February 21, 2014 · 8:00 am

A380: “one-off items” versus “accounting block”

Aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia recently published an opinion article at Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, “Airbus Twin-Aisles—Big Needs, Limited Means“, in which he discussed strategic product portfolio options for Airbus. He was particularly critical to the A380. Let me bring a couple of passages from the article:

Historically, Airbus has spent more than Boeing on development as a percent of sales than. But during the past 15 years, the bulk of this heavy spending was squandered on the A380. Today, development spending is set to fall in line with the company’s new direction. Last year, it fell below 6% for the first time since the company was established (see graph). Given the requirements of funding the A350XWB and A320neo, Airbus isn’t likely to have the resources to fund both an A330neo and A380neo and a new large twin, too. Tough choices will need to be made. […]

In short, Airbus will be paying the price for the A380 for many years to come.

From these 2 paragraphs, the first assertions are factual: Airbus spends more on research and development than Boeing Commercial Airplanes and during the last years most of that spending was dedicated to the A380. In my opinion the last sentence overstates the issue of the current burden of A380 over the company’s future. If the A380 did not derail EADS during 2006-2010 it will not do so in the coming years. As numbers show and top management has indicated at investors events the A380 programme is expected “to emerge from the red by 2015“.

A380 MSN4 (credit: A. Doumenjou).

Today the A380 is a recurring cost issue, not more. The situation would be entirely different had Airbus (or rather EADS, now Airbus Group) applied the same accounting system that Boeing does (since the merger with McDonnell Douglas). EADS has passed in the profit and loss accounts in the previous years several one-off items related to the A380 valued in billions of euros (refer to yearly financial reports). What is left are R&D (mainly D) expenses to bring down unitary recurring costs and producing enough numbers of aircraft so that learning curve effects can be benefited from.

On the other hand, Boeing accounting system spreads the capital expenditures and research and development costs along what they refer to as an accounting block, which for example for the 787 now takes 1,300 airplanes to amortize those costs (previously were 1,100, see here a post on the 787 break even).

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February 19, 2014 · 8:00 am

Boeing list prices increases vs. discounts increases…

In a previous post I updated the estimate of what is the average discount Boeing applies when selling its commercial airplanes using 2013 data of list prices, deliveries and reported revenues. The figure I came up with was a 47% discount. I included the following graphic showing the discount evolution:

Boeing Average Discount Evolution, 2013.

Boeing Average Discount Evolution, 2013.

Seeing the increasing trend of average discount together with knowing the fact that Boeing regularly increases list prices triggered the following question: Have Boeing airplane real prices increased, decreased or stayed constant in the recent years? I set out to answer this question using the estimated average discount of each year (1) from the graphic above.

The Boeing list prices (LP) can be found here. I have been recording those prices for years and thus have a table with the evolution of list prices for each model year by year. The following step is to apply the average discount estimated for each year to then-year list prices, to get the estimated discounted prices (EDP) per model. Thus, a table can be built for the last 5 years.

You can find below the result for the best-selling aircraft during previous years: 737-800, 737-900ER, 777-300ER and 787-8. Together these 4 models amounted 560 deliveries in 2013 or over 86% of the total 648 airplanes Boeing delivered in 2013.

Boeing List and discount Prices evolution table, 2008-2013.

Boeing List and discount Prices evolution table, 2008-2013.

In the table above I included in black figures what have been Boeing list prices of these models in the past years (as reported in their website) while I marked in blue the figures which are estimated, using as a departure point the calculated averages discounts per year (also included in blue in the table). I included as well the list prices year-on-year change as a % of the previous year list prices, per model.

The average list price increase included at the bottom line is computed with the information of all Boeing models (19 in 2008 and 18 in 2013, though different ones, a total of 24 different models along this period), not only the 4 included in this table.

You may see in the table above that after not increasing prices in 2009, Boeing has steadily increased them in 2010 (6.3%), 2011 (4.7%), 2012 (6.7%) and 2013 (1.9%). However, if you take a look at the blue figures in the same table you will notice that prices of 2013 are between 2008 and 2010 price levels for all 4 models! That is, the widely announced yearly list prices increase has been yearly offset by a discreet (not-announced) increase in the discounts applied to sales of airplanes. Thus, the pricing power of Boeing has remained barely constant during the last 5 years. You may see it better in the graphic below:

Boeing List and discount Prices evolution graphic, 2008-2013.

