Oh yes, I forgot to address your other points: RMD share buy...

Oh yes, I forgot to address your other points:

RMD share buy backs

I may have got this wrong, but this is what my calculations were indicating. Over the financial years 2001 to 2012 (that's the last year in which I analysed RMD), I looked at the increase in earnings for every dollar of retained earnings (5 year rolling periods).

This indicated a very nice level and trend, commencing at about 15% at the start of the period, and culminating at about 25% at the end (actual numbers depend on how much R&D is treated as "maintenance R&D" and how mich is treated as "growth R&D").

But when I adjusted for the effect on individual shareholders of the share buybacks (EPS increase on capital-per-share + cost-of-buybacks-per-share), I found a different story resulted. This indicated a value commencing at 17% (in 2001) and trending down to about 13% (in 2012).

I took this to mean that the business was basically enriching shareholders selling out, rather than those staying on-board.

So yes, my preference would be to increase the dividend, if there are insufficient clear value-adding growth opportunities. And frankly, if options featured less prominently in the remuneration of executives, then there would be less need to manage share dilution. That's another thing I like about ARB, REH and ONT.

But as you say, the intrinsic value (on a per share basis, I presume) continues to grow, more than adquately. So I'm proven wrong, in this instance. And that's fine.

Timing the market

Yes, I tend to accumulate cash. Unfortunately, at the last great opportunity, the GFC, I didn't buy aggressively enough. It's easy to say, I price rather than time, but the reality is, that when all starts getting gloomy, its funny how ones valuations start getting lower, and lower. What can I say, just groping in the dark, and hoping that the unwinding of the super cycle really happens.