John Hjorth

About 1982, Paul.

Just hilarious. And things still don't get out of hand. CoBF at its best!

Thanks, Jurgis. - - - o 0 o - - - [ : - ) ]

I have been thinking a bit about your stance on this, Jurgis. I have seen on your blog that you have a large chunk of your capital allocated to Berkshire, Fairfax & Markel. Do you mind sharing the approximate weightings for you within those three? PS: I read your blog monthly. Always interesting to read what you have been up to last month, and your short comments about your thinking related to that.

Basically, everything. Just waiting, while at the same time still studying pretty intensively. I can't get my head around taxes for 2017. It looks to me to become a pretty brutal January 15, 2018 for me and my family [naturally, subject to change]. Never go down on high quality tools and cash.

No, rb, There are minority shareholders that Berkshire is loyal to, and then there are minority shareholders down in the whole system, that are in the doghouse. Mr. Sokol is one of these.

It's actually in the bull's eye!, cubsfan. Earlier today, I was actually thinking about the hypothetical situation of new Berkshire CEO introducing a new version of the owners manual. How would that be received, if it contained material changes touched earlier in this topic by StubbleJumper? Personally, I'm surprised by interim poll outcome so far. [Yes 9 - No 18 right now]. The breakup scenario actually playing out is a nightmare for me. I do not vote at the AGMs. The breakup scenario would make me go through that hassle.

The source is the original donation letter from Mr. Buffett to the Gates Foundation, where the condition is mentioned as increased spending [charity activity ramp up] in the foundation. I suppose otherwise there would be tax consequenses for Mr. Buffett personally.

muscleman, I hope that you - by my biased quoting here - can see, that this line of posting is counter productive, for the CoBF members on here. If persons active here on CoBF can't post here on CoBF about their losses, and their afterwards reasonings related to that - [without being called out on CoBF this way, like you have done here], we [us, here at CoBF] will all most likely fare less well going forward. The wisdom of the losses [investing failures] are as precious as the wisdom of the gains [investing succeses]. - - - o 0 o - - - Please, be nice.

Thank you for sharing this work of art here, too, Joel! The file shared by Joel in the prior post is a searchable pdf file.

To my surprise, I found out within the last week or so, that we do not have a separate topic for this book in the CoBF books forum, so I thought I would just start one here. The book is a compilation of the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Letters written over the years by Mr. Buffett, including some nice stuff in the form of a foreword by Mr. Buffet, and the letters processed by Max Olson [fellow board member Maxprogram], including some nice overviews in the beginning of the book, a Topics Index, a Company Index, and a Person Index. As far as I know, the book by now exists in three versions: Shareholder Letters 1965 - 2012 [first edition, paperback blue cover] version, released in 2013 [i don't recall the exact time when I bought it, most likely just after Max posted about it here on CoBF]. Shareholder Letters 1965 - 2014 [second edition, hardcover version, black cover with golden print], 50 years anniversary edition, dated March 3, 2005 by Max]. This an updated version that also contains a Berkshire Corporate Genealogy written by Mr. Buffet]. Shareholder Letters 1965 - 2014 [second edition, hard cover version [yellow cover with black print]. [Personally, I own these three versions.] As far as I know version 1 and 2 are now sold out, but version 3 is still available, and will most likely be available, untill Max - perhaps - releases a new edition, because he had found a very smart solution for publishing, based on print on demand, at lulu.com. The third version can be ordered at lulu.com here. - - - o 0 o - - - I remember back in time when I ordered the yellow hardcover version the first time, I was quite sceptical about the quality of the hardcover book, because of the real low price for such a brick of about 800 pages [price of USD 40 ex p&p]. I was so surprised and impressed with the quality, when I unwrapped it. Since then, I have always had a couple of extra copies in stock here, that I use as personal gifts - sometimes. [i'm quite picky with that, I must say. I have to have some kind of conviction that the gift might be relevant in some aspects based on a personal judgement of the receiver, - otherwise it would be like throwing pearls for pigs.] - - - o 0 o - - - I just thought I would post this here because of new board members interested in Berkshire, who have joined CoBF after Max's work was discussed here on CoBF in the General Discussion Forum. I think it must have been about 2½ years ago it was discussed.

I think we also here have to reply on the Berkshire system built up over many years by Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger, in this particular case the input to Mr. Buffett from Mr. Jain related to the memo every second year from Mr. Buffett to his superstars at the Berkshire subs about succession in the subs.

