comfortable that the company can solve the problem. Then we do another week or so of further research.
Berkshire Hathaway Is Poised to Surpass $150,000
"The more chaos there is in financial markets, the better it is for Warren Buffett,'' said Whitney Tilson, managing partner at T2 Partners LLC in New York and a Berkshire shareholder for 10 years. "Investors are fleeing to safety, and Berkshire Hathaway offers the ultimate in safety.''
Tilson said the Class A shares have an "intrinsic value'' of $167,000, in part because the most recent hurricane season was benign, holding down costs for Berkshire's insurance units.
"People are realizing earnings are going to be astronomical this quarter,'' he said.
Wired for survival on the savannah
James Montier, a top-rated equity strategist who recently arrived at SocGen in London from Dresdner Kleinwort, has been educating clients for years with his reports on behavioural finance. These have now been gathered together in a 700-page tome, Behavioural Investing: A Practitioner's Guide to Applying Behavioural Finance (Wiley). It is quite simply the best and most comprehensive treatment of the subject to date.
Behavioural finance suggests we overweight our personal, recent experience when arriving at judgments. We also tend to extrapolate from current circumstances into the future. Not only are we prone to overconfidence; we also seek out confirming evidence for our views. We attribute our successes to skill but our failures to bad luck. An ability to respond quickly to perceived danger was a successful strategy in our evolution. But as an investment strategy, fear is self-defeating. It leads to overreaction to irrelevant information and induces investors, who bought at the top of the market, to sell at the bottom.
The best investors, like Keynes, seem not to have inherited these debilitating psychological traits. They are patient, operate with long time horizons and are prepared to tolerate periods of underperformance.
Book: Behavioural Investing: A Practitioners Guide to Applying Behavioural Finance
Labels: James Montier
Warren Buffett's Complete Squawk on Street Interview: Video and Transcript
From Poor Charlie's Almanack:
An Investing Principles Checklist
Risk – All investment evaluations should begin by measuring risk, especially reputational
Incorporate an appropriate margin of safety
Avoid dealing with people of questionable character
Insist upon proper compensation for risk assumed
Always beware of inflation and interest rate exposures
Avoid big mistakes; shun permanent capital loss
Independence – "Only in fairy tales are emperors told they are naked"
Objectivity and rationality require independence of thought
Remember that just because other people agree or disagree with you doesn't make you right or wrong – the only thing that matters is the correctness of your analysis and judgment
Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean (merely average performance)
Preparation – "The only way to win is to work, work, work, work, and hope to have a few insights"
Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day
More important than the will to win is the will to prepare
Develop fluency in mental models from the major academic disciplines
If you want to get smart, the question you have to keep asking is "why, why, why?"
-Intellectual humility – Acknowledging what you don't know is the dawning of wisdom
Stay within a well-defined circle of competence
Identify and reconcile disconfirming evidence
Resist the craving for false precision, false certainties, etc.
Above all, never fool yourself, and remember that you are the easiest person to fool
"Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understanding a lot of things."
Analytic rigor – Use of the scientific method and effective checklists minimizes errors and omissions
Determine value apart from price; progress apart from activity; wealth apart from size
It is better to remember the obvious than to grasp the esoteric
Be a business analyst, not a market, macroeconomic, or security analyst
Consider totality of risk and effect; look always at potential second order and higher level impacts
Think forwards and backwards – Invert, always invert
Allocation – Proper allocation of capital is an investor's number one job
Remember that highest and best use is always measured by the next best use (opportunity cost)
Good ideas are rare – when the odds are greatly in your favor, bet (allocate) heavily
Don't "fall in love" with an investment – be situation-dependent and opportunity-driven
Patience – Resist the natural human bias to act
"Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world" (Einstein); never interrupt it unnecessarily
Avoid unnecessary transactional taxes and frictional costs; never take action for its own sake
Be alert for the arrival of luck
Enjoy the process along with the proceeds, because the process is where you live
Decisiveness – When proper circumstances present themselves, act with decisiveness and conviction
Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful
Opportunity doesn't come often, so seize it when it comes
Opportunity meeting the prepared mind; that's the game
Change – Live with change and accept unremovable complexity
Recognize and adapt to the true nature of the world around you; don't expect it to adapt to you
Continually challenge and willingly amend your "best-loved ideas"
Recognize reality even when you don't like it – especially when you don't like it
Focus – Keep things simple and remember what you set out to do
Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets – and can be lost in a heartbeat
Guard against the effects of hubris and boredom
Don't overlook the obvious by drowning in minutiae
Be careful to exclude unneeded information or slop: "A small leak can sink a great ship"
Face your big troubles; don't sweep them under the rug
In the end, it comes down to Charlie's most basic guiding principles, his fundamental philosophy of life: Preparation. Discipline. Patience. Decisiveness.
Whitney Tilson on Wealthtrack
http://www.wealthtrack.com/video_player.html
Understanding The Numbers
The three pieces which help you put the puzzle together are the Balance Sheet, Income Statement (Profit & Loss) and Cash Flow (+ the footnotes.) These are the key financial statements which together help you fully appreciate a company's current health. In isolation they provide you insight which could be misleading. All three of these statements are related and you need to understand them with respect to the other.
(If this is your first time, reading these statements, this takes a while initially, and this article is certainly longish, however, my aim is to give you enough in one shot.)
Martin Capital Management - 2006 Annual Report
Like the Buffett discussion on derivatives I posted a couple of days ago, I think it is also a good time to go back and review Frank Martin's discussion from MCM's 2006 Annual Report:
Martin Capital Management - 2006 Annual Report (pdf)
To review previous Annual Reports, click HERE.
Book: Speculative Contagion: An Antidote for Speculative Epidemics
