Jurgis

Exactly.

In total only 3 __F_'s so far. 8) Hey, not fair, this was not in the list of votable types. >:(

If it didn't, this forum and the term "value investing" wouldn't exist. IMHO, this forum is not about mechanically buying anything. However, if you seriously have a mechanical strategy that gives 15% annual returns by mechanically buying a basket of low EV/EBITDA stocks, yes, people would use it. Can you share it with us?

If you think that you can get 15% annual returns by mechanically buying a basket of low EV/EBITDA stocks, have fun, good luck. If this worked, this forum would be empty.

So am I the only one with completely opposite results from http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp and http://16personalities.com tests? 8) Do other people find both tests consistent?

Yes, I am still employed. I don't think I will change my investing approach when I retire. I have a chunk of cash that I'd use for "living". If I'd need more cash, I'd sell some stocks. Obviously, people could argue that I might have to sell stocks at bad time. However, if one has a chunk of cash (or liquid fixed income securities), one can adjust the selling somewhat. I also might have some divvy stocks. I am not against them, I am just agnostic. Anyway, a lot of people do what you do. My objection was only to the implication that everyone (or everyone smart/successful/etc. :) ) has to do it.

Hi guys, I am thinking of running a lunch for Boston area people who are not going to Fairfax annual meeting. 8) This is going to be on Saturday, April 18th around noon. I'm trying to figure out a location, so please vote on poll or suggest a place. We'll finalize the place by tomorrow (Tuesday). Let me know if you have any questions or feedback. Question: Why during Fairfax annual meeting weekend? Answer: I kinda promised to run something in April. This is the last weekend of April I have free time. We will try to run something in May - likely a company valuation discussion. Question: Why can't you pick a location, man? Answer: I really don't know good places that are not very busy for lunch in Boston/Cambridge on Saturdays. I was thinking perhaps http://zuzubar.com/ , but I am not sure if it's not too busy. Please help out. If we go for suburbs, I might propose something like http://www.fusiontastestoneham.com/ or http://www.reginapizzeria.com/polcaris.php Neither are T-accessible.

Even if session times out, I don't lose the message. I just have to hit "Post" again. This is on Firefox on PC with ABP if anyone cares.

I think that directors are overpaid in general for the amount of work they do. It is related to the other recent thread here about proxy voting and management being overpaid. I don't vote against directors' fees in proxies. It's just so prevalent that BRK might be the only company not paying directors a middle class salary for attending 5 meetings a year. I can understand why boards don't do anything to rock the management boat. If I was paid $100K to sit and do nothing, I might shut up and not ask questions either. Of course, nobody would want me on the board. 8) (OT: I was on a board of a non-profit. Hated it. 8) ) I have no opinion about Ben Watsa and his compensation in particular.

OT Like Buffett, for example. ;D I never bought a stock because it paid or did not pay dividends. Not planning to do this in the future either. There was a thread about this a while back. Buffett does not pay dividends but his holdings do, and he seems to insist on it. Note much of what he's done recently is preferred issues that generate a lot of income. I don't want to hog the thread. I agree that some prefs and fixed income securities are attractive investments and I do buy them on yield (to maturity usually, though there are exceptions). But I don't buy them for income and I don't buy common stocks for yield. I am also not trying to say that people are wrong if they do. I just don't agree with your generalization. :) Another comment on this: Perhaps. I don't have disdain for them. I just don't care. :) On other forums though, there is a huge influx of people into divvie payers. So much so that I am afraid of a bubble in divvie stocks. They were great investments in 2009-2010, but I wonder if now they are getting overvalued even more than general market. I did not do a non-anecdotal study though. Best

OT Like Buffett, for example. ;D I never bought a stock because it paid or did not pay dividends. Not planning to do this in the future either.

Tests are for rats! 8) ;D :P So: http://www.humanmetrics.com/hr/JTypesResult.aspx?EI=-67&SN=-12&TF=-25&JP=33 result: INFJ Introvert(67%) iNtuitive(12%) Feeling(25%) Judging(33%) You have distinct preference of Introversion over Extraversion (67%) You have slight preference of Intuition over Sensing (12%) You have moderate preference of Feeling over Thinking (25%) You have moderate preference of Judging over Perceiving (33%) But: http://16personalities.com result: ESTP-T (every single one is opposite to the above) Mind Extraverted 12% - Introverted Energy - Intuitive - Observant 36% - Nature - Thinking 10% - Feeling - Tactics - Judging - Prospecting 6% - Identity - Assertive - Turbulent 31% I answered everything the way I thought about it. I did not try to game the results. LOLZ. ;D As the 16personalities.com result says: "There are no rules". There is no spoon either. 8)

Website opens fine for me (Firefox on PC). It even has a Maxim girl on landing page - what's a better way to steer truckers to buy insurance and Maxim at the same time! ;D Just think about cross business opportunities. ::)

I am not sure I agree with this. "similar returns" - what returns? "it is a pretty easy task to identify them" - is it? Are you suggesting a value-weighted index fund? I have not seen people have great returns with "thoughtlessly buying a basket of purely cheap securities" despite any studies that indicate otherwise.

