Jurgis

Yeah, it's amazing how badly he eats. It's even more amazing how healthy he is with this diet. I think he's an alien. 8) "Snowball" mentions some more of his eating habits. Presumably he starves at fancy parties if they don't provide his staples.

Thank you very much, but I am not asking for your advice when to sell. 8) And, yes, I will do as I said in my previous message. I believe that Buffett is about 20% value of BRK. I am not going to try to persuade anyone else to agree or whatever. I asked the question just to see how much value sleepydragon puts on Buffett. There is some correlation between that and how much value is BRK transparency worth.

Let me ask provocative question: if Warren died tomorrow and stock dropped 15%, would you buy a load? How about if it dropped 10%? At which level you would still buy a load? Personally, if it dropped up to 15%, I would sell everything. Somewhere between 15% and 20%, I'd hold. I would possibly buy a load if it dropped over 20% (highly unlikely, since BRK probably has an auto-authorization to buyback massively if this happens).

Yeah, we give a crap. I just haven't had time to look at it yet. 8) Thanks for bumping it up periodically. Actually, don't bump it up. I'd prefer cheaper shares. :P

Let's invert: assume you know nothing about Warren and Charlie and you start to analyze BRK as a black box company with no previous knowledge about its management. Would you not raise serious questions about the BRK corporate governance? For example, nepotism in the board: we let Warren slide with it, but it would be a red flag at other companies. (Aside: auditor trouble at DJCO would have legitimately crashed stock of other companies. DJCO shareholders let it slide because it's run by Munger). Edit: I wrote about corporate governance, while the article talks more about transparency. Still the issue remains: if you were to deeply analyze BRK, would you not need the info about its (re)insurance businesses that is not provided? Would you buy the stock if it wasn't "Warren knows what he's doing, so let's pay 1.3 P/B"? Edit2: I thought the article was a bit sensionalistic, but it IMHO raised some valid points. And to answer the question above: if BRK was a black-box-no-name company, I would not invest in it. I think it is very hard to analyze and very hard to predict future returns.

Thanks. I might stay in Miyako, which is quite close. If I don't get abducted by friends/relatives/etc. :)

This is sidetopic a bit. Unfortunately, it is not clear that research adds value beyond "buy index funds 80%-100% of portfolio, rest bonds/cash". E.g. I have couple 401(k)s that I have to manage (mine and wife's). Can't buy stocks there. There's a list of funds. How the heck am I supposed to research it? OK, I held index funds 80%, bonds 20% so far. 80% split roughly 40% US, 40% international. Now: - SP500 is high. Should I move 40% US to actively managed funds which might perform better during any correction? - International index funds hugely underperform actively managed funds. Should I move to actively managed funds? - Should I change US/international allocation? - Bonds: should I hold generic bond fund? high yield bond fund? cash? I am sure there are financial advisors who would give me 100 page report on how this should be adjusted. But I am not sure their report will have any insight. And neither do I... Anyway, I don't want to sidetrack this topic too much. :)

Added a poll to see what people prefer.

Wurstkuche or Sushi Gen sounds good for me. How safe is the area during the day? I might have to walk if I get a hotel nearby'ish. (I've lived in LA ~20 years ago - omg time flies, but I don't know this area).

Actually, if you read the story of Mike Burry, you make hugely outsized returns for your investors and they still fire you. IIRC, most of his clients complained hugely when they got locked out during 2007-09 crash and left immediately when he removed the lock even though the results were extraordinary. In their defense, they hired him thinking he was going to run a long-short value fund and he style drifted into global macro credit. Just because CDS and sidecars were in the fund prospectus doesn't mean partners actually expected them to be used. Which proves my point: the clients will punish managers who step out of the ordinary.

Yep, I know that is was a bit outside example. In mutual funds, the politics might be more complicated and different. E.g., can you really close the fund before it becomes too big to outperform? Even if you are a great manager and you want to close it, it's not an easy fight. And why would you want?

What they write is known. What are your actions based on this though? Not invest in (re)insurance companies? Invest in BRK/FFH/MKL that hold stocks rather than bonds (somewhat)? Anything else?

