Jurgis

Resistance is futile! 8)

So to echo the VIC thread: Is MOI worth it? Answer before Thursday. 8)

What is your longest held stock? From when to when did you hold it? What was the annualized return on it? What portfolio percentage (approximately) was it? Any lessons you learned from the experience? Only stocks that were continuously held for the whole period please. It's up to you if you want to include board namesakes BRK and FFH. To exhibit my total incapability to hold anything long term, I don't know what I have held for very long. I believe I may still have some shares of BRK I bought ~2008-2009. Probably my longest held position... And it probably was ~1% of my portfolio at most. Maybe others have more interesting stories. 8)

Tough question. How about simpler one: How and why could normal investor (who was not an employee) hold on to Berkshire through thick and thin, from 1964 to today...? Would you have held through the 50% declines? And not sold for 50 years? I could have bought BRK in the 90s and held to now... I did not. (Aside 1: I thought there were at least two 50% declines, but I only see one in http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2016ltr.pdf ) (Aside 2: Depending on whether I would have bought BRK in 1995 (~12.X% annualized since then) or 1996 (~10.X%), I have either underperformed or outperformed... let's call it a wash) If BRK is too easy question, how about Teledyne or TCI? Or Microsoft? Or Google for (somewhat) younger folks? I did not buy-and-hold any of them. Maybe interesting question (another thread?) is: what is your longest held stock and what was the return? Possibly excluding board namesakes BRK and FFH. I might start that. 8)

ScottHall just (re)discovered one of the big claims of The Gorilla Game. News at 10, crash at 11. 8)

I wonder how many things will be pushed into options and how much the options gonna cost. Heard rumors - maybe totally unsubstantiated - about $5K-10K just for Autopilot (sw enable?). Gonna have to think about taking delivery or not when it's clearer about the actual price. BTW, there's likely gonna be a mess with service. People are already bitching about slow Tesla service (though perhaps mostly about the 3rd party body shops). Magnify that x500k cars and no dealerships... Gonna be interesting if they can manage that well.

My wife has Project Fi and we love it. But you're wrong about the bolded. T-Mobile has had this for the last 5-10 years. Project Fi only has it because they MVNO on top of T-Mobile (and Sprint, but not for Intl coverage) I have T-Mobile for 17 years now...

Beam me up Scotty!

Programmers in general are not good in thinking in terms of user experience. Depending on area/product/company there may or may not be a dedicated team that does the user experience (that includes UI, but not just UI). The team may be good/mediocre/bad. It may be supported by the rest of the company or just tolerated. Success of the product(s) may depend on that team or not at all. For most enterprise software my guess is that the user experience is not thought out much. But I don't have non-anecdotal data.

OMG, some Bayes rule love here. 8)

Nobody is saying that TDG cannot refuse to do a cost+ deal. Sure they could. But would they really say "FU" to a big customer who actually might look for alternative source if they are told to "FU" and then that source could sell to other TDG customers. I'd bet TDG won't say "FU". They will go for cost+, but will also dance to get the biggest + possible. I believe there was info in Citron report that TDG itself suggested adjusting contract to cost+ for some contract where government got cost info.

What Schwab711 said. 8)

Perhaps USG could squeeze TDG contracts to cost+ based on "monopolist provider" rule. Someone can do math of how much profit TDG would lose on that. If TDG contracts went to cost+, USG would not need to cancel their contracts with TDG and look for alternative suppliers. Win win. :P

There's a lot of crap Netflix content IMO. (Don't rely on my taste though... actually if you asked me, I don't remember a single good Netflix show. But there's more than one that are crap even based on Netflix show fans.) IMO Netflix/Amazon are fueling content bubble. There was too much content before they joined the fray. Now it's getting way too much. I guess content is still quite profitable, since we've seen pretty zero contraction in the business so far (apart from STRZA purchase by LGF which may not have reduced content much). But I wonder.

Did Warren ask the salesperson at dealership to preset the station or did they show initiative and did it themselves? 8)

Well that was fast! I bet whistleblower claims are going to be the next big alpha-driver for hedge funds. You get a free option on the possibility the government uses your research to collect $ and it helps your short position. Cause it worked so well for Ackman wrt HLF. ;)

In Boston area Vietnamese own the hardwood floor business. I've hired them twice and like you said, I got the 1/2-1/4th the price of the real contractor and good quality. I won't ask where they got materials, where they disposed of garbage and most likely no insurance, no health for employees, etc. :-\ I would have loved to hire them for other jobs, but I don't talk the language so it was hard to ask if they did other jobs and how/etc.

Not to start a discussion here, but "politics" refers to political discussions on CoBF that have potentially antagonized community members against other possible attendees. It does not refer to anything at the last dinner. Although anyone can interpret options any way they like.

Isn't the major "secret": I.e. owner works 24 hours, their family works 24 hours, and/or hires (potentially illegal) immigrant workers who work 24 hours for below official wage salary. Which makes the operation the low cost operator. There might be more to it, but the huge-work-for-cheap is likely major component, no?

BTW if person buys $100CAD option and wants that to be donation (i.e. they won't attend), is there a way to easily indicate that? Or other easy credit-card/paypal donation option for non Canadians?

Not really true. He owned a chunk of UVIC - Florida nanocap contact lens company that was bought out by B&L (Valeant). http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=27642316&srchtxt=Baker He left director position and sold his shares to company for not much gain before the B&L buyout though. So maybe you're somewhat right. ;) (I also sold out for a wash to small gain before B&L buyout too. :'( )

I tried to select option that allows users vote for more than one option. Not sure it works. Edit: it seems it does Note that users can select multiple options, so it's not single user/single vote.

Sanjeev, I appreciate CoBF a lot. I see three reasons for the attendance fall off: 1. People are disappointed with Fairfax. 2. People are disappointed with Premier. 3. Politics threads on CoBF push people away. Not that explanation will make you happier... I am not attending this year. Best regards and best luck Edit: I started poll which may show other reasons.

I know it's for real. The cards I received in junk mail in the past were also for real - some people have used them. The rest of the claims I can't comment on.

I've seen similar (?) drug benefit cards in junk mailer coupon packs in the past. Not sure what was covered, who was paying for the discounts, etc. Never dug deeper.