racemize

it depends on whether you have the money to pay for the tax bill I guess--you could just pay the taxes out of the money itself, then the compounding is the same. If the money they would use for taxes would be invested--fair point.

+1

rate of return should not matter--only the number of tax events matter. So, you can either get taxed going in (roth), or going out (IRA), the only difference is the tax rate. Thus, your choice should be made based on the tax rate. However, as Eric has pointed out in another thread, this isn't quite true since you can effectively put more money in a ROTH account (since it is the same number, but one has been taxed already, making it more "effective" money). That shouldn't apply here.

OK, so bad news everyone, the link stop working when I updated it. Good news is I have a new compilation that has a ton of stuff in it. So you'll have to PM me again. Sorry.

a quick google search brought up multiple copies. Tilsonfunds has the OID pages while valueplays.net has Tilson's notes from the meeting. http://www.tilsonfunds.com/Mungerwritings2001.pdf http://www.valueplays.net/wp-content/uploads/The-Best-of-Charlie-Munger-1994-2011.pdf I'm going to update my Munger compilation to include all of these, and add bookmarks. For those of you I already sent them to, it will be updated and the same link will work. I'll post when it is updated.

wow, you guys are making me feel very popular. I don't think I've ever gotten this many PMs. Edit: If I missed your PM, it is because I've gotten so many. I think I have responded to everyone so far, so if you are still missing a response, remind me again.

In the past, Sanjeev has been concerned about compilation pdfs like these, for copyright reasons. I'm happy to post them up if they are ok, otherwise, just PM me. Here's my list of compilations, which I try to keep up to date: Arlington (I need a source who has up-to-date letters on this, only have a few) Brookfield Buffett (across all vehicles) Burry (don't have them all, just what I could get) Chou Fairfax FRMO Goodhaven Lancashire Leucadia Markel Wesco Oaktree Tweedy Brown essays

For those interested, I do have compilation pdfs for all of Buffett/berkshire (1957-current) and all of wesco letters (1983-2009). Just fyi, I generally have a lot of these compilation pdfs (e.g., MKL, FFH, oaktree memos, lancashire, etc.), if you are interested in other ones.

Yes, that's right (I couldn't recall your user name)--thanks again!

It was at the 2012 Annual Meeting. That happens to be my question (someone was kind of enough to get it asked for me). Here's the transcript (although there appears to be a little bit of paraphrasing): Incidentally, the same question was asked to Howard Marks at the pre-value conference the day before. I actually liked his answer a bit better. This is what it was (from memory) and extremely paraphrased:

seems strange that he first returned capital in 2010? I was expecting 2005-2007 rather than that.

Pretty harsh comments: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000197559

don't forget to check your filtering rules (and of course change your password). Sometimes the hacker will make it so you don't see certain emails to you.

well, at least the guy was trying to ask good questions...

I see a lot of posts where the quote tags get messed up, so I thought I would post how they work, in case it is helpful to anyone. the simple quote tags work like this: [*quote] quoted text here [*/quote] "quoted text here" will get the quote box (except you have to remove the * I put in, so that it didn't actually quote). Here's what it looks like in actuality (when I remove the *): nested quotes work the same way: [*quote] [*quote] two layers deep text! [*/quote] one layer deep text! [*/quote] Here's what it looks like in reality: one layer deep text! the quotes can be much fancier with labels too (e.g., if you hit the "quote" button to reply), but that isn't that important: [*quote author=Viking " data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="3603" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic" 32573#msg32573 data-ipsquote-timestamp=1294290443], indicates the author, topic (linked), date, etc. you would end it with the same [*/quote] tag, regardless of the extra information. Hopefully this is helpful; if you already know all of it, please ignore!

ah, thanks again! I thought it just had the 2013 ones, but didn't click to see the 2011.

Thanks, that got me one that I was missing; Right now I have: May 31, 2011 May 31, 2012 Nov 30, 2012 May 31, 2013 I think I'm only missing Nov 30, 2011, if anyone has that. I'll have a full compilation put together once I get that one, and am happy to provide to anyone that would want it.

I was trying to find all of their letters, and I got most of them, but are missing a few. Has anyone saved them or know of a good place to find them?

I also thought it was great. I've shown it to a couple of my friends as well.

ah, sure, that makes a lot of sense. This essay will be written for individual investors, so what I'm writing about should be on point (I hope!).

Yeah, I figured hedge funds would be much more difficult--I was not aware that "most money invested in HFs is tax-exempt", what makes you think that? It seems like it would be hard for "most money" to be tax-exempt, generally, but perhaps I am totally off base.

Posting my own response, but in case anyone is interested, this isn't bad for mutual fund info: http://www.ici.org/pdf/2012_factbook.pdf

I'm working on an essay that delves into the effect of taxes on reported performance for mutual and hedge funds (e.g., to show after-tax results), but I need to get some reputable statistics to show the representative effect in the essay. Does anyone know of some good studies or papers that show average turn-over rates, long/short term holdings, etc. for mutual funds and hedge funds? Or perhaps there is already a good paper on this whole concept--that could be handy as well.

This is very cool. Please keep going in the coming quarters/years!

There's also some question of what we are picking. Are we picking what we would choose for our own portfolio if we only had 5 choices? Are we choosing what 5 choices will likely have the highest return? Are we trying to balance the risks in the 5? For example, I picked WFC among some others, which I would not do if I were going for highest returns (e.g., it was one of my conservative picks).