Jurgis

Even with Superforecasting predictions are pretty useless for >5 years. Without Superforecasting most of them are useless even for shorter periods (see Tetlock's previous work).

+1. Not to restart my soapbox, but I pretty much stay with opinion that in US you need 500K-1M just to be on the safe side of medical/long-term care. Also assuming 3% withdrawal 500K gives you only 15K per year income...

One answer that is promoted by a lot of people is that you only evaluate process rather than outcome. So a decision is "correct" if you followed the process (e.g. if you're a Buffetty investor: ensured that business had moat, was not in decline, trading at reasonable FCF, whatever else) irrespective of what the investment result was. Of course, the problem with above is that you could have (almost?) perfect process and still crappy results. E.g. you could have bought AXP 5 years ago (arguably good Buffetty process?) instead of MA/V or even SPY and your results would be crap. Maybe not perfect example, but IMO somewhat reasonable one. So at some point you have to evaluate your results too. Or somehow evaluate the process results in comparison with what else you could have done. Not sure how this would work though.

Might be interesting place to work for. :)

Looks like saved by Trump this year. Maybe next year too if Fannie/Freddie work out.

Assuming it's not a trick question and assuming exchange-quoted investments only: No. Temperament and shrewdness or entrepreneurship without stellar IQ might be enough to make this off-exchanges in some situations. Although we always have Forest Gump as shining star.

Right. And I see how people from poor countries might dismiss American poverty as non-issue. Yeah, I have friends and relatives who immigrated to America and are doing "fine" while working mostly menial jobs (for some definition of "fine": some still have no health insurance and just hope not to get sick; they may have to retire back home where it's much cheaper to live; etc.). So it's easy to say: "Hey everyone in America could do as well as an immigrant who cleans floors and wipes asses of rich seniors". Except that's a huge simplification and does not really cover the issues of American poverty.

Great though painful article. Thanks.

The fact that poverty in India is much worse than poverty in USA does not subtract from issues of poverty in USA. Yeah, I would rather alleviate poverty in India and other super poor countries. Yeah, I mostly donate for charities outside USA. But rich rightwingers like people in previous messages who casually dismiss US poor likely haven't seen their living conditions either. It's very easy to dismiss US homeless who die in the streets as mentally unstable or addicts. A lot of them are, but there are numerous examples of normal people who lose their mobile houses (haha, let's perhaps read about BRK's Clayton again), have no employment, are buried in debt, and have no money for medicine or other necessities. Should we read about Flint again? Should we read about native American reservations? It's always possible to blame them as clearly they've had much better opportunities than people in India, but that's the common practice of blaming the victim.

I'll consider this in 20 years when I have to replace my roof. 8)

Right. Part of attraction to FFH was the deflation hedges/optionality and market hedges. They removed half of market hedges and deflation hedges are less attractive with inflation possibly picking up. So then you look at FFH naked and have to decide if that is attractive. If FFH was at price comparable to BRK, it might not be very attractive naked vs BRK. Now that it's at a (way?) "cheaper" price than BRK, maybe it is. Disclosure: I have large positions in both FFH and BRK. Haven't added recently.

So far probably good strategy. :) Although LBRDA and LSXMA are possibly holds or maybe even buys. Disclosure: I own most Liberties at various sizes

Not bad.

I've watched this before. I don't particularly agree about AAPL or FB buying content (DIS, DISCA, etc.). IMO AAPL and FB are very different from content companies and this would probably be bad idea (although maybe OK for shareholders of the company bought). Probably same with MSFT and GOOGL. AMZN or NFLX could buy content companies. NFLX is too small to buy DIS. Edit: see AAPL thread about their weird attempts at the content... I stand with my original opinion though.

My latest in-US anecdotal trip: started on Orbitz (that's where I always start), got airline fare and hotel rate. Went to airline (JetBlue) site to see if I can get better airfare - pretty much same - but they offered the same hotel through JetBlue vacations cheaper (but with more restrictions on cancelling/etc.). Booked there. As mentioned before I don't usually use Tripadvisor even for reviews. Just adding to anecdotes. Disclosure: I have a teeny tiny position in LTRPA from Liberty spinoff and a bit bigger position in LEXEA from Liberty spinoff.

I'm mostly fine with what they are doing. My comment was mostly for myself really so I would not have wrong mental image about their CAGR. Have fun.

Is it me or they are Monday morning quarterbacking the CAGR in slide 7? I.e. they assume you sold STRZA "1 year after spinoff" and reinvested in LMCA - cynic would think that's because STRZA went down. But they don't assume you sold any other trackers or spinoffs - cynic would say because they went up. No?

Exactly. So to clarify my comment above: there are businesses that will do mostly fine when not actively run (i.e. run by passive persons); there are no businesses that can withstand active idiots. And yeah, we shouldn't use word "idiots" since they would really be good meaning, but would break the business by trying to grow (diworsify, lever, etc.) or change the products. See "Billion-Dollar Lessons" for more exhaustive list.

Hey, not fair, I almost had a bet for a free beer... :P

Bet that you are misunderstanding the form. I claim that positions with code 4 are Berkshire Hathaway stock positions and not private Warren Buffett stock positions.

You wanna bet? :)

I believe you're misinterpreting the filing. I believe code 4 is Berkshire proper (as opposed to one of the subs) and not Buffett's PA. I don't have much data to substantiate this, just the fact that majority of positions are in 4 and the fact that there's no code for Berkshire proper. I believe code 4 says "Buffett Warren E", because he's specified as the manager for Berkshire proper.

OK, just for fun: what you guys gonna say if Buffett bags an airline with his elephant gun? 8) I mean there are synergies: BRK is already a transportation company ;D ; they could sell tickets for AAL, BNSF and NetJets depending on your travel plans... ;D

But this is likely not Warren Buffett. Will we have to rewrite the above as: ? ::)

Looks like Lindbald owns Natural Habitat: http://investors.expeditions.com/file/Index?KeyFile=34192191 Update: Also looks like Natural Habitat is for land-based tours. Lindblad is cruises. Thanks. Looking at the respective websites, Natural Habitat has ship based tours. Lindblad has tours that seem to be land-based. Maybe they merged by now... ;) WWF and National Geographic are good partners to have to sell this stuff. Strong channels. OTOH, Lindblad probably pays for it, so the question is whether they get their money's worth and beyond. Anyway, Nat Hab has some tours that I'd be attracted to. Expensive though... Gotta make some money in stock market or something... 8)