Parsad

Have you ever had second thoughts about a decision? I'm assuming Buffett is human and fallible. Also, relationships and the nuances around them probably aren't Buffett's strengths. Calling him a douche for changing his mind is probably a little extreme. Cheers!

You also have to remember that certain desirable locations to live like Vancouver, are limited on growth by three natural borders (mountains, ocean and U.S. border). So a city like Vancouver has only two ways to grow...out towards the valley (east) or up (condos/towers). That puts additional pressure on prices in the region on top of any bubble. Cheers!

Buffett wanted The Snowball to be open and candid about his life, and gave Alice full access to everything, including his personal letters that other writers never had access to. Unfortunately, when the final draft came out, the stuff about Susie made some family members upset, which led Buffett to reconsider what was written. I have no idea if he asked Alice to remove some things or not, but I suspect something of that nature may have happened, and that's why he stopped talking to her...perhaps she refused to take anything out. I don't know. All I know is that he and family members were upset with how Susie was portrayed, even if it was essentially the truth. Cheers!

Test

For the Chinese, the ban on crypto is more to do with unwanted outflows of capital. China has extremely tight control on citizens/expats/businesses moving capital outside of China...they don't want to see an exodus, nor can they support a large-scale exodus of wealth and capital. For years, capital has been flowing outside of China through BTC transactions in Macau...they have tried to cutoff the head there, but little luck. They want to make sure mainstream Chinese institutions aren't moving capital outside using crypto as well. Frankly, I'm surprised more nations aren't banning crypto...there is so much illegal activity occurring through crypto's ability to hide transactions and the ownership of wallets. The amount of tax evasion occurring should also worry nation states. I suspect the current batch of crypto's demise will come when nation states or large corporations issue their own digital currencies that are more stable, efficient and accepted internationally through mainstream institutions. Cheers!

This is not quite correct. Susie essentially became involved with someone else when she left Omaha and began living in California on a more permanent basis. Buffett was completely loyal to his wife, even after she made this decision. They were basically two very different people who fell in love, married, had children, and then Susie realized she had spent much of her life devoted to Buffett, Berkshire and the children, and wasn't able to pursue the life she was missing. Once she had become involved with someone else, and Buffett was alone, she asked Astrid to check in on Buffett from time to time as a friend and companion...not necessarily a lover. Eventually a relationship formed with Astrid, as Buffett and Susie while still married, were not really together any longer...they remained loyal to each other as friends and parents, but were living two different lives. This is one of the reasons Buffett stopped any contact with Alice Schroeder (who wrote The Snowball), as he had kept the incorrect story alive...that he was the one who became involved with Astrid and that Susie lived with Buffett's infidelity. Schroeder while revealing the true story, actually ended up destroying her relationship with Buffett. In other words, for decades, Buffett was thought of as a cheating billionaire, when that wasn't really true...Buffett was ok with that, as he loved Susie dearly...but the truth was much more different than what the public understood. So the comparison to Gates is not accurate at all. Cheers!

Way to go rkbabang! Your one of the few who can say you've actually been to the moon! Cheers!

I hope there is no more to this than Epstein having been a donor...but often in these cases, it's just the tip of the iceberg. Especially with the number of times Gates met with Epstein and travelled on his private jet a few times. Cheers!

I put up the March 31, 2021 numbers on my post above...accidentally mislabeled it March 31, 2020. One quarter difference changed the results that much for 1, 3 and 5 years...what do you think will happen as value stocks continue to outperform over 2021 and 2022? Cheers!

For a guy managing over $500M and sitting on a private insurer worth somewhere north of $150M, your belief that Francis is all washed up is right on the money! The nerve of this guy to keep doing something he loves, treat his investors equitably and just plain be a nice guy. Mohnish is also another one...why do these guys continue to live and do what they enjoy! Assholes! At the end of 2019, Francis' compounded returns for the Associates Fund in USD was: December 31, 2019 (Series A) 1 Year 3 Years 5 Years 10 Years 15 Years 20 Years Chou Associates Fund ($US)1 6.5% 0.0% -4.8% 3.5% 4.0% 7.4% S&P 500 ($US) 31.5% 15.3% 11.7% 13.5% 9.0% 6.1% His numbers ending March 31, 2020: Chou Associates Fund (USD) 85.02% 7.45% 7.43% 2.61% 3.73% 8.41% As you can see, numbers can be skewed significantly due to single year or multi-year under/over performance. With one really good year, Francis' continues to out perform the S&P500 in USD since inception and the numbers over 3 years and 5 years increased dramatically. So you cannot look at performance in a vacuum. Alot of value managers have struggled over the last few years with a rampant bull market. That doesn't mean their results will remain dismal...I suspect Mohnish's numbers will also be skewed heavily in his favour through 2021 and 2022 as fundamental stock picking becomes more important than momentum. Cheers!

