Jurgis

Took a look at this, since it was mentioned as large holding of Askeladden Capital ( http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/the-22-year-old-hedge-fund-manager/ ). Based on FCF ( http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?FilingID=11525674-853-161090&type=sect&TabIndex=2&dcn=0001104659-16-137072&nav=1&src=Yahoo ), it seems cheap; holds a bunch of cash. But I guess the contracts are a big risk. Revenue dropping in 2016. Haven't looked at the significant contract expirations and renewals yet, though this thread does not paint a positive picture. Probably skip.

Yeah, BUD can ;D be a buy at right price.

Depends on what causes supercrash, no? If we are talking about air pocket that drops market 20% or so, most everything "Buffetty" will continue to compound. If we are talking about supercrash that makes Apple go down 70%+, the underlying causes will affect what will come out of the crash fine, what won't. We'll be crapping our pants at that point anyway, so I suggest buying Depends... ::)

MCO, FICO, DIS, TDG maybe. CFRUY if you go out of US, Nestle - same. Personally, I'll probably buy Liberties, since they will crash a lot since they are levered. I'm still not sure these lists are useful, but what the heck. More fun than some other threads. ;) Sorry, no price targets, since looking at your prices I'm not sure I can suggest comparatives. ;)

If market crashes like in 2008-2009, the best buys are weak companies, not strong companies. That's how you make 10x or more from bottom or even above-bottom purchases. If AAPL drops to $30, that would be a supercrash. Less than 1.5x book (which is pretty pure cash) and less than 3x FCF...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/stephen-king-donald-trump-cthulhu_us_57d77e19e4b0fbd4b7bb4540?

Pretty sure those rights are transferred with the shares.... Which is why we have an entire FNMA thread on the outcome of a lawsuit for actions that took place years ago. I am not a lawyer, but fraud and similar securities class action lawsuits have strict time periods of share ownership to be eligible to settlement. They are very different from recovery from BK where the current owner is eligible for any gains and FNMA lawsuits where presumably also current owners benefit. Edit: there might be some confusion since in ZINCQ case there might be some recovery for current holders from BK proceedings and/or there might be some recovery for past holders over some past time period from fraud/mismanagement lawsuit. I am not a lawyer and I don't follow ZINCQ much, do your own DD before investing and afterwards.

Just making sure: are we talking peak oil/gas again? Fracking taught us nothing?

I have to read through his letters - I only scanned through. I think he's in difficult position. He started well and has some nice gains in less than year. He's smart and intelligent and maybe has talent. But he's starting during expensive phase of bull market. There are no secrets. Every fricking stock is turned over by dozens of bright managers. Even if he went for microcaps, he'd have trouble to find something that is great business and cheap. I read a bunch of "great manager" letters posted and referenced here. And IMO at this time anyone who claims that they found Buffett's KO/AXP/WPO "great business at a good price" is mostly deceiving themselves either to the quality of the business or to the price or to both. (There are few exceptions but usually with bad future prospects - according to market - and you'd have to have a great business forecasting ability to predict successfully against the grain.) So... we'll see how he does in next five years. Maybe he'll do great - congratz then. ;) But in general: don't start a fund at later stages of bull market. Unless you gonna short it successfully. ;)

RichardGibbons and stahleyp, thanks for posting. I doubt that you will change the minds of people you're replying to. I mostly gave up, so I can only post a /support to you guys. It is very surprising to remember that USA had top marginal tax rates of 90% and somehow it wasn't called socialist heaven then and its economy, entrepreneurship and innovation did not collapse as some would suggest. But now some people will call you communist and predict doomsday for suggesting even 40% marginal tax rate or any other mechanism to provide more equal renumeration, social services, and opportunities to people. Right, even Koch brothers are now socialists. They dare to talk about income inequality and issues that come because of it. They dare to say that USA should keep social security programs until and unless other ways are provided for people to live a normal life.

Very well said.

I don't think it's no brainer. Yes, his compensation would have been higher with investment format. But he would have faced at least couple of issues: - flighty capital, especially when his AUM would have become large - complications in acquiring full businesses. I guess hedge funds can do this, but there are likely issues. I think with just stock investing Buffett would have performed worse than he did with buying whole businesses. - possible regulations if his AUM got to BRK size? - no float? Though some hedge funds now have insurance companies for float, but then how is this different from BRK?

Parsad, no need to get emotional. Investor judgements come with territory. You can hate your investors as much as you want, but if you manage OPM, you're gonna get judged - fairly or unfairly. If you manage a company, you'll be judged too. And, sorry, but IMO Pabrai is not a great investor. In general though, I think it is going to be very very very hard for people to outperform indexes long term going forward. Sure, maybe next month market crashes, index goes nowhere for next 5 years, all the value investors make out like pigs and then you can judge me. :D Buffett BTW is very smart in that he shifted into operating businesses rather than just investments. This is potential area where people can outperform by running and growing great businesses. But then running operating businesses is not easy either - right, Parsad? Take care.