Labels: Frank Martin
Fall 2007 — CIO interview with Chuck Royce Q307
Q. Do you agree with the idea that we haven't really seen a correction in the stock market yet?
A. Definitely. What we did see, especially in July and early August, was a great deal of volatility accompanied by anxious headlines about subprime mortgages, credit issues and leverage. However dramatic the localized, specific effects of these problems have been in their respective areas, they have not yet produced a substantial stock market correction, which we would define as a decline of 15% or more. The downdraft that began in July hit an interim bottom on August 15, and in the third quarter the Russell 2000 saw 24 out of 57 trading days in which it moved 2.0% or more intraday, making it a wildly volatile period, but not a seriously bearish one.
The Structure of "Unstructured" Decision Processes - 1976 Paper
How do organisations go about making "unstructured," "strategic" decisions? Researchers of administrative processes have paid little attention to such decisions, preferring instead to concentrate on routine operating decisions, those more accessible to precise description and quantitative analysis. As a result, the normative models of management science have had a significant influence on the routine work of the lower and middle levels of organisations and almost no influence on the higher levels. But it is at the top levels of organisations where better decision-making methods are most needed; excessive attention by management scientists to operating decisions may well cause organisations to pursue inappropriate courses of action more efficiently.
Although there is a body of normative literature on techniques for strategic decision making, for example, strategy-planning, models of the firm, cost-benefit analysis, the evidence from empirical studies of their application indicates that all too often these techniques have made little real difference in the decisional behaviour of organisations (Grinyer and Norburn 1975, Hall 1973, Whitehead 1968). These techniques have been unable to cope with the complexity of the processes found at the strategy level, about which little is known.
This paper defines a decision as a specific commitment to action (usually a commitment of resources) and a decision process as a set of actions and dynamic factors that begins with the identification of a stimulus for action and ends with the specific commitment to action. Unstructured refers to decision processes that have not been encountered in quite the same form and for which no predetermined and explicit set of ordered responses exists in the organisation. And strategic simply means important, in terms of the actions taken, the resources committed or the precedents set. This paper uses empirical research to suggest a basic framework that describes unstructured, strategic decision processes. The suggested framework embodies the results of our own study of 25 such decision processes, as well as evidence from published empirical studies.
Warren Buffett on Derivatives – from 2005 Berkshire Hathaway Letter to Shareholders
In light of recent events, I thought it may a good time to review the brief discussion on derivatives from Mr. Buffett in his 2005 letter to shareholders. Many companies, executives, analysts, and members of the media are claiming that current derivatives losses were unforeseen and totally unpredictable. Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger have been warning of these "unpredictable" events for YEARS. I'd be willing to bet that they'd also predict there is still a whole lot more that has yet to come home to roost.
Warren Buffett on Derivatives – from 2005 Berkshire Hathaway Letter to Shareholders:
Long ago, Mark Twain said: "A man who tries to carry a cat home by its tail will learn a lesson that can be learned in no other way." If Twain were around now, he might try winding up a derivatives business. After a few days, he would opt for cats.
We lost $104 million pre-tax last year in our continuing attempt to exit Gen Re's derivative operation. Our aggregate losses since we began this endeavor total $404 million.
Originally we had 23,218 contracts outstanding. By the start of 2005 we were down to 2,890. You might expect that our losses would have been stemmed by this point, but the blood has kept flowing. Reducing our inventory to 741 contracts last year cost us the $104 million mentioned above.
Remember that the rationale for establishing this unit in 1990 was Gen Re's wish to meet the needs of insurance clients. Yet one of the contracts we liquidated in 2005 had a term of 100 years! It's difficult to imagine what "need" such a contract could fulfill except, perhaps, the need of a compensation conscious trader to have a long-dated contract on his books. Long contracts, or alternatively those with multiple variables, are the most difficult to mark to market (the standard procedure used in accounting for derivatives) and provide the most opportunity for "imagination" when traders are estimating their value. Small wonder that traders promote them.
A business in which huge amounts of compensation flow from assumed numbers is obviously fraught with danger. When two traders execute a transaction that has several, sometimes esoteric, variables and a far-off settlement date, their respective firms must subsequently value these contracts whenever they calculate their earnings. A given contract may be valued at one price by Firm A and at another by Firm B. You can bet that the valuation differences – and I'm personally familiar with several that were huge – tend to be tilted in a direction favoring higher earnings at each firm. It's a strange world in which two parties can carry out a paper transaction that each can promptly report as profitable.
I dwell on our experience in derivatives each year for two reasons. One is personal and unpleasant. The hard fact is that I have cost you a lot of money by not moving immediately to close down Gen Re's trading operation. Both Charlie and I knew at the time of the Gen Re purchase that it was a problem and told its management that we wanted to exit the business. It was my responsibility to make sure that happened. Rather than address the situation head on, however, I wasted several years while we attempted to sell the operation. That was a doomed endeavor because no realistic solution could have extricated us from the maze of liabilities that was going to exist for decades. Our obligations were particularly worrisome because their potential to explode could not be measured. Moreover, if severe trouble occurred, we knew it was likely to correlate with problems elsewhere in financial markets.
So I failed in my attempt to exit painlessly, and in the meantime more trades were put on the books. Fault me for dithering. (Charlie calls it thumb-sucking.) When a problem exists, whether in personnel or in business operations, the time to act is now.
