Jurgis

I'll assume you mean "US stock mutual funds" (If you mean "bond", the answer is yes. If you mean "international", the answer is likely yes). It's a tough question. Last time I looked, you still could find non-super-situational (e.g. not just bio/tech only) mutual funds that outperformed indexes for last 10 years. And you can definitely find value mutual funds who underperformed and who argue that the things will change sometime soon (this is the whole long discussion on various threads if value managers are kaput or just having bad time in hugely bull market, etc.). It is very hard to say whether you can pick mutual funds that will do well in the future. IMO, this is possibly as hard as picking stocks ... and very different from picking stocks. So in some sense CoBF is a bad board to ask. People here are either great at picking stocks or think they are great at picking stocks or at least have spent a lot of time and effort to pick stocks. Very few people here spent much time at picking mutual funds. And people who invest into mutual funds here mostly do that because they somehow "know" the management of the fund, i.e. they've read the books, watched the CNN/youtube/Bloomberg, they've met them at BRK/whatever events, etc. Which might not be the greatest way to pick mutual fund - or maybe it is - but who knows... Edit: if you're asking for concrete suggestions, I don't have any. Some time ago I looked a bit at finding good mutual funds to invest into, but I did not spend a lot of time and pretty much gave up. Currently I have no suggestions.

A lot (all?) of their outperformance before VRX debacle was due to their VRX position. In other words, if they have not invested in VRX, likely they would have underperformed too. (Ideally they would have sold most/all VRX near the top or even within 2/3 of the top. Of course it's all coulda shoulda).

As if they don't do that now without collision avoidance. ::) Anyway, you might be right somewhat. At this point I would not change my investment behavior even if I was invested in a pure auto insurer. They definitely have 10+ years of mostly-not-much-change business conditions. And anyone who tries to predict what happens after 10+ years is likely deluding themselves.

It's good that they encourage people to donate directly as that cuts down on how much goes to a second overhead. Curious why you chose to go w/ The Gates Foundation rather than going direct. We probably should move this to charity thread (I'm pretty sure there was one at some point). You are right that donating to Gates foundation makes your donation suffer second overhead. OTOH, you might be benefiting from their expertise in picking organizations to support. Also some organizations that they support might not be accessible for you to support directly. You may also benefit from their "asset allocation" decisions - in terms of how much money to put into poverty, how much into education, etc. If you want to make these decisions yourself, power to you. If you don't, there's nothing wrong to get them to make these decisions for you (as long as you like/agree with their priorities). I'm not a concentrated investor and I'm not a concentrated "charity donator". I know that most people advise to pick a single (or couple) charity to donate to and stick with that. I don't follow that very much. If I concentrated to single charity, I might go with Gates just because of the arguments above. As it is, I do a scattershot with a bit of forethought and planning but also with a bit of random/emotional/etc. decisions. ./shrug Can I ask you to follow up on charity thread if you want to continue this discussion? Edit: we can use this thread I think: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/charity-recommendations/msg284871/#msg284871

I think people are making mistake thinking that you need level 4-5 autonomous driving for the number of accidents to drop significantly and impact insurance companies. IMO, active collision avoidance systems are likely to drop the number of accidents almost as much as the level 4-5 and they will come much sooner. Of course, you still need 10 years+ for the whole auto inventory to get collision avoidance, so I'd say there are ~10 years+ for insurance companies. Also, there will be time IMO when the insurers still charge higher premiums and get extra profits even while the accidents are declining. (The corollary though is last year when Buffett said that Geico had lower margins due to more distracted driving (presumably)).

This might be OT, but Gates Foundation now accepts donations from anyone. This was not true some time ago, but people have been bugging them to take their money 8), so they have relented. I have donated some. I may donate more. There are caveats: a large chunk of your money gets redonated to causes/organizations Gates Foundation supports. You can see the list on their site. They still encourage you to donate directly to these organizations (but they will take your money and redonate).

