Jurgis

I'm going to go out on a limb and say he's not 85. ;D No, he said he was 2003. :P ;)

Was going to ask this myself. Couldn't you just subtract total funds added and calculate percent chance from there? any money you make or lose from funds you have added should count for or against total returns right? Not really. It depends when exactly you added the funds. You can see this if you do the math for boundary conditions: 1. Start with $0 portfolio. Add $1M on December 29th. Let say it earns $1000 in one day it was in your portfolio. What is your IRR? 2. Start with $0 portfolio. Add $1M on January 2nd. Let's say it earns $1000 each month in your portfolio. What is your IRR? BTW, example 1 or some variations on it shows that even IRR is not a perfect answer. ;) It also shows that IRR can be manipulated if you have cash "on the side" and you put it into investments at the right time. But yeah, the best way to handle this is to use Quicken (or similar software) or your brokerage. And even then they might be doing it incorrectly.

To add long term returns: 5 year IRR: 5.6% 10 year IRR: 9.6% 18 years IRR: 9.3% I would not really trust the 18 year IRR calculation though.

Tesla. 8)

2015 results from Quicken: -5% (yes, that's "minus five") overall, -9% (minus nine) if I include only accounts managed by myself (not counting 401(k)s, externally managed, wife's, etc.). Caveat: I don't trust Quicken IRR. My Fido reporting is totally screwed up in 2015 since I created couple new accounts and did a large transfer into them. This screws up Fido reporting, since they treat new accounts as having zero history (not even 1 year). So no Fido return numbers. Negative: this is a crappy return especially compared to people on this board. It is also crappy return compared to indexes. Positive (?): if I had put all my money into BRK and FRFHF on January 1, 2015, my return would have been even worse. Edit: FRFHF actually shows -7.8% now. It was showing -11% recently. So I guess FRFHF outperformed my return. BRK still showing >11% loss.

Who values their investments at cost? Let's not throw baseless accusations here. Are you sure you're not comparing apples to oranges? OK, let's say it's 20 multiple. Can you tell me 20 multiple on what? I would guess it's on the ongoing earnings from HK, not on their cost of HK investment. So then what is their ongoing earnings from HK? This is actually not split out in their reports. If it's "consultancy and advisory fees", that's around 700Kx4 = 2.8M annualized. So you are saying their HK share should be valued at 2.8M x 20 = 56M? OK. Even with that 56M + 91.7M for current assets + 10M for Bermuda/OneChicago (generous, no?) == 158M. Way lower than market cap. Or are you saying that it's "income from investment partnerships and limited liability companies"? IIUC, that's not HK or at least not just HK. That's 800k x 4 = 3.2M annualized. OK, let's do 20x on this == 64M. 158M + 64M == 222M. Still lower than market cap. Your turn to provide your data now.

Looking at 2016 Q1 report, there are 91.7M current assets at fair value. These should be valued at 1x or lower if you think that cash is opportunity cost. Also this assumes that the investments did not drop in value since August, which is not guaranteed. Then we have: Investment in OneChicago, LLC, at cost 246,000 Investment in The Bermuda Stock Exchange, at cost 2,648,733 Investment in Horizon Kinetics LLC, at cost 11,365,679 Participation in Horizon Kinetics LLC Revenue Stream 10,200,000 I have to dig and think on how much these should be valued. Just off the hip, they'd need to have current value >4*cost for market cap to correspond to "updated book". Another observation: Horizon Kinetics still is the driver of this part, since Bermuda and OneChicago are so small. Bermuda has to go up 10x just to match Horizon in size. So... need to dig more, but overall, it's still not cheap. But cheaper than it had been recently. :)

Was trivial last year. However, if this continues to grow, they will either have to move it or start restricting. The space was really full last year IMO.

::) :o :-X Edit: +1 to merkhet.

There's a link next to his picture you know... 8)

I posted this on SI, reposting it here too. just some thoughts. ::) I disagree with him about some things. He might be right that another crisis will happen. If it does, it's likely to be very different from the last one though. Who knows if he'll negotiate the next one well. OTOH, if I had the amount of money he has, I'd hold 50% in cash across 3/4 currencies. Like Buffett says, at that level it's about the preservation of the capital rather than about outperforming. So I'm not sure his investment thoughts are very interesting at this point. Agri business has been doing crappily, water businesses have been doing crappily. If he bought physical farms, he might have done well, but probably worse than SP500. I've looked at food/water plays in the past and so far it hasn't been very attractive. But what do I know... he's a billionaire and I'm a schmuck. ;)

A lot of groceries are expensive on Amazon. They don't have a good supply chain for these and a lot of third party merchants jack up the prices. I had to buy Quaker Oats granola online - nothing special though our supermarket does not carry it anymore. Walmart and Jet had OK - supermarket level - prices, Amazon had crappy prices 2x-4x the grocery stores. Amazon has regular prices for some groceries that they carry. But even those are usually just par for the course.

