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Short Selling Strategy for Value Investors

2012-01-25T20:34:00.001-08:00

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Carnival of Road to Financial Independence #39

2012-01-25T02:12:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the January 25, 2012 edition of road to financial independence. Frugal Living Jon Elder presents Start Thinking Like a Millionaire in 2012 posted at Free Money Wisdom, saying, "2012 is the year you start getting serious about your finances and achieving your goal of becoming a millionaire." Tim @ Faith and Finance presents 25 Simple Ways to Save Money posted at Faith and

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Stock Portfolio and Watch List Updates for January 2012

2012-01-23T20:19:00.000-08:00

Tracking Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Holdings

2012-01-19T20:40:00.000-08:00

Bill Ackman, a New York hedge fund manager, is the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management LP. Currently, he operates three funds: The Pershing Square, Pershing Square II, and Pershing Square International. The inception date of the flagship fund Pershing Square is Jan. 1, 2004, while that of the latter two funds are a year later at Jan. 1, 2005. Cumulative returns for the

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Munnar Trip Report

2012-01-18T21:26:00.000-08:00

Munnar, a hill-station in the Western Ghats, ranked high in our list of must-visit places for our first summer vacation back in Kerala. Located at 1600 meters above sea level, it is considered among the most beautiful hill-resort towns in Southern India. Munnar is less than 120 km east of Kakkanad but the trip can take upwards of three hours – it will be lot longer for first timers, as

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Tracking Bruce Berkowitz's Fairholme Fund Holdings

2012-01-12T07:13:00.001-08:00

Bruce Berkowitz, a Miami fund advisor, is the founder and managing member of Fairholme Capital Management, LLC. He is the advisor for three mutual funds: Fairholme Fund (FAIRX), Fairholme Focused Income Fund (FOCIX), and Fairholme Allocation Fund (FAAFX). Read more at Seeking Alpha...

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Holyland Trip - Gotchas to avoid

2012-01-10T20:33:00.000-08:00

Holyland trip was our first time traveling with an organized tour group. Undoubtedly the biggest edge such arrangements have is the ability to provide the vacationer the opportunity to experience much more than going solo. However traveling with groups has numerous catches too. Below is a list – not all applies to everyone as some are specific to this tour group and the tour company while

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401K & Retirement Accounts 2011 Performance Summary

2012-01-01T08:55:00.000-08:00

The total return this year was -6.22%, well below the 14.24% return we achieved last year. The performance compares with the returns of domestic indexes which are flat, emerging market indexes which are down over 20%, and other developed market indexes which are also down over 20%. We started the year with an allocation of 37-34-29 among Domestic, International, and Bond Funds respectively and

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Carnival of Financial Independence #38

2011-12-27T18:25:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the December 27, 2011 edition of road to financial independence. Beating Inflation Michael Sanders presents How to Get the Best Return on Savings posted at Smart Savings. Frugal Living Jonathan from Debt Loans presents Four Tips for Saving on Transportation Costs posted at Wallet Watcher, saying, "For people who have places to go but don’t want to spend an arm and

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R2I Living - Public Water Service

2011-12-26T20:15:00.001-08:00

Kerala is famous for its monsoons and receives on the average 140 rainy days a year. Despite this, many Keralites moving into newly-built homes will testify receiving public water service as a tedious process. At the time of hand-over, the only water available for consumption in our community was from a common RO-Plant (Reverse Osmosis) setup by the builder. The plant functioned on

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Stock Portfolio and Watch List Updates for December 2011

2011-12-19T23:48:00.000-08:00

Following are the activity from the previous month: a) Liquidated the following long positions: Becton Dickinson (BDX) at $73.41 for a 4.5% gain, Owens & Minor (OMI) at $30.55 for an 8.66% gain, US Bancorp (UDB) at $25.28 for a 3.73% gain, Pfizer Inc (PFE) at $19.95 for a 9.86% loss, and Google (GOOG) at $623.21 for a 17.86% gain. b) Closed the following short put positions:

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Kelly Criterion based strategies for value investing

2011-12-14T01:37:00.000-08:00

Kelly criterion is a very simple formula that returns a percentage value for the size of bets as edge divided by odds. It essentially tells you the best bet size for you to realize maximum returns after n rounds. The original formula is suitable for betting and gambling scenarios. Variations of the criterion have been applied successfully in many areas including as a money management sytem.

