Double Feature:

First Post of the Day from Bloomberg:

Ambac fell $2.02 to $8.70 today in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have tumbled 90 percent in the past year. A $1 billion equity offering would about double the amount of shares outstanding.

Credit-default swaps tied to Ambac's AAA rated insurance unit rose 10 basis points after the announcement to 530 basis points, according to CMA Datavision in London. A basis point on a credit-default swap contract protecting $10 million of debt from default for five years is equivalent to $1,000 a year.

Bank Losses

Credit-default swaps are financial instruments based on bonds and loans that are used to speculate on a company's ability to repay debt. They pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a borrower fail to adhere to its debt agreements. A rise indicates deterioration in the perception of credit quality; a decline, the opposite.

Banks would lose as much as $70 billion if the top-rated bond insurers lose their credit ratings, Oppenheimer & Co. analysts estimated in January. MBIA's ratings were affirmed by Moody's and S&P last week.

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Better Yet Check out this Video:



Hat Tip to Value Plays

Post of the Day: 10 Investing Tips From Warren Buffett

From the 2007 Letter to Shareholders:

1. When you know you're the best, you can afford to tell it like it is. Buffett says: "Our insurance business had an excellent year... that party is over. It's a certainty that insurance-industry profit margins, including ours, will fall significantly in 2008. So be prepared for lower insurance earnings during the next few years."

2. Only four things really count when making an investment (or buying whole companies if, like Buffett, you have $141bn to spend) - "a business you understand, favourable long-term economics, able and trustworthy management, and a sensible price tag". That's investment, everything else is speculation.

3. Invest this way and you don't need to constantly look for the next "new" thing, with all the risk that necessarily entails.

Buffett's biggest investments (companies he doesn't own in their entirety) include American Express, Wells Fargo, Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola.

These four businesses, he notes, were founded in 1850, 1852, 1837 and 1886 respectively. "Start-ups are not our game".

4. Businesses are run by people and the best people are not necessarily the ones with the flashiest CVs. Buffett singles out Susan Jacques, chief executive of his jewellery retailer Borsheims. "Susan came to Borsheims 25 years ago as a $4-an-hour saleswoman. She's smart, she loves the business and she loves her associates. That beats having an MBA degree any time."

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Hat Tip: Controlled Greed

Post of the Day: A Magic Formula Stock from 1972?

Shai Dardashti share with us Warren Buffett's Magic Formula Stock from 1972:

Let’s look at the prototype of a dream business, our own See’s Candy. The boxed-chocolates industry in which it operates is unexciting: Per-capita consumption in the U.S. is extremely low and doesn’t grow. Many once-important brands have disappeared, and only three companies have earned more than token profits over the last forty years. Indeed, I believe that See’s, though it obtains the bulk of its revenues from only a few states, accounts for nearly half of the entire industry’s earnings.

At See’s, annual sales were 16 million pounds of candy when Blue Chip Stamps purchased the company in 1972. (Charlie and I controlled Blue Chip at the time and later merged it into Berkshire.) Last year See’s sold 31 million pounds, a growth rate of only 2% annually. Yet its durable competitive advantage, built by the See’s family over a 50-year period, and strengthened subsequently by Chuck Huggins and Brad Kinstler, has produced extraordinary results for Berkshire.

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Post of the Day: Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report 2007