Jurgis

I charge famous people to have picture with me. ;D 8)

Since there are so many extolling the virtues of non-office jobs, I'll take the other side on this. I had to (was forced to ;) ) do physical jobs in high school and a bit in college. Was a total waste of time and hated them totally. Would have been much more useful to study more, do more programming, etc. It very much depends on the person. You and your son know best what would work for you guys.

It's not a bridge. It's an airport. ::) jk

Not counting startups, most people who leave go to Alphabet and Amazon. But that's partially because of the field (tech) and location. I am pretty sure if you asked people in Silly Valley they would have different answer by now. My friends from Alphabet say that people from there leave for ... some time ago it was Facebook, not sure right now. If you invert, the place where great tech people leave from is IBM. But that's all still limited and anecdotal. :) Also "most capable" is a bit fuzzy. If you are talking about superstars, there's not that many of them and they do live their own lives, some staying in one place like Jeff Dean, some going through multiple places like Andrew Ng. In the past there were also great people and great teams attached to dysfunctional companies/subs. Like Xerox PARC or Bell Labs in later years. There's possibly less of that nowadays, but I wonder if some of Alphabet's moonshot subs not gonna end up like that. From articles Tesla and SpaceX seem also to be magnets for great people. I don't know people there though. Edit: just to emphasize that "great people" does not necessarily mean great organizations, a lot of the great tech people worked at DEC and Sun through the nineties. It would have been a big mistake to invest in either... Maybe things have changed. ;)

It would have been nice if Ackman mentioned his manipulation with option positions in the AR.

5 year return poll similar to 10 year return poll: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/performance-vs-index/ Yeah, I know, this raises a lot of questions: which index, why index, etc. Just answer to the best of your knowledge and integrity. :) Poll is for fun. Vote and enjoy. One source for SP500 5 year average return: https://quicktake.morningstar.com/index/IndexCharts.aspx?Symbol=SPX

So Alphabet is pushing the non-Google subs for products/revenues/results. Possibly influence of the new CFO. Possibly good for shareholders. Possibly bad for moonshot people and people who admired Google for getting involved in the moonshots. I'm conflicted about this per above. As a human being I'd rather see Google prevent death than increase Youtube ads 50%. As a shareholder... well screw Youtube ads! I want fricking driverless cars, walking robots and no death! 8)

Let me disagree with some of these: - There's a number of professions where people are taught how to react to a crisis. Police, firefighters, military, astronauts, etc. Yeah, results vary. - Yes, you can teach patience. The remaining ones are IMO also teachable somewhat, but I don't have good examples. I agree that it's way harder to teach these things to someone not predisposed for them. Also they are not easy to teach and would usually take great teachers (or great teaching institution) and a bunch of time.

And you assume that someone that indexes is able to hold even if the index sucks and everybody else is outperforming like 2000-2002. Indexing sounds easy on paper, but in real life with emotions and all the macro news involved its not that easy anymore. Maybe. I can say from experience that holding index funds in accounts where I cannot buy stocks is trivial for me. YMMV and all that.

Yeah, I know, this raises a lot of questions: which index, why index, etc. Just answer to the best of your knowledge and integrity. :) Poll is for fun. Vote and enjoy. If there is enough interest, I'll create separate poll for 5 years for comparison and people who don't have 10 year records. :) Edit: One source for SP500 10 year average return: http://quicktake.morningstar.com/index/IndexCharts.aspx?Symbol=SPX

Not really. You are assuming that good investors outperform the baseline which is index. My guess is that they don't. A lot of the "best" did not outperform index for the last 5-10 years. (I guess we could do a poll here, though results would be skewed)

Fannie and Freddie? ;D 8) ::)

Francois Rochon: http://www.givernycapital.com/en/doc/206/Giverny_Capital_-_Annual_Letter_2015_web_.pdf

Oh crap, I need a lawyer.

Yes. What's even worse, market behavior changes through that decade and things that worked 5 years ago may not work now, and may or may not work next 5 - 10 years. And if you attempt to shorten the feedback loop, you are more exposed to market short term swings and learning wrong lessons. Fun, isn't it?

Bingo. That's why I don't live in Silly Valley.

It's a mix. Even great investors were not great investors when they started. They all needed training. But, yeah, like no amount of training would make me into Richard Feynman, Lee Sedol or Mozart, no amount of training will make into Buffett. Investing is deceptive though. Everybody knows from experiments that intermittent positive feedback is what hooks you onto some behavior. Investing is like that. It's very easy to keep coming back and thinking you're great while you're not. Anyway, not sure what's the goal of this thread is. :) Can you clarify?