The second reason I regularly describe our problems in this area lies in the hope that our experiences may prove instructive for managers, auditors and regulators. In a sense, we are a canary in this business coal mine and should sing a song of warning as we expire. The number and value of derivative contracts outstanding in the world continues to mushroom and is now a multiple of what existed in 1998, the last time that financial chaos erupted.
Our experience should be particularly sobering because we were a better-than-average candidate to exit gracefully. Gen Re was a relatively minor operator in the derivatives field. It has had the good fortune to unwind its supposedly liquid positions in a benign market, all the while free of financial or other pressures that might have forced it to conduct the liquidation in a less-than-efficient manner. Our accounting in the past was conventional and actually thought to be conservative. Additionally, we know of no bad behavior by anyone involved.
It could be a different story for others in the future. Imagine, if you will, one or more firms (troubles often spread) with positions that are many multiples of ours attempting to liquidate in chaotic markets and under extreme, and well-publicized, pressures. This is a scenario to which much attention should be given now rather than after the fact. The time to have considered – and improved – the reliability of New Orleans' levees was before Katrina.
When we finally wind up Gen Re Securities, my feelings about its departure will be akin to those expressed in a country song, "My wife ran away with my best friend, and I sure miss him a lot."
Warren Buffett's Video Tour of Berkshire Hathaway Headquarters
Video and Transcript:
Eddie Lampert Issues Letter to Sears Associates
Yesterday, Sears Holdings announced our results for the third quarter of 2007. While we were not pleased with these results, much of the commentary in the media and on Wall Street following the results ignores the strength of our company and the progress that we have made. In fact, over the past several years, we are one of the few retail companies that have actually reduced our overall debt levels, while at the same time investing over $1 billion on capital expenditures, making investments in inventory for our customers, contributing significantly to our pension plans for our past and future retirees and repurchasing over $3 billion of our shares.
Retail is a fickle business. Nevertheless, like any other business, by focusing on the long term, making decisions based on facts and logic, and appreciating that all decisions are based on many possible future scenarios, companies can navigate the ups and downs of the economy and the stock market to create long term value for their shareholders. That is our focus, and our goal, at Sears Holdings. We will take the actions we believe are necessary to drive value over the long term and manage the business closely and opportunistically in the short term.
We thank you for your hard work and are committed to working to deliver better results in the future. Remember, not everybody likes rooting for the underdog. It is up to us to earn their respect by our performance on the retail playing field.
Arne Alsin: No pretty bow, but still a gift
Here is a new stock idea: recently I said "bargains don't arrive at the market in pretty packages wrapped with a bow". While my gift to you, Tecumseh Products, is an amazing bargain, it is far from being wrapped in a pretty package. It is not only a messy package, it is also complicated – there are a lot of moving parts. Here is the story, in brief.
A few months ago, Tecumseh had compressor, engine and electrical businesses. It was struggling with a potential liquidity crisis because of a significant debt burden. The company has just finished selling off its engine and electrical businesses for $260m, using the proceeds to pay off all of its domestic debt. Now the company can concentrate on maximising the potential of its global $1.1bn (annual sales) compressor business.
Today, the market values Tecumseh at about $400m. By my calculations, the company will not only be debt-free, but also will accumulate $150m-$200m in cash over the next few quarters from non-operating items such miscellaneous asset sales, a tax refund, monies from an over-funded pension and assorted other items. My calculations also indicate that if the dollar is stable, the company can generate $90m in annual free cash flow beginning in 2009.
Based on these numbers alone, you can recognise a bargain. This gift does not need to be wrapped in a pretty package tied with a bow.
Arne Alsin: The rational investor looks beyond price
How do you value a stock? This is the single most important question that an investor has to answer. If you cannot generate an informed estimate of value, you should not be making buy-and-sell decisions.
All rational buyers of assets go through the same exercise. They ask two simple questions: "What does it cost?" and "What is it worth?" If you can look up a stock quote, you can answer the first question. But the answer, by itself, is meaningless.
The Entrepreneurial Investor
A logical investor must take irrational market behavior into account when choosing stocks to buy, sell, and hold. Fear and euphoria cannot dominate the actions of someone who really knows the companies and industries in which he or she invests, but other people's fear and euphoria should influence one's choices. Do not blindly follow the herd, but pay close attention to its movements. Opportunity exists in the gap between a company's value and the herd's perception of its value. Of course, it can take a long time for the herd to catch up, but that is how an entrepreneurial investor's patience is rewarded.
Book: The Entrepreneurial Investor: The Art, Science, and Business of Value Investing
Tweedy, Browne's Semi-Annual Report
In a fascinating new book, A Demon of Our Own Design, author Richard Bookstaber, a "Wall Streeter" with over 20 years of quantitative trading experience, contends that financial innovation, complexity and globalization have combined to make our markets more crisis prone. He uses biology as a frame of reference for economic behavior, and contrasts the cockroach and the furu, a small perch-like fish, in a case study of risk management. He finds the survival of the cockroach over millions of years quite remarkable, especially in light of what he describes as their "coarse and sub-optimal behavior" when it comes to risk management. In essence, the cockroach has a rather simple defense mechanism: moving away from slight puffs of air. It completely ignores a wide range of other information and risks "…that one would think an optimal risk management system would take into account."
