LC

Response: "Anyone caught with western items will be shot on sight"

Took a starter position in DVA.

About time. Talk about a wart on humanity's backside.

why don't you think that residential solar is all that smart? is it a price point thing or a economies of scale thing or something else? I had a discussion with another user about it over on this thread: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/america-1st/msg302262/#msg302262 Essentially it comes down to this: The large gap in per-MWh costs between utility- and residential-scale systems results principally from: (a) lower total plant costs per installed kilowatt for larger facilities; and (b) greater solar electric output from the same PV capacity (300 MW-DC) due to optimized panel placement, tracking and other economies of scale and efficiencies associated with utility-scale installations.

I think the real winners will be the utility companies that can build economically-feasible solar plants. I don't think any of the hardware sellers will do particularly well. The other parties I think may do well are the contractors building/servicing these sites, and perhaps residential solar financing groups (I don't think residential solar is all that smart, but people still do it and usually get financing).

I was just going to post, asking about how to import a company's most recent dividend into google sheets. Anyone have a snippet I can copy? Cheers 8)

I think the death of the traditional CPG is a bit overblown. Distribution of both marketing material and the actual product has definitely changed. Tide ads are on certain websites I or my wife visit. And I get my laundry and dishwasher pods (or whatever they're called) via Amazon usually. But tide pods are still the best of the brands in my mind, and priced a buck or two higher than the competition. The biggest reason the big CPGs will survive is there really are economies of scale. In terms of hundreds of millions of people cleaning their clothes and dishes, it's a helluva lot more economical to produce billions of tide pods in centralized locations vs. some lady in her kitchen making homemade soap.

is it because 291,000 = 291.00 (comma used as decimal)?

I don't agree with this part. Why are those your only two options? Why bother paying that 1% in the first place to Merrill for S&P performance? Just buy the SP500 index. From a client's perspective, the best situation is to invest with a manager whose net worth is tied to the fund (downside protection), and who is paid on a performance basis above the risk-less alternative (incentivize upside). If I had a few million to my name and I wanted to start a fund, I would charge a 20% performance fee above the 10-year treasury rate hurdle.

Also bought MO (and sold out of PM to offset) - thanks for the tip, Lance. The reason MO fell today was this byline from the FDA's announcement: Agency to pursue lowering nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels and create more predictability in tobacco regulation Only by reading the entire FDA press release would one would have seen the following: Importantly, the anticipated new enforcement policy will not affect any current requirements for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, only the newly-regulated tobacco products such as cigars and e-cigarettes.

I think he was joking :o ;D

Sold the balance of my position in MMM. Nice gain over the last 1.5 years but the reason I bought (attractive 4+% dividend, below SP500 earnings yield) no longer holds (2.3% dividend, earnings yield about equal to SP500). The two most attractive investments to me are Citi and Compass Minerals, but I am wary of being too overweight. Would like to redeploy into Berkshire, Philip Morris, RELX, but not sure I can justify buying at these prices.

I have nothing valuable to add here, but holy shit, this thread spans hundreds of pages, over 6 years, for a stock that has barely moved.

I wouldn't call it a huge bubble. Here's the historical SP500 P/E back to 1928: http://www.macrotrends.net/2577/sp-500-pe-ratio-price-to-earnings-chart Frothy? Yes.

I've argued this on other points, but I'm not sure I agree. A lot of society is pretty developed. We've built the highways, the dams, the housing, the utilities, the railroads, the oil rigs/drills, etc. From here on, it's mostly maintenance. And what we are building, we're building cheaper. Of course there's still other areas of the world which are under-developed, but it's shrinking every day. And now we're building robots to do all the manual work, so even the human capital element is decreasing. I think over the next 50 years, we're going to be less of a capital-intensive society. That's what I hope for at least. And that is one of the big reasons I think returns on capital (interest rates) are low.

Tough questions...I'll take a stab. Perhaps you get this bifurcated industry, where it consolidates into one or two giants on the B&M side, and one or two giants on the e-commerce side, for a given product class. So you have two options in terms of how you want to buy (B&M vs online), and then two options on where you want to buy within that category. The Coke/Pepsi effect. On the B&M side (in terms of who lasts), I think part of that consolidation is maximizing the retail footprint. Being really smart about what people are walking into the store to buy, and being really smart about store size and location.

To be fair, I think the reason a lot of people mention his name first is due to the fact that he is one of the most public figures in this community. The dude really puts himself out there. When he performs, everyone praises him. When he doesn't, he will be the first everyone piles in on. That's just how publicity is.

His letters are about as public as you can make them. The SEC requires/required accredited funds to have a separate log-in to access information from advertising (newsletters, performance numbers, etc). If you are accredited and contact Pabrai Funds to access the letters, I'm pretty sure they would grant access. This rule was loosened up a couple of years ago, so I'm not sure why most funds still use the password protection. Cheers! Speaking of letters, will you ever be making the 2016 Corner Market Capital letter available? :) Pretty sure Sanjeev can't himself, but you know, if one of his accredited investors happens to attach or link it...

Mohnish owes you a license plate.

Yea, I thought it was obvious we were talking about the net value of the float, including the invested assets and any underwriting profits. As you say not even an insane person would pay to assume just the liability. You need to be paid for that.

If the float is $100 but only $90 will be paid out, and you can invest it for an extra $5, why not pay $5 for it? Free ten bucks, no?

You think correct, here are insurance premiums received: 2005 - $21,997 2006 - $23,964 2007 - $31,783 2008 - 25,525 2009 - 27,884 2010 - 30,749 2011 - 32,075 .. 2016 - 45,881 I personally think the assumption being made is a decent one to make. History certainly supports it, both from a premium growth side, and the fact that Buffett has created one of the best insurance machines out there. IMHO and as you mention, only drastic technological changes will alter this trajectory.

I essentially agree with the rest of your post, but I am not so sure about this. I don't know the insurance business that well, but I would think that the profitability of new insurance business is somehow correlated to the current interest rate environment. When cash is cheap, lots of people can write business, which pushes down profitability (I could be wrong here). Buffett notoriously does not want to write unprofitable business. Here is the big assumption that Buffett makes: Owing $1 that in effect will never leave the premises –because new business is almost certain to deliver a substitute – is worlds different from owing $1 that will go out the door tomorrow and not be replaced. As long as new, profitable business can be written, for Buffett (or any other consistently profitable underwriter), this business is like having the ability to draw upon a negative-interest rate revolving loan.

It's value may change. All earnings are not created equal. If you think their underwriting earnings are more or less valuable than their investment portfolio earnings, then I would think their value would change.

I've got a couple of thoughts but it's a bit late here so I'll put one here and mull over the rest for tomorrow. The reason I took out the investing portion when comparing 2 insurance companies is this: Imagine an insurance company with negative underwriting profits. They are essentially a leveraged investment company. They pay X% for financial obligations, and try to invest to make X+Y%. The only value they add is via investing. Take away their investing arm, and they will eventually drown. So their only real asset is their ability to invest profitably. So why write insurance business? To grow AUM. So we can think of the liability associated with float as the cost for an investment manager to increase their AUM. So if we look at it from that perspective, let's go back to underwriting profitably. Imagine investing with a fund manager. You pay him a % to invest with him. At some point you will redeem your investment, but when is that a REAL liability to his business? I can think of 3 scenarios: -your clients will all jump ship in a crisis -your performance is consistently just plain bad and most importantly, -your cannot replace any leaving AUM Maybe I'm rambling but that's a thought I had.