Jurgis

Wasn't See's Munger's idea? Wasn't Lubrizol Sokol's idea that he had to pitch to Buffett for quite a bit? Not to put down Buffett, but nobody lives in a vacuum. If the idea is not from screening and just reading 10Ks (which might be majority of his ideas, but I don't think they all are), it's partially "not his" idea. Maybe he means that inspiration might be from someone else, but analysis is his. I can see that. :)

;D Buffett's answer is good, but the questioner is overgeneralizing. :) There were tons of young people at DJCO annual and I assume the same is true for BRK, etc. Young people are not becoming more stupid.

I've seen him say this more than once, but is this really true? Looking at http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2014ltr.pdf , 2008 shows 9.6% book value drop, 2001 shows 6.2% book value drop. Are these not related to portfolio drops? (I guess they might be operating business goodwill writedowns - 2001 could be GenRe, I'd have to look up...). Also didn't he have Washington Post drop over 50% as he was buying it and wasn't that a large part of his portfolio? It is still very surprising that he never suffered higher than 2% loss per year in his portfolio - if that's what he means. I don't think there's anyone else who has this kind of record...

Read philosophicaleconomics links from http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/%27macro%27-musings/1000/

It likely will be unless it acquires controlled operating businesses fast.

Spek, do you still hold QUCT?

boilermaker75, I think your last answer was very fair. Thanks a lot for discussion. I'd love to continue it, but clearly not here and perhaps not over the electronic medium. Best regards and good luck with your teaching. :)

I agree with theasiareport on diversification in net-nets. Does anyone use Piotroski score on net-nets? Theoretically, it should improve the results. Practically, I don't know since I have not bought money-losing net-nets. :)

Isn't this like a loan against your 401(k) just for regular account?

This is not high frequency trading at all though. And if the scoop was false, the trader would have lost the money they put in based on WSJ tweet... so it was risky. TLM trade last year was much less risky IMHO and was available for a whole day... 8)

AFAIK, Barron's roundtable is the only place I have seen her picks. It would be interesting to see if there are other places to find her investments. I think somebody said recently that she might be not reporting and not publishing, but I don't remember the details. :-\

Yes, you are right in your thoughts. When Graham talked about net-nets, he talked about profitable net-nets. I don't have exact quote off top of my head, but he did not suggest buying money losing net-nets. Unfortunately, in this time, there are very few profitable net-nets, usually microcap and/or international. Others might be able to give you examples. I have not bought net-nets personally recently.

Ted and Todd are not women. ;) I am happy that Buffett's attraction to females is not getting attention. Just means that people concentrate on important things and not person's personal life. 8) Question about the interview: is it the 16 minutes clip or are there other parts?

So in your opinion it would be better if there was no rate cap limit and military personnel was loaned money at over 36% APR? :o

Whatever, I am done with this discussion. If you prefer to learn using chalk and board, that's your choice. I did not say that this was prohibited. On the other hand the person you are championing said: If you want to support this, that's your choice too. For me this is irresponsible dictatorship. Have fun.

Oh well, so you should know better, but you seem to be stuck in your thinking; you don't see that there is progress; you refuse to participate in it and do things better. So be it. There's probably no point to continue this discussion. I think you are mixing up lectures with practice sessions where you show students how to solve problems. These are very different. I completely agree that there is a value to brainstorm write-and-solve when you are trying to demonstrate how to solve problems. But that's not lecture, that's not presentation. There is a huge difference between the two. OK. Look at the first 5 minutes of his talk. What if he had a slide or two instead of drawing an atom on the board? Would that be better? Worse? You say worse. But I say better. He would not have made an error that he had to correct. He could have really shown the difference between the size of the atom and the size of the nucleus by having the animation or relative comparison of something that has 10^4 size difference. And these are just couple of ideas of how this could be improved via multimedia. And BTW he is not showing students how to think in these 5 minutes. He is just presenting information. He is doing it well. But he could do it much better with a slide that shows the same concepts. (I haven't finished watching the lecture yet. I probably would have other examples from it, but not sure if it's worth giving more) I would have never rated any professor who writes on board as the best.

