Jurgis

IMO you all are looking at risks wrong. The risk for V/MA is what drove their stocks down in the past: regulatory anti-trust fee restrictions. Look at where they traded under regulatory risk in the past and look at what's happening with GOOGL/FB nowadays. Although I'm sure this won't stop bulls from seeing only blue sky

Yes, but you'd have to include everything into your utility function. I.e. destressing, lower yearly cost, etc. OTOH, I think there will be a some percentage of personally owned robo cars. I don't have a good prediction of what that percentage will be. I think that most people who try to predict don't know crap either. 8)

I think you are totally right about ATVI staff/morale/future issues.

So they are paying out 2-and-20 (with 7% hurdle) to outside manager. This seems quite a drag for the company.

Most of that 2 hours would be concentrated around 8-9am and 5-6pm... so I highly doubt that an autonomous fleet would dramatically reduce the number of vehicles required. At least the math won't be 1/12. Yeah - I doubt people are going to start commuting at 4 AM to make the robotaxi industry more efficient. Also, with no driver who cleans up the fast food wrappers and body odor smell? I'm sure they'll clean them between shifts, but how many times would you want to commute in a vehicle that smells like stale fench fries and sweat? They might if the prices at 4am are 1/2 of the prices at 7am. (Personally I commute outside rush hours, so bring it in!) Your second complaint is mostly a straw man. First, nobody's cleaning regular taxi all day either. Second, anyone commuting in a bus/metro are exposed to even worse smells. Third, you can have inside cameras to ding passengers who leave trash (although clearly this is a bit draconian and companies might choose not to do it.). Fourth, I'm sure there's gonna be stratification of taxis - if you pay up, you gonna get white glove limo cleaned up and dusted and with champagne too. I agree that 1/12 of car fleet is huge underestimation. But even 1/2 of car fleet or even 2/3 would be a huge hit to auto industry. Worse than most recessions.

Ref to senior living costs upthread: Barron's had an article this week about senior living/housing with some cost numbers: https://www.barrons.com/articles/finding-your-retirement-home-51559332736?mod=hp_DAY_10 (opened free/no paywall today/might differ from printed version).

If they can produce ~2B+ FCF, this is somewhat attractive. However debt is an issue, especially if there's no growth or even decline. Cause then you're taking ~15 years to even pay off the debt. It gets more attractive if either FCF gets towards 3-4B or there's growth or both. Not sure how easy to evaluate and predict this with confidence though.

Bbbbuttt, Elon Musk? Hmm, I think I should not have said that. 8)

What do you think about Jack Dorsey? "Hatching Twitter" ( https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00CDUVSQ0/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_mI-7Cb9WRA7BQ ) pretty much hatcheted him. Of course, it's one-sided account, but I'm not sure I want to invest into a business run by him. Edit: lol what Foreign Tuffett said too. 8)

It's cool explanation, but really it's yet another post-factum rationalization of what happened. If they were successful, everyone would say "Look, they replaced dinosaurs with McKinsey kids and succeeded. Everyone should do that". Now you say "Look, they replaced experienced people with kids with no experience and failed. Nobody should do that" There are CPG companies staffed with dinosaurs experienced people that are not doing great either. Although you are right that what they did did not succeed in this particular situation. ;)

Many small banks merged into bigger banks and then into even bigger banks. Anti trust authorities were asleep at the wheel and so Big Bank happened.

I really like your dry humor. Possibly a bit underappreciated on CoBF. 8)

I'm pretty sure that you can easily prove that these large swings in price are not a (big) inefficiency. If these swings wouldn't (on average) represent real swings in value you could easily generate alpha with very simple technical trading strategies were you just sell stuff that went up a lot and buy stuff that went down a lot (and it shouldn't matter a whole lot how you construct the strategy). If you agree that making money isn't that easy in the stock market the conclusion is that the observed volatility must mirror the underlying fundamental volatility in business outlook. Business fundamentals are not changing 40-50% for large diversified businesses in any given year. Then those businesses are on average also not going to have large swings in price. It's really easy. If there is a big disconnect between price volatility and business value volatility there is an easy arbitrage. But I think we can agree that this arbitrage isn't there. Value investors like to sounds smart by making stuff up about how the market is wrong and then pick one example of a large company were in hindsight it sounds ridiculous that the price went up/down while nothing really changed. But they don't realise that if the market would really be systematically wrong like that making money would be easy. So it's just BS people like to put in quarterly letters. If they would be right they would be making money hand over fist. I'm with Hielko here. If 40-50% change does not correspond to predicted (!) business fundamental change, it should be easily exploitable and value some kind of investors should be making 40-50% per year. OK, let's settle for 30%. Who is doing this?

I'm cleaning my stuff and planning to throw away Third Avenue Reports/Letters in paper form approximately 1998-2010. Probably nobody is interested (and the link in this thread may cover some of these...), but if you are, I could send them to you. US only unless you pay for postage. 8) PM me. Also have some Ariel Investments reports 2007-2010 timeframe. Same deal.

Jurgis, You are a total fan boy of this game and you live in the matrix. You just refuse to philosophically acknowledge that you're partaking in it. OMG, it sounds all existential and all. I hereby publicly acknowledge that I live in the Matrix. Where's the woman in red?

