Hedged In

Berkshire's 50-to-1 split of its Class B shares (BRK.B) will bring some much-awaited liquidity to the highly-coveted and highly-expensive stock. "This stock split, more so than anything else that’s happened lately, may be one of the single best investing opportunities of the decade," Phil Davis says.

Totally nuts. How can a stock split EVER be a buying opportunity? And you have to ask yourself: if Buffett is paying in stock when he has enough cash for the transaction, what does that tell you about his view of BRK.B's relative value?

4 ETFs Ideas for the Battle of the Smartphones

I think you're right that the key beneficiaries are the network operators and the semiconductor component suppliers. Margins for the smartphone providers themselves will fall, particularly AAPL and RIMM.

Personal Privacy

Thanks for the link. The map, particularly, was very interesting.

Grantham: Overvalued Markets Due for an Adjustment

Why didn't you link to the full article by Jeremy Grantham? It's here (in PDF):
www.gmo.com/websitecon...

A key selling point for gold, of course, is that it's a store of value that's hard to make disappear. Which is why some are troubled that the serial-numbered Friday physical bar listings from [[GLD]] - the largest U.S. gold-backed ETF - shrank from over a thousand pages to around 200 for a couple of weeks this month, before jumping back to 855 pages after growing online chatter.

Has anyone looked at SGOL? It's a gold ETF, but claims that it's audited, stored in Switzerland etc. seekingalpha.com/symbo...

U.S. Generational Shift is Key to Future Consumer Spending

Outstanding article.

Just how long was Galleon Group trading on inside information? Judging from the Madoff-like 20%-plus returns going back to 1992, maybe the entire time.

There's a thin line between great channel checks and inside information. It looks like they crossed that line, and built the firm on that. Lots of others don't.

Upscale vs. Downscale: Luxury Retailers Dramatically Outperforming Wal-Mart

Prescient article - congratulations. ROB continued to outperform, and for an obvious reason: it's more leveraged to an economic recovery. Or to put the same thing differently: WMT is more insulated from a recession.

Cetin caught on camera

Thanks Jesse!

Julian Robertson on Debt, Sudden Stops and More

Excellent interview -- Julian Robertson is a rock star.

But I'm left wondering: Why would China want to cause a collapse in the dollar, ie. a collapse in the foreign purchasing power of Americans? That would lead to a collapse of US imports from China.

Cetin caught on camera

What did he say? It wasn't so clear.

Today in Commodities: Holiday Volume

"U.S. inventories of distillate fuels, which include heating oil, are at their highest since January 1983, the U.S. Energy Department said Sept. 23. Stockpiles of 170.8 million barrels in the week ended Sept. 18 are 28 percent above the five-year average."

Source: bloomberg.com/apps/new...

Google Brings Back Web Site Annotation with Sidewiki

Sidewiki is smart for GOOG - it potentially gives it future ad inventory on every web page on the internet, irrespective of whether Google owns that web page. And as the comment above notes, it means that Google owns the "community" on website. But this is potentially bad for the large publishers like NWS NYT YHOO MSFT.

The challenge will be whether people will use something that is a Google Toolbar feature and later a browser feature, instead of plain text on a webpage.

Intel faces up to ARM

Excellent article -- thank you.

All That Glitters Is Not Gold

Have you looked at the short interest on gold? Interested to hear your thoughts about that - why it's risen and what the implications are.