Jurgis

I think discussing selling should be done under general category and not here, unless you are talking about FICO specifically. :) But for short generic thoughts: Yeah, selling forever companies is a hard choice. On one hand, if you sell, you may miss runups due to crazy multiple expansion or - on more rational level - business expansions to some new subarea/etc. On the other hand, you could end up like Buffett with KO - dead money for 10 years from the top. I don't know the answer. So far, I have held very few forever companies and sold a lot of potential forevers way too soon. I am trying to make my portfolio more forever-company heavy now and I feel that it will be very hard to hold and hold and hold. :-\ Might be simpler with companies that you buy cheap and they stay somewhat cheap like BRK or FRFHF. Harder if you buy expensive and it stays/becomes even more expensive.

I'd love to buy stock in this company. However, it is expensive. You are somewhat right that you can rationalize the expensiveness and make a case for OKish returns going forward. But then why does management issue special divvies and not share buybacks? Assuming they are smart - and we all think so I believe - they probably do this because they believe the shares to be overvalued. Great company, high price. But, yes, waiting so far meant lost opportunity.

OT Great call global! I guess it's worth looking at Baker Street Capital's discards. I owned another one they owned and forced the company to buy back their stock. The stock went up ballistic afterwards. Unfortunately I also sold at similar time when they did.

Just FYI this transcript has some errors. E.g. Munger's Posco answer is quite different in audio.

Breaking news: BH is acquiring Groveland to be merged into Lion Fund. Swenson will lead S&S franchising in Pakistan. Barkett appointed as Maxim's editor in chief. AIRT and ISIG will be rebranded as Air by Biglari and Biglari Insignia. This a coup for Sardar and his loyal supporters. ;D

I will take that bet.

Thanks JBird!

There is some guy selling notes for $33 or something like that. I won't advertise for him though. No free notes so far AFAIK.

Yeah, Liberty, but you and others argue the opposite of what you said here on VRX thread. ;) Of course, I guess I also argue the opposite to what I said here on VRX thread. ;) .... Edit: In general, I don't give a ^*&( much. I still think that Buffett's integrity is overrated, but I'm fine with it, since he's a human and he can hold contradictory opinions at the same time and rationalize why they are fine...

I prefer Darien Taylor... but Greed is good. 8) :P :-X ::)

OT. IIRC, the question wasn't worded as "what tech company would you buy if you had to buy tech company". The questioner mentioned Google directly, so Munger answered about Google directly with his "gun to the head" answer. So we don't know if he'd prefer another tech company. We also don't know if he'd include something like Visa into the universe (which I could argue is more tech company than a lot of tech companies :)).

There are a lot of things we support or like when Buffett/Munger do them, but not when others do it. There is definitely some hypocrisy in their actions and words.

You've just found out you are not like most random people off the street. Congrats. This can be good or bad. Thanks. 8) I knew it already. I'm not even like most random people on CoBF. 8) This is good and bad. ::)

Careful guys. This begins to sound like "get rich quick or not at all". How about "getting rich slowly"? ;)

OT I did not like this article. It touched important topic(s), but I thought that it was too simplistic and I'm pretty sure "caching" model is not a good shortcut to describe how brain works. Artificial neural nets would be a better model, but possibly tougher to explain to non-computer-scientists. It also might be better model to explain why "recomputing" is not as easy as author might imply. It seems that the author took "caching" and shoehorned heuristics and a bunch of cognitive biases into this model. I found his examples strange, since I personally would not complete any of them the way he did. This is not to say that I don't have (false) heuristics, biases, etc.

I just realized that oddball is making "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" arguments. ;D

I agree with your other points, but you are really misrepresenting the situation there. I'll flip your argument completely: if you are the best worker, it does not matter that you are fired, you can find another job easily, possibly even better one with better pay. Your example only makes sense if employee is in bad business field (e.g. even if they are best street sweeper, they could be fired and be unemployed for long time). But that's because they chose bad business and not because they chose to work for employer. A person choosing to be entrepreneur in bad business will suffer similarly. A lot of people in the world can do quite well by working for employers. They can do above average if they choose profession well. (It is tough to choose profession well if you lack skills/training/education, etc., but that's also tough position to be in if you want entrepreneur.)

Clothes don't rot. :) I still have some clothes that are 25 years old. Yes, I know. 8) (I do have most "things" that typical person uses.) I have paid for experiences in the past (travel mostly). This attracts me less nowadays. I do pay more for convenience nowadays. Of course, this is complete waste of money: it is fleeting like experience and it's not even experience. :)

I agree with tombgrt. I vote against CEO compensation in most proxy votes. There are few exceptions: BRK, Fairfax, maybe couple more. But most CEOs are ridiculously overpaid. Same has to be said about most investment managers.

Due to the very reasonable request, Biglari henceforth will be called "Maxim Liar". 8)

My first step towards overcommiting less is going to be not reading the book. ;D

It was possible to record the whole meeting and I believe some people did. Whether they will transcribe and post, I don't know. I did not record the whole thing: I did not plan and I was not prepared and too lazy to transcribe afterwards anyway. :) There was nothing earth-shattering IMHO. The theme was mostly that competition in various businesses (AXP, China vs. West, etc.) is getting stronger and moats perhaps will be harder to maintain and investing and beating indexes will be harder too than it was in his investment lifetime. He expressed a couple opinions about specific companies that I won't try to paraphrase: wait for transcribed notes. :)

I agree that the paragraph is badly (or just Britishly? ) worded. "Ease down" in this context means that the things are getting worse because of "reduced capital expenditure by the oil and gas companies and tighter pricing."

I completely agree with Munger about Valeant. However, since this thread is fanboyfest, I won't defend this opinion. 8) Liberty, if you seriously think that Munger said this because he read some media article, I think you are just underestimating him and showing your VRX owner bias. This does not mean that you guys won't make money. You might. For me though at this point in time Valeant is not investable. Have fun guys.

Was great to meet everyone and hang out at Wurstkuche. 8)