Moved to...

Just for the curious: I've started two new blogs, Systemically Important and The Guru Five.

The former will cover everything from business to pop culture (in a hopefully humorous way); the latter will focus on the thoughts and actions of five investors well worth following: Warren Buffett, David Einhorn, Marty Whitman, Ken Heebner and Ian Cumming.

You can read snippets of my latest posts underneath the "new blogs" label on the right hand side of the screen.

Bad Thinking

Actual quote from a World Bank economist: “In our base case simulation there is an upside case that, er, corresponds on the flipside of the downside case in kind of an adverse direction.” Taken from an FT.Com column by Lucy Kellaway.

Moving On...

Hope everyone is doing well these days. I'm leaving this blog alone for (at least) a while.

It's been a good experience and at times a pleasure. Stalkers can be persistent though, and can rob one of the motivation to write.

Of course I've been meaning to put a halt to my efforts here anyway and focus on the other projects I have going--so this isn't that sad of a moment for me. For the people who come here often this probably isn't that much of a surprise either.

In any case, for the nostalgic or the curious, my five favorite posts are as follows (in no particular order):

1. The post where I blogged from memory the time Paulson and Bernanke met with the House Financial Committee when the crisis first started. Though it was only blogged the morning after, events since have made it much more interesting (at least to me).

2. The post on basic investing principles--which focused on how to think about investments, and possibly a lot more in one's life.

3. The post on Dick Fuld getting knocked the flock out--which, like the one where Benny B used up all his ammunition in the first round, was bloody fun.

4. The post on an agriculture company where I shared some scuttlebutt and looked at investing in it--with Leucadia's investment strategy being used as a frame of reference.

5. The post I made predicting that since the principle had been established that suffering is a blank check on the resources of others we can expect to see the number of needy demanding help multiply--and the follow-up posts (especially this one).

POT: Buyback Update

Per the just released SEDI filings PotashCorp bought back a total of 379,200 shares--at an average price of 69.13 per share. Given the release of quarterly results, the Company couldn't make a purchase until the 24th of last month--and that's when we started to see buying from them.

One insider, Bernie Rock, sold 9,925 shares; another, Robert A. Jaspar, purchased 2,000 shares at the end of the month for $66.85.

Bill Doyle, the Company's CEO, exercised 10 year options before they expired and sold a huge amount--too many for my aching head to count now but much less than his current ownership in the Company via both directly held shares and (3.2m) unexercised options. Proceeds were used to fund previous exercises and the related tax bill.

How Many Boxes Do You Have?

If a roundhouse kick by Chuck Norris impregnated a calender filled with witty quotes, what would be the result? Fifty two weeks of brilliant posts at Seth Godin's blog, that's what--and each one would kick ass.

"Your career is not a boat. Neither is your business.

A boat with even a small leak is going to sink. You, on the other hand, don't need to be perfect to succeed. Imagine that you have a 4 x 4 grid to fill with assets. If it's a business, it might be location, reputation, staff, offerings that are in high demand and a sector that's robust... if you're doing it for yourself, it might include your resume, your network, your skill set, etc.

...

That's why human nature is so enraging. When something is going wrong, when the economy is out of sync, we panic. We obsess about just one of the sixteen boxes and ignore the others. We talk ourselves into hysteria about how, "none of our customers have any money," or, "in this bleak economy, we'll never make a sale." Instead of using the relative downtime to build up the other 15 boxes, we just sit in the corner, keening, worrying about that one box that's out of whack.

By focusing on the red box, the sore one, and ignoring the other elements of what makes our product or career worth marketing, we cause two problems. First, our attention does no good at all on the problem at hand, and second, the other boxes suffer...

The above is excerpted from a post made a while ago, but which I've found very helpful of late. Since it's election day, you guys might be interested in the marketing lessons that can be learned from this year's campaigns.