He contrasts the sub-optimal behaving cockroach to the finely tuned and optimizing behavior of the furu, a once dominant, small, perch-like fish that survived in Africa's Lake Victoria for thousands of years. The furu, over the centuries, became highly adapted to its environment, evolving into some 300 species and developing a myriad of skills, which allowed it to thrive and flourish in its habitat, rivaling "the finches that Darwin studied in the Galapagos." It unfortunately fell victim to extinction when the Nile Perch was introduced by a Kenyan game fisheries officer into the lakes of Central Africa. Bookstaber points out that their "extinction was not the result of natural selection based on fitness in the usual sense; they were diverse and suited for almost every conceivable element of the Lake Victoria ecology.…Its path toward extinction was just a result of dumb luck that someone had introduced an alien species into its waters."
Bookstaber concludes that "the cockroach and the furu are just two of many examples I can cite in biology to illustrate the benefits of coarse behavior and the perils of finely-tuned behavior in reacting to a broad range of natural uncertainty."
To carry Bookstaber's biological case study into the capital markets, Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett are perhaps the "cockroaches" of the investment world, eschewing leverage and demanding a substantial margin of safety in each investment they made. Their simple and elegant defense mechanism against the vast uncertainty of financial markets was a cheap entry price supported by collateral value. By avoiding leverage, they were not likely to ever be untethered from their ownership of real and growing assets.
The furu, on the other hand, is akin to today's highly leveraged investor seeking to eradicate risk by fine tuning portfolios using probability theory in an attempt to ferret out and nullify any and all conceivable risks. Portfolios of high alpha generating, non-correlated assets are put together in a mosaic that is supposed to enhance return and lower volatility. With risk so theoretically constrained, investors are free to use leverage to exploit small market inefficiencies, allowing them to proverbially and safely "pick up dimes in front of steamrollers." With massive amounts of individual and institutional capital having moved into these finely-tuned and highly leveraged strategies, Bookstaber contends that our capital markets will from time to time be confronted with liquidity shocks that could accelerate into full blown crises. Such was the case with the credit crunch in August.
Annaly - Note on Freddie Mac Following Release of its 3rd Quarter Results
Another (see post below on Pzena) opinion on Freddie Mac:
Richard Syron, Chairman and CEO of Freddie Mac, articulated the company's dilemma in very blunt terms. He said that he could either turn his company into "Fortress Freddie", in which the company shrinks its business, or he can continue down the path they have laid out today. Either outcome is unpleasant. "Fortress Freddie" would mean that the firm would likely be a seller into the market at a time when the market is looking to the GSEs to provide liquidity, which would not benefit the mortgage market or the economy as a whole. The path they have laid out, on the other hand, will depress returns to shareholders, at least in the short run, but keep Freddie as a more active participant in the mortgage finance process.
Headlines and press releases will continue to affect the trading of the securities of the Agencies. We already see what has happened to their share prices. Agency MBS, as usual, underperform Treasuries, a fact that has not been helped by the challenges of the current credit crunch. But Freddie Mac has chosen wisely to focus on fulfilling its mandate and to shore up its balance sheet. This bodes well for holders of Agency MBS. Freddie Mac stockholders, however, will have to wait.
Long-Term Value in Freddie Mac
[Rich] Pzena, whose firm, Pzena Investment Management, recently went public, says the mortgage purchaser is still severely undervalued.
Speaking at the annual Value Investing Congress in New York City, Pzena labeled Freddie "the single cheapest stock that I've come across in my career." This isn't because Pzena is bullish on the U.S. housing market (he's not), but because he says Freddie has been unfairly tarnished by the subprime brush that is has afflicted so many mortgage lenders.
Freddie's shares (symbol FRE) traded at $65 as recently as August 22 and plunged to as low as $22.90 on November 26 before rebounding.
Pzena says he considers three questions when analyzing businesses selling at low prices. Is it a good business? Are its problems temporary, rather than permanent? Is it rational to think that earnings will return to historical levels? With Freddie, he says the answer to each is yes.
FPA Capital Fund's Semi-Annual Report
In light of the above comments, we believe the odds of a 2008 recession have increased to at least 50%, or more. Given the growing credit contraction, oil prices approaching $90 per barrel and the dollar setting new alltime lows versus a basket of currencies; future Fed policy actions may prove rather ineffectual in dealing with these challenges. We are of the opinion that the Fed will lower the Fed Funds rate into the 3.75% to 4% range next year, or lower, as housing, capital markets and consumer issues negatively affect economic and corporate earnings growth. We view consensus earnings growth expectations as being too high and believe that they will have to be lowered. Only recently have various types of financial services companies begun to recognize their problem loans and investments, with charges and provisions for future losses. Some of these stocks have responded favorably, with the belief that these companies are getting their problems behind them. Again, we believe the consensus is being too optimistic. Generally, managements are always initially optimistic, until they have to face the grim reality of the situation, and this process should extend well into 2008. The stock market appears to be ignoring these various risks since there appears to be a general belief that lower interest rates will ride to the rescue to solve these credit problems and support stock prices. We do not agree with this optimistic view and, therefore, we will continue to deploy a highly defensive portfolio strategy since we do not believe we are being appropriately compensated for these risks.
LeBron Inc. - The building of a billion-dollar athlete
And here lies the difference between James and nearly every other professional athlete. Together with Maverick Carter, a childhood chum and the de facto CEO of LeBron Inc., James is trying to create a new financial model for the 21st-century athlete.
Instead of just lining up endorsements and cashing checks, James is seeking equity in the companies he works with; and he is using his on-court prowess to build a corporation that deals with entities as disparate as Bubblicious and Warren Buffett.
"What I do on the court will drive revenue," says James. He's also picky about his partners, always asking himself, "Is it authentic? I know I can go out and sign a lot of endorsements and get checks. Money is not the issue."
