Jurgis

NOV could be a good acquisition for BRK. But then BRK doesn't do hostile deals, NOV has no 5%+ owners (apart from BRK itself perhaps), and it's unlikely NOV would sell below $80 or so.

Cut couple years ago. Current setup: Roku + Netflix + Amazon Prime Instant Video + Netflix Blu Ray.

AtlCDore, thanks for your post, some good thoughts. :)

Now that you put it this way, I am gonna pack my bags and go sip mai tais in Hawaii waiting for that big crunch. Screw working and investing! 8) Edit: OMG really worthy 500th post!!! 8) ;D

Yeah, I held HOG around 2008-2009, sold close to lows. For a small justification, they did change CEO and the new CEO presumably cleaned up the company quite a bit. Of course now Barron's does a spread on the new CEO and they almost immediately hit a tough patch again. :) Currently no plans to buy. I think I'll just say that it's not in my circle of competence. :)

Yeah, there are two schools of thought on this: - Personal engagement is better than giving money. (There were couple people on this forum who supported this on another thread) - Giving money is more efficient than personal engagement if you have highly paying profession, investing income, etc. There was a talk on this during Peter Singer's Coursera course I believe. I could try to dig it up if there's interest. I think this goes down to personal choice, preferences and perhaps where you are in your life (working/retired/etc.). Personally, I am involved in some nonprofits, but not much. No time and not really my thing. I can see where that could change if I retired and/or started spending less time on investing. ;)

Adding http://givingpledge.org/ link to this thread.

Yep, givewell is another good website to use.

I think what Liberty wrote raises a number of topics (he may not have intended all of them though): - Separating "investing" from "spending" that couple people commented on - Spending X amount of time deciding whether to spend Y amount of dollars vs. spending Z amount of time deciding whether to invest W amount of dollars. I think we think that the rational thing would be if X was proportional to Y and Z was proportional to W, but perhaps not at the same ratio as X to Y. In reality, sometimes X is not proportional to Y and Z is not proportional to W. Which may be good: there's a tremendous bargain and there's no point to spend days on deciding whether to buy a huge amount of it. Or it could be bad: risky big bets in investing, spending large sums of money without thinking enough. - Overspending time trying to optimize/decide insignificant amounts of money. Anyway, it's good to be aware of these and figure out what works for you. :)

This thread is about giving away. I did not search if this has been asked before. :) The poll is a bit unscientific since I ask percentages of income or wealth, but I was not sure if restricting to either one was the way to go. I am giving away too little - about 1% a year. I plan to give away more in the future, but I don't have a specific pledge. Relevant link/image: http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/ http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/portals/0/images/resources/item_78.jpg

Let me start another thread about giving away. :)

This thread is not about being happy, financially secure, etc. :) It's about being on top. :) (Not that I will try to enforce this - OT's are totally fine and encouraged :) ) Sure, we can argue whether Einstein or Hawking is on top, but we pretty much know they both are. Similarly Buffett in investing. Elon Musk in space business and electric car business. Jobs in leading integrated gadget design. We might know the best in more restricted fields that are familiar to us. E.g. the best low power GPU designer, the best researcher in TaiChi medical applications, the best vegetarian chef in NYC, etc. Edit: so yes, it is about .000001% and our attitudes towards it: do we care/don't care, want to make it there, not, etc. It would be great to know what the people who voted "I am the best" think they are best in. :) (Mr. Buffett, did you vote? ;) ). I doubt they will speak up though. :) Maybe they were just taking it lightly and voted for fun. :)

This feels especially stupid if you just made a few thousand on a stock that you just bought and made a quick gain on by nothing more than pure luck (that it appreciated so quickly thus the much higher CAGR). On the other hand it's probably sensible to review all expenses versus what you make in your day job and not versus temporary portfolio successes or drawdowns. But what Liberty does is totally normal. The fact that your account went up (or down) $20K a week does not mean that you should suddenly buy a new car or eat caviar at the restaurant. If fact, there is a known psychological bias to "spend" any "bonus" money multiple times. "Oh, I got this money, so I can buy a computer" and then couple days ago "I can get a vacation", and so on where in the end the money spent is larger than the money received. So it's good to go against it.

