Warren Buffett versus Pranab Mukherjee

Interesting juxtaposition on the front page of today's Financial Times: The paper leads with Berkshire's $27 billion buyout offer for the ~77% of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and highlights this quote by Buffett:

It's an all-in wager on the future of the U.S.

That makes the bet seem a little riskier than it is, I think. The bet seems fairly agnostic about, say, the future of American manufacturing or exports. The railroad will make money shipping imports in from the ports or exports out to them. In any case, here's what the FT had below the fold: news that India sold dollars to buy 200 tons of gold. Excerpt:

Pranab Mukherjee, India's finance minister, said the acquisition reflected the power of an economy that laid claim to the fifth-largest global foreign reserves: "We have money to buy gold. We have enough foreign exchange reserves."

He contrasted India's strength with weakness elsewhere: "Europe collapsed and North America collapsed"

USEG News

Would have blogged about this earlier, but I got a late start today and was on the go. Shares of U.S. Energy Corp. (Nasdaq: USEG) were up 21.68% today, mainly on the announcement of positive results at the second of its Bakken wells:

U.S. Energy Corp. Announces Initial Production Rate of Approximately 1,776 BOE/D From the BCD Farms 16-21 #1H Bakken Well.

Also, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that "market talk" suggested that Standard Steam Trust planned to raise a minimum of C$50 million in an IPO. Recall that USEG purchased 25% of the privately-held geothermal company for about $3.5 million at the end of last year. Recall also USEG CEO Keith Larsen's comments to us about Standard Steam back in August:

Keith Larsen predicted that USEG's investment in Standard Steam Trust would be a ten-bagger within two years. He noted the advantages of Geothermal versus other alternatives such as solar and wind (Geothermal's always on, so it doesn't need a back up power source), and mentioned that a Canadian geothermal company, Magma Energy recently raised over $100 million in an IPO.

Christie FTW

Former Goldman chief Jon Corzine loses despite outspending former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie by $12 million: Republican Christie captures NJ governor's seat.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder writes,

The Republican wins in New Jersey and Virginia and the close race in New York City tells us...
...self-financers, people affiliated with Big Wall Street, the Old Money Crowd, the establishment, the party leadership... are being put on notice. Not a Democratic or Republican thing...but a gun, fired by the political regulars -- not the newer Obama turnout cohort but the regular off-year cohort -- at the heart of those who protect those in power, at bailouts, at spending.

Also: very easy alternate explanation: the economy sucks. States are really hurting. Governors are very unpopular. Their support is going to crater.

Because pointing and walking is epic

Hat tip to Hit Coffee for this clever commercial for a business that sells refurbished mobile homes:



And hat tip for the Hackensack for digging deep to find this video of the making of that commercial:



I may have to hire these guys to make a commercial for Shortscreen.com.

New site

If you're new here, please take a moment to read the post below, which is a message from our sponsor.




A few of you have already seen the demo version of this site, but the live version of it is up now: ShortScreen.com. This site features an automated calculator and a screener based on the Altman models. With the calculator, all you need to do is enter a stock symbol, and the calculator will instantly give you that company's Altman Z-score, or Altman Z"-score, if it's a non-manufacturing company.

The screener runs the Altman Z-Score model on all of the manufacturing stocks in the site's database, and the Altman Z"-Score on all the non-manufacturing stocks. You can pick a minimum share price and then see a list of the 50 most distressed stocks at or above that share price, out of the universe of roughly 3,000 stocks in the site's database. You'll find a couple of the short positions I've mentioned previously on this blog among the 50 most distressed stocks at or above $9 per share.

If, like me, you think it's prudent to include some short positions in your portfolio, perhaps you will agree that a list of stocks that the Altman models predict are headed for bankruptcy might be worth considering as potential candidates for short selling (or buying puts on them, if the particular stocks have options).

The site also has a message board system with a couple of unique features. The first is that, unlike other stock message boards, there will be no bias against skeptical or bearish comments. If you've ever posted one of those on a typical message board, you probably noticed that it quickly got deleted. That makes it tough to find a balanced discussion about any stocks.