Wouldn't it be interesting if LeBron used LRMR (see article) the way Mr. Buffett has used the insurance business to build a diversified holding company? For LeBron, the return on capital for that business is ridiculously high while he is in his prime and if he lets all that cash build up, gets someone with capital allocating expertise to partner with, and then either invests in and/or buys businesses when they are cheap, he could have pretty sizable conglomerate by the time he retires.
And in full disclosure, I grew up in the Cleveland area and am a big Cavs fan. That fact also makes me hope that Mr. Buffett's decision to stay in his home town of Omaha also rubs off on LeBron and he spends his entire career in Cleveland!
Another "Friendly" Deal? - by Phillip Ristau
Why would anyone invest in SNS? There may be a catalyst. There is a proxy fight to gain two board seats by tenacious value investor Sardar Biglari. A sale of Friendly Ice Cream was announced about 9 months after he disclosed his initial 13D filing in 2006 for about twice his average cost.
Putting it all together, SNS's earnings are worth $78 million in three years, discounted at 10% equals $59 million or $2.06 present value per share for the pure-franchise model. In addition, a sale/leaseback plan for the real estate would generate $5.97 a share for the 155 properties it owns. Finally, refranchising 435 units might generate $435 million, or $15 per share. Since this operation would take time, I use a 10% discount rate and a three year time frame. I derive a present value of refranchising of $327 million, or $11.47 per share.
Thus, intrinsic value is $2.06 future earnings + $5.97 sale/leaseback proceeds + $11.47 refranchising cash for a total intrinsic value of $19.50 per share. SNS is currently trading around $11.
What Makes Warren Buffett Successful?
Mr. Buffett has explained it by acknowledging that he is "wired" in such a way that makes him very adept at capital allocation. This might be a disconcerting notion to some as it implies that you either have it or you don't.
But what is "it" anyway? To me, it is a combination of an array of characteristics, some very learnable, some less so. The learnable ones are characteristics every CFA charterholder probably has. These are things like strong analytical skills as well as simply a good knowledge of the financial markets. That is not especially hard to replicate. Moreover, with tens of thousands of CFAs in the world you would expect a few more Buffetts were this all it takes.
It is the less-learnable characteristics that set Buffett apart and this is where watching Warren Buffett the person may help the most. People who have spent time with Mr. Buffett notice two things. For starters, he reads – constantly. Sometimes he can spend his entire day reading, and it's not just for pleasure. He reads because he is hungry for information that will make him a more successful businessman. Very few people have the drive Warren Buffett has.
Easy enough right? You are probably thinking, "Well if all I have to do to become a billionaire is read all the time then sign me up for the value investor's book club." Not so fast. A lot of people read a lot. The difference is Buffett's memory. Not only does he read but he remembers everything he reads. Folks familiar with the man know how tremendous his memory is. Very few people have the memory Warren Buffett has.
The most important less-learnable characteristic Buffett possesses, though, is very uncommon. It is emotional discipline. By this I mean the ability to resist the natural human instincts of fear, greed, pride, regret and all the other irrational biases to which people are inherently inclined to succumb. I have been trying myself to master these biases for years and, let me tell you, it is tough. Even once an investor is cognizant of these biases he may find it extremely difficult to control them. I can't let myself buy because stocks are going up (greed) or sell because they are going down (fear). I have to base my decisions entirely on an unbiased assessment of the underlying business. This is far easier said than done.
Incentive-caused Bias in the Medical Profession
An excellent post from the blog of Sanjay Bakshi:
Mr. Charlie Munger would surely have enjoyed reading this superb article in New York Times Magazine published on 25 November.
The piece titled, "Dr. Drug Rep", is a moral story of Dr. Daniel Carlat, a medical man, who learnt how to deal with one of Mr. Munger's favorite mental models: Incentive-Caused Bias which Mr. Munger likes to describe as "whose bread I eat, his song I sing."
Every professional should read Dr. Carlat's story. It has powerful lessons for professions outside of medicine...
Mr. Munger likes to talk about incentive-caused bias as a very powerful psychological tendency, which makes, "a decent man, driven both consciously and subconsciously, by incentives, drift into immoral behavior in order to get what he wants."
Its fascinating to me to see what happens once incentive-cause bias sets in.
After his immoral behavior has started, the victim would come under the influence of several more psychological tendencies. For example, Operant Conditioning (It feels good, so I want more), Social Proof (everyone is doing it, so it must be OK), bias from Commitment and Consistency principle (I have to be consistent with my earlier, taken stand), and Low contrast effect (If I said yes to x, then saying yes to 1.01 x is no big deal) would combine together to produce rationalized immoral behavior. ("Man is not a rational animal, but a rationalizing one.")
It takes a lot of courage for a professional to speak out against the incentive caused bias spreading like cancer in his profession, which is exactly why such stories deserve to be recommended for reading...
For example, the accounting profession could do with more Dr. Carlats...
Article: Dr. Drug Rep
On Seeking Professional Help - By Dan Ferris
There's much documentation to show that most investors – individual and professional alike – fail to adequately appreciate how difficult, and therefore rare, is the production of outsized investment returns. I don't want to suggest that you're crazy to pursue such a goal, but I think most of us – again, individual and professional alike – ought to have no qualms about seeking, as it were, "professional help."
Seeking professional help means that, when the public equity markets offer you easy access to a great capital allocator, you should exploit the opportunity. The names I'm talking about include the folks in Omaha, Loews, Sears Holdings, Leucadia National, Markel, Fairfax Financial Holdings and the one I own, for which I shall advocate forthwith, Alleghany Corporation (NYSE: Y).
Notes from the 3rd Annual New York Value Investing...
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to Acquire 60% of Pritzker...
A big deal: Poker is getting younger, cleverer, du...
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave ...
Mark Sellers, Intelligent Investor - Motley Fool I...
Warren Buffett's Complete Squawk on Street Intervi...
The Structure of "Unstructured" Decision Processes...
Warren Buffett on Derivatives – from 2005 Berkshir...
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LeBron Inc. - The building of a billion-dollar ath...


