Spekulatius

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.

+1 cant find much. Looking at what I can find with google search very asset rich company. Have nightmares though of holding it for years/decades with value never being monetized. Here is an older annual report. https://www.amstock.com/proxyservices/Files/AR16728.pdf I have concerns about fraud and companies imploding because changing business environment, but never about a company/stock just sitting there and doing nothing. If company is doing nothing, I just sell the stock at a somewhat opportune time and move on. Other than opportunity cost, I should not have lost money. No investment is worth having nightmares about it. If I were to have nightmares about and investment, it's a sure sign that I own either too much of it, or the stock is not suitable for my situation. Better to sell down the position or sell it out entirely and get the sound sleep back.

No it wasn't me. However, it is clear that the value of the ranch exceeds the book value by far. I also think that based on the rent income (roughly 2.1M$), the value of the RE exceeds the book value of ~16M$ as well. If and when the value is realized remains a big question, but I think as long as the assets are well managed and appreciate in value, the stock price should just appreciate likewise, plus there is a chance of a huge payoff, if the company decides to monetize some assets.

Spek, do you still hold QUCT? Yes, and I added a chunk at 1080$ a few days ago. They only publish number since a year and that is it. Last years profit was down, because the costs in the trust business were growing faster than revenues, supposedly a result of a branch expansion. QUCT bought a decent chunk of commercial RE last year for 8M$ (~160M$/ share), but I don't think that this increase GAAP earnings although it my improve intrinsic value over time. They still should have a decent amount of net cash even after this investment. OK, this is probably a value trap, but I don't think I will lose money on that one. I estimate the asset value at least twice the current market value and maybe more, if they indeed would find a buyer for their ranch (I don't think they are looking to sell the ranch actually at this point). Overall, the assets are getting more valuable, the trust business throws of cash and the insiders as far as I know don't rob the company, so I think this illiquid, but safe.

QUCT, obscure company that runs a trust business, owns a huge ranch in central CA, commercial RE and a bunch of cash and bonds. Trades on appointment only. The folks running it are the same folks that own and run FMBL, a southern CA business bank.

I look at asset quality and asset quality trends first. i won't buy anything with a high Texas ratio. Typically a 40% Texas ratio is my limit. I look for a combination of low PE and low price/tangible book ratio. I look at pot. Vulnerable assets like construction loans, how assets held up during the great recession and generally I like to see the potential to earn at least a 1 % ROA, without risky endeavors. I think nowadays, one should look at the duration of their loan and securities portfolio as well (interest rate risk).

It's one if the cheapest aerospace manufacturers/suppliers in the US stock market currently, if the earnings forecast from management comes through. This is not a sure thing, because they disappointed in 2013. I think the issues are fixable and if management isn't able to fix it, somebody else will do it for them.