Rishig, I slept on it and after that I decided that I disagree with you more than I did yesterday. Sorry. :) I think that luxury is subject to fashion. I don't think there is such thing as timeless luxury, although surely if there was something like that I'd say it's high art (Monet, Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Renoir, etc.). Especially, I don't think luxury clothes and luxury watches are timeless irrespective that Michelle Obama or even Her Majesty the Queen wears them. There is a fashion change through generations and things may or may not remain attractive purchases in 10 - 20 years time frame. Sure this fashion changes way slower perhaps than your teen beach apparel. ;) But it's still trendy somewhat and fashion driven somewhat. Not that my opinion change matters. With all the thoughts above, I still don't imply that Richemont is a bad business. So don't pay attention. ;)

Hmm, maybe I should have said "clothing". :) Richemont has a bunch of clothing brands: Peter Millar, Shanghai Tang, Alaia, Chloe, Alfred Dunhill, Lancel. I may agree with your distinction of luxury and fashion in jewelry and watches. I am not sure I agree with you when we talk about clothing. Although, yeah, I am aware about the haute couture, etc. I don't track the latest trends, especially per country to say whether Richemont clothing labels are "timeless" or fashion wavy. I did not say or imply it was a bad business. I said that I don't like it and that it's just me... don't pay attention. :)

Don't like jewelry, don't like fashion 2x, don't like watches 10x. It's just me, don't pay attention. :)

They also give out some tickets with Maxim subscription. Just kidding.

Hah, I noticed this fallen valiant (yeah, pun intended) in Barron's chart section. Just looked at numbers. OMG what a mess. OK, so tons of acquisitions, tons of asset writeoffs, so no earnings, completely hosed balance sheet. So I look at CF statement and they have no OCF either... wth? I'm sure there's story here and someone smarter than me might get it. I'll skip. I have some CXRX. There's thread here on CoBF: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/cxrx-concordia-healthcare/msg238770/#msg238770 . Another fallen valiant. Might be a bit better ... perhaps. They also did big acquisition last year, so no real numbers... Edit: CXRX announcing 4q results today (March 23rd) after close - grab popcorn!

This is a bit OT and a bit dated, but. I recently finished "Country Driving" by Peter Hessler ( http://smile.amazon.com/Country-Driving-Journey-Through-Factory-ebook/dp/B0035D9UX2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458704522&sr=1-1&keywords=country+driving ). The third part about Chinese boomtowns and factories is pretty interesting read. Can't say an eye opener, but gives some picture of China business. In terms of China stocks, I'd probably suggest actively managed funds rather than index fund(s). I've held TDF in the past, but at some point it became such a small position that I sold it (never added). Not sure if that's the best pick, especially since Mobius is retiring. Matthews funds might be good, but I haven't looked at them for quite a while now.

Sorry, randomep, I can't really help here. I think oddball is the expert on these kind of situations. Get on a plane, buy him a beer, and go through your positions with him. I'm sure he'll have input. ;) No, seriously. If I had to choose an expert for your issue, it'd be him. ;) The remainder of this is my thoughts that are not directly helpful, so please skip. :) .... .... What randomep described is one reason why I don't do the niche egregiously undervalued stock investing that we discussed with oddball. With mediocre businesses it's very hard for me to know when to hold and when to fold (sorry for repeat of what I wrote to oddball ;) ). Yeah, stocks don't go up. Or they go up some, then go down some, then go up some. And since the business is crappy (ok, not crappy, "mediocre" ;) ) and management is mediocre, you really don't know what you are waiting for. Numbers look so so, maybe OKish, maybe not. Maybe it will get better, maybe it won't. So I lose patience, I lose interest, I sell. And then bam it's 3x+ in next couple years. ;) (See UVIC story). Or I sell and the business goes nowhere for another 10 years and I'm glad I sold. ;) For some reason or other I believe that it's easier for me to hold stocks in good/great businesses with good/great management. E.g. BRK - and I'll include BAC here for cheesiness ;) - and I'll include Malone constellation for "these-are-not-value-stocks-are-you-kidding". We'll see how this works out, since that's also experiment in progress and I don't know if I will manage to hold these forever. With great businesses, the issues are (usually) different. Stocks become overvalued and you have to decide whether to sell or hold. Or stocks are already overvalued and you have to decide whether to buy/add or not. Or stocks are overvalued and they drop a bit and you have to decide whether to add or not. Or business experiences slowdown and you're no longer sure if it's a good/great business (AXP, IBM now perhaps?) and you have to decide whether to buy/hold/sell. ------------------------------ And yeah, whether you do egregiously cheap or great-businesses, you still have to figure out position sizing, which is another 100 page topic by itself... ;)

Yeah, Rupert is fun guy. I wonder if he's really Terminator or if he just pretends to be. ;) If only I liked the business more...