Spekulatius

was he even born? Obviously he went back in time. He used the Tesla that comes with a flux capacitor. That is the model which has an incredible battery that can deliver 1.21 gigawatts to the flux capacitor for time travel. Manufactured in the gigafactory of course. It's model E. You can order it for 2025, it's gonna be made in 2030, and delivered to you in 2018. That's why Elon is so good - he is ahead of his time because he can travel in the future. I vote for "not human".

I drink when I am not driving. Always looking forward to a glass of wine or a beer in the evening.

I think one of the reasons they are paid more is the technology. With private jets, smart phone, big data, etc, etc. A CEO can run a much bigger and more complex company than decades ago. It's like these mega sports stars, I don't think Lebron James is better thank MJ. However, with today's technology, he can sell to a much bigger audience and realize more value for himself. In today's world, it's more than ever winner-takes-all. It's not that those CEOs create more value. They are just in the right position to take more value created by other factors, such as technology. The same is true for everyone, even the lowest paid workers. I work as an engineering manager (low level) and have some low level temp workers operating $2M pieces of equipment. It makes a huge difference in va,UE creation for the company, if they do the job well, but very little of the value accrues to them. They are truly seen as a commodity and being replicable, which is true to some extend, except that the replacement could be a screwup guy. Yet, in the current economy, the value creation of some is not rewarded. My own take is that everyone is replaceable, which applies to CEOs as well. HAlf the CEOs That I worked for I'm my carrier did not make a whole lot of difference, I only, but they still get paid as if they did.

Business I admire: Nestle: a consumer staples company truly managed for the long term. Focus in innovation and health. AAA balance sheet since forever. Keyence: Japanese company that is the undisputed market leader for optical sensors. Engineers love them. It seems like a company driven by Engineering and pretty successful at that. Fuchs Petrolub: Family controlled business with focus on mundane lubricants. Very systematic approach to gain market share (acquisitions, R&D) and strong long term financial performance.

I see - thanks. I'm looking at a refi right now, but I honestly can't imagine refinancing again after this. How much lower can mortgage rates go? By my math, my fees will be repaid by monthly savings within 15 months of refinancing. I'm about to pull the trigger on it. If we get a recession, the 30 year mortgage will get below 3% for sure. I personally like a payback in less than 12 month before refinancing. NY has a tax on mortgage, which creates a hurdle on refinancing with a different lender unfortunately. When I was in CA, I was a serial refinancer with low/no fee refinances. My 30 year mortgage sits at 3.625% and I will start looking if we hit the 3.0%. I give this about a 50% chance.

Besides the rationalization of the consumer banking, the bigger industry challenge may be the rationalization of the investment banking, which I think is in the early innings. Investment banking is rally not earning any reasonable return on the invested capital since 2009, which in my opinion means that the business impaired if not broken. Yet, I have not really seen much rationalization and in particular don't know, why the sky high salaries in this sector have come down. It kind of funny to see an industry that tries to model all other industries (and to some extent determines how they are run) having such abysmal result itself year after year and not going through a rapid transformation that they would probably recommend for any other business sector, but their own. ::)

True, Mr Big has not and probably never will blow up. He will just continue to underperform. In addition, his business acumen is overshadowed by his greediness and hubris. I never invest, if I don't like the leadership. I actually think it is easier T discount a lack of business acumen in a CEO than a lack of integrity

MY favorite compounder is Nestle (NSRGY). I have owned it for 15 years (with some buys and sales over time) and never broke a sweat about owning this company. Over time, this stock has done ver well for me. FWIW! My last buy was in February 2009.

Wells Fargo's online banking platform is the worst of all major banks that I know (far inferior to BofA) and even my small CU is better than what these guys came up with. They have not really changed anything in their banking interface for about 10 years as far as I can tell. And don't get me started in Wells Fargo Brokerage, although the latter has been recently updated. It is simply amazing that a major bank has such an antiquated inline Interface. Their IT budget must be really really small...

I agree. I think the common theme is "If it sounds too good to be true..." It certainly is interesting to watch a number train wrecks (SHLD, Biglari, Zinc were others ) that were so intensely scrutinized as an investment to run aground. It certainly should teach a healthy dose of skepticism and humility ton aspiring investor. While I never invested in any of them (they mostly did not look cheap or Were too complex for me), some did look god even to me at some point, I have to admit. I think more and more that defining one's circle of competence is the most important thing and should rule over almost anything else in investing. When in doubt or something even remotely smells iffy, just stay away on it - because from my experience, if you do put a lot ofwork into something, you inevitable think you understand it and put money in an idea that may be outside your circle, as it turns out later.

Haven't bought anything Since February....

5% yield seems awfully low for taking some credit risk. I am not really interested in any preferred unless it is yielding 10% or at least something close to that number.

Let me guess, ole Warren will pick the blonde.

Typically, when the price is right for me to buy, these wonderful companies don't seem to be that wonderful any more.

Maybe the man and women with a 130+ IQ do something more useful than investing (building his own business, research, cure cancer) and invest in index funds ;)

Really? - Please elaborate a bit, Jurgis. I don't believe I add value through my investing decisions. And it probably would be more useful to society if I spent more time on projects in my primary occupation rather than trying to get extra return by actively investing. This is probably correct for 95% of the population and probably 80% of the posters in investment forums as well. I know I underperformed this year and only matched the index last year. I don't think I had much alpha during the last 5 years, so at that jars stick, I think one is better off taking a step back and check if things that one had been doing still make sense. I do think that index investing can be bad advice too, if the whole world goes nuts, like what happened in 1999/2000. During 2000 and he following years, I was able to outperform. That has proven to be more of a challenge lately. I don't think that going passive investing is a balaclava and white thing, you can attach yourself to some great minds and just own what they are owning. BRK comes to my mind. Best idea that Inhave regarding active investing is to look more how to avoid mistakes, that finding home runs. The oil disaster was knew that probably was avoidable, although I got sucked into that one as well to some extend. I was trying to go this way this year already, but got sucked in into oil morass and some other interesting "opportunities". 8) Most likely I'll just dump most money into BRK/Fairfax/Malone and couple more "forever" holds. I've been going in this direction already. (And before we have religious argument that this is also "active" investing - yes, I know, next question 8) ). The counterargument to this is that putting money in BRK/Fairfax this year would have been even worse than my oil-dragged portfolio. :o But this is for 2015 results thread. 8) Peace.

