netnet

inner, I have to disagree with you here. I find his blog brilliant and incisive, but as they say it takes two to make a market ;) I have no insight into his book as I have not read it.

the problem with FA jobs is that if you do really well by your clients--introduce them to a future Berkshire Hathaway, you will have their gratitude and you will starve. You are way, way better off in industrial or high tech sales. Look at the base rate of successful FA's not that many, most drop out, very few are successful, plus the tide is going out. Most of the successful business people want a broker who can get them 20+ per year and the younger ones do it themselves. What is the goal here. In all probability, you are not going to manage money starting there. What about starting a small real estate fund, if you want to manage money.

Hard to tell exactly what kind of job you are talking about. Joining a "large financial advising firm" covers a lot of sins ;) You could be peddling insurance door to door or selling to institutional clients at Goldman Sachs. I would echo Sharper's comments as well. Starting at Merrill doing retail clients is tough in what I suspect is a shrinking business, IB or Schwab anyone?

thanks for the heads up, Donville's letters to investors are great.

Additions to the list with caveats: Leonard at Constellation Software (CSU): the stock is expensive and he is reducing his workload. honorable mention for Don Graham at Graham Holdings (GHC) He seems to be in a slow motion liquidation.

+1

First of all you have to go with a company where the objective indicators of success, i.e. not the stock price are pointing in the right direction. Following Munger's suggestion, I look at those first without looking at the quoted price. Those numbers speak for themselves regardless of the quote. (I don't think either Biglari and Moynihan have put up similar numbers.) Second, his letters are fantastic. Third, regarding the numbers, he set the bulls eye in 2006 and hewed to those targets; he does not paint a bulls eye around where the arrow hits. (Biglari anyone) Four, his compensation is meagerly and Buffett like. (Biglari and Moynihan fail here, big time.) As I said before, he is the real deal, even if the market had valued the company at 1/10 of its current price. In fact I wish the market did value the company at 1/10. The current price is way too rich for me :-\

Lib, you add way more value literally and figuratively when you put in your high conviction ideas and then let other people debate it. Afterall this is not your investment committee! The objection and critiques can help clarify your own thinking, but you don't need to justify yourself. I totally understand how the board can be a time and energy sink. To combat this I either give myself a block of time to look and/or post or limit to scanning just the investment ideas at the end of the day. Or better yet, NO posting. (Simple rules work best for me.) Similarly, it seems Dazel, for example just stopped posting, particularly on Altius. All of which to say, what is your best idea? Altius is mine. KOOL could be my second best if and when they get their PIPE together or whatever funding is going to get them through their Phase III. Best, netnet

This a very, very good point. This is a value board with significant Canadian membership. Why and how did people miss this? and what else is out there?

+1. Not a shareholder of CSU (unfortunately), but Leonard is incredible. QSR/BKW performance blows my mind. I'll go ahead and make the obvious, while controversial, nomination: VRX - Pearson. Flame away. Just skimmed through a few years of annual letters. Wow, WOW, WOW This guy is the real deal. Shockingly good. I have some experience in software and am not easily impressed. He is impressive. (I'm sorry that I did not know about him 10 years ago and that he is looking to reduce his involvement in the company.

This guy also says to highlight and summarize. The literature on learning is quite explicit and strong on this highlighting and summarization are not very effective. see for example: The one thing they never taught you in school, How to learn http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/assessing-the-evidence-for-the-one-thing-you-never-get-taught-in-school-how-to-learn It's a painful truth, having spent most of my high school, college and graduate years summarizing and highlighting.

The literature on learning how to learn is fairly explicit on this point. Spaced repetition really helps learning, but once you have a strong scaffold in your mind it gets quicker and easier. There are a few more things to aid retention: Relate the new to something old that you already know well. In your summary, act as if you are explaining it to a 5 year old. Draw pictures. Study/review summaries in a different location, say outside walking, etc. Review right before bed. And test yourself--really, I'm not kidding. For more info, see these books, (but reading more kind of defeats your purpose ;): How we Learn A Mind for Numbers Make it stick and this article: http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/assessing-the-evidence-for-the-one-thing-you-never-get-taught-in-school-how-to-learn

This is just a thought experiment (or maybe a dive philosophy or maybe a hair splitting spitting match). Would you consider the young Buffett teamed with Munger a competitive advantage to the level of being a moat? (or more properly is any truly excellent management a competitive advantage to the level of being a moat?) Given that they are not replicable why are they not a moat when Google's algorithms are?