text:
Q: PERCENTILE_DISC but using less than or equals in AWS Redshift The function PERCENTILE_DISC is equivalent to use
pandas.quantile(q=P, interpolation='higher')

Redshift documentation states:

PERCENTILE_DISC Window Function
  PERCENTILE_DISC is an inverse distribution function that assumes a discrete distribution model. It takes a percentile value and a sort specification and returns an element from the given set.
For a given percentile value P, PERCENTILE_DISC sorts the values of the expression in the ORDER BY clause and returns the value with the smallest cumulative distribution value (with respect to the same sort specification) that is greater than or equal to P.

How can I get the equivalent for lower? is possible Redshift devs just overlook 'lower' case?
pandas.quantile(q=P, interpolation='lower')

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


French accuse English of cultural piracy. UK Govt trying to think of a defence.
Makes yer proud to be British don't it?! Last month the nation was informed by Country Life magazine (briefed by the Portable Antiquities Scheme?) that critics of the British system are "scholars of the old school" (in other words, out of touch and wrong) and that Dr Lewis, Deputy Head of PAS, "actually welcomes" the activities of metal detectorists. Stupid French. And Irish. And indeed every other country on the globe. They just don't understand the lack of need to regulate artefact hunting like the British do ("a catastrophe for science" indeed! Damn fool French Culture Ministry!) so us sending our artefact hunters over to impose our Truths – a bit like we used to send missionaries – is exactly what they all need.
This has just been posted on a metal detecting forum …..
So, is that an exciting ten-person lost tractor parts hunt (which is legal under French law) or is it something else? And will the British authorities, including PAS and the Alliance to Reduce Crime against Heritage be having a conversation with their French counterparts or will they pretend they haven't read this or that it's not their concern? Are we Europeans or dog-in-the-manger Rosbifs with piratical standards?
Up Yours, Desforges! as the Sun might say.
Words (almost) fail me. I am appalled to hear that Brits are now plundering France as well.
Doing research on Iron Age sites in France was made just that much harder because publications (and often grey lit) had to avoid or obscure map data to avoid feeding information to metal detectorists. That being said – it's not just the British who are metal detectoring in France.
Indeed. A while back a detecting organisation (UKD Forum Database) offered to "give asylum" to the records of what French detectorists had dug up!
« Woman fined £600 for stubbing out cigarette at Stonehenge!


There's no time to eat Halloween candy when the last full week of October is packed with this much delicious-ness. And whether you want to grub on barbecue, sip fine wine, or indulge in uncommon ramen, there are choices galore for an unforgettable week on the Dallas dining scene.
Veteran wine maker Bob Lindquist guides guests through a five-course meal paired with wine selected from his award-winning winery to complement each dish. Courses include ahi tuna carpaccio, scotch bonnet egg salad, duck confit tortellini, and more. Tickets start at $85, and the dinner kicks off at 7 pm. For reservations, call 469-620-8463.
This six-course menu features culinary creations that bring emojis to the table, and each dish perfectly pairs with wine. The dinner features a menu with no descriptions or photos, only emojis. Tickets are $65 and the dinner starts at 7 pm.
Experience this "Iconic Gems of the World," four-course wine dinner paired with Terlato wines. Courses include stone crab two ways, Mediterranean seafood salad, center-cut filet, and New York-style cheesecake. Tickets are $200, and the evening festivities begin at 7 pm. Call 214-220-4201 to reserve your spot.
Who says Halloween has to be all about candy? Enjoy food, drinks, and live entertainment at this festival featuring some of the best restaurants in DFW (think Knife, Meso Maya, Stirr). Vegan and vegetarian options also will be offered. Costumes are optional but welcomed, and the three best each night will win great prizes. Tickets start at $65, and the festivities kick off at 7:30 pm on Friday and 7 pm on Saturday.
Amateur bakers of all ages are invited to join in the fun with their with a special award for best youth bakers under 16. All pies will be available for tasting by the public, who vote "Best of" in the categories of Fruit, Nut, Chocolate, Cream/Custard, Youth, Most Beautiful, and Best Overall. Entry fee for bakers is $10 per pie, and tasting tickets will be available the day of for $5. The contest kicks off at 10 am. Register online here.
Ten50 BBQ's William Weisiger is teaming up with Cobra Brewing Company to spend the day teaching attendees tricks to becoming a barbecue master. Guests will be educated on everything from how to choose the meat to how to smoke it to perfection. And, of course, they can enjoy barbecue by Ten50 and craft beer by Cobra Brewing during class. Tickets start at $20, and the class starts at 11 am.
Head to the Four Seasons' signature restaurant to enjoy a four-course chocolate dinner in celebration of National Chocolate Day. The evening begins with a welcome reception followed by a tasting menu with cacao carefully woven into each dish. Wine pairings are available for an additional cost. Tickets are $78, and the evening kicks off at 5:30 pm. Call 972-717-2420 to reserve your spot.
Once again, the national cuisine of Texas meets the dietary laws of the Bible as the Men's Club of Congregation Beth Torah presents this third annual event. The festival also features music from Counterfeit Radio, a kids zone, and great food. Proceeds from the event benefit programs and initiatives of the Congregation Beth Torah Men's Club such as CHAI (Community Homes for Adults, Inc.). Admission is free and food is available for purchase. The fun starts at 10 am.
Chef Alex Astranti collaborates with Julian Barsotti from Carbone's to create signature noodles and drinks for this epic evening of food and drink ramen style. The ramen costs $15, and a portion of the proceeds benefit the Houston hurricane relief efforts. Call 214-855-1354 to reserve your table.


