Over the next few months, due to other commitments I won’t be writing posts as frequently. [Removed] Until then, you’ll have to settle with a few posts here and there with links I may find interesting.

On that note, I’ll take this time to thank all the readers and subscribers of this blog. It’s been running for about 6 months now, and has received about 15k views from 78 countries around the world. I don’t write as often as some other blogs, but when I started FutureBlind I wanted the quality of the posts to make up for it. So hopefully you’ve either enjoyed the articles, learned something new, or gotten some kind of insight from this blog.

In the first part of May, I will be attending the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. I hope to see any readers who will be at the meeting or at the Yellow BRK’er party Friday night. For those who can’t make it, I’ll probably be posting a brief summary of my experience (every year it seems there are plenty of bloggers/writers who give great summaries of the meeting). This is the second Berkshire meeting I’ll have gone to (first time in 2006), and hopefully it will be just as good as the last.

Here’s a few good links before I go:

Fear of a Black Swan — interview with Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Sam Zell: A Tough Guy in a Mean Business

Evolving the Wow! Factor – Olivia Judson is a science writer for the NYT. She is an evolutionary biologist and always has very fascinating articles. For anyone interested in evolutionary mental models, Olivia is one of the best writers out there.

Place Your Stock Bets Here — A post on the Freakonomics blog on the site Inspectd.com. A good site to show you how futile charting and technical analysis techniques are (once again, the rear-view mirror doesn’t help much).

The above also links to another good Freakonomics post on the media’s insistence on finding a reason for every market move. My favorite future headline: “Stocks Dive: Three First-Movers Sold Hard and Then Everyone Else Inexplicably Followed“.

Studying Students’ Reaction to Chance

An interesting article on a contest held at University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. The contest split 269 students into two groups:

1. The first chooses one of two unmarked briefcases. One has a check for $18,750, and the other has nothing. Before opening the case, they are offered a chance to receive a fixed amount of cash in its place. It’s their choice.

2. The second group is given the cash upfront, and then offered the chance to buy one of the briefcases. For the student mentioned in the article, he was given $3,000. He could have walked away with the $3k, or bought the right to choose one of the cases.

The research showed that “buyers” (the second group) were more likely to keep the cash. Of course that isn’t rational, because the expected value of the case selection is $9,375 (a 50% chance of getting the $18,750 check).

The students admitted the decision is easier on paper, and more difficult when you have a handful of cash.

Overall, I’m glad Darden is doing research like this and teaching the students about decision making in the face of uncertainty. More schools should be doing the same.

Death, Taxes, and Reversion to the Mean / Michael Mauboussin’s latest paper on reversion to the mean - why high return on capital can’t stay high forever - incorporating reversion to the mean in DCF valuations - “Good to great” and “Great to good”.

I came across Shahin Khezri’s blog a few days ago, and really enjoyed his post “Lessons From Ted Williams“. Shahin talks about Buffett’s comparison of the stock market to baseball. The market throws thousands of pitches a day, but you must decide which to swing at and which to let fly by. The difference between an investor and a baseball player is that the investor never has to swing. Great investors like Buffett don’t swing very often, even if the ball is in the strike zone. They wait for the obvious ones—the fat pitches—that can be hit out of the ballpark almost every time.

Reflections on Value Investing points readers to Authors@Google - a series of talks with respected authors hosted by Google. I’ve only watched the talk with George Soros (which was very good), but many of the other talks look interesting. See also my post on the TED Talk Videos.

Some interesting reading material for the holidays:

Rough Rider / This New Yorker article is a month old, but if you haven’t read it yet I strongly recommend it. Connie Bruck profiles Sam Zell and his history of contrarianism and buying assets on the cheap. Zell has quite a personality, and I think that any investor, businessman or entrepreneur can learn a lot from him.

Be Prepared for A Lot of Bumps /  An interview in Fortune with John Bogle. Bogle talks about current market conditions, his favorite CEOs, “Nobody knows nuthin’,” and his biggest mistake.

Valuing Western Sizzlin / George of Fat Pitch Financials goes over a detailed valuation of Western Sizzlin (WSZL). He concludes that buyers of WSZL are getting the investing skills of Sardar Biglari (a great value-oriented fund manager) for a very cheap price. I would also add to George’s analysis that WSZL also has a new fund management business, that although hard to quantify now, should be very lucrative in the future.

There’s No Money In The Long Tail of the Blogosphere / An interesting article on The Long Tail of blogs - why individual sites have trouble making money - and why companies like Google (GOOG) are reaping all the gains. Especially interesting for other blog owners.

Why Penney Will Perk Up (requires Barron’s subscription) / Retail in general looks very cheap at the moment, and JCPenney (JCP) is one of my favorites. This Barron’s article argues that JCP could be trading at $60-70 a year from now, and currently trades at a 15-year low multiple. Penney’s has great management that knows retail very well and has gone through a successful turnaround over the past 7 years.

Gannon to Barron’s: Berkshire Fairly Valued…As a Buffettless Empire! / A response to Barron’s article “Sorry Warren, Your Stock’s Too Pricey“. Geoff hits the nail on the head, as I had those exact thoughts after reading the Barron’s piece. Basically, based on the value of the operating business and investments, Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) is about fairly valued. But that doesn’t take into account Buffett’s capital allocation skills and his ability (and his future successor’s ability) to compound equity at above average rates. I would also add that it was unfair for Barron’s to compare Berkshire’s multiples to that of AIG, Allstate, and Travelers.

Disclosure: I may be long one or more stocks mentioned in this post. This is not a recommendation to buy or sell any securities.

Seth Godin points readers to evidence that there’s real people working at Amazon.com (AMZN). This is just one of the many reasons that great service is sending more and more customers to companies like Amazon.

By doing something that customers don’t expect—Amazon stands out from the crowd. One person has a good experience. They tell their friends, and their friend’s friends. By using money that would have been spent on marketing on a better experience, Amazon gets very sticky customers for a cheap price. Widening the moat, one day at a time. It’s unfortunate that the stock is a little too expensive for my taste.

Make sure to check out the Amazon reviews of the Bic Ballpoint Pen that Seth linked to. Out of all the pens I’ve tried, this one’s the best. As noted, the ink consistency is just right for a variety of different papers. (Click the “Comments” of Matt Williams’ review - I’m glad some people have a sense of humor).