Jurgis

I agree that concentration does not have to be gambling. I can't do concentration. I admire people who can do concentration safely and get great results. IMO there are not that many of them. Good luck.

Yes. There are additional factors, but you got the gist.

Trains are more energy efficient than trucks (well, mostly, if you want a dissertation, read http://www.lafn.org/~dave/trans/energy/rail_vs_truckEE.html ). The price gap would narrow though.

My guess is that most of the time, there will still be a person in the truck. Need someone there to deal with breakdowns, accidents, thieves, etc. There will be Terminator in the truck. And when the truck stop attendant asks him if he's gonna return the same way, he'll say "I'll be back".

Your points are good. You can add: 4) Investments underperforming (KO, IBM, AXP biggest worries, WFC - maybe only if it blows up due to some internal issues) 5) Buffett dies, BRK value drops (internal infighting for money, nobody strongarming subs - make no mistake Warren barges in if sub underperforms horribly, no more sweetheart deals, key personnel leaving or retiring, etc.) Obviously you need a mix of 1-5 to have a bear thesis. Just one of these points is not enough for bear. @rb: no, I am not going to provide numbers for these. ;)

I'm not that patient either, though I might have dry powder if it gets there. Take care

"Deserve" is a wrong word. No, it probably does not "deserve". BRK is somewhat cheap while S&P is quite expensive at current multiples. So really the expectation is that S&P might rerate lower rather that BRK would rerate higher. Although some mix is possible. In other words, I'm interested to buy BRK (or similar great/good business) at 13X, but I am not that interested to buy S&P at 18X.

Just please don't do this while driving, kk thx OK?

Great points Picasso.

What a waste of time... ... You could read some extra pages while waiting at least! ;D

I must have expressed myself badly then. :) What I was trying to say is that alpha may require more than just knowledge of value investing and accounting. There is skill (talent?) factor that might not be easy to learn. Anyway, this is not directly related to this thread. Congrats on good returns. Take care.

I assume you saw MKL's purchase of CATCo ( http://finance.yahoo.com/news/markel-acquire-assets-catco-investment-060000063.html ). Isn't FRMO through Bermuda stock exchange also playing in this field (not directly though)? Looks like ILS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance-Linked_Securities_%28ILS%29 ) are sexy hot. ;) Is there a risk in this field similar to risk with other structured finance products? Something like if huge cat hits, the buyers go bust and you can't offload ILS that you have on your hands? Is there counterparty risk for ILSes already sold? Sorry if these are naive questions. :) Good luck.

Schwab711, I'll answer this, but I start to think this is not productive. Where did you get this impression? Yes, but the skill is not just knowing value investing and accounting. inadvertently? ::) So we agree that this thread is rather pointless, since it does not talk about method or quality companies or "comparing actual returns to expected returns at purchase" or about long term results?

+1

You should pose this question to Cardboard, not to me. ;) And your post kind of implies that you have to be on a trend every year to deliver alpha. ;) ... OK, let me be controversial: learning alpha on this forum (or any other forum) is impossible. One can learn value investing methods, but there is no guarantee that they will deliver alpha. Even if a person knows the financial statements backwards and forwards and they know Buffett/Graham/Watsa/etc. backwards and forwards, there is no guarantee that they will deliver alpha. (Unless they go for pure mechanical system like "Magic Formula", then maybe - if formula works). The composition of their portfolio and their "calendar-year" decisions have more influence on their results than all the knowledge above. And these are not really learnable. Yeah, sure, it's easy to say, "buy great businesses at fair price and hold" or "buy $1 dollars for .70$ cents and sell at $1", but these are not specific enough to deliver alpha - at least not yearly alpha. For example, a person could have gone for "buy great businesses at fair price and hold" and bought AAPL for 3.7% return this year. Or bought VRX for 57% return. Is there a lesson in this? Did anyone suggest at the beginning of the year that MKL will hugely outperform BRK and FRFHF? Is there a lesson in that? Anyway, I am not saying this forum is worthless, it's quite useful. But I am quite skeptical that it's possible learn much from the fact that person X did this-and-that and got XX% in the last year. For example, I would not buy NTLS or VRX, so any lessons from the fact that people bought them and made XX% are quite lost on me. ;) (Well, perhaps the only benefit is that I don't have to ask "why they have XX% return?") Take care.

doughishere: Fairholme and Ackman are just pounding their agenda. FUD is usually the way to go for that. Probably best to tune it out... Take care

Why is that? It's likely that people who did >20% this year are: - "overweight one or two stocks or industries that did better than the market". Not gonna pick on people in the forum, but Sequoia's outperformance for last couple of years is VRX. Only VRX. They were questioned about it during the investor meeting. Without VRX, their performance was below market. - currency tailwinders like Packer said - have good timing in shorting/derivatives I'm all for learning, but if you follow this forum, you pretty much know what the few forum successes this year are (NTLS, VRX, am I missing any other big ones?). What might be interesting, is that BRK and FFH are not carrying anyone this year. It's gonna be tough for people with BRK/FFH positions to perform or outperform... unless something changes in the last 3 months. Not that I suggest "closing this thread". However, it does bring people back to short-term thinking and p3415 envy, so I'd rather see it once a year or less frequently. But who am I to have an opinion (especially when my p3415 is non existent this year). Peace

Fairholme now makes biggest investment returns via book sales. :P

Are you a lawyer? A fund salesman? Neither - just a person who knows how rare that kind of talent is. And also just making the point that looking at +20% as making decent money this year is a sort of crazy standard. You forget you're on CoBF. Such numbers are norm here. ;) Edit: Data: Over 20% of CoBF had over 20% return in 2014 ( http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/your-2014-portfolio-return/ ). We'll see how it goes this year.

In true spirit of American business, Christmas is coming earlier and earlier to CoBF. Soon we'll be reporting annual returns in April. For full disclosure: Fido says -2.7% YTD, 0% TTM. Nothing to see here.

OK. So they could/should hedge half of it then, no? ;) Good point though. ;)

Audio NSFW.

How does Fido software work if you have multiple computers? Do you have to install it on every computer you access Fido from? Also anyone does Quicken downloads of Fido with this enabled? How does it work from Quicken? (For example, you can't get IB data from Quicken side, so it's not an issue that IB has authentication card - you have to do it from IB side anyway. But with Fido, I am getting data from Quicken side, so it's not clear how the login would work - or not work.)

OK, let's compare them to MKL instead of BRK. Why do they need to hedge and MKL doesn't?

One of the most depressing Howard Marks' letters. And he just loves to rub it in. :'(