A zesty, sweet-sour version of the classic G&T, the pour of cranberry juice adds a fruity touch to the clean botanics of Tanqueray London Dry Gin.
Pour Tanqueray London Dry Gin, tonic water and cranberry juice into the glass.
Using a jigger, measure 50ml Tanqueray London Dry Gin into the glass. Top up with 60ml cranberry juice and 60ml tonic water.
Get to know the Alcohol by Volume (ABV) of your favourite drinks so you can get an idea of how much you are drinking.
Launched in 1830, Tanqueray London Dry Gin is double-distilled with distinct citrus botanicals, particularly grapefruit, to the fore.


UCP of the North Bay supports Kamp Kennedy – a four-day camp that includes arts and crafts, song and dance active and passive games, and play groups. The annual summer day camp is provided by the City of Santa Rosa Recreation & Parks Department for school-age children at Kamp Kennedy located at Howarth Park. Accessible park facilities offer children the opportunity to go boating ride the carousel, take train rides, and pet animals at the zoo.
For more information about Kamp Kennedy, visit the official webpage here.
Dances for adults with disabilities are held at WineBev Services in Napa, California. These dances are open to the public and provide an excellent opportunity to meet some new friends, catch up with old ones, and have a great time.
Held 3 times per year.
Outdoor adventure activities include sea kayaking, white water rafting, and adapted cycling in partnership with Environmental Traveling Companions (ETC) and Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program (BORP). All activities are accessible for ambulatory and non-ambulatory children and adults with developmental disabilities.
Questions? Contact Jen Whalen, UCP of the North Bay Community Relations Director.


I've been a dreamhost customer for 7 months now… overall I'm happy with its features and performance, but response times from support have been a big issue since I signed up. I remember reading about Dreamhost working on this and hiring more support staff but in my personal experience nothing has improved. My tickets keep taking close to 24 hours to get an answer, sometimes longer, making support useless in most situations… it usually takes far less for problems to get fixed than it takes to get a simple response from support, even if its quick answers like "we're working on it", "we'll look into the problem" or "we expect a solution in 2 hours".
Well I'd like to know if I'm the only one experiencing this… what's your experience with support? How long does it usually take you to get answers from them? Have you seen any improvements in their response times in the last few months?
In the past, my tickets have been answered literally in minutes. The longest one was when the filer problems were occurring, but it was still a same day answer.
I've always gotten fairly quick support help, too, at least within an hour or maybe two. Except for today, which may be due to the power outage still causing problems. The support page says their "datacenter has experienced some power fluxuations" within the past 24 hours (as of this writing).
dreamhostsupport.com once again says "everything's fine" and I've been without email for almost 24 hours now - rubbish.
A response from support is nowhere to be found and there's 850+ support requests inthe queue. You think they don't have enough staff to handle things if there's any sort of problems?
I've got the same opinion. I've had a pretty good experience over the last year (a few temporary outages), but the past couple of weeks have been horrible.
I've also been without email for almost two days now. I sent a ticket in early this morning, but haven't heard a peep.
This, of course, comes on the heels of almost four straight days of no service of any kind last week.
Something isn't right at DH right now. I hope they can solve this and we can get back to business.
At least I know it isn't just me re: the email situation. Actually makes it more tolerable believe it or not. I just wish they'd post something. The emergency status page has yet another "everything's fine" now post. Several people are complaining about email, but nary an official peep.
Hey, do you know of a way to look at the support queue? How do you know there's 850+ plus?
I suspect all of the lingering problems relate to the file server problem of last week. Some of Dreamhost's central databases seem to be periodically unavailable thus causing various systems not to respond.
It'd be nice if Dreamhost were more up-front about these issues rather than saying everything is back up when it's not.
You'll get: +OK Password required.
The mail server will then immediately close the connection.
Curiously enough I can read my email with Pine.
I can read with Pine too, but since these recent problems cannot send (relaying denied). At least webmail works for me.
Also, I'm still getting 500 errors in this forum, and the wiki seems slower than before.
Hey, do you know of a way to look at the support queue? How do you know there's 850 plus?
"Still need to submit a support request?
You'll see how many requests are in the queue.
It's climbed to 908 open tickets now.
I can't help thinking that DreamHost could significantly reduce the support queue by ridding these forums of those damn 'Internal Server Errors'.
Support queue is up to 933 open tickets now. They closed the system wide issues that I had opened 20 hours ago without fixing the problem - mail is still not reachable via POP or webmail.
dreamhoststatus.com still says everything's peachy!
I'm beginning to thing they don't want any publically accessible forums available when it hits the fan - I mean how pathetic is it when a hosting company can't even keep their own support forum running?


