racemize

I personally expect 10-15% compounding on book value over long periods of time (hopefully 15% or even greater, but 10-15% is my expectation).

bear in mind underwriting for longer running FFH insurance subs are much better than those that have only been acquired recently. If they stop acquiring insurance companies, the underwriting would look a lot better.

I think there are also a lot of FFH owners on the board, but just don't talk about it that much.

DataRama posted the changes to Berkowitz' portfolio: http://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=fairx reduced CIT, bought Sears Canada.

Yeah, for the NWS corp one I just started, I added spinoff to it, so hopefully that will work.

I'm still at 0%, but I'm not buying anything either. I'm planning on just holding what I have (maybe selling one small position) and building cash from my full-time job.

man, I wish I could have gotten into the fund in my 401k... We couldn't get them to respond to our requests.

ah, not so exciting then.

Maybe a nice acquisition? http://247wallst.com/2013/01/28/berkshire-hathaway-files-to-raise-capital/

I'm just going to take this time to say, wow. I agree dcollin, I can't believe I just spent time on this instead of the davos video. But LOL...

now I wish I had TV channels!

I didn't manage to get one of the books when I went--are there any available somewhere?

Sunday morning at the Omaha Marriott near Borsheims. Cheers! Actually, sorry Bill. It looks like they moved the event last year to the Omaha Hilton. Go to the MKL thread in the "Investment Ideas" section. They have the email contact at Markel. It used to just be open to everyone, but it looks like it may be by invitation now. Cheers! I don't speak for Markel, but I believe the event is still open to everyone. I think the invitation is more for the purposes of getting a head count. If anyone is planning on attending I would recommend sending and email to Myra Hey mhey@markelcorp.com as a courtesy. I have gone the last three years and the event keeps growing so I am sure it is not easy to budget for food and seating. I just got a response from her, so thanks! She indicated it "was after the Berkshire meeting"--I assume that's sunday, but could you confirm the day?

I've also been thinking about this a lot. I'm looking forward to seeing how things play out for Japan, the US, and Europe over the next 10 years, as we are undergoing a massive economic experiment. This is one of the reasons I wanted Obama to win--to see if these policies were "right" or at least how they turn out, versus a dramatic shift right in the middle, which would have killed our portion of the experiment. I have trouble not agreeing with Kyle Bass, as it seems logical, but there does seem to be a different rules set for governments that can print/monetize debt.

I'm thinking of going this year--is there stuff to do on Sunday, or does everyone leave then? I'm still trying to figure out if MKL has theirs in Omaha this year (on Sunday maybe? I heard they did it the same weekend usually?), but no luck yet.

I think there's been a few instances in this thread where people are discussing price performance, and that may be what happened above. I personally don't care about price performance, since I wouldn't have bought it at inflated BVPS, so I'm only paying attention to underlying growth.

I agree, for BRK, I'm expecting/hoping for 10-15% BVPS increases, and for baby berkshires, 13%-20% BVPS increases, over long periods of time.

Nice to read something positive for once. Also, quite interesting.

I was hoping to find some better quotes, but here's the ones I dug up from my quick search for Phillip Fisher: An investor should never sell out of an outstanding situation because of the possibility that an ordinary bear market may be about to occur. If the company is really a right one, the next bull market should see the stock making a new peak well above those so far attained. How is the investor to know when to buy back? It is my observation that those who sell such stocks to wait for a more suitable time to buy back these same shares seldom attain their objective. They usually wait for a decline to be bigger than it actually turns out to be.

Yes, I agree. Incidentally, I've always liked the dividend growth strategy, but I wonder if outperforms the index over long periods--anyone know? Probably too many variables/companies to have a conclusive result...

Well, I guess I mean public history, unless they have a record before 2000? Thats all I saw in the 2012 letter yesterday, and I don't see any letters before 2005. Am I missing something? Still though, 7-10% returns using a leveraged structure just seems too low to me. Ok, another question--the chart shows 7%compound investment gains, but book didn't increase by more? What's going on there?

Full Disclosure: I have not looked at this one in a lot of detail. Regarding comparison to MKL, MKL has a much longer history and was able to compound book at 12% over the same period as Y, and at much higher rates overall. 7-10% is fine, but that's a bit below my threshold on returns, so I'd rather just go off on my own or buy a different compounder.

Great memo, as always. I'll quote the end (after he is talking about bonds getting too high, despite all the vocal concerns): Seems like equities and cash makes the most sense, and I probably need to get more cash!

Hi Ragu, thanks for your comments. I agree with your skepticism with respect to growth, however in this case, I had done enough homework to justify my assumptions, at least according to my own standards. The portions in the letter and my comments here are just the tip of the iceberg, as you can imagine (e.g., compare bac portion to the thread on the board). In any event, it was clear to me that the company had a very high chance of significant growth going forward, and at P/Es of 10-13, I would likely get at least get the underlying earnings growth and, given the huge swings in multiples, I might also expect to get higher multiples going forward. This, combined with the understanding of their management and culture made me confident in my decision.

This may be worth starting a new investment thread.