ASTA

Thanks for clearing that up alwaysinvert. As a fellow swede its good to know. But my business experience in Sweden is zero USA and gaap my circle of competence :D Sometime in the future I should add Sweden to my knowledge base but as I don't live there anymore its hard with America being easier and bigger too master.

SwedishValue Its because of the Swedish tax code that for example Investor doesn't want to buy back stock as explained buy Third Avenue. And maybe Wallenberg wants dividends instead of paying higher taxes on income in sweden :D

AAII had a very interesting graph and sentiment survey which just hit a record low of 19.3% bulls. So the contrarian in me say it means stocks are a buy. Maybe we can apply a feedback loop from Soros playbook and this implies stocks will fall. How know's its dam hard to invest today everyone I follow are negative except Warren how thinks long term 10 years plus. Well that's the problem with a game its not suppose to be easy to win :D Cool graph from bespoke underneath. http://www.bespokeinvest.com/thinkbig/2013/4/11/bulls-move-to-the-endangered-list.html

Well I think that good books should be re read. But if you have other books to read as I have Andrew Carnegie at the moment its good to broaden ones knowledge. So maybe ones times are tough or too optimistic its a good read to drive down the basics which are 80% of investing in my view.

[amazonsearch]Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer[/amazonsearch] If you feel like you have read enough of investment books and need a fun autobiographical book this one is good. The book goes from the 1900's century to the 2100 century describing Budweiser struggle with alcohol probation(turnaround from biggest brewer to zero beer and still surviving), mergers and expansion, family feuds, first born always first(instead of breast milk first born son always got some Budweiser beer as first drink in life but first born are not always best to lead), size matters :D (describes how efficiency and scale really works throughout time), And how marketing really in all manners of size and ingenuity help Budweiser become a giant brand in America.

[amazonsearch]Simple But Not Easy: An Autobiographical and Biased Book About Investing[/amazonsearch] I want to contribute to this forum so here is a gem of a book that's one of the top 3 starting books on investing. One great quote from the book is when he explains which investment returned the most money from 1997 to 2005? KO or the Russian index? Ask that question to any of your brokers for a quick answer and its fun to see their guess. He was a money manger for the Rousing family for a while and now runs his own investment company Oldfield Partners. And as a person who likes to copy people he is one interesting person to copy that's not American. However, he likes American stocks too, such as MSFT and CHK. Regarding the book: its packed with behavioral finance, investment anecdotes, investment tips and tricks :D and a little history. He recommended the Rausing family to be 80% in stocks. Obviously on the security's part of their wealth. Concentration is also something he champions. As I am a bad reviewer of books my nondescript review is only a staring point to a recommendation but this book is short and good.

Yea have read about half off Titan but was over a year ago but will start again but long books are hard to stick to. The Vanderbilt book is very long to but very informative but after like one month of this audio book I am ready for maybe something in the line of Freakonomics.

[amazonsearch]The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt[/amazonsearch] I have just finished this (audio) book last night and its long but good. Its the best book on the market in the 1900's century I have read. This books also drives home that cash is king and how Vanderbilt's friends had 10 million but still went bankrupt leverage cuts both ways :D But we also learn that whenever there where a crises through the hard skin and nerve he always went ahead and became a lot richer after each crises. Have some time on your hand and want to learn about the american markets and general business history of the 1900's century I recommended this book.

Thanks for the links. I hope the carpenter and his wife made it out before the crash.

Well I never said 100% did I :D If you look at Ted's previous investments he likes roll ups witch also fits NOV. Good forbid and its that other guy at BRK for got his name ;D Win win in any case how bought it, still is a stamp of approval 3 times over.

Have 30% cash and 10% dell(hoping its cash equvilent ;D) and 20% ffh

I like this memo a lot thanks. Reading it makes me think a lot about portfolio positions. Lets say I manage a little portfolio for my grandma and I have 80% equities at the moment and 20% cash. Now according to Mark's the bond universe is risky at the moment which have been my stand for the last 2 years. But am I risky with this equity % as well? Lets take a small sample of the portfolio I bought C this summer for this portfolio and 6 month later I have a 64% return should I sell to maybe buy MSFT to be prudent and a good contrarian? These things keep me up at night and is very tough to call any-thought's?

I have read The Success Equation its not very good as Think Twice is much better.

Great book read it in 2 days great short fun read.

Great shows watched them all as they are free to :D

Hello Gio, True story I almost bought this on Monday as I sold my GBLB and wanted to swap to this stock. However, being a cheap skate wanted to pay 64.89 but never happened. Regarding the company listened to some call's and was following Ted Weschler as he is most likely to have bought this for BRK spending 500h before he bought it is more then enough financial work then I could do. If it reaches this level again I will buy it I think. The company also intrigues me because of the monopoly it has and the ensuring natural resource boom in America. Cheers, ASTA

Hello Gio, Take a look at Bestinver's hedgefund and you can see that they have over 20% of their portfolio in Exor. And MOI had a interview of them explaining a bit of it. I might buy it as well if it goes to 15 :D Cheers, ASTA

Hello Gio, As a new board member I can only tell from my experience from only managing my own money full time its still though. As building a house for 2.5 years really hurt and family times and I don't even have kids. But once I have good track record I might go to work. And its quite lonely to just sit at home and read all the time. But as I own 20% in fhh I might go to a forum/ffh meeting soon for some fun. And as a bonus and thanks to this forum I made 160% in ostk becoming 20% of my portfolio this year so my other bad idea's don't look so bad. RSS Feed have actually saved me a lot of time keeping track of different blogs so I don't need to click on there websites every day. Its now all automatic and I can read more blog-posts this way. So breaking free from frenetic routines is up to each persons circumstances I think and one needs to optimizes ones time according to that. Just like in investing I learned a lot by customizing my investing according to my circumstances. And as I side note I like your way of investing with your time restraints from what I have read here. And I am flowing a similar path but throwing in BAC,HPQ(down 64%) and other stocks so leets see if my side investing will do better then straight up fhh. It has so far :D Cheers, ASTA