I have a great business idea: Value Investors Championship League. We book the largest sports arena, we invite star investors, and they compete for fabulous prizes. "I buy BRK!", "Oh no, I buy SHLD!", "Oh no, I short SHLD!". The excitement! The drama! This would be huge! We could sell viewing rights, sponsorships, merchandise! You heard it here first!

frankly I am a little flabbergasted by your statement. How many people do you know have paid out $1M for hospital bills in their lifetime. And what percentage of the population has paid $1M in their lifetime? I mean say 10% (very generous) of the population can pay $1M, how many of them do? not to mention the other 90% that cannot afford it, so they are toast, or they just skip paying their bills. Even if you are worth $10M I'd think you'd be livid at paying $1M for an illness. Now if you are talking about long term care, well that goes into the yearly expense category and someone mentioned $65k a year, I think that should do the job. Yes, most people in US are screwed up if they have serious illness. First of all, I did not say that $1M would be used by illness. I said that the income from $1M would be used by the illness. Assuming 2.5% withdrawal, that's $25K per year. There are drugs that are way more than that. Second, $65K per year is borderline for care. Even taking Alabama, which is likely one of the cheapest states, semi private room in nursing home is $6K per month. https://www.genworth.com/aging-and-you/finances/cost-of-care.html Third, I did assume a couple rather than a single person. So if one person needs care, the other person still needs money to live on. Fourth, people on this thread are talking about living "nicely". I'd assume they would prefer to choose good/great doctors, possibly drugs that are not covered by insurance, possibly good-to-great nursing homes rather than crappy facilities for themselves or their partners. Yeah, sure you can survive for less... maybe. Maybe not. It's obviously your decision how much money you'd allocate for this. But yeah. There was a similar pushback from people last time we had this discussion. "Are 99.X% of elderly Americans screwed?" Maybe not. There's a significant percentage who don't need care, who die fast, who might be looked after by their family (sacrificing their lives to avoid the costs). There's also some percentage who can survive with Medicare/Medicaid coverage or whatever equivalent their socialist state (CA/MA) may provide. It's your choice to evaluate probabilities and account for possible expenditures accordingly. I personally don't want to get to 75, get chronic disease, and discover that my wife has to choose to either live a comfortable life or to take good care of me but not both. If that makes me overestimate the money needed for medical/care, so be it. Maybe Elon Musk will develop the brain uploading and this whole point will be moot really soon now. Edit: Estimate from Fidelity: https://www.fidelity.com/viewpoints/personal-finance/plan-for-rising-health-care-costs (Emphasis mine)

I have looked at this. I see zero revenue growth in past couple years, zero income growth, and zero change in shares outstanding. It looks like all CF (and more) is paid out as dividends. So is the future going to be the same as past and there will be no growth + all CF paid out as divvies gonna be the only source of return? Why would the future be different from the past?

I would need about $65k after tax in 2017 dollars with a paid off house to retire the way I would like. $8k/yr taxes a maintaining the house; $15k/yr in groceries, dining out, and decent wine; $5k in autos/fuel, $37k for travel and everything else. $1.85M should do it. Canada or US? I'm totally flabbergasted how US based people don't account for significant medical expenses in their planning. We had that discussion on Money Mustache thread and I'm probably beating a dead horse here, but the costs are large. And if you or any of your family hit any chronic disease and/or require long term care, that can eat income from $1M+ by itself. Edit: +1 on what RichardGibbons said.

OT? The goal might be laudable but IMO naive. Who is a "good actor" in financing/takeovers? Malone? Did you miss all the complaints about Malone CWC shenanigans? Berkshire? Did you miss the complaints and lawsuits against Berkshire's Clayton takeover? BTW, these are not one-off exceptions. Both Malone and Buffett have quite a few questionable deals in the past. Are these "good guys" because you personally were not among shareholders who got taken advantage of (or believed that they were taken advantage of)? Most takeovers (or takeunders) by a good investor are not fair to selling shareholders by definition. If the buying (value) investor is good, they are only buying companies by underpaying. Investors selling to good value investors usually get a good deal only when the buying investor inadvertently overpays. BAM and Elliott might be bigger scoundrels than Buffett and Markel, but I think your view is quite skewed by recency bias and the fact that you are personally affected. Nobody on this board wrote letters and complained when BAM were buying companies or pieces of companies that CoBF members were not invested in. In general, moral outrage does not really work in investing world. Trust me, I am and have been morally outraged at a number of companies. ::) Anyway, good luck though. 8)

Looking at various sheets in spreadsheet, the allocation and trades don't correspond to the posts upthread. It's possible there were other threads with subsequent changes to the portfolio. However, I'd think that the spreadsheet is likely broken or has been used for author's private (play?) portfolio rather than the last allocation mentioned upthread. So probably any conclusions are not meaningful. One meaningful conclusion possibly: voting on portfolio yields crappy portfolio. Even when it's voted on CoBF.

Screw my previous goals, i’m all in on this one. Seriously?! Surely you can think of better things to do if you're ever in a whorehouse ;) Wait, there are other things to do in a whorehouse? ???

I think this is a good observation. I had similar thought when Munger was running Wesco. He always said not to think of Wesco as mini-Berkshire. But since it was so much smaller, he could have fished in smaller (other) ponds and made better returns than BRK. So either he just phoned it in or he really did not want to make effort (perhaps not to appear to be favoring Wesco - and now DJCO - vs Berkshire?) or it's really hard and - at least Munger - can't do even close to 50% in these situations.

There's a large Lithuanian community in Chicago. I have relatives there and have visited them recently. Chicago is great city: great downtown, arts, culture, eating. I'd probably be happy living there. Climate sucks more than Boston though and there's no ocean, but overall it's a good place to live. RE is way cheaper than Boston. Jobs are there. There's tech sector that might not be as big as Boston/NY, but not tiny either. Logistics/transportation is still there and large. Pittsburgh is contrarian? It's got CMU and that's one of the hottest schools in tech/AI. I'm pretty sure there's tons of tech jobs based on CMU collocation/startups/spinoffs/etc.

I'd rather be poorer than my neighbors. They'd less likely rob me then... No, seriously. And the neighborhood is nicer if they're richer than you.