The other unique feature is the premium ranking system. Premium members will have the authority to rank comments on a scale from one to five stars. Comments that have an average rank of less than two stars after several votes will be deleted, and the highest-ranked comments will move to the top. Although non-paying registered users and paying premium members will both be able to post on the message boards, the site limits the ranking authority to premium members to discourage anyone from creating multiple accounts in order to manipulate the ranking system (which is pretty common, unfortunately, on Yahoo's message boards).

Premium members will also have the opportunity to become affiliates, and get paid to refer other premium members to the site. When you become an affiliate, you'll get a unique bit of HTML code for an affiliate badge that you can copy and paste onto your site. When you do, it will look like this:



When visitors click on your affiliate badge, they'll go to a special version of the Shortscreen sign-up page where they will get a 5% discount off of the regular membership rate, and your affiliate account will be credited with the referral.

The image above was one of the later preliminary sketches by my logo designer. At that point we were refining the steepness of the hump of the bear's withers. I wanted it to be steep to connote aggression, but when it got too steep it looked too wolf-like.

Can't do housegirls

Eliot Spitzer is the subject of this weekend's Lunch with the FT. In it, FT interviewer (and Spitzer biographer) Brooke Masters writes,

But the spectre of Ashley Dupré, the 22-year-old prostitute who became Spitzer’s downfall, hangs over the conversation. At one point we are comparing notes on skiing, and I make a pitch for how nice it was to have a catered chalet with what I refer to as a “houseboy or housegirl” to cook all the meals.

“Housegirls I can’t do,” he says bluntly.

From foursquare to FIVEsquare

In a recent post ("Blogging like it's 1999") we mentioned Fred Wilson's portfolio company Foursquare. One of Fred's regular commenters, entrepreneur and investor Andy Swan, also mentioned it on his blog. This was his take (Introducing FIVEsquare):

By now you’ve probably heard of foursquare, the mobile internet sensation that has everyone talking, and VC’s opening their checkbooks.

But just like 7 minute abs and 6 hour power crushed their competition, we are here today to bring an even more effective product to the world.

Introducing, FIVEsquare…. the “mobile meets local” web pi app of the future. It is to local-mobile-apps what dippin’ dots is to ice cream, if you catch my drift.

So how does FIVEsquare work?

Because FIVEsquare is common-sense based, it requires no download, no install and no login. There are several ways to make FIVEsquare work for you:

One to One communication: When you want to know where a friend is on FIVEsquare, you simply pull your phone out of your pocket and either dial their phone number (VOICEsquare), or send them a SMS message (TEXTsquare) with the following message “Hey, where are you?” Unlike foursquare, if you are leaving where you are at and going somewhere else, you can tell your friend where you are going, and what time you can meet there (PREDICTsquare)

One-to-Many Location notification: Let’s say you want to tell all of your friends where you’re at or where you’re going. With FIVEsquare, you simply send out a message on twitter (TWITsquare) something like this “I’m going to the saloon around 7:00 if anyone wants to meet up!”. Let FIVEsquare do the rest. Before you know it, individual friends will be meeting you places or using VOICEsquare to get more details and let you know where they are going!

Friend Nearby Alerts: FIVEsquare utilizes “visual recognition technology” to alert you whenever your friend is in the same location as you. To utilize this service (SEEsquare), simply put your phone into your pocket when you walk into a location, look around and see if there is anyone in there that you recognize. Another FIVEsquare miracle!

Badges and Titles: With FIVEsquare, you don’t have to go into a place a certain number of times or compete with others for rewards and titles. Simply decide (CLAIMsquare) what you want to be for this location (King, Mayor, Lord, Peasant, Dictator, etc) and claim it! Then, tell people that you are the ____ of _____ and they will give you just as much respect as anyone is getting on foursquare!

Locations: While foursquare only works in select cities, FIVEsquare already works world-wide. Any location, anytime. That’s our promise to you.

So…what are you waiting for? Whether you want to invite friends to join you somewhere via VOICEsquare, figure out where your friends are via SEEsquare, or increase your prestige via CLAIMsquare, you’re in business with our new startup. Get out there and start using FIVEsquare to improve your social life today!

p.s. To help spread the word about FIVEsquare, please use the #fivesquare tag and let your friends know that you connected to them via fivesquare. We’ll be running a beta-test in Louisville this evening.