Chou seems to be a nice guy and clearly Toronto/Canadian crowd likes him, but the performance and portfolio seems to be bad. I guess just shows that being nice and talking good talk is not enough.

That's pretty much the situation. Fund argument is pretty much that they will outperform eventually - when market crashes??? - but I am not aware of any funds that are clearly worth investing into with expectation of outperformance. I thought a bit of getting into Sequoia this year as they opened to investors. But did not act and not sure it's worth doing it. If you're bearish, it's likely better to just adjust your allocation yourself rather than invest in value fund and expect that it will do better in market downturn... Edit: OTOH with 20-40% non-stock allocation, you're likely to underperform index as well, so... you might do as well with some value fund maybe... or not... :) Just my thoughts though. I may be wrong. :)

Great decision by EC. Double Irish and other variants are clearly perversions of the tax system. I would say that ought to be up to the sovereign governments to decide for themselves! Personally I am for unified EU tax system and then EU based distribution of tax monies. Well, I am for unified EU overall.

Great decision by EC. Double Irish and other variants are clearly perversions of the tax system.

Ziiiiing! ;D

Baby boomers can't get elections even with Viagra?

Valeant killed the radio star...

OT. I'm with libertarians on this: removing cash - even when people are talking about $100 note - is a stepping stone to police state. It is like war on drugs: removing just $100 won't work, so what's next? Removing $50 - already talked about in the same breath as removing $100. Then what? Removing $20? Banning cash? We need NCA - National Cash Association. Government is coming for your cash. More important for freedom than your guns probably. ::)

Let's rephrase this: It's an obvious Biglari-style company. Now, just bring this to Sardar's attention. Preferably by launching a proxy contest and doing a photo shoot in one of the clubs.

Hmm, I'm somewhat in the camp that the number of cars produced won't likely go down much. Very very optimistically (or pessimistically?) to 1/2 of current. I see proportionally more smaller cars - almost nobody needs four-seater taxi - but I don't see why you think the production will drop so much. Can you walk through your thinking and numbers? My thinking follows the discussion on FCAU thread (I think): The number of miles driven is unlikely to go down (I still have to do all my driving legs even if I call self-driving-Uber). It might even go up if cars have to drive empty to pick next person and if people switch from busses to self-driving-Uber. Assuming number-of-miles-driven doesn't go down, it doesn't matter that person does not buy a car. The car wears out from being driven. So replacement cycle based on miles driven won't change (much). There is some replacement from cars being old but not driven much, but that's likely what 10-20% of replacement? So OK, let's go all the way and say 50% of replacement gone. That's where we get to 1/2 of current. Maybe you can argue that electric/automatic cars don't wear out at 200K miles driven, but I'm not sure that's true... Anyway, I don't see cars going to 1/10 even in wildly optimistic (pessimistic?) scenarios. :) I'm not talking about possibility that something else replaces the car concept way long term.

TedKord, What is the timeline you are considering to get to 90m electric cars? Tesla AFAIK is the most aggressive and we are still talking only 500K cars in 2018 (?). That's only 50m pounds of extra copper or 22k tonnes. That's only 10% increase of Codelco production and only ~1% increase of worldwide production. When you say "Either Telsa and the rest of the electric car makers aren't going to hit their targets on production", can you point to what these targets are? How fast you expect them to go from 500K cars to 1M, 10M, 90m? Don't forget that optimization happens too. The fact that the car needs 100 more lbs of copper today doesn't mean it will need 100 more lbs of copper in 10 years. In particular if we gonna switch to Uber-taxi model, most cars could be much smaller since really nobody needs SUVs or even four seaters most of the time... (which BTW was not mentioned in the discussion of whether car production drops or rises when we have self driving cars). Lithium might be more attractive, but I haven't done the math since I probably won't invest in commodities companies anyway. Too many things can go unexpectedly sideways. In particular often costs rise as fast or faster than profits + crazy expansions, acquisitions, etc. :)

Great question and comment. I agree with the first part that a lot of people don't have a dream/passion/ideal job. I disagree that there is no way to solve this. The somewhat expensive way is to get good life coaching. It's not guaranteed to work, but I've seen really impressive people in that area and IMO impressive results. The somewhat cheap way is to do-yourself. There are ways to analyze what you like and dislike, to pay more attention to both your current situation and your future, to plan, to not get stuck, and progress. Not easy, but possible IMO. There are free resources and supportive people for at least some of these so you don't have to go alone. Finally, I somewhat agree that any job is not all sunshine and unicorns all the time even if you love it. And, yes, a lot of people who even have a dream don't realize how tough the job actually is. "Oh, I want to be a writer, a dancer, a pet zoo owner, a fireman, etc.". And then you have to write when you don't want to write, dance with broken leg, get crapped by an elephant and get third degree burns in the fire. Or like you say just boring routine. But again there are ways to deal with it and that's another part where ... see above ... there are expensive ways and cheap ways. :) If you have concrete questions, shoot me a PM or post here.