Grenville

Thanks for posting! I always wondered what Geico was like, nice to hear a first hand experience.

Thanks for the heads up. He will be in SF next week: Jan 13, 2010 – San Francisco, CA 8:00 PM Jewish Community Center of San Francisco 3200 California Street San Francisco, CA 94118 http://www.jccsf.org/content_main.aspx?catid=535#3351 other locations: http://gawande.com/events#

Hi, I use Microsoft Money 99 to log all the details for transactions including dividends ( I manually enter the data instead of having the program pull it from websites). I have been using the software to track a range of stocks and mutual funds for the last five years. The best feature about the program is the ability to pull transaction data very easily into excel. In addition, the money program can get online and pull recent stock quotes and mutual fund quotes. One spreadsheet I create and constantly update is my current stock positions and weightings. With one press in excel it will go to the money program and pull the data to update your current positions. Also at year end, I calculate cumulative returns in my various accounts. You can pull specific transaction data for certain accounts and then crunch through the data with excel formulas to calculate cumulative returns in which ever way you want. I prefer calculating my returns then relying on Microsoft Money's approach. It's not super high tech, but it fits my needs and is customizable through the excel feature.

Here is the transcript of the interview between Matt Rose and Warren: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/934612/000095015709001025/form425.htm

Just another data point from SF car insurance over the last six months. my premium is down 5% Notables: + "premium reductions" down 5% + comprehensive dropped 10% + collision dropped 19% + uninsured motor bodily increased 30%! My current premium shows a decent delta compared to the last one...pricing is moving.

Article: NetJets still has plans to grow in Columbus, new CEO David Sokol says. It'll just take a little longer. A nice article about the future plans for Netjets and the recent cuts. Sokol also mentions future growth plans in China. Enjoy! http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/business/stories/2009/11/22/netjets_sokol.ART_ART_11-22-09_D1_5SFOD23.html?sid=101

The most likely purchasers of the recent equity offering: Change in Shares ING Investment Mngmt 1,087,212 Capital World Investors 660,000 Davis Selected Adv 584,087 Capital Research Glo 359,800 Marshfield Associate 278,105 total 2,969,204 http://holdings.nasdaq.com/asp/Institutional.asp?&sHead=t&coname=Fairfax+Financial+Holdings+Ltd&market=NYSE&selected=FFH&symbol=ffh&symbol=FFH&ads=1&FormType=Institutional&strFilter=T

Doesn't this mean AIG owned the Davis fund, not the Davis fund owned AIG? Sorry, I wrote things backward. Davis NY Venture Fund held AIG.

I just can't seem to forget the fact that they missed the ball on AIG. They had over a billion before AIG imploded. Interesting picture: AIG reported holdings in Davis NY Venture Fund 10/31/07 28,556,210 shares at $1,802,467,975 4/30/08 30,451,813 shares at $1,406,873,761

Great article! Thanks for sharing. Shetty shows a similar line of thinking exposed by Atul Gawande. The heart surgery high volume approach shows the benefits of specialization similar to the example of the hernia operation center in Canada. "Japanese companies reinvented the process of making cars. That's what we're doing in health care," Dr. Shetty says. "What health care needs is process innovation, not product innovation." A great sign for the future of healthcare for us all!

Warren Buffett refers to a speech given by Li Ka-shing titled "My Third Son" in the 8 minute web exclusive on the Charlie Rose site. This video actually plays through without any hitches. Here is the text of Li Ka-shing's speech: http://www.lksf.org/eng/media/speech/20060905.shtml

