Circle of Competence

You are browsing the archives of 2008 August.

The results for Sears’ (SHLD) second fiscal quarter are now out and, for most people, they are not very pretty.  Year over year sales declines, net income down, lowered guidance.  These things are, in essence, death to any retailer, or any publicly traded corporation for that matter.
Here are some headlines I read this morning:
Sears Falls [...]

I can’t vouch for much of academic finance.   When it comes to this field, academics tell us all about beta, risk adjusted this and Sharpe weighted that. Though the reality of the situation is that finance and economics are not easily definable subjects with physics-like rules, academics try to prove otherwise, [...]

As a frequent reader, and now small-time contributor, to the Berkshire Hathaway group over at MSN, created and wonderfully maintained by Sanjeev Parsad, I was intrigued by a recent post regarding the dumping of Pinnacle Airlines (PNCL) by Mohnish Pabrai.  Before I begin, I want readers to understand that Mohnish is one of my idols in [...]

Here it is folks, the first quarter for Steak N Shake, under the watch of Sardar Biglari, is now in the books.
Instead of me giving you all the quotes, you might as well just go ahead and read the press release.  There are too many great quotes for me to choose one or two.
Basically, Biglari [...]

As we’ve known since the annual meeting of Western Sizzlin’, Biglari has been searching for a new CEO for Steak N Shake (SNS).  It seems he has found one: himself.
Before we go nuts here, read this quote from the filing:
 I would like to thank Wayne [Kelley, interim CEO] for his guidance over the last several months. In [...]

Note, 08/06/08: I made some horrendous editing mistakes in this piece.  I’ve gone through it again and fixed up most of the mistakes.  Sorry for the sloppiness, readers.   In the future, if you notice them, leave a scathing note so I get sufficiently motivated to do better editing work.
Sorry for the dearth of writing lately.  [...]