Free Books, How to Absorb Knowledge, Future of Education, and a Microsoft Sony merger?

Free books

Here is a link for some more free books from Csinvesting.  Thanks again John and the anonymous contributor.

How to Absorb Knowledge

This article gives you a technique that a study shows, will help you remember what you have just learned.

Future of Education?

This is an amazing article that could help kids, especially from poor families, gain a proper education.  Rocketship Discovery Prep is a charter school who has been having some amazing results teaching kids so far how to become better in math and reading.

This is the kind of thing that we need more in this country.  We need school vouchers and school choice for families, especially if they live in terrible neighborhoods, and we need to worry less about the teachers unions and politicians that are controlling education now.

Microsoft Sony merger?

This article speculates that Sony and Microsoft could be working on some kind of collaboration for gaming in the future.  This is something I think could be beneficial for both of the companies in the upcoming console generation.  Too bad it is most likely not true.

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Vodafone dividend from Verizon, Microsoft buying Activision, and what I am doing now

Vodafone and the possible dividend from Verizon

This is a fantastic article about the potential special dividend Vodafone might be getting from Verizon.  The article talks about the relationship between the two companies, how big the dividend could be, whether it could become a regular thing, and whether there could be a possible Vodafone/Verizon merger or if Verizon could buy out Vodafone’s 45% stake in them.

What if Microsoft Bought Activision Blizzard?

This article talks about some scenarios that could possibly happen in the video game industry if Microsoft were to buy Activision Blizzard.

What I am doing now

I am currently reading Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies, one of the free books that Csinvesting put on his site, so it will be a few more days until I will be putting up some more valuations.

I have also been learning and applying some of the different valuation techniques from the Manual of Ideas to some of the stocks I have already written about, and will post some of them after I finish reading Valuation.

I can’t wait to start diving into some more annual reports and finding another company to evaluate, as this book is so far kind of a let down. Valuation is a good book so far, about a quarter of the way through it, but a lot of the stuff I have already learned from Damodaran’s free valuation course, Bruce Greenwald’s books, and from various other books I have read.  So far up to where I have read in the book, it is almost exclusively talking about how to do DCF valuations, which I don’t do, with a little bit of strategy mixed in, and how companies with high ROIC are better investments than lower ROIC companies.

Until next time.

An Amazing Free Offer, More Vivendi News, and Investing Lessons from a stock up almost 1500% since 2002

Free offer from the Manualofideas.com

The Manual of Ideas put out a free offer of their monthly publication.  I had never heard of them before but the information in the free publication is incredible.  Manual of Ideas gives investing ideas, goes over valuation and analysis of those companies, giving three different valuations of the companies, talks about the risks of the company going forward, and shows you holdings of top hedge fund managers that you could get more ideas from.

At the very least I highly recommend that you should download the free publication to get some ideas to research, and look at how they value and analyze companies to see what we could all be doing better and what we might be missing from our analysis.

Too bad that if you like MoI, which I do a lot, is pretty expensive if you want to subscribe to it.  The price for one year of subscription to the regular monthly publication is just under $1300.

I will learn from the free publication and when I am able to start my own firm or work for someone else, this is going to be one of the first things I buy to get ideas from.

More Vivendi News

This article on Vivendi again talks about which of their businesses they should sell or spin-off and lists some of the companies that they are talking with about the potential sale.

The main thing that caught my eye is that they are talking with Microsoft to see if they are interested in buying Activision Blizzard.

Any reasonable sale of ATVI would be good for Vivendi shareholders.  However, the only way Microsoft buying ATVI could be good for the console gaming industry would be if it meant some kind of gaming merger between the Playstation and Xbox brands, eventually leading to a one console future, and the gamers winning out.

Most likely though, if Microsoft were to buy ATVI that would probably lead to Sony having to buy EA, and each company trying to acquire the best gaming companies they could to keep them out of the hands of the other.  A very bad scenario for the gamers.

Sony and Microsoft have been pretty antagonistic to each other over the past decade when it has come to their consoles, so although I hope there is some kind of console merger with a one console future, at this time I do not see that happening.

Lessons from a 15-bagger

This article is from the Motley Fool and goes over some of the original reasons they bought Amazon in 2002 and how since then the stock is up almost 1500%.

Any stock pick that goes up by that amount should be analyzed and learned from.

Feel free to post your thoughts.  Enjoy