LC

Rb: I don't understand your point (then again I am pretty dense...) If we take your example of company A (underwriting losses) and B (underwriting gains) and simplify the problem: Imagine they both write their first business today. Let's remove all investments of the float, assume they only hold cash. Let's go forward 1000 years of this behavior, and then look at the companies. Company A will now be bankrupt due to underwriting losses. Company B will have printed money continuously. If we go back to time zero, we see the underwriting performance of A to be a huge liability which has wiped out the company, but a huge asset to B.

Isn't Berkshire generally posting underwriting profits, though? Their float is being paid for because they are better underwriters than other institutions. To other firms the float is a liability but for Brk it is an asset, or at least that is how I understand it.

Norm does the best shaggy dog jokes. Here's another great one: I sold SAN on (1) a comment that SD made in the SAN thread and (2) because I think Citi is also undervalued and has a better business. So I've shifted to that.

I'm always a fan of shaggy dog jokes, Norm Macdonald does it best:

Congrats Keith, about time!

Question for the board: I have probably 10? different accounts of various forms (Roth/regular IRAs, 401ks, regular brokerage accts) over a few different brokers (schwab, fidelity, vanguard, etc etc). It's a pain in the butt trying to navigate each one to view the overall performance of a various position. I have been using a spreadsheet and just entering each trade manually, but I am wondering if there is an automated tool or website that people use to make life easier?

I lean towards Poor Charlie's comment. I won't be managing anyone else's money. I'd want to sit down with someone who is a damn good stock picker/businessman, pick their brain for a few hours. Analysis by contrast: what do they do that I don't? how does their thought process differ? etc.

I haven't been to a branch in at least 3 years...

Bought more Citi today

Nyc/den

I agree with Scott. As to being an investment analyst...what do they do that you cannot do from your couch? The answer is not much. I took the investment knowledge, applied it to the modeling space. Helped that I had a background in some heavy math and stats. But overall a very useful skill set: my peers are math nerds without an understanding of the final implications. Have that understanding makes it easier to back into whatever problem we are facing. Also the ancillary skills are useful: communicating a thesis, distilling data points into what is coherent and important. These are useful anywhere.

In my personal investing, I first calculate historical economic cash flows. Then I take a more qualitative approach: read/learn about the business and form an opinion on how stable I think are those cash flows, and do I think they will be growing or shrinking in the future. If I can't get a handle on that, game over. From there it's then about whether the current valuation is cheap, reasonable, or high, as a multiple of the economic earnings I calculated previously. I also think about, If the SP500 multiple is X, do I think this company is better or worse than the average company (and therefore deserves a higher/lower multiple)? For example I had good fortune buying Philip Morris and 3M at market or less-than-market multiples about a year ago. I thought these had better than average business prospects, and the economic earnings multiple I calculated was less than the current SP500 multiple.

Your link supports my argument. From the third sentence of the link you posted: Additionally from the link you posted https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Matriarchal_Prehistory The evidence that matriarchies ever existed is extremely poor and the idea is mostly a wholesale invention and feminists and marxists. Second the current definitions of matriarchy need not even contradict the idea of mostly male leadership since many anthropologists/feminists/marxists redefine matriarchy to mean social roles are relatively egalitarian. This would imply that North America is matriarchal since social roles are relatively egalitarian...however it still has mostly male leadership. Leadership is the extreme of the distribution....not the average. The article lists a bunch of examples: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy#By_region_and_culture The sentence you quote is more an issue with syntax and the strict definition of matriarchy.

The premise that Y (male leadership) is invariant is false. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy

Packer recommended to me (years ago now - wow) Shannon Pratt's valuation textbook. It was very comprehensive. Personally I think the best way is practice. I don't really use a DCF in spreadsheet form, but I learn about the company, adjust the financials to reflect true economics, and figure out what I thinl that stream of cash flows will look like and what that is worth.

Not sure I follow...I'm saying Amazon can make headway into the auto parts business because they can probably match the selection and delivery of auto parts stores. Maybe 1 day excess lag time but that may be worth it depending on the price difference.

Interesting theory, but let me add that sometimes being overly obsessed is not a good thing to achieve the best outcome. Missing the forest for the trees kind of thing.

I think Amazon could do a great job with auto parts. A piece of my car fender broke a few months back. Step 1 was to find the part # from the manufacturer's website, Step 2 was to go on Amazon and see what prices looked like. Much cheaper to get the part from Amazon and have a body shop (or yourself) install it. I remember my father used to do this, he would bring the car to the body shop, get the part # he needed from the mechanic, and went to the auto parts distributor to buy the part and bring back to the mechanic. Saved the giant markup from the body shop (who were just ordering the part and adding a markup). Online manuals/Amazon (or Ebay) make this a lot easier.

What is the market like for this business? Why don't other medical groups offer this? If I'm a hospital or medical group why wouldn't I just set this up for myself...It could be used to reduce the volatility of work, especially during slow hours. Perhaps the real business is selling the software/setup to hospitals/clinics/medical groups and whatnot?

In the risk space the women I work with are very good. I would say better on average than the men I work with (myself probably included!) In terms of investing, I have yet to see how gender matters. Anyone who can read Ben Graham has a shot, IMHO.

I haven't seen any comparative tests, and really I'm not sure how you would even do it. I could see comparing the materials, but in terms of which one "feels" better? That seems very subjective. I would second themattressunderground.com for all things mattress related. Also, apparently this company makes the mattresses for the royal family: https://www.hypnosbeds.com/international I can't comment on price or value, though.

Do you have name, model etc? Please do tell if it's available. Thanks in advance. That's what I've been consistently hearing that the confusion between $200, and $1000 and $4,000 mattress is so great that it makes buying one a pain in the butt. Sure, I bought 2 of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GTCL3SQ/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

i bought a cheap $200 queen-size mattress from amazon. i really can't tell the difference between a $4000 mattress, $1000 mattress, and $200 mattress. plus its much easier to replace (knowing it was so cheap) if for whatever reason i need to do that.

Happy Canada day folks!

Agreed. Same situation - mortgage, car payment, refi'd student loans, and any other loan i can get below 4%. We have the entire world to invest in, and the hurdle is 4%. Well, you won't go broke doing this, but when we actually hit a serious downturn, I can say from experience that it really feels shitty to be in the situation with your equity decimated and all these loans hanging over your head. It does work out in the long term (assuming you haven't done something really catastrophic on your investments) but it doesn't feel good at all. Fair point!