Yale's extremely well-regarded endowment manager, David Swensen, passed away from cancer: https://finance.yahoo.com/m/5fe5568a-2b47-3c65-847e-aee46bd42f41/david-swensen-dies-at-67-how.html

Not a huge fan of perma-bear David Rosenberg, but I thought his recent article was quite funny...and I'm sure he's got even more interesting experiences with Wall Street and Main Street! Cheers! David Rosenberg: I haven't been this excited about going against the herd in years | Financial Post

I've been getting requests for no ads, so I thought I would do a poll to see how people feel. Cheers!

Ok All, This one is locked. You are all more than welcome to start it up again on the Politics forum...go over there for this stuff! Cheers!

Possibly, but probably not. Most likely gave them some of the cash assets in the portfolio to manage. Cheers!

I'm checking out different plug-ins that will allow members to modify their view to their liking, including colors, themes, etc. So everyone will be able to change their view that makes it easiest to read for them. Cheers!

You've got a techtard running it on top of it all! It takes me a while to figure things out...but I will figure it out. Just give me the long weekend. Cheers!

Hi Doc, You guys do most of the heavy lifting, so it's only fair that you get to continue to use it for free! Newbies on the other hand have yet to earn their keep. Cheers!

Hi, we'll work on modifying the ads so they aren't as obtrusive. Give us a couple of days, as we'll probably make most of the website changes over the long weekend. Cheers!

Ok, I've expanded the editor. You should have pretty full functionality now. You should also be able to edit and delete your own posts now. Let me know if you are having problems with either of the two above. Cheers!

You should be able to do this already. Let me know. If you cannot, I'll look into the settings. There are also tons of plug-ins for the Invision forums, so if you don't see it, we can probably add it. Keep sending requests on this thread if you have them. Cheers!

We'll move the ads within the threads to the side bars, so they won't cut through the posts. Will look into the emoji thing. Cheers!

Hi Everyone, It's taken a bit of time to put it together, but the new "The Corner of Berkshire and Fairfax" site is up! It's a bit of a change for everyone, but we'll all get slowly used to it together. I'd like to thank Paul Clerc and his team at Watermelon Webworks for their work and trying to get all my desired features incorporated! While I've been playing with the "Beta" version, it isn't exactly like the actual site, so please work with me as I figure things out and get used to the administration. If you were a paid member of the old site, you are "grandfathered" in, and your same username and password should work here. You won't have to pay for anything, and all services are open to you...again, we'll get used to all of the services together. So we have a base of some 3,500+ members using the site. For new users, the fee will be $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year. I think over the years, from the experiences everyone has shared, both mentally and financially, that's pretty darn cheap! We have a number of useful features that members can tap into directly, rather than going through me...Podium, Classifieds, Zoom Room (which will feature recording and transcripting features) for members and their booked events. There will be an annual Stock Competition with cash prizes, an area to buy some COBF logo items (people have asked me to do this for a while), and yes a "Politics" forum with a separate link away from the "Investment" forum. Lastly, our new cleaner looking "Investment" forum has a ton of features and many that can be added. There are a ton of features within the site, but if there is anything you wanted or anything missing that you liked about the old site, please use this thread and respond. Paul and I will slowly try and incorporate any desired features with plug-ins and programming! Finally, my old contact email "cornerofberkshireandfairfax@gmail.com" is still active for queries, help, etc. You may have noticed the new domain name "thecobf.com"...a lot shorter and easy to remember. My future contact will be "info@thecobf.com", which should be working over the next couple of days. Once again, thank you all for your support over the years! We are going on our 20th year, and it has been my pleasure to be friends with you all! Sincerely, Sanjeev

You're absolutely correct! Go down to the "Provisional Death Counts For Covid" on the link you selected. Go through deaths for each age group...you'll see spikes in all categories, especially younger ages, into December (15-24). And then you see the massive drop in deaths as people began to get vaccinated from January. I'm glad you selected that link, since it's about as clear as I can get about the matter! One can act smart without taking the vaccine, but your own data shows that taking the vaccine has a much more dramatic effect than just "acting smarter". Cheers! That makes zero sense. The CDC link was interesting - younger age groups had their peak deaths the weeks of January 9 to 23. That usually means they were infected in the second half of December or the beginning of January. At that time only 0.1-1% of the U.S. population had been vaccinated, practically all of them care providers or risk groups (https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/). So you are saying that vaccinating this tiny fraction of people, somehow was miraculously the cause for a fall-of-a-cliff type drop in contagion and subsequent death rate of younger cohorts? Not to mention that the vaccines only protect the vaccinated from severe outcomes, but not from getting infected and potentially spreading the virus - or so we are told. No, vaccination dropped death rates for all categories...you can see the stats for yourself from January to present day. As the number of vaccinated people increased, the transmission rates dropped...the number of pneumonia cases dropped...the number of deaths dropped. Is it any wonder the number of influenza cases was so low in North America this year? That is due to social distancing, lockdowns, masks, increased disinfection...and you also see a decrease in Covid cases as inoculations occur. This is common sense and would be expected. Do vaccines carry risk...yes...but at extremely low levels as we've seen globally as inoculation results are studied more and more. Cheers!

