Buffett Buys IBM: A Quality, Improving Stock At A Good Price

This story is interesting. David Sokol was one of the people being groomed to succeed Warren Buffett as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He was forced to resign in an insider trading scandal.David Sokol bought a lot of shares of Lubirzol for his personal account. Then, he advised Warren Buffett to buyout Lubrizol, and Warren Buffett followed his advice. David Sokol made approximately $3M off his Lubrizol trade.

There's a major revolution going on right now in enterprise technology.  Apps, devices, cloud computing, big data, networks, software are all being overhauled.

Dennis Byron submits: As described in two recent year-end blog posts, personal computing is not dead, and neither is

VMware today demonstrated its new cloud computing service that takes on the 800-pound gorilla, Amazon.

MONTREAL — The strong Canadian dollar, surging production costs and the worldwide economic downturn are all being blamed by the Cirque du Soleil for its decision to lay off 400 employees. Most of the layoffs will be at the artistic giant’s Montreal headquarters. Company spokeswoman Renee-Claude Menard moved to dispel speculation the Cirque is flailing. “The first thing to say is that the Circus is not in crisis,” Menard told a news conference Wednesday. “Let’s get that straight.

By MyPlanIQ:We continue to look for stock ideas for the long term investor and Matt Koppenheffer summarizes the picks that Warren Buffett highlights in his annual letter. There is nothing that can be added to what it means to be selected by the Oracle from Omaha, and probably these stocks will have a pop from his recommendation; however, it is worth investigating them.

TODAY, the Dow Jones Industrial Average flirted with the 13,000 level, prompting lots of people across a number of different media to talk about how the Dow was flirting with the 13,000 level. Of course, there's no real meaning to the 13,000 level; people just like big, round numbers, and so discussion about how the Dow had returned to this particular level (the last close above 13,000 occurred in May of 2008) seemed somehow more justified than discussion of the index's attainment of, say, the all-important 12,578 level. A focus on big, round numbers is a little silly.