youve done any research in this. And what about hyperloops?

http://news.illinois.edu/news/13/041...lliamKing.html

And its suposed to be scalable. But yeah i guess thats gonna take more then a few years before its ready.

Well isn`t there a huge Race going on at the moment in the electriccarworld? I highly doubt the money that is flowing in Research at the moment is comparable to the 1970s or prolly the whole time frame from 1900-2010 or something.

also im pretty sure that tesla is using technology that came in 1992, so i guess i can tell the 70's to stick their timetraveltelephone up their arse.

So you think that long term trends don't get weaker the further they go? You don't believe in substitution? You don't think that as something gets more expensive people will be ever more willing to explore alternatives?

I mean yeah at current price levels electric cars aren't all THAT viable. At the same time they are looking a hell of a lot more viable going forward than they have at any point in the past. Much like oil shale they'll get more and more interesting to consumers as oil prices go further and further.

And that is why oil prices cannot simply balloon out. The Chinese will not allow their people to simply consume as much oil as Americans do, because their air is already gas mask worthy. Within 5-10 years expect to see them get even more serious about the environment (they're actually already quite serious). Also the Chinese are facing the biggest demographic nightmare in human history because of their one child policies, the main spear point of which will have hit them long before 2030.

Dude. Long range forecasts are toilet paper. They just are. They are right about as often as random chance would be. This is because the world is complicated and there are many, many variables. Long range is anything greater than 3-5 years. Medium range forecasts are usually off by a significant amount. (but still better than nothing)

LOL fine. The oil company that I own is one that basically every special opportunity investor should already be well aware of: MUR.

I don't really feel like doing a full write up of it (because that would be a lot of work)... But if anyone has any random questions I'll be happy to answer them in the context of my actual entry price which was 63.58.

what do you think about the murphy spin off that is going to happen. And why do you think oil prices will go up. I looked at the graph and they dont really seem to be at an all time low.

I hope I didnt come across like I was picking on you or hating on your post. Alot of people post buys like this, I just happened to see yours and thought I would use it as an opportunity to bring up some theory.

That theory being that too many people in this tread post things like GM, or AAPL or MSFT as longs and think thats good value investing. they could be good values, but its very unlikely you have any more knowledge or a better understanding than the market, so your are playing in the wrong sandbox.

If you have a 100k portfolio, you big advantage you have over pros is you can buy a 150mm marketcap company. so spend your time researching things like that than buying msft guys.

+1 definitely applies to the trading side as well.

Speaking of 150mm market caps, does anyone want to explain why SKUL is such a steal?

All time low is obviously hyperbole. They were at ~95$ a barrel when I bought MUR. There is very little chance of them getting significantly worse. Historically oil is fairly cheap right now imo.

I think the spinoff is a huge catalyst that will unlock shareholder value. For an example of how great this has been for integrated oil companies look back on the Marathon spin off (which I made a fair bit of money on).

I mostly agree with this. At the same time I think there are situations where mega cap companies are available for prices that are low enough to make a 'value investor' pull the trigger and be in the right sandbox to boot. The market is just capable of tremendous amounts of irrationality... And sometimes that applies to larger cap stocks.

The perfect example of this would be CSCO in the late summer of 2011. It traded for <14.00 at the bottom. Yes the whole market was cheap, but that was absurd.

They have been a marketer of really low quality headphones (they did ok at that). They are restructuring to build and sell higher quality headphones (we don't know whether they will do well at that).

There were more detailed analyses earlier in this thread.

It's a generally substandard company that is very, very, very, very, very cheap. Did I mention it was cheap? Yes... It's cheap.

I have never found a cheap company that wasn't cheap for a reason. Sometimes it is a good enough reason for it to continue to get cheaper.

I looked at it at the IPO and again recently and decided to pass.

I don't even think it is that cheap. It's not trading below NAV or NCAV. Which is why I'm also leaning towards pass.

There are basically no businesses with any kind of business at all that trade for below NAV or NCAV. That's the level of cheap where you rapidly find out that it is under investigation for fraud.

Benjamin Graham laid out a great framework for value investing, but he wouldn't be able to make a single investment today. It's just how things are in finance. Things work for a while (sometimes a long while) eventually though they stop working. Buying stocks for less than the value of the current assets is one of those things.

EDIT: It's important to note that when I say 'there are basically no businesses' that leaves open room for exceptions to the rule. There are definitely absurdly cheap micro caps that might randomly trade below NCAV for a little while. Not exactly a common occurrence though.

I mean it's a totally different proposition at its current price vs the IPO. At the current price their business is worth more than the market cap if it stays the same. Even if it shrinks a little bit it's still going to be worth more than it's selling for. Does anyone have any reason to believe they are going to suddenly stop being a cheap brand of headphones?

Add to this the fact that they could actually look better directly after the reorg (and this is going a lot happen more often than the reorg actually working long term... personally I won't be holding the stock and waiting to see what happens. If I get a reasonable price for SKUL I'll be gone in an instant)

Wasn't slamming your trade. I am on the fence. SKUL is a potential growth story, but not one that interests me enough to put my money where my mouth is.

Given my primary investing strategy is very close to Benjamin Graham style value investing and served me quite well, I will say that his strategies are still very valid today. Oh well, as long as we are all making money then whatever; there is certainly more than one way to skin the cat as I am quickly learning in the trading threads.

Ugh thought of you today

their astro headsets are considered at least in the top 2 and mostly on no1 in alot of reviews. And i think they are working on a deal with microsoft because old headsets wont be compatible with the new xbox one. I dont think that willl be the case for the ps4 tho. If they do get that deal, that would be nice. Even if theyr not, old headsets are not going to be compatible, so that should be a nice boost no?

also:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/6/prweb10815825.htm

Also turtle gaming is kind of sloppy lately, adn they hold the largest market share. I wonder what this would mean in numbers

I agree. If you can find companies selling for less than NCAV where you have a chance of getting your money out I'm very impressed. How do you handle the fraud risk though?

seems that the internet kind of ruined that opportunity? Now finding opportunities like that are just a few mouseclicks away. And in graham's time you had to request a bookwork, and know about it in the first place. You couldnt just look up some investment strategy online, and know very quickly which 8 books to read to get better at it. And you couldnt instantly filter out from a few thousand stocks to see their price to book value.

It seems smarter to me to use the wealth of information out there now to get an advantage in situations that look mediocre or bad when you glance over them. Since people are still lazy.

Also what does it mean when a microcap company changed auditors like 4 times over the past 10 years? No disagreements, they just fired them, and got new ones after every 2-3 years. Could this simply mean that they found cheaper ones? Especially if its a pretty small company.

Auditors are supposed to be replaced every few years. Just an fyi.

I would. Hybrids still sell only a fraction of the total market and an even smaller percentage of the total fleet.

Lots and lots of careful vetting

Which is probably why I only find <10 candidates a year, from which I invest in like 2-3. But that is good enough since my turnover isn't really high anyway.