Jurgis

Possibly OT, if so, please ignore. There is a high probability that current generation (and even higher probability for next generation) of kids will be practically immortal. That's gonna make intergenerational transfer quite interesting to think about.

It's not big deal, but the website seems to invite potential customers. There is a section "Our Services" with bullet list " Acquisitions Funding Turnarounds Management Execution " And none of these are links. :) I was wondering if I could order execution of some Canadian CoBF members, but apparently I'll have to wait for website update. 8) Good luck!

Not really. Read the article. That's about 10 years from start to completion.

Who would ever buy a car with doors that open "like this"? 8)

PSH is pretty certainly a PFIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_foreign_investment_company Have fun dealing with PFIC requirements.

Actually, MON stock rallied when the deal cancellation was announced. Right now I don't have an opinion if this was positive or negative.

Donald Trump, is that you?

Well, Buffett is always surrounded by women. "Scantily clad" is just a perk. 8)

I bought a tracking position recently to monitor MON. It's not cheap, but the stock has gone nowhere for 2.5 years in bull market (admittedly not agri bull market). The long term growth has been 9-12%. CEO has been in Barron's top CEO list for a while - some would say that's a kiss of death though. ;) I think he's been successful - as evidenced by past results - but possibly more mainstream successful rather than "outsider" successful. Overall, the good news is that nobody's been talking about MON recently, not even Barron's. But then you had to come here and start this thread. >:( Just kidding. ;) Bill Nygren and Wallace Weitz bought some recently: http://www.dataroma.com/m/stock.php?sym=MON

Actually US also has pretty good demographics due to the birth rate. http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=us&v=25 Not exactly sure why. Europe has much better social/monetary support for having kids and yet people in US have more of them. Anecdotally even my Euro friends in US have more kids even though it makes no sense (they would be better of having kids back in Europe...).

Right. BRK ROE has been low for long time, IIRC that's because of the investment side and maybe (re)insurance. WACC is rather artificial anyway, so garbage out. Cash Flow calculations do now work straightforwardly for insurers and financials.

Wow, these guys are smoking some pretty strong stuff. Nope, it's just mechanically generated numbers and text. Does not work with BRK.

Right, what I was trying to say is that T&T could have bought it for short term gains, but since Buffett did it (apparently), we can exclude short term gains as a reason.

OK, but refining is periodically very crappy business. And I don't believe even Buffett can know that we are in sustained low oil price environment. I'd not be surprised if T&T bought this for a short term play. I'd be surprised if Buffett bought it without some kind of an angle, and I mean more than "refining is gonna be great business now for ... forever". I'm not completely joking that he might be looking for another stock swap for some part of the business. But this is of course just pure guess.

OT. I've tried this and other tech solutions in the past and they were more pain than gain, since they are not flexible enough for "I'll come on Thursday, but only if it's not snowing, or Friday if it's fish restaurant in downtown, but no later than 8pm". Some of them require accounts/logins too, which is bleh. YMMV.

BUT "plagiarism is the highest form of flattery" ;D and it works for Buffett. ;)

More likely new car prices will drop correspondingly.

And then it's not mechanical investing anymore, so you might as well do full-fledged analysis of these businesses before investing, no? Edit: This shows how mechanical investing is as tough as any other kind of investing. People are tempted to fiddle with formulas, to change them because "they are not working", or to start pick and choosing companies from the mechanical screen. Of course that happens with non-mechanical investing too. Buy-and-hold: tough to sit and do nothing. Valuation based buys-sells: tough to have discipline to buy and sell at specific valuation points. Qualitative/management based: tough to stay with management when they do something you don't like or they are underperforming for a stretch.

I hate to get dragged down in this stupid thread but I feel a strong urge to post my thoughts: there is something wrong on the internet. Gio: I am sure you know this but let me point out the difference between Berkshire and Valeant. Buffett has a 50-year track record. Berkshire is not very leveraged, generates loads of cash and has tons of liquid assets on its balance sheet. Buffett is guiding towards 10% growth in the foreseeable future. Pearson has a 7-year track record, Valeant has 40b in intangibles vs 6b in equity and 30b in debt and promises 20% CAGR on all its acquisitions. Berkshire is trading at 1.4x book, Valeant is trading at 12.6x book. We can't even compare price to tangible book because VRX doesn't have any tangible book value. Now, with regards to this "trust" thing you are talking about: suppose both Buffett and Pearson are way too optimistic about their own companies. Let's say Berkshire makes a small loss over the next decade, and Valeant only manages to grow by 5% annually over the next decade. Guess which stock would do better? And which scenario do you think is more likely? That the guy with a 50-year track record predicting 10% growth is too optimistic or that the guy with a 7-year track record predicting 20% growth is too optimistic? The fault that I think you are making is that you frame the 'trust problem' as if it is a multiple choice question: either you trust management (in that case Valeant is the better buy) or they are fraudsters (in that case both Berkshire and Valeant are worthless). I, on the other hand, think this is a 'fifty shades of grey' problem. I agree with you that it is almost impossible to state with certainty whether a company is completely honest, a total fraud or something in between. However, I think there are some heuristics that I can apply to get an indication of a) how likely it is that there are some rats in the kitchen and b) what will happen if we find some rats in the kitchen. All these heuristics point towards BRK as a safer and more believable company. That does not mean that I think that Valeant is the next Enron but it means that I think it is more likely something bad will happen at Valeant. And, if something bad happens, the consequences are probably harsher for Valeant. Which means, in turn, that I require more certainty before concluding Valeant is a good investment than I would require for Berkshire. I almost deleted this entire post because I wanted to rephrase it but I'll leave it here and write a second post later. I'm going to enjoy the sun. I think I need a break because this pointless thread is devouring this forum up to a point where I want to stab myself and now I am even contributing to it. Great post. +1

Maybe he'll swap the stake again for another piece of PSX business... ::)

With all respect, this is an old story. And the fact that great investors use it in their reports is nothing to be happy about IMO. I'll just write it off as a filler material. For anyone else in the business: telling old jokes does not improve your reputation.

Not really so trivial. PMT has bunch of debt, almost no OCF and a bunch of capex. Buying PMT assumes that: - They won't sell TOU shares low - TOU will go up - PMT won't spend the gain to capex and pay off debt It might work, but it's not that they have TOU 3x in their market cap unencumbered. It is kinda levered bet on TOU as well as PMT treading water with their own properties at least.

I did not find 'high personnel costs' in linked article either. But it is mentioned in another article, also about Fanuc's latest quarter results: http://www.afr.com/technology/fanuc-is-a-cheerless-chappie-20150729-ginh2u Thanks. I'd argue that "high personnel costs" was just a cheap shot by the journalist. He pretty much admits it himself.

People in the past considered XOM, CVX, OXY greatly run companies. Not anymore?