My son and I are going to go fishing in BC this year. I was thinking about fishing on the Cambell River, BC. Any suggestions or alternates? Thanks, Netnet

Although the discussion has moved on from the article, the article itself is riven with distortions and inaccuracies, as one would expect from a utility lawyer. (One would expect the same distortions from a solar city lawyer as well.) Frankly, the utilities are worried. Just read the last paragraph to get a flavor for it: he calls roof top solar a "losing" and less green(!) technology. Really? Where is a Jon Stewart send up when you need it. Per public policy, we let corporation, particularly utilities depreciate, read expense their capital projects. Is there any reason why this is per se a bad idea when a consumer is 'adding' power to the system? Both are subsidies, as is mortgage deduction. Net metering, probably results in cost shifting, but there are studies that claim otherwise, see the report to the Nevada Utilities Commission. Furthermore, clearly a solar customer does not demand as much from the grid as a non-solar customer, by definition, and when the Tesla batteries come.... I'm not inclined to dig enough to find out, but it would not surprise me if it was one of this lawyer/lobbyist's utility clients, who urged states to charge residential solar users whether or not they used the grid. You want to talk about subsidies?

Any suggestion, websites, etc. for generating special situation ideas? Spinoffmonitor.com stockspinoffs.com clarkstreetvalue.blogspot.com twitter.com (lots of garbage there though) etc. Edited

I just read a book on 3G's founders and all I can say is that it is no surprise that Buffett and Munger like them. Hard charging, fair and fairly ruthless business builders. They keep their word and make their partners and employees a lot of money. (Enriching your employees and giving them equity was unheard of in Brazil.) The book, Dream Big is a breezy and a bit uncritical. ( Also the translation is pretty weak, e.g. sales point instead of store or store location.) but it conveys a sense of the evolution of the companies and the founders, which is, given Brazil's business culture, fairly remarkable. (I love Brazil, but the business culture was unbelievably hide bound. And in building their businesses they violated virtually every custom and rule during a time of unbelievable inflation.)

Provocative and interesting...and wrong. I think that I see the point you are trying to make, that Buffett (NOT Graham) went to quality businesses, influenced by Munger and Fisher. But, to say that the greatest value investor, Buffett, and the founder of the field, Graham, are or were not value investors, well let's say it's more than a stretching of the truth. Going to first principles, value investing is paying less than the asset you are buying is worth. That's it, buying a dollar for 80 cents. So when you buy a really cheap, but crappy company, the proverbial cigar butt, you buy it because it has a few puffs left, not because it is a soggy mess--in other words, it has to have more value left--the puffs. Buffet started doing that after he read Intelligent Investor. Not to be pedantic, but if you haven't read it yet, you should try. Graham just did not believe in paying up for quality, his preference was a great price for a fair business, rather than a fair price for a great business. Paraphrasing Buffett's own words, you could say that "Even though buying a cigar butt business is a basic strategy of many value investors, this can be value destroying, because time is the enemy of bad businesses." Less catchy, still provocative and true, sometimes.

I just came across this, the Wall Street Journal has annotated the annual letter. I have only gotten a few pages in, but the first comment from Russo is worth the price...oh right it's free. 8) http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1678424-berkshire2014.html#document/p1

More like filleted fish memory--It's either old, stinky and quickly discarded or fried and gone. 8)

Reflect your belief that is attractively priced? Or are dollar-cost averaging? I think it is attractively priced… As a very long term investment and if a more difficult environment awaits us. In case something goes wrong with this global deleveraging, and we actually get to see deflation or a stock market that goes down and stays down for some time (or both), FFH imo might truly succeed in compounding at 15% annual. If FFH compounds at 15% annual, there is no reason why 10 years from now it won’t trade at the same multiple it is trading today. This of course would mean a 15% CAGR for my investment. Of course it won’t happen if central banks succeed in resolving our debt situation without any harmful consequences, and if the stock market keeps marching upward undisturbed. Gio You like it at current price/ book?. If that is so, I will wait for the reputed " post Gio buying, drop in price" to buy some 8)

This article got me thinking:http://wallstreetrumble.tumblr.com/post/116235902584/margin-of-safety-the-lost-art. This analyst has an equity MoS of 15%. Now I found that really shocking. That is no margin of safety; that is really the error bounds on your calculations of value.(Which he sort of admits!) Somehow a MoS of 15% doesn't begin to make me want to invest. (One could of course argue that there is no MoS in an index, which would stop you from using an index fund, but that is apples and oranges comparison and the retort is that indices beat 80% of active managers anyway.) Unless it is a jockey stock, great jockey and a decent horse, my MoS is at least 30-40%.

it's funny about the Munger partnership returns. I knew almost on reading the numbers that it probably was Munger. If I had just invested with him without knowing Munger well, I probably definitely would have withdrawn my money. 4 years of under-performance, starting the year I invested? No I would not have had the fortitude to continue, in all probability. The only way to last through that is to believe in Munger and his process. Had I been a new investor, that would have been tough.

Sorry, already sold. :-\

I have an extra ticket for sale.