What the guy wrote was not science. It was sexist manifesto with some pretense of trying to sound like science. I am sorry Richard if you don't see the difference and that he managed to fool you with his guarding phrases and "sciency" sounding pieces. You want him to be treated like a legit scientist raising scientific questions and proposing scientific studies to address them. He is not. He might try masquerading as one, but he's just pushing his sexist worldview. I'm not going to go through his puke point by point - there are a lot of other people who did this in way better way than I could do. Edit: Nice writeup by Economist: https://www.economist.com/news/21726276-last-week-paper-said-alphabets-boss-should-write-detailed-ringing-rebuttal I completely agree with rb. I also completely agree with this guy: https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-manifesto-1e3773ed1788

Datorama updated: http://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=brk Baupost also bought SYF... did any of these guys talk about what/why they like it?

Partially OT: Rocketfinancial people should figure out that there's no LMCK anymore... ::)

I completely support Google for firing the sexist alt-right asshole. This was great decision to show people that such behavior won't be tolerated.

Let's see how this goes. As someone who buys frozen meals, I'd be interested in non-frozen prepared meals at right quality and (cheap) price. 8) Currently a lot of frozen meal prices are approaching our (subsidized) cafeteria prices making them not worthwhile. My magic limit is ~$5. Trader Joe's still cheap. 8)

Shouldn't that be the way to deal with all countries USA goes to war with? ::) Sorry to say, this is yet another simple Internetz solution that does not work. (Yeah, Internetz is famouz for simple solutions that don't work). Big issues with these kind of approaches are: 1. The target country will try to shoot down any planes sending the balloons. If you respond by hitting their defense systems, you have war anyway. 2. The target country will send military/police to get your propaganda donations. 3. The target country's populace is unlikely to revolt even if military/police gets your propaganda donations. 4. Even if populace will revolt, the likely answer is that the target country will hit its populace with its military. Or they will nuke their neighbors. Or they will nuke US. There are no simple solutions. One possibility is to get China realize that supersanctions and regime change under their supervision is better for them than having nuclear neighbor with a dictator. Not an easy task and does not guarantee 100% success anyway. For Internetz simple-solution-solvers: bonus problem: apply this solution to Russia. 8) This message may self destruct in ...

A friend in CA has Leaf. He and his wife are both in queue for Model 3. I believe he likes Leaf, but the range is too limited for longer trips. (He also "fills up" for free at Google and does not charge at home - haha he's a value investor I guess 8) ). For me, I would buy Model 3 for autopilot only. I don't care about the e part much. Torque would be nice, but if there was a gas car with better autopilot than Tesla, I'd just buy that. I might be too optimistic about autopilot/self-driving - maybe I would not use it much/at all due to limitations - and then the whole purchase is mostly bleh... ::). That's just me though. ./shrug 8)

I just realized that this idea has a precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatons_to_Megawatts_Program 8) Let's hope it all ends well.

and eventually more reliable than Toyotas and Hondas. Yeah, that's definitely an important area that is a bit scary for me, especially when the repair center is about 20 miles away and may be jammed with broken cars if Model 3 is successful but lemony. Sudden engine death on the freeway is another scary situation. I think Picasso mentioned that in regards to Model S. BTW, not trying to diss Tesla or start a flame war re its reliability. Just things that I am personally concerned about and would be very happy if the reliability was great.

ROFL. 8) I wonder how the heck anyone ever bought a car called "Oldsmobile"... ::)

It's been over watched... Sorry, could not resist. 8)

LBTYA or LBTYK Thread at: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/lbtya-liberty-global/

Yeah, if I get Tesla, I'll still gonna use gas car for very long trips (i.e. more than ~180 miles roundtrip). So not planning to use superchargers at all. Just charge at home. That's also the reason I won't get extended range. BTW, I took a look at supercharger map around us. I'm pretty sure there are "good ones", but there's bunch for "members only" of some hotel/club/whatever. And there's bunch of "everyone allowed" but you have to call to make appointment to use it... ::) :o WTF.