Hi SouthernYankee, please don't take any offense. That argument would be ok if your choice in not taking the vaccine had no impact on others...say like getting a stent put in or not, because you have a clogged artery, or not getting chemo because you have cancer. But this is far more impactful and detrimental than even second hand smoke in how you affect others around you...unless you stay in your home locked up and never seen anyone again. I think that is the main point anyone in favor of inoculation is making...not the statistics, politics, etc. Simply that the more people vaccinated, the less likely vulnerable people will die from Covid by being exposes to others. And we've seen how variants are affecting younger, healthier people...so it is no longer just the old and immune compromised anymore. Cheers! Agree with Southern Yankee. The stats generally point to older folks (65+) or those with pre-existing conditions being the most vulnerable. It may sound selfish but if you are vulnerable the onus is on you to protect yourself. The overwhelming majority of young people recover pretty quickly (less than 2 weeks from Covid). In the US a country of about 320 million (fairly large sample size) only 8000 people under 40 have died according to the CDC. The covid vaccine was rushed to market for obvious reasons and nobody can be sure what effects if any might exist long term. If there was more science/data to support getting the vaccine I probably would. However, when the average FDA approval takes 4-8 years depending on the source to reach stage 4, I think I have a right (maybe an obligation) to be skeptical of a vaccine that went through all the steps in under a year. Stay safe and healthy--your body, your choice. Generally vaccines take that long because of limited dollars and extensive volume trials. But this was a pandemic and they essentially threw unlimited resources at it and fast-tracked emergency approval guidelines on clinical trials. In other words, the possible side effects and risks, were outweighed by the risks and deaths from not using the vaccine against Covid. You now actually have far more data, which has been extensively analyzed by experts around the world, than any trial would provide...and the results are the vaccines are effective and have limited side effects. Regarding age...some of the new variants are having a greater impact on those between 30-50, including higher mortality. So just because one variant affected older and immune compromised patients dramatically, doesn't mean a new variant could not pose a threat to the healthy and younger subgroups. And we know that the current vaccines are having some protective effect against some variants. Will that last...we don't know...but so far it is working. Cheers! Regarding the vaccine and side effects...in the short term sure you may well be right. In the long term we have no idea because the vaccine has not been used that long. Regarding age....no idea where you are getting those figures from. The deaths quoted above are directly from the CDC. Also, I find it unlikely that a new variant would do more hard to younger people with stronger immune systems than older people. In the US, doing the rough math 8000 deaths in the age bracket cited above while tragic comes out to about 22 people under 40 per day. Hardly worth rushing to get a new vaccine in my opinion. Type "Covid variants young people" in Google and you will find tens of articles discussing how some new variants are making young people sicker and even increasing mortality rates. Cheers! I did as you suggested and looked that up. Really saw articles saying what "could" happen. The reality which is what we know is that based on the facts younger people are basically not dying here. This is like someone suggesting a stock and saying google "buy name of company". Again, I say lets look at the reality-22 people a day in the United States---very sad but hardly an extraordinary number. https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-variant-in-u-k-probed-for-increased-risk-to-younger-people-11611661304 https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/12/data-reveal-deadliness-covid-19-even-young-adults https://interestingengineering.com/uk-study-shows-new-covid-19-variant-spreads-faster-affects-younger-people https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/15/uk-study-finds-kent-variant-may-be-70-more-deadly Just a few found in minutes. Cheers! I think the article that will really trump the four provided: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm Again, when dealing with reality, in the US with a population of approx 320 million people, it's pretty clear that younger people recover from Covid. To the extent the new strains "maybe" more deadly that clearly has not been reflected in the actual death rate in the US yet. I'm not saying don't be careful and act smart. But it's my belief that one can act smart without taking a relatively new vaccine. Cheers! You're absolutely correct! Go down to the "Provisional Death Counts For Covid" on the link you selected. Go through deaths for each age group...you'll see spikes in all categories, especially younger ages, into December (15-24). And then you see the massive drop in deaths as people began to get vaccinated from January. I'm glad you selected that link, since it's about as clear as I can get about the matter! One can act smart without taking the vaccine, but your own data shows that taking the vaccine has a much more dramatic effect than just "acting smarter". Cheers!