So Master, is the soul immortal or not? Do we survive our bodily death or do we get annihilated? Do we really reincarnate? Does our soul split up into component parts which get recycled, or do we as a single unit enter the body of a biological organism? And do we retain our memories or not? Or is the doctrine of reincarnation false? Is perhaps the Christian notion of survival more correct? And if so, do we get bodily resurrected, or does our soul enter a purely Platonic spiritual realm? Stolen from alt.buddha.short.fat.guy.FAQ http://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/alt.buddha.short.fat.guy.FAQ

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Really? - Please elaborate a bit, Jurgis. I don't believe I add value through my investing decisions. And it probably would be more useful to society if I spent more time on projects in my primary occupation rather than trying to get extra return by actively investing. I was trying to go this way this year already, but got sucked in into oil morass and some other interesting "opportunities". 8) Most likely I'll just dump most money into BRK/Fairfax/Malone and couple more "forever" holds. I've been going in this direction already. (And before we have religious argument that this is also "active" investing - yes, I know, next question 8) ). The counterargument to this is that putting money in BRK/Fairfax this year would have been even worse than my oil-dragged portfolio. :o But this is for 2015 results thread. 8) Peace.

Quit active investing.

Fair enough. Good luck. 8)

I somewhat agree with you on the bond spread. If one is buying bonds to hold to maturity and the return is attractive, the spread is not a big issue. Sure, it would be better to get them cheaper, but it's likely good enough to get them at the price they are being vomited at. On the other hand, there are issues with buying bonds. Some similar to buying stocks, some not. Off the top of my head: - Liquidity. You might not be able to buy at attractive prices. You might not be able to sell if bonds tank. Some of bonds I hold no longer have quotes in Fidelity at all. You could try to vomit sell them, but that's likely drop the price another 5% or more. - Seniority structure. If you don't look at this, you might buy junior bonds that are nearly worthless in restructuring. - Covenants. What is default? What company can and cannot do while the bond is issued? Companies try to be covenant light and you may be getting crappy bonds. - Related to above: company moves to screw you. See CHK for example: they are issuing senior secured notes and tendering unsecureds. So now unsecureds are much less likely to get anything in restructuring. Can you say that you just were screwed? This is not unexpected in junk world. - You are not institutional investor. Which means that you have no power and you can't participate in a lot of events. See CHK again: there is a tender offer for senior unsecureds to convert them into secureds. It's not a great offer, but it's way above current prices. Can you participate? No. It's for institutions only. So you are screwed again. - You are not activist institutional investor for any restructurings. If bonds default, you will get whatever other holders of your bond class negotiate in BK proceedings. If your bond class is weak, you can get screwed. Now regarding CHK: why do you want to buy CHK bonds? :) They are no longer the most senior class. Secured bonds are and they are not trading. Did you do a DD and figure out that in event of BK, you will still get enough recovery? Or do you think that CHK won't go BK and you'll get par on maturity? Disclosure: I hold CHK, DNR, SFY, X bonds. I am quite leery about CHK here. I think that X is possibly safe. DNR... well maybe, but possibly not if oil continues to flounder in 30's.

If you guys think that Tack is unfair to minority shareholders, I think you should strongly consider selling. Whatever is the outcome to Picanol merger and your contest to it, Tack controls TESB and will continue controlling it. If you think that he's screwing minority shareholders now, why would you hold the shares for the future? It's not that he'll suddenly change his behavior even if you guys win the contest to Picanol merger. At best you might expect some share price bump if you win the contest ... and sell then? Otherwise, you're in bed with a person you don't trust for long term. And that usually does not end well. Personally I haven't decided what I'll do. If I decide that I want to invest alongside Tack, I won't contest. If I decide that I don't like the way merger is structured, I will sell my shares. Good luck.

And it's so easy for 5%-tech-and-business types to sneer about job losses in general population. Until AI can design a circuit and write code better than I can anyway, which will happen in my lifetime I think. Exactly. So do not ask for whom the bell tolls.

Because we need to get out from Earth to space, not from Moon to space? ;) Of course, if you have everything you need out of the gravity well, then you don't need space elevator. You don't need it on Moon either although it's possible/cheaper to build it there. Likely capturing/using asteroids for materials is cheaper than getting them even from Moon's gravity well.

And it's so easy for 5%-tech-and-business types to sneer about job losses in general population.

Thanks kab60. I have to keep reminding myself that GDWN operates on the possibly-more-profitable fringes of commodity businesses. They've done great in this space in the past, but sometimes it hits them. We'll see how they will negotiate this downturn. Still no additions to my position.

Ultimately space elevator is the way to go. Probably won't happen for another 20 years or so. Possibly longer.

I think you are talking about something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne Apparently, this would need way more energy than it has right now to reach orbit. Also way more heatshielding to reenter. Not clear when they will get there or even if they are planning to.