Boeing List and discount Prices evolution graphic, 2008-2013.

The graphic shows the price evolution for each of the 4 airplane models selected, taking as a reference their list and estimated discounted prices in 2008 (indicated as 100%) . List prices are shown with straight lines, versus dashed lines used for estimated prices. Each pair of prices for each aircraft is presented in the same color for easier identification. Some comments to the graphic:

  • Through continuous increases, 2013 list prices were between 18% (737 and 777) and 27% (for the 787) higher than in 2008.
  • However, due to increasing discounts from 38% in 2008 to 47% in 2013, the increase in list prices is almost entirely offset.
  • 2013 discounted prices are below 2010 discounted prices for all models.
  • 2013 discounted prices are almost back at 2008 levels for the 737 and 777, only the 787 seems to have stayed at 2010 levels.

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(1) There is no way to know the real price and discount that Boeing applies in each sale, as it will depend from customer to customer (American Airlines -AMR- or Fedex) and from model to model (737-800 or 787-8). There where competition is tougher, discounts will be higher. However, the estimates I have made are an average of all Boeing aircraft sold in a given year.

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February 17, 2014 · 8:00 am

Weapons of mass miscommunication

With the advent of the Internet, the email has become one of the main ways of communication both in personal and professional environments. I won’t deny the simplicity of conveying ideas, instructions, files, etc., in an email. However, I have often referred to emails as weapons of mass miscommunication.

What do I have in mind when I state that? Emails that need several clarifications, wrong interpretation of emails either or both in the spirit and the letter, emails that go unnoticed, emails that waste reading time of too many people, etc.

While reading “Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger”, by Peter Bevelin, I thought of another good weak point of emails when reflecting on the following passage on the disadvantages of scale in large institutions:

[…] as you get big, you get the bureaucracy. And with the bureaucracy comes the territoriality which is again grounded in human nature. And the incentives are perverse. For example, if you worked in AT&T in my day, it was a great bureaucracy. Who in the hell was really thinking about the shareholder or anything else? And in a bureaucracy, you think the work is done when it goes out of your in-basket into somebody else’s in-basket. But, of course, it isn’t. It’s not done until AT&T delivers what it’s supposed to deliver. […]

(excerpt from the Lecture by Charles T. Munger to the students of Professor Guilford Babcock at the University of Southern California School of Business on April 14, 1994)

SendThink back of emails and how often we may think that some piece of work is completed when we have clicked on the “Send” button. But it’s not. Not only the work might not be done, but the communication might not even have taken place even if we think so. And it will not happen until the receiver at the other end of the channel has gotten the message and gone through it. Then, the above-mentioned criticism to emails apply (unclear message, clarifications, wrong interpretations…). Thus, no matter how much effort it costs to us breaking the inertia and comfort of our quiet work place, it is much better to accompany an email with a quick immediate follow-up phone call ensuring that the communication actually happens and explaining what is expected from the receiver.

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February 15, 2014 · 8:00 am

Boeing commercial aircraft discounts (update for 2013)

Few days ago, Boeing released 2013 results [PDF, 841KB]. The company reported revenues of over 86.6bn$, 648 commercial deliveries and 1,355 net orders for its commercial aircraft. All these were widely reported by the media and mean a great year 2013 for Boeing (with increases in these metrics from 6 to 8%).

Last years, I wrote in some posts (1) what was my estimate of Boeing discounts: the relation between what is announced by the press, what appears in its list prices and sometimes as backlogs and what it is indeed computed into the profit and loss account. In this post I wanted to update, if necessary, the figure I calculated for the average discount of Boeing.

Most of the necessary information can be found in its website. Boeing list prices can be found here.

The number of gross and net orders (after cancellations) year by year can be found here.

