Index_Is_Hard_To_Beat

Contrarian Short Base Rises for Palm

The Palm Pre is late to a crowded party (RIM & iPhone) and Dell is already working with Google on the next version of the Android. This may not be a smart play for Google but they have $17B in cash and can afford a miss here and there and their entry into the market will come at Palm's expense. Palm is burning cash and already has has $400 million in debt. For Palm to get to scale will probably cost more in marketing dollars than the have.

Markel Corp. Q2 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

Sorry - make that MKL in the last sentence.

Markel Corp. Q2 2008 Earnings Call Transcript

Thanks for posting this transcript.

One important correction:

In the 3rd to last paragraph of Thomas Gayner's initial comments, the paragraph which starts: "Over the course of the last two and a half years we've been driving without foot on the brakes when it comes to allocating money to equities."

This should read "with our foot on the brakes"

The change makes for a very different meaning as the allocation to cash has grown over the past 2 years and that should serve MLK well when that cash is invested during this recession.

Newcastle, RAIT Financial: The Long Case for REITs

Generally agreed but this analysis completely discounts any problems with NCT's commercial real estate loans (most of their portfolio) as we are heading into a recession and there will not be clarity on that for several quarters.