How do you determine easily if company uses management consultants? :)

Ah, but once you start talking about CEO salary as relative to company's net income, you can justify huge payouts like most of the Wall Street does. I don't think this is justified even for high performers like Dimon. Honestly, nobody needs a salary of more than $1M a year (and I am being generous here). They might want it or might think they deserve it, but they don't really need it. Of course, there are numerous people who are fine with paying jockeys multimillions in salary or hedgie fees. Though in reality indifference rules: institutions vote for status quo. I've seen some super egregious payouts voted down, but most are not. And it's rather funny to see $20M payout cut down to $10M after vote. "Oh noes, we did not think 10M mattered to anyone, what's the difference."

I always vote the proxies. For most companies, I vote against the executive compensation and against the compensation committee of the board. There are exceptions. BRK and FFH are obvious ones, but there are some more. FRMO. MKL is so so. Don't remember other names of the top of my head. MSFT was exception when Bill Gates was CEO. No longer. What do you guys do with great performers? E.g. Buffett said that he'd pay even more to Jamie Dimon at Berkshire implying that he earns every cent he gets. His compensation is still egregious. I vote against, but what you guys think? I was thinking about this, but this limits the number of investable companies too much for me. :)

Using FFH or BRK as conservative position is not bad as long as you don't expect them to behave as cash (i.e. not drop XX% on market drop). FFH is my largest position and I hold a bit of BRK and MKL too.

Apple sells overpriced products for snobs. I will never buy a single one of them.

Ah yes, the Apple fanboy comments. So much hubris.

I cannot answer for all shareholders, but I voted against Biglari because of "governance issues". In particular, I am not against his compensation as approved by shareholders although I consider it high, but I am against his maneuvers to extract even higher compensation than approved by shareholders.

This is a strawman argument. Nobody demanded to "change their compensation to 100k (or less)". You should not distort the shareholder position.

May I remind you that this was a contested meeting to get rid of the management who is stealing from shareholders? The fact that the contest was destined to fail with 20% votes residing with the said management does not make the opposing camp somebody without sense.

I think that the main risk on this right now is their equities portfolio ($15M in January 2015). Since we don't know who manages their investments, we don't know what happens if stock market drops. I'd be fine if I knew that this is index fund, but now we don't know who it is and if they won't underperform hugely on market downturn. So it's no longer cash + business, but rather equities + cash & fixed income + business at a time when market valuation is not low. Of course, they might have Munger (or Nate? :)) ) managing their portfolio in which case it would be an advantage and not disadvantage. But we just don't know. I think the business might be doing a bit better since this thread began, but the portfolio is riskier. And the price is higher. Might be avoid for now...

Debranding. I am not sure. Personally, I am probably very "non-brand" person: trying to buy stuff cheap, don't watch ads, don't use social media, ad blocking, etc. But... I'll go through concrete examples: - Cars. Bought Toyota Camry used last year. No, I did not do any research to see if Hyundai or whatever would be better/cheaper. I doubt I would have been able to make informed choice even if I did the research. So pretty much a brand buy. - Cat food - we buy some mainstream brands, some small "quality" brands. Both pretty much because the cats eat them. Can't choose something else and risk they don't like it... OK, so half brand. - TVs, Blu-ray players, appliances. Just buy cheapest with OK rating and looking good... But there is not much competition... You go to Lowes or Amazon or whatever and there's only Samsung/LG/Sony (TVs), Samsung/Bosch/GE appliances. It's brand - there are no "no brand" products. - Computers - just bought a gaming PC. Went to small custom company that assembles PCs. IMHO they did a crappy job. So... a great area for debranding, but small companies do crappy job... Big companies also do crappy job (see Dell, HP reviews)... So a wash between brands and no brands - Toothpaste. I buy generic mostly, wife can only use Colgate, don't even try anything else - Shampoo. I don't care. Wife can only use very select brands, otherwise her hair and scalp all get unhappy. So... I am not sure the debranding is accelerating. IMO there's still a lot of power in brands. Yes, I think some areas will see debranding, but some are getting more branded. E.g. Apple products in almost all areas are a brand incursion into no-brand or weak-brand areas. And BTW, I think I disagree with People want to do their own research and make their own decisions now, because it is no longer that hard to do. Yeah, people do it, I do it, but it's not easy. Reviews are all spread out, they are stacked by fakes, people complain more than post positive reviews (I've bought hard drives from Seagate and WD and they all get horrible reviews, since majority of reviews are from unhappy people). It's a mess. And it possibly takes more time (and time cost in money) to do research than to grab the brand and be done...