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This is a rush transcript from "The Big Story With John Gibson and Heather Nauert," January 16, 2008. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
HEATHER NAUERT, CO-HOST: Douglas Kennedy joins us now with the clip of those frantic and horrible phone calls.
DOUGLAS KENNEDY, BIG STORY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Heather. These tapes show that at first the zoo employees did not believed the boy had actually been attacked, even calling his account crazy. The tapes also revealed paramedics refused to enter the zoo, fearing they might get attacked themselves.
CALLER: It's a matter of life and death!
KENNEDY (voice over): His friend lay dying and his brother bleeding but Kulbir Dhaliwal couldn't convince paramedics to come into the zoo and save them.
OPERATOR: I understand that, but at the same time we have to make sure the paramedics don't get chewed out, because if the paramedics get hurt hen nobody's going to help you.
KENNEDY: During summary frantic call with the 911, Kulbir estimates he has waited for 18 minutes for the circling paramedics. The call also reveals zoo workers were reluctant to aid the alleged tiger taunters, including Kulbir's brother, Paul and 17-year-old Carlos Sousa who later died from his injuries. Kulbir for instance screams at the manager of the zoo restaurant to get him something to stop the bleeding.
CALLER: Give me a towel, man! What's wrong with these people?
KENNEDY: And in another 911 call, two unidentified employees at the San Francisco Zoo are heard doubting the boy's story.
ZOO EMPLOYEE: They are screaming about an animal that has attacked them and there is no animal out.
OPERATOR: Is he saying that he was bitten? Is the patient saying that he was bitten by the animal?
ZOO EMPLOYER: He was saying he was bitten by an animal but there is no animal escaped so he could just be crazy.
KENNEDY: Michael Cardoza is the Sousa family attorney, and has now teamed up with famed California litigator, Mark Geragos, who is representing the brothers. Both are expected to file civil suits against the zoo and possibly the emergency response services. The zoo's director, meanwhile, strenuously defended his employee's actions. "I'm extremely satisfied that our zoo staff acted appropriately. Some of our staff did heroic things and I hope that eventually, they can be recognized for the way they handled some very difficult situations."
And a judge just issued a blow to the brothers and the family of Sousa, allowing police to search their car and cell phone for any evidence that the three had attempted to agitate the tiger, possibly with a slingshot. Geragos and Cardoza insist they did nothing untoward, pointing to the 911 tape as evidence of the zoo's indifference to keep patrons safe.
CARDOZA: Well, I mean, here you have a young man lying on the ground that just mauled by a tiger and some of the zoo people and some of the people on the phone are questioning whether they're telling the truth or not?
KENNEDY: Cardoza also told he is upset zoo employees did not take action quickly. He says, at that point, three people had already been mauled and had clearly been attacked by an animal and he says, John and Heather, he is going to hold them, of course, responsible.
GIBSON: Douglas, so, the cops that just got access to those guys' cell phones and car. When will we know what really happened in this?
KENNEDY: I talked to the San Francisco Police just a little while ago, and they say, they are not giving a timetable but it does not look like they're going to file any charges against the two men, but, you know, who knows. If they don't file charges, then we've got to wait for the civil case to come around and that could take months.
GIBSON: Douglas Kennedy. Douglas as always, thank you.


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text:
self isolation
jesus, socrates, mohammad, dc miller, et al. were all rejected and punished by society at large due to their virtue.
:crylarf:
A virus for an atomised society.
I wonder if this enforced isolation will wake people up, paradoxically, to how important it is to get out of the cocoon.
It could do the opposite too. People might wonder why they ever bothered working in an office etc once they've become accustomed to doing everything from home.
Maybe. This could definitely be a tipping point for WFH. But otoh I think people don't realise how important the social side of work is. Being unemployed is shit for the lack of money of course first and foremost but it's also isolating.
Although, imagine if rather than you and your mates all going to different offices in the morning you all met up and did your separate jobs together. Would that be disastrous?
The Cocoon Era.
I'm getting used to it. The movies feels like a sinking into it.
It's getting to the point where I'm starting to lose my sense of how things were before. That you could just go out whenever you felt like it, meet a bunch of people in the pub. It feels like a distant land.
Reactions: sufi
You didn't go out between lockdowns did you? I went to the pub heaps then.
Plus lots of drinking outside and eating Chinese
Nah, I just stayed as locked down as I could as I felt it was a matter of time before it kicked in again and I didn't want to get ill. I went to a mate's once, but that's about it in terms of social events. I've been for walks more or less every day.
Well I didn't get ill I threw the dice and I won baby
Still relevant
RIP Marvin.
I've mentioned this before but I think one interesting fork in the road is what happens when the shops disappear. We're crossed a threshold. People will still consume needless to say but consumer spending is no longer the main driver of the world economy. The internet is forcing 'bricks and mortar' shops out of business.
There's an opportunity, potentially, for a reclamation of public space. Shopping is a tragically degraded use of it in any case. Could there be a way to repurpose it for something which involved interaction and shared projects etc. Almost certainly not... but who knows
As retail continues to retreat, might our future high streets embrace the great outdoors?
Bulldoze the high street and build a giant park: is Stockton the future of Britain?
What do you do when M&S, Debenhams and New Look are all gone? Knock down the shopping centre and replace it with green space. Could the 'visionary' plan of Stockton-on-Tees spark a revolution?
www.theguardian.com
"Ever since Woolworths closed in 2008, Stockton Council has been rethinking what the town centre should be," says Cooke. "The future is not more shops. It's about leisure, culture, events and recreation, and making it a nice place for people to simply be."
This was basically Corpsey's High-Rise thread before Corpsey thought about High-Rise.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Pielęgniczka pięknopłetwa (Apistogramma steindachneri) – słodkowodna ryba z rodziny pielęgnicowatych. Hodowana w akwariach.

Występowanie
Ameryka Południowa - Surinam, Gujana i Wenezuela.

Charakterystyka
Mało agresywna, może przebywać w zbiorniku wielogatunkowym. W akwarium wymaga gęstej roślinności, korzeni, kryjówek wśród kamiennych konstrukcji oraz miękkiego podłoża. Tworzy stada haremowe. Zalecana obecność niewielkich kąsaczowatych i piękniczkowatych.

Dymorfizm płciowy
Samiec większy (dorasta do ok. 10 cm, samica do 6 cm długości). Dorosłe samce mają wydłużone płetwy, u samic płetwy zaokrąglone na krańcach.

Młode wylęgają się po ok. 3 dniach. Opiekę nad potomstwem sprawuje samica. Samiec strzeże rewiru.

Warunki w akwarium

Przypisy

Zobacz też
 Słodkowodne ryby akwariowe

Linki zewnętrzne
 Opis wg Fishbase (j.angielski)

Apistogramma
Ryby akwariowe
Gatunki i podgatunki zwierząt nazwane w 1908 roku

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia