Jurgis

Merger for a company in the middle of a legal controversy is very unlikely. Top brass is too busy and nobody wants to buy unknown liabilities. They might have to sell some of their untainted brands if legal hit becomes too big.

So, screw the environment and air quality for everyone, yes? I'm just saying that the individual consumer has no motivation to sue. He will not notice the extra pollution coming out of his tailpipe, yet he will notice the other benefits. Depends. If consumer is environment-conscious, they have motivation to sue. If there is a class-action, they will join anyway. If state authorities do not give consumer yearly state permit (sticker or whatever it's called in various states) and they can't drive the car, they will sue. I doubt that state authorities will do the last thing (i.e. not give VWs/Audis yearly state permit), but who knows. CA might do it. Edit: anecdotally, my friends are split on this. Some want to sue (but won't since it's too much trouble - but they will join class action). Some want to keep the car without "fix", but are concerned about what state will do with sticker checks. BTW, VW dealers might be forced to "fix" if you come in with other issues. Or might "fix" without you even knowing (if it's software change). Though this is guesswork at this time.

So, screw the environment and air quality for everyone, yes?

There is no longer any point to shadow BRK holdings. Like you said, majority of his alpha comes from BRK internally. You can still buy what BRK invests into, especially T&T purchases, if you believe they are cheap and you believe they will outperform the market. But shadowing whole BRK portfolio with the goal of replicating BRK makes no sense.

I am pretty sure Spier said that he does not invest in any healthcare companies (including DVA) for the reason you gave above. But it was some time ago, so I don't remember what exactly he said. He also may have changed his opinion in different interviews.

So you like it when people die because they don`t have enough money? ;) I read LC as saying that companies should balance ethics and economics rather that he approved "charging almost anything for a drug..." I'll delete my interpretation if LC responds himself. :)

What I find incomprehensible is American companies develop drugs that they sell much cheaper in other countries while they rob their own countrymen/women. Even more difficult to understand are the people defending/protecting them. +1

Thanks for the article link.

Yeah, Thrun co-ran the first massive online course - Stanford AI course. On the wave of that course's success, he started Udacity at the same time as Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller started Coursera. It seems that Udacity was less successful than Coursera. Funny enough, Stanford now runs its online courses on a 3rd platform (which might be onsite deployment of some Coursera code variant, but I am not sure). And then MIT/Harvard/etc. edX is 4th platform. http://www.themarysue.com/sebastian-thrun-udacity/ Disclosure: I took the Stanford AI course and I know some people involved in both companies.

This is getting OT fast, but what would you propose as good indexes (and funds using them) for international? From what I've seen Vanguard International has underperformed active international funds (Fido International, I believe) for long time. One issue for international is composition of the index... how do you select countries that go into index? how do you select country percentages in the index? how do you select company representation per country in the index? Do you include or exclude emerging markets? If so, why? And so on. I guess, one "right" way would be to do market cap weighed index of "non-US" companies without doing any kind of country weight adjustments. Not sure if anyone does this. Of course, this runs into issues with China megacaps... and so on. I'd also claim that total global market is not as efficient as US-only. So active manager can shift countries and industries possibly better than US-only manager. Although clearly it's also much more work. I guess I could start a thread in general category on this.

IMO, active funds are still viable/attractive for: - International. Most indexes suck / it's tough to make a good international index allocation without serious work - Bonds. AFAIK, bond index funds also suck. - Non-traditional holdings I don't know what percentage BEN has in the above vs. "just-buy-Vanguard-and-be-done-with-it" USA equity funds. No positions, no opinion, just responding to benhacker above. P.S. benhacker - you should buy BEN just for the pun value. ;)

i would suspect that it is because most of zinc mohnish bought at very low Prices. around $3-4 per share. therefore i think it is growing to 15% ZINC stock chart suggests it hasn't traded at those levels since Feb 2009. It makes sense if there are other foreign holdings skewing the data -- however I thought these were notes from the meeting so it's a little odd if the meeting didn't present the data in a non-skewed manner. Anyways, doesn't really matter. It also does not work with FCAU: 10% could not have grown to 42% even if he bought at the bottom. Hmm, I guess it could if the whole fund shrunk significantly... But "Anyways, doesn't really matter." ;)

When I buy art, I want to buy picture with the three commas... 8)

Prem... Watsa his name? ;)

Great posts Schwab711 for investment-size business models and oddballstocks for personal-size businesses.

I'd be curious to hear one. We had this discussion in the past. I am not going to repeat. Listen to the event. There were at least couple ideas mentioned there in between Ackman propaganda. Edit: since you asked 8) : Courts find that what govt did was all legal. Govt sets up new GSE where they put the money from the old GSEs and wind them down. New GSE is well capped and does great things for taxpayers. It might even go public. The end. I will attempt not to answer any posts that claim that this is not realistic, that it's soviet, or any other Ackman argumentation. ;) Take care. Ah, yes. We may have to agree to disagree that transferring assets from the old GSE to the new GSE would still be a Takings Clause violation. Thanks for providing your thoughts on this though. Ah, but if the courts rule for govt status quo, can't govt bleed GSE as they do now, stop accepting new mortgages into current GSE at some point, create new GSE (Brad and Angelina ;)) that is not directly tied to money bled from current GSE, start accepting mortgages to new GSE and finance it - not directly - with money from current GSE. I am sure there are other ways. Even the following: continue as it is. At some point GSE is bled to death and dies. Taxpayers are on the hook, but by that time they (taxpayers or govt) have received so much money from GSE that the caping of any new GSE costs less than all the profits. (Sure there are arguments why this is bad, but it could also be not that bad... ;)). Anyway, I am not a lawyer, I can't handicap this, I spent on this about five minutes (plus half wasted hour to listen to the Columbia event), so probably not worth pursuing it further. OTOH somebody could probably spend couple months on this and figure out numerous ways to work govt side if they win lawsuits.

I'd be curious to hear one. We had this discussion in the past. I am not going to repeat. Listen to the event. There were at least couple ideas mentioned there in between Ackman propaganda. Edit: since you asked 8) : Courts find that what govt did was all legal. Govt sets up new GSE where they put the money from the old GSEs and wind them down. New GSE is well capped and does great things for taxpayers. It might even go public. The end. I will attempt not to answer any posts that claim that this is not realistic, that it's soviet, or any other Ackman argumentation. ;) Take care.

Hedgie family offices: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-16/inside-these-hedge-funds-quiet-family-affairs-for-the-boss

Ah, but you have to think whether you approach this as investor (in common or prefs) or as a taxpayer who wants GSEs on sound footing. Despite what Ackman says, the two are not the same. There are solutions for taxpayers that leave current investors with nothing.

Maybe I should try to persuade my wife to get VC funding then. She +1 are working on website kinda in Vistaprint area part-time, not funded. Might not be world changing billion-user-chat-app enough...

What's the goal? If it is to improve human civilization, then I'm pretty sure that even most silicon valley types working in social-media app companies would agree that their talents would be better used working on other things. Same with all the physicists and mathematicians working for HFT and writing derivatives on Wall Street; in aggregate all their work is probably a net loss for society, and their talents would be more useful elsewhere... But if the primary goal t is to make money, then they may be right, it's probably easier to make money that way. But those are different things, and it's not about being smarter or not; it's about looking at what direction they are driving in and where that leads. (and yes, social-media is changing the world for the better in many way -- all I'm saying is that other fields that could also make a big difference are under-developed in comparison because they are harder problems, which is what makes Elon Musk special, he does the hard stuff). Second in a row post by Liberty that I agree with. Did I get transported to a parallel universe while sleeping? :) Probably should buy a lottery ticket today. If I jackpot, we split. 8)

I read through the article. Though it has some good points, it also drags a lot of anecdotes to the preplanned conclusion. Can valuations drop? Sure. Even for companies that are already selling at somewhat reasonable valuations. Would I call such a drop "a bubble going kaboom"? Not sure. Would I prefer that more Silly Valley companies focused on really important and hard problems (like industrial robotics, materials for solar, medical sw/hw/drugs, brain modeling, strong-AI, etc.) instead of doing yet-another-ad-based-social-network-crap? Sure. Would this happen if yet-another-ad-based-social-network-crap goes bust? Not necessarily. Would I prefer that Silly Valley expanded geographically instead of running CA RE to nebulous levels? Sure. Will any kind of bust help with that? Not really. Would I prefer that SV multimillionaires spent their cash on improving human condition on this planet instead of buying cars that have doors that go "like that"? Sure. Would that happen if their companies lost X% of valuation? No. Some of them do good things with their money already. So, overall, rather pointless article with a large dose of envy. What did Munger say about the worst sin? ;)

The question is badly put. Some companies have bubbly valuations. Some are cheap. Some are in between.

I'm surprised that people lend money to friends and family for huge interest. IMO it's a great way to lose both money and friends. I guess it works for some... Then, I'm surprised about a lot of things on these couple threads. ;)

I'm not sure what @undervalued wants. However, things that are not available through forum (as we're discussing on another thread) are position sizing, concentration, entry/exit, etc. This might be something where mentoring might help a lot. I don't know if anyone would agree to do it though... :)