wachtwoord

I enjoyed reading your reasoning based on inversion and fully agree. The only way any of this changes is if faster than light travel is possible in our universe or some way around it such as intact wormhole traversion of matter or information. At this point that seems unlikely though. Thanks for the factual correction. I was an order of magnitude off on when life developed on earth it seems :)

Yes you are exactly correct in the paragraph above. The conclusion I draw is that we have not been visited, or at least we are no longer being visited. My personal opinion based on nothing concrete is that intelligent life is rarer than most scientists think and we may be the only intelligent species in the Milkyway right now. There are surely others in other galaxies (there are just too many of them to think otherwise), but we may have this one to ourselves. The problem is both space and time. First off space is vaste and for two worlds to communicate or even visit they need to develop a reasonable distance from each other. Remember, for now we believe the maximum space of matter or information is one light year per year. This is extremely limitting and makes it quite unlikely already for intelligent life that developed independantly from each other to meet. Now add time to the equation. The period of time that there has been life on Earth is miniscule a few 100 million years versus the 14 billion years the universe is old (1.4%). Of those few 100 million years humans have existed for roughly 200.000 (0.2%, so 0.0028% of the age of the universe). And the we have only discovered using radio signals 130 years ago or so, space travel 50 years ago. So to meet the alien civilization needs to not only be close enough but also reach this level of civilization at the exact time we are at that level as well. The odds of that are tremendously small, even with millions of different uncorrelated species developing in the universe throughout its existance thus far. And the I did not even consider physical or psychological reasons that make learning of each others' existance impossible or unlike (eg the inability to decern the other entity as a life form, no desire the explore, the knowledge that staying hidden is much safer due to the likely existance of von-neumann machines etc). People that say there must be no life in the universe because we have not observes it are highly uninformed. It's actually quite likely there is and has been and still we will never know.

France is the worst ruled European country. Venezuelan stocks will perform very well at some point as well on a short time frame. Direct consequence of hitting rock bottom, not of it being a good place to invest.

Doesn't need to be local. I'm not from the us and simply found a US library that allows (free) signup which allows online signup. Did this years ago to read Morningstar.

Why are they IPO'ing now? Do they think they reached their ceiling, do they need investments and can't borrow cheaply enough or do insiders simply want to cash out and diversify their risk?

Thanks for the report! Now I really want to read an update (post mortem): how did the margins, valuations and metrics evolve over the 5 year period? Can the difference between the prediction (-1.1% p/a) and reality (+9.8% p/a) be explained by variance or is the model invalidated? What are the chances of either? Did they update their model? Edit: For anyone interested they speak about it in their 2018Q4 report: https://www.gmo.com/europe/research-library/and-the-winner-wast-bills/

All the EU did was aimed at scaring any other country from trying to leave like Brittain did: years of fear mongering (the economy, o no!), years of calling the Brits xenophobes and uneducated, purposefully fucking up any sort of deal while pretending to work on one. It's like trying to leave a gang. The gang leaders will want to make an example out of you ... I hope the Brits do the hardest Brexit imaginable and in 10 years will have a much improved economy to show for it. A giant fuck you to the European "gang leaders". However, I expect the EU to coerce GB into a remain.

If you haven't already definitely read The Intelligent Investor. Mandatory reading material ;)

@SHDL: I have nothing against suggesting BRK as the default equity investment (its swapping diversification for likely outperformance) rather than VT but when you look at the numbers of the index as a giant conglomerate numbers are not so bad: PE: 16, price/book: 2.1 and ROE: 14% https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/portfolio/vt (And OP should learn to pick his own stocks rather than copy "ours", even if it is Berkshire we're talking about).

This is good advice. Start now but start small. And stay small until you think you know what you're doing. I don't recommend blindly putting all your money in a US equity index fund at this time by the way. So just pick VT from Vanguard (cheapest worldwide index fund) and put all your investing money in it. Then start researching and if you want to take a position after sufficient due diligence sell a small part of the index allocation to fund the position. By having your money invested you won't feel time pressure (oh no! My money isn't doing anything) and you will take your time.