I bought OKE bonds ( the 2022,2023 maturities), WMB and added a bit to SE and WCC the last 2 days. The MLP midstream sector looks way oversold and is due for a bounce, imo.

I think it is an untimely investment, as I see headwinds in the aircraft business for a couple of years. This is similar to buying ISCAR shortly before the Great Recession. I do think that the multiple will turn out to be a bit rich, given he near term performance. However, I think in the longer run, this is a good business, with the opportunity to bolt on more via acquisitions.

The fund got pretty big due to a good performance in 2013, so I think a lot of new investors were performance chasers that did not really know what they owned. Then came the crash in crude late 2014 that tanked many of their energy related investments. They dealt one trashiest segment of the bond market and the recent rush on junk bond debt did them in. http://seekingalpha.com/article/2904666-third-avenue-focused-credit-tackles-distressed-debt 3rd Avenue tells a good value investor story, but they seem to suck in terms of performance. Read their shareholder letters and buy what they buy 30% lower, or maybe better don't buy it at all.

We will see how the share price goes. What I can say is that one can now build your own BRK buying business like UNP , relatively cheap industrials like PH, ITT, ETN, selected utilities and possibly some other stocks and have a similLar value than just buying BRK - the recent pullback in stock prices made that possible, despite the overall indices looking fairly healthy still. What I do like about buying BRK rather than individual stocks is the discipline in capital allocation that I see with BRK, which I think alone is going to give an extra 1-2% of annual performance. We also get the deals that only Buffet seems to be able to get like the GS/BAC preferred and more recently the Heinz deals. So these special deals probably will give us another 1% of outperformance. Take this together and you hAve. Pretty sound chance of beating the index buy a couple percent each year over the long run. That is a very sound value proposition. If you can buy it really cheap at 1.2x book (or whatever price Buffet would buy back) than you can tack on another one time 10% revaluation going on this, that you likely will get. That's even better. I think Todd and Weschler are very important now and will deeply influence investment decisions. Maybe they will be more important than Buffet soon. I think this will take BRK also in a different direction, but hopefully the culture will stay intact.

Bulls should note that BRK's main business aren't doing so hot lately: BNSF - declining revenues and earnings if UP is an guide Insurance earnings have been weak lately Industrial demand has been weak and the strong US$ does not help (Mormon, PCP, Tungsten tool business) Utility earnings impacted by low NG prices I think here is a reasonable chance to get BRK at $120/share.

So someone takes a loss on my 2% cash back card? The 1.5% fee is net to Visa though and there are other layers on top of that. I think merchants pay 2.5% of the transaction value on average, but I could be incorrect.

Decades ago, smartphones were not available. Smartphones run on either IOS or Android, so there is already a huge network of users. Layering a payment system on top of it would not imply building a new network, it would ride on top of an existing network, so would cost may less. So, I think in terms of network buildout and network effects (critical scale), the possibility to take market away from V/MA is there. Will it happen or will Apple/GooG decides it is just easier to ride with Visa/MA? As far as P2P usage is concerned, I don't think he consumer has much power to make a change. I get zero benefit , if I start to use P2P now, instead of using credit cards, but lose all the CC benefits. bye Be, cash back, extra insurance etc. Why would I do it, unless the merchant gives back the savings? Right now, I pay the same using a CC than I do using cash or P2P, except in gas stations. If merchants wood break out the cost of using CC as anextra item (similar to VAT) and let me pAy for the privilege (which merchants are not allowed to do, per Contractual terms), then I switch A hardbeat and so will many others. Come to think about it, legislation that allows merchants to tack on the CC cost on the bill is probably a large thread to CC companies as well and would immediately impact their business model. Does not seem to be likely, but one never knows.

Visa and MasterCard don't grant credit, the card issuers do. Visa and Mastercard bear no credit risk, except maybe some small float from transactions. Google and Apple as well as Paypall have already a huge customer base as well as the infrastructure to handle huge amount of transactions and it is fairly easy to replace the functionality of a comparatively dumb credit card (even with chip) in a smartphone. Even though handling transactions is not their core business (except Paypall) it is quite conceivable that they gain market share and put pressure on the profit margins in this space, which could be a huge hit on V and M bottom line. Buying V and M at 30 X earnings is pretty much a bet that this won't happen for another 20 years or so, not a bet that I would be willing to make. Edit:20 years

I guess I am one of these guys who seem to know less about investing than 20 years ago - all I have learned is humility and a healthy respect for Mr. Market. I am a diversified investor and typically have about 40 stocks in my portfolio. I did not find that my "best" ideas necessarily performed best in the past. I often had secondary ideas where I bought just a small position and those outperformed my best ones, (or those I considered best when I bought in). I like to be diversified as an insurance against my lack of knowledge and more so against my hubris. Being diversified has advantages. I found for example that when I have large positions in a stock, my judgement tends to me less rational. i think what happens is that a large position becomes not only a matter of money, but also a matter or ego (you got to be right) and due to the large stake involved (both financial and emotionally) the decisions about buying and tend to be less rational than with smaller stakes. I view diversification as "cheap" insurance against blow ups ands keep sound sleep at night.