Yeah, the typical car dealership attitude. Which sucks. I don't like very much Tesla's attitude to push more expensive configurations (apart of AWD) to the top of the queue. I understand it, but I don't like it. If you wait for AWD, you pretty sure lose federal tax rebate. Which I think is a rather big hit to price... Your call though. I have mostly decided that I'm not buying if I can't squeeze into the tax rebate cohort. Additional data point: for people who don't want autopilot, there are older used Model S online at ~$45K price range, some even with good options. Clearly it's the oldest Model S configuration, so FWIW.

I'm a bit confused. I don't think I paid 3% of a house as a buyer. I never paid any fees for mortgage or closing... simply got no points, no fees mortgage. It may have been a bit higher rate, but since I refi'd at least 3 times per house, it was well worth having a bit higher rate but then refi with no points no fees again. Yes, you do pay something like 5% real estate agent fees as a seller, which is split among seller's agent and buyer's agent. You can save by not having an agent but it has its own issues. If you have no agent as buyer, it doesn't give you any benefit usually. Anyway, just my experience, your's might be different.

Ah, OK. 8) I am not Amazon bull on investment side. I'm in the "great company, won't talk about the stock price" camp. I like Amazon as a customer. Yesterday I bought a bunch of Russian books from 3rd parties that otherwise I'd had to buy from some Russian-book sites for more. Yeah, there were fun issues (some of the books are listed using Cyrillic name of the author, some Latinized, some yet another version of Latinized name) and yeah some books are way overpriced (didn't buy these). I'm really not a bull on the marketplace, not a bear either. It has plusses and minuses both for Amazon as a company and me as a customer. I think Amazon should segregate (ah what a word) 3rd party sellers more but Bezos knows better I guess. ;)

I guess this is the problem. On eBay, Craigslist, and Alibaba, I am expect the transaction to be fraudulent or counterfeit or stolen. Which is why I shop on Amazon. Here is another example: https://www.polygon.com/2017/3/30/15124114/nintendo-switch-scam-amazon Edit to add: This is actually one reason I'm not convinced that Amazon will succeed in Industrial Supply (or pharmacy for that matter). It's one thing when a consumer get's counterfeit Birkenstock's. But companies won't be willing to wade through pages of shady sellers just to save 10% on industrial supplies. Just to be clear (and sorry I am beating a rather dead horse here): I bought my Nikon B700 on Amazon from Amazon (not 3rd party), even though 3rd parties were $100 cheaper to get original item. But I did not buy it on Walmart.com since Walmart only has it from 3rd parties. There don't carry Walmart sourced item at all. Now, of course, regular people may not distinguish products on Amazon that are from Amazon and products on Amazon that are from 3rd parties. And that's an issue. Also an issue for Walmart, but perhaps they don't give a crap. Edit: BTW the electronics has been like that for ages... I wonder if you're unhappy because you just found out this... I've been buying stuff from 3rd parties on Amazon for >10 years now... Programs, games. Sometimes you get "Norton Antivirus for Africa Only Not for sale in US" for $10 instead of paying $60. And it's just fine... maybe. Sometimes you get broken fake stuff... Which is mostly because you were cheap and risked to buy 3rd party from Chinese sellers. It's not news for me at all. But I can see that it might be an issue for less informed people. The question is really if they really encounter if more nowadays and if they transfer their experience to their opinion about Amazon. Edit2: And yeah Amazon is really great on watching your back and refunding for the fake broken stuff. But yeah it's a bit of a hassle. Also if you really don't want grey market, you have to buy Amazon-proper only. Cause in some cases you can't spot the difference.

There is no scam. But, yeah, 3rd party sellers can put up any price and if there are no other sellers at lower price and buyer is desperate (or not price sensitive), you get the sale. This is true for any similar market (eBay, Alibaba probably). This is how I make huge fake money in online games and how some people make real money on Amazon, eBay or Alibaba... I agree though that it makes some people negative about Amazon. I also agree that crappy 3rd party prices and possibly fake products from 3rd parties hurt Amazon ( while at the same time helping their sales and giving them high margins ). FYI, it hurts Walmart online too. I've already posted twice about their 3rd party electronics offerings from possibly fake or grey markets...

IMO Petec has a pretty good handle into possible Fairfax performance.