{"id":26823,"date":"2014-07-01T09:33:15","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T13:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=26823"},"modified":"2014-07-01T09:33:15","modified_gmt":"2014-07-01T13:33:15","slug":"deal-flow-is-critical-but-from-where","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=26823","title":{"rendered":"Deal flow is critical. But from where?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Go GoPro. I was right, for now.<\/p>\n

Buying eyeglasses. Part 432. <\/strong>You can pay $500 for a pair of glasses at your local retail store. Or you can pay $20 online (lenses included) at two of my now favorite online eyeglass “stores” –<\/span>–<\/span> EyeBuyDirect.com <\/strong><\/a>and ZenniOptical.com.<\/strong><\/span><\/a> These frames (with lenses) are $22 at EyeBuyDirect:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"eyeglasses\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My favorite ballet dancer is Tiler Peck. <\/strong>She just married my second favorite ballet dancer, Robert Fairchild. You must read the story of their long romance and watch the video of them dancing together. The article is called “And Sometimes They Dance.<\/em>”
\n\"TilerPeck\"<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Prepare to cry. I did. For the story and the video, click<\/span> here.<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

14 sentences that changed the way I think about investing. <\/strong>From Motley Fool. The ones that appealed to me most:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“Timing the market is a fool’s game, whereas time in the market is your greatest natural advantage.” — Nick Murray<\/p>\n

“It is remarkable how much long term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” – Charlie Munger<\/p>\n

“Men resist randomness, markets resist prophecy.” – Maggie Mahar<\/p>\n

“My conceptual framework, which basically emphasizes the importance of misconceptions, makes me extremely critical of my own decisions. I know that I am bound to be wrong, and therefore am more likely to correct my own mistakes.” – George Soros<\/p>\n

“Read 500 pages [of books, magazines, reports, etc.] every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.” – Warren Buffett<\/p>\n

“To better avoid errors, you should talk to people who disagree with you and you should talk to people who are not in the same emotional situation you are.” – Daniel Kahneman<\/p>\n

“When a possibility is unfamiliar to us, we do not even think about it.” – Nate Silver<\/p>\n

“You never know what the American public is going to do, but you do know they will do it all at once.” – Bill Seidman<\/p>\n

For the full article,\u00a0 click here.<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I’d add one sentence.<\/p>\n

“Deal flow is critical.”\u00a0 The more opportunities you can find, the more you can say NO. The more you say NO, the more the quality of your opportunities improves.<\/p>\n

My deal flow presently consists of: The New Highs List,<\/strong><\/a> Cramer’s interviews with CEOs (much better than his picks), ideas from my investment club and its members, my Birthday list (click here<\/strong><\/a>), Seeking Alpha (click here)<\/strong><\/a> and constant reading, especially annual reports and conference calls.<\/p>\n

Three favorite recent New Yorker cartoons.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Alarm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DirtyLooks\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Bacon\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"HarryNewton\"<\/a>
\nHarry Newton who’s worried that Israel might stupidly escalate the killing of its three teenagers into a full-blown crisis. This piece from Stratfor, the intelligence people, is worth reading. I pray Stratfor is right. We don’t need another war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

Israel Names Hamas Behind Teenagers’ Killings Despite Anomalies<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday upon the discovery of the bodies of the three teenagers kidnapped more than two weeks ago in the West Bank. A military escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian theater can therefore be expected as Israel makes a retaliatory show of force, using the crisis to keep Hamas and Fatah split between the two Palestinian territories. Despite Israel’s claims, the highly unusual circumstances surrounding the kidnappings do not clearly point to Hamas. And the low likelihood that Hamas wants to provoke a wider confrontation with Israel, combined with the constraints on Hamas’ rocket supply, suggest that this latest flare-up is less likely to widen into a sustained military confrontation.<\/p>\n

A number of strange details surround the kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli teenagers. According to the official story, three teenage male religious students were trying to hitchhike around 10 p.m. on June 12 from the settlement block of Gush Etzion, just outside of Bethlehem, to Hebron in the West Bank when they disappeared. Hitchhiking is not particularly uncommon in the area, where buses are known to run infrequently. Nonetheless, this is a heavily patrolled area due to the array of security threats Jewish settlers face in the West Bank. The three teenagers were shot and buried under stones in a field near the village of Halhul, just north of Hebron, only around 150 meters (about 500 feet) from a heavily guarded settlement compound.<\/p>\n

Any Arab militant group would find it extremely difficult to pull off such an operation in this area undetected. Had this been a Hamas or Hamas-affiliated operation, we would expect the hostages to have been used as political capital for prisoner releases, as we saw with the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. Though there is no direct evidence of this, the killings could have been accidental given that they occurred at night in a high-threat environment. And if the killings were intentional, the operation at the very least appears to have been amateurish. The apparently hasty nature of the burials suggests an attempt to cover up the incident.<\/p>\n

Israel seems to be using the incident to further its political objective of undermining the Hamas-Fatah political reconciliation by holding Hamas responsible, thus raising the political cost to Fatah of remaining aligned with the militant organization in a national unity government. Why Hamas would have carried out such an operation, which it knew would lead to another conflagration in Gaza and to renewed struggle with Fatah, when the Hamas leadership has been trying to use a deal with Fatah to normalize its political relations outside of Gaza remains unclear. Hamas certainly does not appear to be getting much out of this operation.<\/p>\n

In fact, Hamas distanced itself from the actual kidnapping, though it praised the act at the same time it denied having anything to do with it. A collection of little-known groups, including Dawlat al-Islam, Hezbollah Battalions in Palestine and Battalions of the Freeman of Hebron, claimed the kidnapping, though there has been little to corroborate any of the claims so far. Hamas is known to use front groups to give it cover for more controversial operations. Alternatively, a Hamas splinter faction could have carried out the attack to undermine the main group’s dealings with Fatah, but that still doesn’t explain how it was able to operate in a heavily patrolled area of the West Bank, much less why the operatives chose to kill and bury the hostages.<\/p>\n

In any case, Israel’s unequivocal holding of Hamas responsible for the act means retaliatory action on both sides can be expected in the coming days. Israel will likely rely on airstrikes, raids and arrests against Hamas, while Hamas and its militant affiliates will respond with rocket attacks. There are probably limits, however, to how far this latest confrontation will go.<\/p>\n

If our doubts regarding Hamas’ involvement prove correct, then Hamas is probably unprepared for a major confrontation with Israel. Hamas’ rocket arsenal has been under strain since the 2012 Pillar of Defense campaign and Egypt’s crackdown on the Rafah border crossing. Of critical interest to Israel is the status of the supply of long-range, Iranian-made Fajr-5 rockets in Gaza. After all, the accumulation and launching of these rockets, which could reach deep into Israeli territory near Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, is what triggered Israel’s intensive military campaign two years ago. Stratfor has seen indications since then that Iran has continued its efforts to smuggle weapons through Sudan and the Sinai Peninsula into Gaza, but it is safe to assume that it has become more difficult to ship arms along these supply lines in the past few years.<\/p>\n

Either way, Israel can be expected to seize the opportunity to deepen Palestinian fissures while Israeli emotions run high over the killings. There is also always the possibility of militant actors and even militant sponsors such as Iran exploiting the current tensions to escalate the conflict. From what we can ascertain so far, however, a sustained military confrontation on par with the 2012 conflict seems unlikely.<\/p>\n