Monday

Farmland bubble "Is the land worth it? 'I have no idea,' he says. 'I'll tell you in five years.' Across Minnesota and the Midwest, concerns are rising that farm values are climbing too high. Farmers, bankers and investors have put huge sums of money on the line, in the hope that boom times for agriculture will last. [...] Land prices have reached levels not seen in a century, even adjusted for inflation"

Latest Thiel notes: "It is clear that biology is quickly becoming an engineering problem. I got interested in biotech several years ago when my CS friends started picking up biology books. They thought, probably accurately, that the next big thing in coding would be bio, not computers. This is now a mainstream view. Bill Gates has said something like this, along with several others. Great hackers go into biotech..."

Solar market share increasing: "From a very small base, and from a tiny position in world energy supply, the buildout of global solar power is starting to go parabolic."

Deflation watch: WSJ: "Why Hire a Lawyer? Computers Are Cheaper"

Mauboussin: Share Repurchase from All Angles [pdf]

Warming?: "Sea ice area has never been so low for this date in the satellite record, not even close to it. 2012 has over half a million of square kilometres less ice than record minimum years 2007 and 2011."

Leads to: "Arctic Ship Cargoes Saving $650,000 on Fuel Set for Record High"

Latest Hussman" "The global economy remains in a deleveraging phase - the difficult portion of what is known as the 'financial cycle' - in the aftermath of a long period of excessive debt expansion and credit growth."

Valueprax latest Gannon net net compilation: "Two pieces of advice for net-net investing: Put 100% of focus on buying and 0% on selling, Put 100% of focus on downside and 0% on upside [...]
Focus on a process that keeps you finding new net-nets and minimizes your temptation to sell what you own."

Paper: "Tradeoffs in Staying Close: Corporate Decision-Making and Geographic Dispersion": "Geographically dispersed firms are less employee friendly based on an employee relations index. Second, using division-level data, divisions that are closer to headquarters are less likely to face layoffs. Third, we find a pecking order in divestitures of divisions: divisions further from headquarters are divested before closer divisions"