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Holyland Trip Report - Old Cairo - Day 8

2011-12-12T22:22:00.001-08:00

On the morn of our final day we visited Old Cairo before boarding the afternoon flight back home. The breakfast buffet included Om Ali, a popular breakfast dish in Egypt made from flour, almonds, and other nuts. It is similar to oats but very sweet and can be eaten hot or cold. The most popular and common dish in Egypt is Kushari, regarded by many as the national dish. It is traditionally a

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Holyland Trip Report – Suez Canal, Cairo - Day 7

2011-12-08T22:38:00.001-08:00

Mount Sinai (city of Saint Catherine) to Cairo is around 520 km by road and was the most exhausting leg of the whole trip. Wake-up call was at 4AM and by 5AM we were on our way complete with packed breakfast. The ‘helpers’ in the bus became five for this road-trip – main guide, two helper guides, bus driver, and a gun man – the gun man, provided by the Egyptian authorities, is mandatory for

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Covered Call Strategy for a Stable Income Portfolio

2011-12-03T22:48:00.001-08:00

Constructing a stable income portfolio can be pretty challenging in an environment of low interest rates. Options that guarantee capital preservation such as bank fixed deposits, treasury bonds and bills (assuming it is held to maturity) provide comparatively little income. Holding defensive dividend paying stocks is a strategy that many investors use. The option is somewhat risky in that

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Holyland Trip Report – Egypt – Red Sea, Sinai - Day 6

2011-11-29T02:30:00.001-08:00

Sinai is around 440 km from Jerusalem with the Taba border crossing (Eilat) in between. The desert country-side along the way is dotted with Bedouin (native semi-nomadic Arab tribes) dwellings. The major attractions on this route are: Qumran Caves: A series of natural and artificial caves discovered by the archaeological team of Qumran (around 45 minutes from Jerusalem). The famous Dead

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Carnival of Road to Financial Independence #37

2011-11-23T06:14:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the November 22, 2011 edition of road to financial independence. Beating Inflation Carlos Sera presents A Preservation Tale posted at Financial Tales, saying, "This tale is specifically written for those that are looking for ways to deal with periods of high inflation with a secondary consideration for dealing with high inflation and receiving periodic income from your

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Stock Portfolio and Watch List Updates for November 2011

2011-11-20T22:08:00.001-08:00

Following are the activity from the previous month: Added Microsoft (MSFT) at $26.23 with 8% of portfolio on 11/7/2011. Added Market Vectors Etf Gold Trust (GDX) at $62.69 with ~2% of portfolio on 11/7/2011. Added Spider Gold Trust (GLD) at $173.56 with ~2% of portfolio on 11/7/2011. Diebold (DBD) Shares worth ~1.5% of portfolio were assigned to us at $35 as our cash-covered put position on

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Berkshire Hathaway US stock portfolio ten-year performance - Best Guess

2011-11-19T08:43:00.000-08:00

We got a request to come up with a guesstimate for the actual returns of Berkshire Hathaway’s US stock portfolio returns for the last ten years. So, here is our attempt: as some background, Berkshire Hathaway does not provide this information in any of the regulatory filings and chooses not to do so in his annual letter to shareholders. Instead, Warren Buffett keeps a tally of the book value of

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Tracking Seth Klarman's Baupost Group Portfolio: Q3 2011 Update

2011-11-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

This series of articles will be ongoing updates that analyze changes to Baupost’s U.S. stock portfolio from quarter to quarter. Read more at Seeking Alpha... Related Posts: Tracking Seth Klarman's Baupost Group Holdings.

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Tracking David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital Portfolio - Q3 2011 Update

2011-11-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

This series of articles will be ongoing updates that analyze changes to David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital US stock portfolio from quarter to quarter. Read more at Seeking Alpha... Related Posts: David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital Holdings over the years -an introduction.

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Tracking Mohnish Pabrai's Portfolio - Q3 2011 Update

2011-11-16T18:09:00.000-08:00

This series of articles will be ongoing updates that analyze changes to Mohnish Pabrai’s US stock portfolio from quarter to quarter. Read more at Seeking Alpha... Related Posts: Tracking Stocks in Mohnish Pabrai's Investment Funds.

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Tracking The Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio - Q3 2011 Update

2011-11-16T18:06:00.000-08:00

This series of articles will be ongoing updates that analyzes changes to Berkshire Hathaway’s US stock portfolio from quarter to quarter. Read more at Seeking Alpha... Related Posts: Tracking Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio over the last ten years.

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David Einhorn's Holdings - PART III

2011-11-14T19:15:00.000-08:00

This article is the final piece of a 3-part series. (Click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2). Some very public short-selling made David Einhorn a familiar name starting in the early 2000s. But Greenlight Capital’s shorting acumen was evident from the late 1990s. Read more at Seeking Alpha...

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David Einhorn’s Holdings - PART II

2011-11-11T17:39:00.000-08:00

At any given time Greenlight Capital holds both long and short positions, with a marked inclination to long. Independent of the market swing, its bottom-up value analysis of companies is expected to yield positive returns for Greenlight’s investments. This proprietary analysis aims to identify investments based on misconceptions in the market, either on the long or short side. Read more at

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