Last year deliveries can be found in the report of financial results (or here). From there we can also deduce the figure of Boeing Commercial’s sales of services. That is not directly reported but can be deduced (all Boeing services-related sales are reported as well as Boeing Capital Corporation division and Boeing Defense’s “Global Services & Support” unit)

As in the previous years’ post:

  • I needed to make one assumption: new orders come with a 3% down payment in the year of the booking, while the remaining cost I assumed that was paid on the year of delivery (for simplicity I didn’t consider more intermediate revenue recognition milestones linked to payments, the 3% figure was taken from the AIAA paper “A Hierarchical Aircraft Life Cycle Cost Analysis Model” by William J. Marx et al.). (2)

Having put all the figures together, the calculation is immediate. Boeing Commercial Aircraft revenues in 2013 (52.98bn$) are the sum of:

  • the discounted prices times the delivered aircraft in the year (including possible penalties from delays),
  • less the down payment of the current year delivered aircraft, as the down payment was included in previous years results,
  • plus the down payment of current year net orders (this year’s calculation has been again a bit tricky as it included 737NG deliveries and 737 MAX orders),
  • plus services revenues (less than 0.3bn$ from the commercial aircraft unit – calculated, not reported).

The discount figure that minimized errors last year was 45%. Using this figure, the error obtained this year in relation to Boeing Commercial Aircraft reported revenues is 3.9%, much too high. The best estimate for last years average discounts were: 45% for 2012, 41% for 2011, 39% for 2010 and 38% for 2009.

The updated figure (which minimize errors for 2013 down to 0.2%) for the discount for Boeing commercial aircraft is 47% (3).

Boeing Average Discount Evolution, 2013.

Boeing Average Discount Evolution, 2013.

The explanation I can find for that increase shall be linked the built-in penalties for 787 plus the introduction of the new 787-10 with increased discounts for the launch customers.

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(1) Find here what is becoming a “body of knowledge” on Boeing discounts: estimates calculated for 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009; a review of the French portal Challenges.fr of aircraft discounts prior to Le Bourget airshow of 2013; a Bombardier’s CEO statement on what is known in the market as the Boeing discount; Boeing Commercial Airplanes president Ray Conner speaking about the more aggressive pricing they are being forced to offer.

(2) Two years ago, I received a comment from the analyst Scott Hamilton on the level of downpayments. He mentioned they could reach up to 30%. I tried this time to compute the calculation using that input, though the figures of discounts to be applied each year to minimize errors would have to be even higher, over 50% (!), thus I stayed with the 3% used in the above-mentioned published paper to stay on the conservative side.

(3) I find this trend of continuous increases in Boeing discounts in line with both Challenges.fr report and Ray Conner’s mentions of aggressive pricing last year, both referred to in note (1).

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February 13, 2014 · 8:00 am

Bean counters turned risk managers

In a previous post I wrote about the Titanic as an example of disaster of project management, drawing from a conference I attended.

At the end of the post I reminded the theory of safety in systems seen as layers of cheese with some holes in them. The speaker did not enter into risk management, but rather in communication, teamwork and leadership, nevertheless she acknowledged the side of risk management to the case.

"What management is", by Joan Magretta.

“What management is”, by Joan Magretta.

While reading the book “What management is”, by Joan Magretta, I recently came across the case of the Ford Pinto which I did not know:

In the 1970s, the Ford Pinto taught the nation the basics of cost-benefit analysis. The car had a design flaw in the gas tank that caused at least fifty-nine deaths. Rubber liners would have fixed the problem at a cost of $137 million. But careful calculations of the benefits – all costs associated with those burned and killed down to the flowers at the funeral – only added up to $49.5 million. Cost-benefit analysis said it just didn’t pay to redesign the Pinto. The lesson at the time seemed pretty clear, and many baby boomers grew up suspicious about management and its methods. […] (excerpt from “What management is”)

You may see in the article of the Wikipedia here more references to the case, including an apparently famous article at the time, “Pinto Madness”, which appeared in the Mother Jones magazine. Some excerpts from that article:

Because assembly-line machinery was already tooled when engineers found this defect, top Ford officials decided to manufacture the car anyway […]

For more than eight years afterwards, Ford successfully lobbied, with extraordinary vigor and some blatant lies, against a key government safety standard that would have forced the company to change the Pinto’s fire-prone gas tank. […]

Ford waited eight years because its internal “cost-benefit analysis,” which places a dollar value on human life, said it wasn’t profitable to make the changes sooner. […]

I place myself the same question again: Have we progressed since then?

And again: Today we like to think that yes. More requirements regarding safety are put into projects. Regulations are passed to ensure safety. Risk management is used as part of project management to ensure that the kind of decisions taken at the time of the Ford Pinto today they are taken without overlooking the risks behind them.