I'm not trying to clog up this topic with a Buffett succession speculation post, but have to bring up a cut from a Bloomberg article today: After Decades of Hints, Buffett's heir May Now Be More Apparant. Say it isen't so.

Aberhound, Pardon my ignorance here, what are you referring to here? The book by Mr. Dean Henderson? Other?

Thank you for sharing the Staff Discussion Paper in your topic starting post, SharperDingaan, It's a great & interesting read.

Life is not always easy, even despite you're a Tesla owned by Mr. Musk. - - - o 0 o - - - Poor car & *shaking head*.

On November 30 2017, Mr. Taleb released the cover for his latest book "Skin in the Game" on FB, the book to be released at the end February 2018, if I remember correctly. [basically, you can read the whole book already by now, by using his personal website, combined with Medium.] Please see attached, and please see the back side of the cover, especially the last comment there. No foreword here from some big hot shot![, who most likely does not understand the man anyway [lol]]. This man is in every way seeking the borders of everything. However he's not full grown antifragile yet, otherwise he would have put those comments in the book as a foreword. - - - o 0 o - - - I have read some other comments about legs and dogs behavior related to one of the other quotes on the backside of the cover, however I'll leave it up to your self to find those comments, because Dough, the OP in this topic - has asked in the topic title to keep the jokes PC.

Copying from General News topic: I haven't seen a company with that big of a deferred tax liability either. Obviously it is a consequence of rarely, if ever, selling anything large and a half century of acquisitions. Even Precision Castparts came with ~$7.5 Billion of "income tax, principally deferred" - so a lot of this liability is never to be realized even if the equity portfolio was completely liquidated. At the last 10Q there was $82.2 Billion of unrealized appreciation in equity securities and another $1 Billion on the bond portfolio. At 35% that amounts to a $29 Billion deferred tax liability. At 20% it is $16.65 Billion, a savings of over $12 Billion if the tax plan passes and Berkshire gets the 20% rate. Year end gains look to be higher still, at least so far. Berkshire's tax rate bounces all over the place between 30% and 20% most of the time. But the tax liability on the unrealized investment gains is usually calculated right at 35%. I can't speak to the rates used to calculate the rest of that income tax liability. But it isn't nearly as important since it won't be spent. The equities may actually be sold, resulting in a real cash savings. I don't see them selling the land under BNSF's tracks or the property plant and equipment of PCC. Well said, globalfinancepartners, We also know that a significant part of the deferred taxes are related to BNSF and Berkshire Hathaway Energy - companies primarily operating in the US.

No harm done, DooDiligence, We can just continue the Berkshire tax discussion here. [ : - ) ]

The Berkshire tax discussion is for a short period continued here.

Berkshire income taxes end of 2017Q3, balance sheet, liabilities, stated at USD B 86.559, with the text:"Income taxes, principally deferred". So a rough estimate of effect on Berkshire equity according to the financials would be: [uSD B 86.559 * [[35% - 20%]/35%]] = USD 37,097. So the numbers mentioned so far here seem to me to be in right ballpark, and most of all material, even to Berkshire. This estimate is most likely overstating the accounting effect, the most material part of the overstatement being deferred taxes in subs taxable outside US, who will continue to account for deferred taxes based on actual local/national corporation tax rates. - - - o 0 o - - - All other nitpicking omitted here. - - - o 0 o - - - Isen't Berkshire World Champion in deferring taxes by the way? -I do not recall ever having read any other balance sheet with such a large figure stated for deferred taxes.

It's good humor, DooDiligence, A few years from now you will be able to look back at this post of yours and at that future point in time think that what mattered was that you actually bought in stead of staying on the sideline. Because longinvestor is right: It's a hedge against bad things happening to you in the future. [Falling in love again etc.]

"Devastating" provision in tax bill could hobble solar, wind tax credits. All over the place this morning here in Denmark. I'm happy I did not grab for some VWS shares. I expect it to be really hurt when the Danish market opens in a few minutes.

I have expected this post from you the last two days, Valuehalla! [ ; -) ]

I had a similar surreal experience recently with SCHO.CPH in connection with Q3 reporting. Absolutely strange market reactions to trifles from a well run company with an unassailable reputation and trustworthy management. If honesty is a not a 1/0-thing, I would say that you are more honest than me, because what I posted here on CobF was actually "Oh well", while I meant "WTF". [lol] - - - o 0 o - - - Back to topic.