John Hjorth

@longterminvestor, What is your geographical scope and / or basis for your considerations above?

Terry Smiths track record is indeed quite impressive. Almost by coincidence a few years ago [likely by looking at Dataroma, I think], I found out, that I had a sweet tooth for the same things as Mr. Smith. One can read his stuff on and on. [Personally I'm still doing it.] But no matter how you process his stuff and think about it, my observations are as follows : 1. Never any specific talk about new additions, untill they already are built to wanted /desired size, & 2. No tangible and / or specific comments related to what may have gotten the boot out of the boat [<- I'm not totally sure about the 'No' [ever] here, it may be incorrect, or just inaccurate.] - - - o 0 o - - - No matter how ones modus operandi or ones investment style, stock picking isen't an easy, nor trivial, thing. Mr. Smith appears to have found his way forward. He has so far been damn good at doing what he says he's doing. [This label is certainly available for every money manager, for a variety of reasons.]

Now I'll stop derailing this topic from its purpose by intent of the topic starter [Greg [ @Gregmal ]], and start brewing on a new topic about the major Canadian banks, for separate discussion of them there.

Thank you for sharing, @ICUMD & @KJP, For starters - related to large Canadian banks -, I'll try to find if there already exist separate topics for and about them individually in the Investment Ideas forum here on CoBF. - - - o 0 o - - - Just a personal comment here about taxes on dividends from North American banks - both Canadian and US banks : I get credit releif for withheld dividend taxes on dividends in both Canada and in US by the calculation of my local Danish taxes on dividend income in both taxable and tax deferred accounts, so I do not personally have any issues [tax leak] with withheld canadian dividend taxes.

Thank you very much, @ICUMD, To me, they all [the largest Canadian banks [5 or 6]] appear really impressive. Those 10-years surveys in the annual reports for several of them really makes one stare at them [as were they some super curvy eye candy]! -All while pretty much nobody here on CoBF talks about them, while it's not even talking dirty talking about them here on CoBF! - Just absolutely outstanding return metrics for them as whole compared to similar clusters / groups of large banks in other countries.

Question likely especially for @ICUMD and @CorpRaider, Which Canadian and / or North American banks are you invested in? I hope that you wouldn't mind to share. - Thank you in advance. - And as already written : All replies from everyone welcome!

There is also this book by Terry Smith : Amazon : Terry Smith : Investing for Growth. We also have a discussion of the book here on CoBF in the Books forum in this topic.

It will be interesting to see when we get the 10-K for 2023, if this includes a sale of the final and remaining part of PilotJ to Berkshire, or not. The Haslams instead of being partners with Berkshire and Berkshires shareholders seem to be a pretty troublesome, stressful, cumbersome and taxing minority shareholder to tug around as a drag if you ask me. It's just such a no-go. *sigh*

BusinessWire [January 7th 2024] : Berkshire Hathaway Reaches Settlement with Pilot Corporation. Typical Press Release format from Berkshire :

Thank you, @gfp, You are exactly catching the only specific and for the specific case the only tangible figure I've been able to relate to the case for Berkshire. Estimated economic value of the put option, according to BRK 10-Q reporting : BRK 2023Q2 10-Q - "Redeemable noncontrolling interests - USD 3,210 M" [ p. 3 ], & BRK 2023Q3 10-Q - "Redeemable noncontrolling interests - USD 3,230 M" [ p. 3 ]. To me, it's not totally clear what has triggered the Haslams to sue in the first place. Is it something internally processed by the board, or did they expect more than ~ USD 3,2 billion?

Isen't there to some degree confusion about the numbers [money sums] involved in the description of the disagreement with the Haslams?

The topic title is misleading and deceptive : , compared to content of the starting post, and shoud be accordingly edited to : Let me just say, that those two questions appear to me to be far from identical.

Take it easy, - no sweat, @villainx, Just make AAPL your benchmark, drop all your laggards [relative to AAPL], and your nest would be a ... cuckoo's nest! - Naturally what you did in the past mattered : You bought AAPL to the extent, so it went to get 40 percent of your portfolio. [I would argue there are worse problems to be the owner of ]

Is it yet to an extent so we need to have a separate topic to show off our bulging belly buttons?

Posted by @Xerxes, In the above mentioned topic : while I prefer to reply in this topic : Yeah, naturally. That said, I have to say one particular thing : I had low expectations ordering my first personal copy. It turned out that I ended up very surprised about the quality of the book [here, the book, based on the craft you can assess and make judgements about involved in producing it - here, not the contents as such], and surprised in a very positive way! - to me, it's really good quality! ,- despite a price that appears to me personally to be modest. So I ordered a few more copies, that I have used as gifts to family members.

We can think and speculate away in any direction each of us personally want. What one gets from buying the original book from www.lulu.com [ Link ] is a survey of the central facts, that turned Berkshire Hathaway Inc. from being a turd to a company saturated with greatness : Survey of : 1. Float development 2. Cost of float development. [In the book, it's outside pagination, in the front.]

Max Olson [ CoBF member @maxprogram ] has recently released a new digital version of this book. Please visit this CoBF topic in the Berkshire Hathaway forum for further information.

I speculate that Mr. Buffett has never forgotten how his cooperation with the author of 'Snowball' turned out [the only book about Berkshire / Buffett that I own, that I've never finished reading [in the meaning : reading it from first page to the last], and likely never will]. Maybe Andrew Kilpatrick with his several and regularly editions of "Of permanent value"- 'regularly' at least untill the latest 2020 edition - may be the exception from that rule of thumb.

@KJP, That was very well said. When we hit February 1st 2024, that's one month from now -, - if nothing seuriously really starts to break somewhere before that date, we will have have had and experienced one the longest bull markets - 15 years! - in economic history, - if not the longest ever, with only short periods over those 15 years where cash in clear hindsight was to be preferred over the stock market.

Happy New Year!

After thinking a bit about it, this approach appears to me to generate good 'approximation towards and near perfection' for practical purposes.

~19%, with S&P500 at ~24%.

@dwy000, Years ago, I did spend many hours each year on such excercises, with what I would label immaterial differences to a straight IRR calculation as outcome. Pragmatism made me leave this activity for good, as immaterial. But YMMV, dependant on how stable [to which degree stable] your capital base is. Progress in our endavours to become richer aren't really measured in 0.1 percentages!

A place to start [, by Joel Stevens, [ @austinvalue ], our CoBF member @racemize ] : Austin Value Capital [writings : Writing - Measuring returns ]

KAL's Cartoon this week : To stay on top of this tooth issue, I highly recommend The Deluxe 5-stone System from Lansky Sharpeners as an ideal DIY-solution - based on personal experience, I have to say it works great! :