I can answer those questions "yes" and "no", as can my brother and father (a dirt-track racer before I was born), and here's my explanation: #1) I know what it is to face danger, my limits, and those of the machine. I can control my emotions and behavior in those situations. #2) I'm mature enough to not intentionally put myself in those situations anymore or take undue risks. Sounds very plausible. Interesting!

Interesting read, thanks!

Thanks for sharing AWS.

Out of interest do you think Watsa's style has changed or did you not like it from the start (whenever that was, for you)? Watsa has as much right to comment on bitcoin as anyone else. Bitcoin can only be understood through two lenses: 1) crowd psychology and tulip bubbles and 2) fiat currency collapse. The first - which is the one he used - is well within his circle of competence as a value investor. My framework for the third world insurance businesses is this: if one or two of them find that sweet nexus you occasionally get in insurance where a superb manager meets a superb opportunity, then you've seeded the next ICICI Lombard or First Capital. My guess is that's the game plan, but it's only a guess. The opportunity stems from the fact that in most of these places insurance will grow faster than GDP, because it is currently underpenetrated. I think Watsa and Fairfax are very good value investors and underwriters. I don't believe they have any sort of edge at a macro level and therefore are adding variance with zero reward (at best, in reality it comes at a cost). I wish they would focus on what they are good in cause this would be a world class investment (I am a shareholder btw). I mentioned Bitcoin because it's indicative of him having (and sharing in the context of his annual shareholder letter) an opinion about something he does not comprehend while having confidence in his uninformed opinion. In the case of Bitcoin I don't mind as he isn't basing an investment decision on it, but his certainty in the face of a flawed understanding scares me.

I agree the tone of the letter is infantile. I'm sure Watsa isn't infantile but coming across as such is not good. I also believe Watsa's macro view is highly flawed. This wouldn't be an issue if he would act macro agnostic however he made huge bets in the past and even though he claims to have learned from the past I see him comment on Bitcoin which is a macro thing and quite clearly outside of his circle of competance. He seems to overly rely on his own ability on matters he knows little about which is a large risk going forward. Finally I agree that the 3rd world insurance businesses look like crap. What's the plan there?

Thanks for the link. Do you know of any such resource to backtest European stocks as well? (The available stocks seem to be restricted to N. American companies) Some european companies have US listed ADRs so you can use that if it works. Also, stockcharts is pretty good for that ( use the perfcharts option) and is one of the few out there that allows you to pick shares including or excluding dividends. I am Europe based as well and these 2 work for large, well known shares but I don't know of any others which include small-cap or less well traded exchanges. Yes I use the US ADR trick for the seekingAlpha portfolio. Unfortunately the ADRs must be too obscure for these sites to support them (for example Exor). I don't own European stocks because I'm from Europe (US is usually better for business) but there's some very nice holding companies located there as well. Thanks for the link though.

Thanks for the link. Do you know of any such resource to backtest European stocks as well? (The available stocks seem to be restricted to N. American companies)

Depends who you ask in our consumption addicted world, but to me (and most value investors?) that's very true.

This doesn't just hold true for cities and states but your chosen country of resident too (and in the case of US nationals whether or not you choose to revoke citizenship with their insane worldwide taxes on non-resident nationals).

Why would you want to be first in the plane? I always prefer to enter as late as possible (except when hand luggage is not guaranteed as I prefer it not to go to the hold). Yes to store a bag in the overhead and to get an aisle seat. It is open seating on LUV. Lol like a bus. Yes then I get it. I think Ryanair does the same in Europe.

Why would you want to be first in the plane? I always prefer to enter as late as possible (except when hand luggage is not guaranteed as I prefer it not to go to the hold).

That analogy only holds up if there would be only 1 brand of soap that actually cleans you.

Thanks to everyone doing the math. I find numbers really interesting. Of course that doesn't take anything away from the guy's (amazing) accomplishments but without facts the whole article is moot (as most journalism these days).

Store of value is in the long term (not silly year over year changes). If I buy it now will it, with high likelyhood, have at least the same purchasing power in 10, 20, 50 and 100 years from now? This is why gold is still a better store of value (higher likelihood) but bitcoin has orders of magnitude more upside.

Who cares about the other ones? ;)