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.

Some interesting reading material for the holiday week:

On incentives, biases, and lollapalooza effects / Todd Kenyon discusses Charlie Munger’s Mental Models and their application to the recent meltdown in the Financial markets.

Malone’s Playbook / Goes over a brief history of John Malone’s media companies. Also discusses his latest strategies and what he may be planing in the future. As with anything to do with John Malone, it’s an interesting read. Here’s a quote from Liberty’s CEO regarding the split up of IAC: “[the break-up] will allow us to begin a dialogue with IAC about how we are going to work together in the next phase of our relationship.”

The Evolution of an Investor / A great (and long) story on Blaine Lourd, written by Michael Lewis (author of Moneyball and Liars Poker). A good quote from the article: “As a group, professional money managers control more than 90 percent of the U.S. stock market. By definition, the money they invest yields returns equal to those of the market as a whole, minus whatever fees investors pay them for their services. This simple math, you might think, would lead investors to pay professional money managers less and less. Instead, they pay them more and more.”

Think Disruptive / Another article in Portfolio - this time by Andy Grove (former CEO of Intel). Grove talks about innovation, electric cars, and the benefits of being a big company.

After looking over the recently released Forbes 400 list (the richest 400 people in America), I noticed the list has included more and more individuals in the “Finance/Investments” category. The growth in assets managed by Hedge Funds and Private Equity companies has been a major cause of this increase. In the Forbes 400 magazine, it shows a graphic representation of each category since the first list in 1982 (25 years ago). In 2007, Finance and Investments had the largest number of members in the list. Below I list which categories have grown or shrunk over the years:

Higher: Service, Finance/Investments, Technology, Retail

Lower: Food, Oil, Media/Communications, Real Estate, Manufacturing, Other

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