However, I wanted to remark this time the need and criticality of placing safety at the driving seat of cost-benefit analysis, of evaluating risks and mitigations, budget reductions, targets setting, etc. As Charles Munger uses to say all these frameworks and mental models together may create a lollapalloza effect, that is the confluence of incentives and biases acting together may result in the overlooking of serious risks which down the road (after the fact) would seem impossible to have been overlooked (as in the cases of the Titanic or the Ford Pinto).

I believe this takes the utmost importance especially in an industry like aerospace, where the words “safety first” cannot be just a phony industry mantra.

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February 11, 2014 · 10:00 pm

Time Value of Money

In courses about finance in the past, as part of job-related investment projections, for personal investments and as part of exercises related to posts in this blog I have discounted cash flows several times. Discounted? To those not initiated: it is about the time value of money.

Many course of finance start with the explanation of time value of money. You can find Wikipedia’s article here.

I recently came across the most descriptive and ancient (to my knowledge) explanation of the concept.

“A bird in a hand is worth two in the bush”, Aesop, 600 B.C.

Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger, Peter Bevelin.

Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger, Peter Bevelin.

I found it while reading “Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger”, by Peter Bevelin, in which the author retrieved a passage from Warren Buffett’s 2000 Letter to the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway [PDF, 93KB, pg. 13]

Leaving aside tax factors, the formula we use for evaluating stocks and businesses is identical. Indeed, the formula for valuing all assets that are purchased for financial gain has been unchanged since it was first laid out by a very smart man in about 600 B.C. (though he wasn’t smart enough to know it was 600 B.C.).

The oracle was Aesop and his enduring, though somewhat incomplete, investment insight was “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” To flesh out this principle, you must answer only three questions. How certain are you that there are indeed birds in the bush? When will they emerge and how many will there be? What is the risk-free interest rate (which we consider to be the yield on long-term U.S. bonds)? If you can answer these three questions, you will know the maximum value of the bush ¾ and the maximum number of the birds you now possess that should be offered for it. And, of course, don’t literally think birds. Think dollars.

Aesop’s investment axiom, thus expanded and converted into dollars, is immutable. It applies to outlays for farms, oil royalties, bonds, stocks, lottery tickets, and manufacturing plants. And neither the advent of the steam engine, the harnessing of electricity nor the creation of the automobile changed the formula one iota — nor will the Internet. Just insert the correct numbers, and you can rank the attractiveness of all possible uses of capital throughout the universe.

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February 6, 2014 · 11:20 pm

Penosa encuesta de Metroscopia

Me encuentro hoy en El País con la siguiente encuesta “Autoubicación ideológica de los electores”:

Fuente: Metroscopia para El Pais,

Fuente: Metroscopia para El Pais,

Dicha encuesta va acompañada de un artículo (“¿Hay espacio más allá?”) firmado por Jose Pablo Ferrándiz, sociólogo y vicepresidente de Metroscopia. Y por lo que parece, mal profesional.

Viendo la encuesta me llama la atención que indiquen que hay 342.967 electores de extrema derecha (10), los mismos que prácticamente extrema izquierda (1) o derecha (9). Miro en detalle los números y veo que han preguntado exactamente a 100 personas.

La encuesta indica que la población de electores es de algo más de 34 millones de personas. Me llama la atención lo pequeño de la muestra, y me pregunto por la confianza de la muestra que han tomado, y así que se lo pregunto

https://twitter.com/javierirastorza/status/431536329625579520

Como no espero respuesta, decido hacer los números.

[Por cierto, cuando digo arriba “mal profesional”, en parte lo digo porque ya es poco profesional no adjuntar los datos de la muestra: número de encuestados, nivel de confianza e intervalo de confianza… pero veremos que no los incluye por algo]

Usando un simple calculador podéis ver que para un nivel de confianza típico de entre 95% y 99% con una población de más de 34 millones de electores, el hecho de haber cogido una muestra de solo 100 personas hace que el intervalo de confianza esté entre + / – 10-13%.

Es decir, lo que Jose Pablo no nos dice es “un 10% de los electores se ubica en el centro derecha (6) con un intervalo de confianza de más o menos 10%, podrían ser 0% o 20%, vaya usted a saber”. Esa es la frase que echo en falta en su artículo donde llega hasta el punto de desgranar como se califica un 2% o 6% de la población (más menos 10%...)