Well, as Buffett has said: "In the world of business, bad news often surfaces serially: You see a cockroach in your kitchen; as the days go by, you meet his relatives." Perhaps Heinz took his teaching a bit literally. ;)

Good thoughts, writser! 8) I'd still love to have the 10 year streak of 30-50% returns like Joel Greenblatt and/or Stan Druckenmiller haha. Or a knockout 10x (?) like Mike Burry big short. But yeah, slow and steady is not bad in the end... if you're not Joel/Stan/Mike. Edit: Aside (?) - I've never been good with microcap investing. I prefer "Buffettology". I think my only claims to the very limited fame are keeping at it for almost 20 years now and buying-buying-buying in 2008-2009. ;D

Vinod1, Just a quick answer. 1. Hmm, I actually think that mainframe HW has bigger moat than SW. Clearly Rational is bleeding - which I kinda would have expected. I think services are hard to quantify - I agree some of them are sticky, others less so. Since services is a large part of revenues, we might have tough time coming to a common view. :) 2. I am not sure what numbers you are using: 2014: 168 market cap + 15 pension / 12 earnings = 15 P/E P/FCF is similar though a bit higher 2015q1 annualized: 168 market cap + 15 pension / 2.4x4 earnings = 19 P/E FCF - they reported Free Cash Flow (Excluding GF Receivables) 1B in Q1. I will also post what I sent to cubsfan in private: Hopefully this clears up and somewhat wraps up things. I really don't want to "fight" on bear side and get attached to that being "my" side, so I'd rather let other people discuss things for a while at least. Thanks for understanding.

Starting thread from: difference between being in top 2% versus top .000001% ? i think being in the top 2% is not a bad place to be :) I agree. 8) Maybe that's the end of the thread then. :) We'll see. So personally I grew up with some indoctrination that I am the best. There was even some factual evidence for that - in a small pond. Then I went to a big pond and realized that I am far from the best. :) Since then I've done various things in various areas and periodically I get that thought "hey, what are you doing in this area, you're never gonna be the best in it". Which is right for a couple of reasons: first, I am not necessarily the most talented person in area X; second, I do too many things while this age rewards specialization to the hilt; third, I am a bit ;) lazy. Anyway, this came back on the other thread where we were discussing the "he who dies with most toys wins" and chess/poker/bridge championships. I also watched "Jobs", "The Theory of Everything", and "The Imitation Game" in last couple of days, which also brought back this theme. Anyway, Jim Rogers said - talking about expats - that it's better to be medium fish in big pond than top fish in small pond (I am paraphrasing). I actually agree - so I agree with rohitc99 too. But perhaps people have interesting insights from their own life. 8)

OT. I tried chess when I was kid - I sucked, never got over not grokking it on deep level. Never played poker. I played bridge a bit - missed that great opportunity to play against Buffett/Gates when they were on Yahoo bridge (I think) and it was relatively easy to get onto table with them. Of course, they would have handed me my ass on silver platter. Overall, maybe I should start a new thread about living as (maybe) above average person but seeing that you'd never be the best in anything. Interesting feeling. 8) Though might be more applicable to all INTJs here. ;)

Wow, great comments from the trenches oddball. Sounds like you've got a great business going on. 8)

Nope, I am not going to Omaha. OK, I'll see if I have May 9-10 weekend open. If we do lunch, we may try http://www.fusiontastestoneham.com/ or http://www.reginapizzeria.com/polcaris.php or http://spicemelrose.com/ perhaps. If we do a stock discussion, I'll have to see if any of my friends can get a library room somewhere.

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood. :) I get these once in couple years. I have a list of gripes with Fidelity, so every time they call I start on the gripe list. They don't call for another year. :) And I hope that my gripes will get fixed at some point haha. But overall Fido is pretty good - they usually send emails telling me to call their financial advisers to manage my finances, which I just ignore. And most of their people I deal on the phone are knowledgeable and professional. Branch staff are usually much worse though. I think it's a revolving door of young hungry inexperienced financial wannabes there... I wish them luck, but it's not great when they are learning ropes on you... :)

I don't get phone calls from brokers. I guess I am well hidden. I'm also on the "do not call list" ( https://www.donotcall.gov/ for USers ). Anyway, since we are grossly OT, perhaps I should tell how I got into investing. I was playing all these computer games and then I thought: "what's the point? you waste all this time, win all these pixels. how about play the real thing and make real money". And the rest, as they say, is history. 8)

Ah, personal attacks. OK, I am out of this discussion. Have fun.

If you put it like that, I disagree with 1. Edit: to elaborate, I believe that IBM has at most 60% of sales in above average business that is not growing. The rest is potentially a melting ice cube. Edit2: to be complete, I will also disagree with 2. :) If I put GF debt and pension liabilities into EV, IBM is trading at below 5% E/EV.

Yes. If only they had moderate revenue growth. ;)