I will keep a substantial long exposure to gold -- which serves as a Jelly Donut antidote for my portfolio. While I'd love for our leaders to adopt sensible policies that would reduce the tail risks so that I could sell our gold, one nice thing about gold is that it doesn't even have quarterly conference calls.

Microsoft has one more shot at a role in smart phone software through its deployment on Nokia phones. Nokia is still the global market share leader in cell phones. Maybe it will work out, but this is hard to envision great success in the area coming on the heels of so much disappointment in missed opportunity in this important and visible category.

As an investor my job is to figure out what will happen rather than what should happen.

What do you call a stock that's down 90%? A stock that was down 80% and then got cut in half.

Microsoft could help Facebook with one of the biggest challenges, namely monetizing its traffic without reducing the user's experience. It's obvious that Microsoft needs traffic and Facebook needs search.

A 99% Value-at-Risk calculation does not evaluate what happens in the last one percent... This is like an airbag that works all the time, except when you have a car accident.

The loss was not bad luck. It was bad analysis.