cubsfan

Wow. Who is he cloning on the FCAU and ZINC positions? He has mentioned that ZINC is his first original idea, and FCAU was from a Columbia student's presentation. So you are saying he is cloning Columbia students? So I also heard on this thread he goes into positions where he expects 2x 3x gains; so how does Brk BAC fit? he seriously expected Brk to triple? Pabrai is so full of contradictions I wonder how anyone can follow what he says..... I don't know his results last year or this year... but it can't be good, GM has gone nowhere and Horeshead....well that's a disaster..... He paid $5-6 for BAC, so looks like a 3X. Most of his GM common was below $20 before he switched to the warrants, so nothing wrong with 50% gain in 3 years. He still may get his 2-3X.

Try page 586 of The Snowball. Actually, it's on 616-617 regarding the arbitration hearing for Gutfreund of Solomon Brothers.

They are usually in February.

You might consider Van De Velde - a under the radar high quality luxury producer of women's undergarments. Primarily family controlled, nice dividend, high ROE. Not exactly a household name, but I've owned it for a few years. I've viewed it as a company run for shareholders interest, not the street. Located in Brussels suburb.

First Pacific Advisors - and their quarterly conference calls are worth listening.

Don't be surprised - it was posted in the Markel thread last week with rave reviews. http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/mkl-markel-corp/460/ But your right - it's great!

Yea, basically the vc's have it valued at that number with the last funding round. I guess you can say it's unproven commercially, but it looks very promising in a huge costly market.

Theranos is valued at about $10B, and Elizabeth owns over 50%.

I added a lot yesterday. Sub-140 looks like a very good price.

That was a very good interview Keith - I learned a lot.

Nice clip - "They're simply contributing to the general treasury account"

Very well done. The numbers are staggering and the visuals are great. The numbers blow your mind if you read Antony Beevor's "Stalingrad" and "The Fall of Berlin".

Max - fantastic stuff - just ordered both!

With the Old Breed - I'll second that one - nothing like it.

Very nice insights Scott. You sound like a page out of Tom Russo and his "Capacity to Suffer" thesis on great businesses.

That's a nice interview with Monish - thanks for posting. A few new insights included.

Fantastic commentary from the right people - thanks for posting.

You have to wonder how driverless software makes decisions and who has the liability. I think Warren alluded to this last year. Imagine a scenario where a driverless car going at a high speed encounters a child crossing in front. What happens with 3 choices faced. 1 - straight ahead and kill the child 2 - swerve left into on coming traffic - how many potential deaths there 3- swerve right into concrete wall and kill occupants of your car All outcomes are bad - how do those decisions get made and who accepts liability? Stuff like this will take place hundreds of times a year. Hard for me to understand how you easily roll out driverless vehicles with these type of issues. Should be interesting.

Nice questions.... May I ask - where & who would I submit a question as well? thanks

"You make most of your money in a bear market, you just don't realize it at the time" Shelby Cullom Davis

I think that is such a good point - security is just really, really hard - because the bad guys continually change tactics. And also users don't want their lives to be made more difficult by internal security processes. (You want me to remember how many passwords and processes??) Companies will continue to spend fortunes on it, as they have since the inception of the mainstream internet. It started with antivirus and firewalls - but continues to morph into a large variety of products/services as security threats evolve and the endpoint devices keep changing. It's a nightmare for IT departments. So the only area I would disagree. Companies are willing to pay plenty for top notch security. It's just that it takes many products to solve the problem - and also a large amount of spending, (not to mention increased hassle for their user) on their own internal processes, etc. - No one vendor or product solves the problem, although many of them (Symantec, RSA, etc) say they can. Most of the technology to secure data/endpoints/devices exists - for a price. But the one problem that is very difficult to solve - is how you don't overburden and piss off the people you are trying to protect?

That is really ugly. There are usually 2 sides to every story, so will be very interested to hear Berkshire's response. It does bother me the company did not comment extensively if they were contacted by the authors.

First of all, thanks to JBird for the great audio file. Having gone to the meeting before, and not being able to go this time, it was terrific to hear Charlie's voice again. The jokes and intonation come across much better than in the notes. I will however give FarnamStreet his due: his notes are simply fantastic, and much of what you will miss in the audio - you will pick up in his transcript. I took pages and pages of notes at the previous DJCO meeting, but they simply did not compare in terms of completeness with FarnamStreet 40+ pages of notes. And I'm happy to pay a very reasonable fee to fully capture the full force of Munger's intellect and have a historical record. I've re-read those notes many times - better than most books as far as I am concerned. I'm grateful to both of you for contributing to this effort. And thanks to all the other members that have shared their personal DJCO notes and efforts.

Analysis by Larry Robbins on the dealer sector is very helpful. Thanks for posting.

I think Wilbur's comments last year about selling IRE - the position is a 3X, so it makes some sense to get lots of our investment out. And it was a very large position.