El último detalle que me ha encantado es la nota del final: “* La diferencia hasta 100% corresponde a no sabe y a no contesta”. Lo gracioso es que las cifras de porcentajes que han dado sí que suman 100%, y por tanto la nota final sobra. Todo el mundo ha contestado y el único que no sabe aquí es Jose Pablo.

¿A quién debemos poner en solfa? ¿A El País? ¿A Metroscopia? ¿A su vicepresidente Jose Pablo Ferrándiz? ¿Al becario? ¿…?

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NOTA: Al final dudo de si con los 100 encuestados se han limitado a preguntar a “electores” y aleatoriamente. Capaces de haber preguntado a menores de edad, extranjeros, y solo a familiares y amigos…

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January 31, 2014 · 8:00 am

My charities for 2014 are…

“If you’re in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.” Warren Buffett

I take for granted that most people are to some extent concerned by others and many contribute in different ways to alleviate others’ burdens. Some find it that these contributions should rather be kept private. In this regard, I take the opposite approach.

I try to be as public as I can, hoping that I may serve the causes I contribute to also from the awareness point of view. Take this blog post as an example. I expect that it will be read by over 100 people. If just a reader feels compelled by the message and decides to look for a cause to contribute to, the time spent by me writing this post will have been worth it.

Let’s go and see the different causes I decided to support in this 2014 (1):

AACR, the last organization I decided to support.

Kiva, Vittana, Oxfam, MSF, Slavery International, Wikipedia, Fundacion Hombres Nuevos, Gapminder, American Association for Cancer Research Foundation… those are the causes I decided to support this year. If not one of those, I am sure that you will be able to find one which resonates with you. Do yourself a favour and contribute to it. It can be just 25$, the cost of diner at a restaurant. You’ll feel much better. 

“No one has ever become poor by giving.” Anne Frank, diary of Anne Frank

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(1) You may check out similar posts I wrote about contributions to NGOs in 2013 and 2012.

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January 15, 2014 · 8:00 am

The most (and least) read of the first 400 posts

A classic post of the blog: a recap at each hundredth post dedicated to show which were the most and least read of the first 400 posts. (1)

Since I started the blog in February 2010, the blog has received over 118,000 visits and hundreds of comments.

Find below the list of the top 10 and bottom 10 posts:

1. Impuestos en Francia vs. España
2. Will Boeing 787 ever break-even?
3. 787 Break Even for Dummies
4. Mi adiós a Ibercaja
5. Impuestos en Francia vs. España (actualización 2012)
6. Monaco GP Walking Tour
7. Airbus vs. Boeing, comparison of market forecasts (2012)
8. Airbus vs. Boeing, comparison of market forecasts (2011)
9. Patek Philippe Caliber 89
10. Beluga vs. Dreamlifter
…

390. Ballesteros (the movie)
391. “Caimaneando”
392. From climbing to merely walking
393. De Feria en Feria
394. Not just another letter
395. The Art of War
396. Lowell Observatory
397. Casablanca
398. Book review: Pirate Latitudes
399. International Day of the Book

Let’s see what I’ll write in the next 100 posts…

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(1) I wrote three just posts when I reached the first 100, 200 and 300 posts in the blog.

NOTE: the box in the right showing “Current Top Posts” shows the most read ones in the last two days, not the all-time most read ones (the ones above).

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January 13, 2014 · 8:00 am

Confusion of Confusions

Shuffling books among shelfs at home a few days ago, I came across “Confusión de Confusiones” by José de la Vega (“Confusion of Confusions“ in English). This is a book I had referred to a couple of times in this blog but I never wrote about it.

José de la Vega was born in the province of Córdoba in Spain in around 1650. The family, Jewish, moved to today’s Netherlands to profess its faith. In 1688, he wrote Confusión de Confusiones, the oldest book ever written about the stock exchange business. The book takes the form of a dialogue between a shareholder, a philosopher and a businessman.

I read a hard cover Spanish version of the book edited by Macanaz. The editors did a great job. The book includes a ~30-pages dictionary at the end translating old Spanish words, Latin words, providing explanations for characters and places mentioned, etc. It also includes a 5-pages recap of the main advises José de la Vega provides to investors along the book.