I completely disagree. The problem with this kind of thinking is that there is the implication that your investment decisions are right or wrong based upon the market price of the asset. For example, I buy at $5 because I think IV is $10 and the asset then rises to $10. I sell out of my position and track the asset after my sale. The asset then rises to $20. Did I make a foolish decision? I don't think so. As an investor, all I care about is (a) current market price and (b) intrinsic value. Whether or not that asset will then be traded by overly optimistic parties at some later date is irrelevant and it certainly doesn't make my investing decisions foolish. Biglari once stated that value investing is buying from pessimists and selling to optimists. That implies that the asset you sold to the optimists might trade much higher at a later date. And then I ask ... so what if it does? I agree with what you are saying in regards to short term price. I still think there is value in the idea of tracking what you have sold for some time. One's determination of intrinsic value is subjective. The goal should be to constantly improve the assessment of intrinsic value. Mr. Market provides a fairly strong data point in regards to intrinsic value. The caveat though is that in the short term that indication can be significantly off, but over time the market quote should eventually track intrinsic value. How much time elapses before the market weighs correctly is debatable. The value is using the market quote over time to provide some feedback to the intrinsic value calculation. An example: Company A trades at $5 at year 1. Intrinsic value is assessed at $10 At year 2 the price reaches $10 and the intrinsic value is still assessed at $10 and the stock is sold. At year 7 the price reaches $25. Now what does this mean? a. The market is overly optimistic b. The assessment of intrinsic value missed something c. A fundamental change occurred in the company after year 2 d. and so on.... In the event that (b) is true some % of the time, the process of tracking a sold position provides important feedback to the intrinsic value calculation. Investing is a marathon and not a sprint. Any bits of insight that can be picked up along the way is only beneficial.

I couldn't make it past the 4 minute mark. I am going to try again later tonight or tomorrow.

A nice short interview with Jason Zweig that I thought ya'll would enjoy. http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=311658 Very nice idea: "....The only effective way I know of doing it is to incorporate a kind of analysis that most advisors to my knowledge don't use, which is to track not just the hold portfolio but also the sold portfolio. You have to keep a continuous record of the performance of the investments you got rid of to see whether after you got rid of them they did worse. And I know very, very few advisors who actually do this, and in fact some of them are puzzled as to why that's necessary. And the simple answer is that you can't know whether you made a good decision to sell unless you look at the performance of what you sold after you sold it. Because it's quite possible it did better after you sold it than it did before you sold it. And it may have done better after you sold it than the thing you replaced it with, in which case you made a very foolish decision. And you can't evaluate whether you made a foolish decision unless you measure it...."

Thanks for posting again! Is there an easy way to get on the mailing list for when these memos are released? Otherwise I hope you continue to post when new memos are released in the future!

It's interesting to see the purchase of 30 year debt. The yield is good, but the duration is longer than usual. Are they building a deflation bet?

The 13F just came out. Here is a highlight of the portfolio changes: Alcoa SOLD OUT BCE Inc. -91.5% $6,592 9/30/09 value GE +45.2% $435,671 9/30/09 value GE Calls NEW $8,354 9/30/09 value 2,620,000 SH INTEL -18% $111,748 9/30/09 value King Pharm SOLD OUT Leucadia -32.4% $16,677 9/30/09 value Magna -2.3% $224,701 9/30/09 value Methanex SOLD OUT Sandridge -29% $11,426 9/30/09 value Zenith +78.3% $30,625 9/30/09 value http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/915191/000095012309061698/o57876e13fvhr.txt

Just ran across this insider purchase of the ORH-A by Michael Wacek of 1000 shares at 24.9. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1137048/000123458409000014/xslF345X03/edgar.xml

"Our book value per common share was $59.72 as of September 30, 2009, representing an increase of $14.35, or 31.6%, from our book value per common share of $45.37 as of December 31, 2008." http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1137048/000095012309057694/o57685e10vq.htm http://ccbn.10kwizard.com/xml/download.php?repo=tenk&ipage=6584368&format=PDF

http://www.nasdaq.com/reference/ownership.stm Make sure you fill out the bottom search box which describes institutional holders and not stock symbol if you want to get directed to the holdings as formated in the earlier posted link. You can thank Partner24! I had the same question a while back.

Really?! You're not joking are you?

Agreed! I remember listening to the Alice Schroeder talk from Motley Fool and she described how Warren keeps CNBC on mute in his office. When they start talking about him, he turns up the volume. I guess this time he decided to call in! Nice tidbits: + 40% of all ton miles moved on rail + 470 miles/gallon of diesel for 1 ton of goods transported

http://holdings.nasdaq.com/asp/OwnerPortfolio.asp?FormType=OwnerPortfolio&CIK=0000915191&HolderName=FAIRFAX+FINANCIAL+HOLDINGS+LTD/+CAN

"Buffett will use $16 billion in cash for the deal, half of which is being borrowed from banks and will be paid back in three annual installments, he told the CNBC. Berkshire will have more than $20 billion in consolidated cash after the purchase, he said."

The text of the comments is in one of the Outstanding Investor Digests. I bought the one that has the information on EBAY. I can dig it up if you want specifics on his comments. What about the USG deal? How did you know Fairfax brought it to Berkshire?