Actually, if you read the story of Mike Burry, you make hugely outsized returns for your investors and they still fire you. IIRC, most of his clients complained hugely when they got locked out during 2007-09 crash and left immediately when he removed the lock even though the results were extraordinary.

TLM got bought. PGN bought two-rig operation in Norway. I'll add 4. Companies whose share prices collapsed don't yet want to face the music and sell out at way below last year's prices. 5. Buyers are still waiting to see how the dust (and oil price) settles. Not many companies are like BRK who are ready to pounce during downdrafts. Give it time.

BRK never bought cosmetics companies and somehow I doubt they will start now. It's a good area, but possibly not something Buffett feels to be within his circle of competence? (I doubt he considered PG or JNJ to be cosmetics companies). I really doubt that BRK will reenter media/newspapers. I think that Buffett is out of that for forever. I also really doubt that BRK would buy supermarkets. I think Tesco has left pretty nasty bruise on that area. Honestly, I also think that Buffett has no edge in clothing: his buys there have been lackluster or failures. But apparently he has not given up on that area. I agree with the rest.

Unless you are a lawyer, I think these should be treated as lottery tickets. Buy only if you have 10:1 payout or better. Don't invest more than 1% of portfolio. Sell if it runs up a lot without court decision - even if it seems that the news are positive. If you are a lawyer, you can relax the above constraints a bit. Still, unless you are a practicing lawyer in that jurisdiction and that area of law, I doubt you can relax them much. I.e. I doubt you can invest at 2:1 payout ratio and over 5% of portfolio.

Thanks. Might be a good idea. I haven't bought futures and futures options in the past, so I'd have to learn. :) I'll see if I have time/etc. My overall position in oil cos is about 10% of my portfolio. There are a few more companies in that, which are less attractive IMO, so I did not mention them before (SPND, DRAGF, APA, NOV, HAL, SXY bonds).

LOL. Especially how this went "whooosh" for some people. ;D

I did not claim that majority of people will sell on Ebay or craigslist. rsmehta asked about alternatives and I told what alternatives are. That's all.

Right. But drilling does not equal production. So to cut 1Mn of production, drilling might have to drop (temporarily!) what 20-30%? Not 7% that is 1Mn/14Mn. Of course, you are right: there are different parts of the service. The parts that supply production rather than drilling would drop less. The parts that supply drilling itself will drop 20-30% - my rough guess. You are also right that "No Other Vendor" is good to turn to. I am not sure if market is very inefficient in this though. I think the stocks that cratered are mostly the ones that will suffer most. But you might be able to find some companies where price inefficiencies exist. My call on PWE, DNR, GTE was purely oil price call: i.e. that it will go back to $70+ sooner rather than later. I don't have strong arguments for it and I am definitely not going to try to convince others that I am right: most of these discussions are rehashes of old arguments and does not lead to productive results. I am open to ideas how else to play this though. :) Regards

You got it! You buy a bus for $198K and it provides 12% yield when you use it to show RE to Chinese RE tourists. 8)

Copy Ubben, buy HAL? :) I'm not that bullish on service stocks: IMHO, they could suffer even more than E&Ps since activity (drilling) drops hugely. While (some) E&Ps can survive by barely drilling and just selling a (declining) flow from existing wells.

Ebay. Craigslist. I've sold things on both. It's more of a hassle, but likely to offer higher price than ecoatm.

Thank you very much, but we are quite capable to make our own decisions where to invest or not to invest. :) And it's actually quite fine to hold BH position and vote for Groveland. In fact, GAMCO might do that. Or are you going to tell them too to forget about the company and invest in something else? ;)

rb, I like most of what you write, but I don't agree with the above. You are probably looking just at supermajors - and then you are right, they are not cheap. However, there is a lot of blood in small E&Ps. Companies like DNR, GTE, PWE (I own all of these). Of course, a lot of them are (over)levered, but some are not. And clearly you'd have to do a deep dd to figure out which ones are good candidates for investment. I don't claim my dd is deep or good. :)