The Amsterdam stock market at that time suffered from all the ailments that stock markets suffer today: hysteria, bulls and bears, irrationality, information asymmetry, etc. It is worth noting that the stock market at that time consisted of: one single trading place, Amsterdam, and one single company, the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC). This may lead to think that everything should be quieter at that time, but as the author notes (1):

[…] you shall know that the Shares have three stimuli to go up and another three to go down: the status of India, the disposition of Europe and the gambling of the Shareholders. Thus, very often the news do not produce any benefit, because they take the flows to another direction.

The health of the business, the mood in the market place and the selling and buying of investors and speculators. That is all that it takes to provoke the financial ups and downs that in the end cause stock market crashes.

About the place and the way the market operated, he explained (extract from Google digitized English version, public domain, which however omits some paragraphs):

Extract from "Confusión de Confusiones".

Extract from “Confusión de Confusiones”.

To conclude with the comments on the book I will include here some of the advises from the author, first in Spanish so the readers of the blog who understand it can capture the language and then translated:

“Los necios, que de todo se afligen, de todo se lamentan, de todo se desesperan.”

“Los que están con la soga en la garganta no tienen otro cortejo que de verdugos.”

“¿Qué vale no arriesgar la hacienda, si se pierde el Alma?”

“Si el que compra algunas partidas, ve que bajan, rabia de haber comprado, si suben, rabia de que no compró más; si compra, suben, vende, gana, y vuelan aun a más alto precio del que ha vendido, rabia de que vendió por menor precio; si no compra ni vende, y van subiendo, rabia de que habiendo tenido impulsos de comprar, no llegó a lograr los impulsos.”

“En acciones no se debe dar consejo a nadie, porque donde está encantado el acierto, mal puede lucir airoso el consejo.”

“La máxima de los accionistas veteranos, es No casarse con las Acciones.”

“En perdiendo esperar, en ganando recoger.”

“Es ignorancia haberos dejado engañar, porque precediendo para la constancia tantos avisos, no pueden tener descargo los errores.”

“No quieren apercibir esta filosofía los inquietos, y como son aire, y es aire lo que tratan, para fabricar torres en el aire, juzgan que cuanto más se mueven más se exaltan, cuanto más se agitan más se calientan, y cuanto más se calientan más crecen.”

“Quien tal hace, que tal pague.”

“El punto no estaba en ver cómo se había de entrar, sino en considerar cómo se había de salir.”

… (see translations below (2))

Each of those sentences would suggest a topic for a whole post in itself; advisors, frequent trading, bubbles, short-term view, banks bail outs, etc…

The book is great, however it is quite difficult to read. Jose de la Vega lived in 1688 and was a philosopher; be prepared for the language he uses and the use of ancient History episodes to illustrate his explanations.

Finally, researching for this post I learned in the Wikipedia that the Federation of European Securities Exchanges (FESE) awards each year a prize honouring De la Vega to authors of outstanding research related to the securities markets in Europe. You can see here the list of winners of the prize.

Curiously enough, the 2013 prize went to Sophie Moinas from Toulouse School of Economics, for her paper “Liquidity Supply across Multiple Trading Venues” (jointly with Laurence Lescourret).

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(1) Translations are mine, as I noted the book I have is a Spanish version of it.

(2) Translations of the advises:

“Fools, they grieve about everything, lament everything, despair with everything.”

“The ones with the rope in the throat are not courted by anyone but executioners.”

“What is it worth not to bet the house, if the soul is lost?”

“The one who buy some shares, if they, is angry at having bought, if they go up , is angry because he did not buy more; if he buys, they go up, sells, wins, and the share fly even higher than the price at which he sold, he is angry for having sold at a lower price; if he neither bought nor sold, and he sees the shares going up, he is angry because having had buying impulses, he failed to buy.”

“Regarding shares one should not give advice to anyone, because where success is haunted, it is difficult that the advice looks graceful.”

“The mantra of veteran shareholders, is Not marry the Shares.”

“When losing wait, when winning collect.”

“You have been an ignorant for having let yourself fooled, because preceding such a record of warnings, there can not be excuse for errors. “

“The restless do not want to embrace this philosophy, and like the air they are, and air is what they trade, to build castles in the air, they judge that the more they move the more exalted they are, the more agitated they are more over heated they become, and the more hotter they become they grow more.”

“He who does that, he who shall pay that.”

“The point was not in seeing how to enter in it, but in considering how to exit.”

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