Sorry, but you guys don't know what you are talking about. :) I have not seen a single board and chalk presentation that is worth 1/10 of the best multimedia presentations. And, yes, I have seen the best board and chalkers including Richard Feynman, Patrick Winston ( ), etc. Show me a single person who does board and chalk better than Hans Rosling does multimedia and then I might change my mind. Don't talk about crappy Powerpoint lectures in your universities. I've seen enough crappy chalk lectures in universities to fill a lifetime. I've given them too - both powerpoint and chalk variety. :) Whatever. I took MOOCs on Coursera and I ran board and chalkers at 1.5 to 2x speed.. That's pretty much how much they lose in presentation. I wonder if you guys are all coming from economics and social sciences? There's definitely a tendency of talking heads in non science courses. They are usually fluffier overall: I run 2x most of them, while CS/Stat classes are tough to absorb at over 1.5x. I can't say it's true for everyone, there was a great accounting class on Coursera from Brian Bushee out of Wharton. And then you get someone like Bob Shiller - board and chalker and boring even at 2x speed... Even more off topic, I wonder the same thing about investor presentations. It's usually all talk and hand waving. I can't figure out if this comes from TV talking head style or earnings calls over phone where they can't present visual material or what. For some reason, everyone's a Buffett and well prepared slide decks mean that the CEO is a sleazy marketer out to fleece investors... And yeah, definitely CNBC/Bloomberg TV/etc. don't help: just show talking heads and maybe a stock price graph... great visual info... not.

OT LOL. You sir have not seen good talks. The waste of time trying to write stuff using chalk is just mind boggling. A well prepared slides are at least two times more efficient than trying to write with chalk. If presenter uses pictures or graphs, it can be even 10 times better. Watch someone like Hans Rosling and learn.

I am not going to justify Clayton. One thing to note though: if they cannot sell their mortgages to Fannie/Freddie, they might have to charge quite higher rates for 20+ year loans. This is the same argument people make about 30 year mortgage availability and rates that would be much higher if Fannie/Freddie would not buy them with government backstop. This does not justify some other things in the articles if they are prevalent.

I don't think the COO/CFO leaving is a smoking gun, but I do think that there is a risk for the new people to start bending the rules which might hit a levered company much more than unlevered one if something blows up. It's not a significant risk: I agree with Liberty that new people might be great and they might integrate well. But something to keep in a corner of the mind for investors.

Hey, I voted for Groveland, why is the tally at 100% for Parsad? Just kidding. 8) Carry on, nothing to see here. ;)

Ah, this says that 30% drop happens only one in 10 years: http://investment-fiduciary.com/2011/08/05/how-often-do-market-corrections-happen/ This makes the above results worse... 9 years of 3% fees + 1 year of plus 10% vs drop of 30% is becoming to look like a wash. Yeah, there are some 10-20% corrections where you would make some money, so more precise model would be needed to see if you come ahead. I also assumed static 10% OTM put pricing which will not be true during corrections. Plus 30% drop is per year. If it does not happen within 2 months you have an option, your return will be worse. I.e. if market drops 10% per month, you will still lose all your option money but your portfolio will drop 30% like the market. So... this does not look very good anymore.

One in five years. So 0.005 to 0.4 5 to 80 I have no clue what you meant by this. :) Assuming 1 in 5 years: - 4 years you get a return of your portfolio minus 3% annual fee. - 1 year you get a return of plus ~10% instead of minus 30%. This is actually a good result. :) Which means that I am probably simplifying too much, missing something or calculating it wrong. ;D

If you buy 10% OTM puts with 0.5% of account and market falls 30%, you will get about 40% return on account from put position (eyeballing at current SPY prices). Assuming your account falls 30% with the market, you would still be ahead. So I guess 10% OTM puts at 0.5% account is not a bad deal in this case.

If you spend 0.5% of your account to buy OTM puts (10% below market let's assume) 1-2 months out, you are going to lose 3% per year in rising markets by definition. That's 0.5% * 6 (12 months / 2 months out) that is total loss. (Yeah, you might be able to roll over, but I am not talking about option-fu trading - if you can option-fu trade, then you are option trading, not downside protecting...) This is quite high cost. So either you have to spend less than 0.5% or you need to buy a longer puts or ... ???