two sound businesses, page-4

Camden55,

The only good would likely be we wouldn't be taken out too cheaply. Birketu have been taking up cheap DRP shares using the creep provision. Latest total 51m or 23.83%.

Then there's Mark Foley with 13m or 6.1%. After 10 years of stewardship he seems content to leave the MD helm to an outside appointee, Stephen Nash (Metric Group). With this move I suspect BSA are planning to be more aggressive and acquisitive themselves. The Chairman's commented he will "take BSA to the next level of development".

I've read some of your posts. Great logical cash focussed approach. I've gravitated from a PE to a cash approach of late. Thanks very much for that psychological "whole company" buy test.

The level of financial literacy is uninspiring; non-existent in the specie end of town I sometimes frequent in specfic instances. I've tried posting informative pro/con posts there, but don't bother anymore for those type of companies. People don't want to know. In combination with financial training, my view is that children should be taught (gently) of the behavioural hardwiring that makes many of us dubious candidates for logical sharemarket investing - and indeed dubious candidates to run a planet.

This is a hobby horse of mine so I'm going to get way too philosophical. In the last 2m years or so, all our evolution has occurred within the setting of optimising survival within a small mobile group. All evolved behaviours were useful at the time, but some have real downside now imo.

Some examples:

- a fairly short term, reactive focus (to predators, food gathering, most things)
- an imperative to stay in the group for best survival and status (thus a modern tendency to follow the herd too religiouslyy)
- a propensity to react strongly to visual/physical/emotional prompts, rather than intellectual information.

Now that we're instantly interconnected everywhere, our small group herding behaviour (partly known as sentiment) has merged into a global beast, flowing ceaselessly and connecting the unconnected. Small daily BSA movements might flow from the DOW being down after Bernanke changes a few lines in a speech. Bizarre really.

We all know this occurs, but most people show no interest in the real cause. My point is, even if most people became financially literate, their investment decisions would often be trumped longer term by unfortunate behavioural inheritances. For those who aren't resolute or haven't mastered compensating techniques, they tend to erode considered logical decisions over time - imo.

On a lighter note, I calculate FCF to EV %'s individually. Are there databases out there that contain this info and that can be used for initial screening?

Regards