Circle of Competence

You are browsing the archives of 2008 July.

Steak N Shake (SNS), led by newly installed Chairman Sardar Biglari, has had a quite an interesting week or two.  I want to highlight 3 pieces of news for those following the story:
1. Administrative Outings:
The first is the resignation of CFO Jeff Blade, who had been subject to the criticism of Biglari and Co. since their [...]

Last week, I answered 20 Questions for Geoff Gannon, author of the always amazing Gannon on Investing.  Geoff has been running this series since his early days a few years ago, and has accumluated some awesome interviews that I’ve enjoyed reading.  There are intereviews in there from Jonathan Heller (Cheap Stocks), John Bethel (Controlled Greed), and [...]

About a week ago, I came across an interesting article called The Checklist on the blog Street Capitalist. The piece, from the New Yorker, was about a doctor who, through the use of checklists, was able to dramatically improve the critical care unit of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Today, I posted a Reflection on the other blog [...]

Note 5/20/08:
Based on the excellent comments and questions coming in below, I want to make this clear: I am agnostic as to how Sears achieves it success and valuation.  This column was not to argue the merits of retail, or to even suggest that I am betting on a retail turnaround for Sears, merely what [...]

Today is a momentous day, readers, for the state of the global financial system. In a shocking historic mandate, Congress, in concert with the SEC and the U.S. Treasury, has declared that all short sellers with open positions in financial companies must close their positions within three days, followed by a transfer of the newly liquid capital to the [...]

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending the 2008 Annual Meeting for my favorite young company, Western Sizzlin’ (WEST).  As you all know pretty well by now, I’m an unabashed fan of what Sardar Biglari is doing with Western Sizzlin’, and a shareholder myself.  The meeting took place is mid-town Manhattan at the St. [...]

Via Abnormal Returns, I came across a great article written by former Harvard Endowment portfolio manager, and now PIMCO manager, Mohamed El-Erian. He actually put out a book recently, which I may or may not get around to reading this century called >When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change
Anyway, he [...]