John Hjorth

Is this another Trump pivot? How many of those did he have? I definitely hope that it was all an act and that he's really a reasonable and capable person as opposed to a petty dishonest vindictive nut job. The scary part is that many people in the past said exactly what you did and boy were they wrong. rb, My answer to your question #1: Personally, I don't know. My answer to your question #2: I can't count them. [i think valcont posted about it some days ago with a link to www.star.com about Mr. Trump's lies, inaccuracies etc.] As I have already posted: I really don't know what to think right now. What for me really matters here: I do not in any way underestimate Mr. Trump, one way or another.

- His promises and overall plan seem to be boiled down to what he said in the time span 5:13 - 11:13 in the clip - six minutes!, and a total U-turn in behavioral dimension compared to before this [especially longinvestors post above comes to mind here]. I have read a lot of posts in this topic, to which I can relate - both pros and cons. I really don't know what to think right now. I just really want my fellow US board members to hold Mr. Trump up on what his has promised here.

There is this active topic these days on the board about hedging against the US Presidential Election. On the November 4th I got hit by some very concerning news here, original source here. That really made me panic with an outburst to the lady of the house: "You really need to go buy me some hedging in downtown now - right away!" She: "What??" Me: "Please go buy some more of those to hold them up - before they go out of stock - to hold me up!". She looked at the monitor to understand what I was talking about and shaked her head. After which I glided from a panic state of mind into a state of depressed apathy.

Monday evening at 10:21 PM my local time I got an e-mail notification about a new memo from Howard Marks. Basically it's about: Now it's time for comity, and the need for constructive, bipartisan gorvernmental action. I highly recommend my fellow board members to spend some of your time on reading it. It's food for thought - as allways, when Mr. Marks has been writing.

Trump skeptics forces Canadian immigration website to its knees. [You can read it using the translation tool in Chrome.]

Well, that could actually be me! [<- place smiley here]. This is an oversize Rock of Gibraltar, a former failing textile business, earlier gone into run-off mode [-What a run-off mode!]. Is rock productive? The market price per share now is about the same as two years ago. Please lookup 2014Q3 reporting and compare to 2016Q3 reporting, and take a look at what has happened in those two years. Perhaps I should consider stop expressing my impatience and buy more. I get more and more dizzy reading the financials quarter by quarter for this thing. Now we have: Net cash flow from operations at USD 25B for 9 months, Insurance float at USD 91B, Deferred taxes at approx. USD 74B, Cash and cash equivalents at USD 85B, Equity securities at USD 101B.

The pleasure of working with permanent capital - from very patient, long term investors. You meet in at the office, every day, stating to your secretary: "No calls to me today about WFC, please - thanks!". In the middle of the day you take a nap on the couch in office, thinking about things in general. Then you get up in the middle of your rest, calling Mr. Munger: "Any ideas?" Answer: "No". Then you go to, or call T&T with the same question. Same answer. Then you you go back to the couch, trying to get some rest, but to no avail, because the couch is standing in a high bow, because of the cash pile below it. Problems [to the contrary of conditions] are issues, to which you are able make a difference. I'm [still] waiting.

is available now here. Enjoy!

NVO, Friday.

It is a difficult problem, not unsolvable. Part of the problem lies with the perception that a single payer system, such as our provinces have is socialism. As we know this is not a well liked concept in the US where folks appear to value their civil liberties more than a social safety net. From my perspective this is not a correct assumption. Our health system is similar to any western countries public education system, including the US. Health care eats a greater peice of the pie than education but it is similar in nature. The US uses the military both as a social safety net, and as a means to move government money into the private sector. Other countries do this to a lesser degree. If government mandated single payer health care is socialism, than certainly government mandated military expenditures into the private sector are also socialism. Its just better hidden. Please do not shut up. It's an interesting discussion [, but hardly investment related, though]. Personally, I pay a - basically - flat rate "health contribution" of 3.68% of my gross income by working, to the Danish state. It's not tax deductible, so it's a tax. A minor part of my municipality tax [basically a flat rate of 24.5% of my gross income by working, at total level] goes to the running of nursery homes for the elders situated there in the municipality. It's a social contract established between generations and citizen in the society over time, established by the society - by law. I pay it gladly [,said the capitalist, & educated and professionally trained capitalist henchman [CPA]].

Reduced CHR.CPH [Chr. Hansen Holding A/S] from a small position [~1.5%] to a tracker position, yesterday, at quarterly reporting, at a gain of ~50% in about 18 months. Despite good progress and growth for the company, a P/E at around 40 makes no sense to me at the moment.

Don't we all have those attractions to certain industries? [<- place smiley here]. Mr. Buffett was quite candid about it at the last shareholder AGM, that both insurance and reinsurance as industries aren't any longer what they used to be.

netnet, Already posted and discussed here.

Added to FFH.TO today.

I absolutely agree with this. I work on the retail side and see people buy high and sell low regularly. Eventually active strategies will have their day and the same people who ran into passive strategies will go back the other way (at what will likely be the worst possible time). I see institutional clients and their investment consultants doing the same thing. It's incredibly frustrating. Those investment consultants are for sure not worth their fee. Discussing indexing without also having investment time horizon in mind makes no sense to me.

aws, What's your source for your post?

Certainly expected!

Yes, net cash flows from operations is now about USD 2.5 B - per month. BRK could almost take out a CAT now - or easily a DEERE.

SnarkyPuppy, Howard Marks wrote a very good memo back in 2006 about measuring portfolio performance.

CanadianMunger, I totally concur on what longinvestor posted above. With regard to your question: , you have to read it into the context, written by Mr. Buffett above the actual bullet point in that part of the shareholder letter:

Added to MKL today. Still at about 15% cash.

Yes, this seems almost insurmountable. A short time ago I tried to get some kind of understanding of what's going on in the Italian banks. I ended up giving up trying to understand the situation. I mean: How do you value a bank based on its financials when you know that about 13 percent of the loan book is in default, and proper provisions for losses aren't made? [banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena]

100 Year Old Galapagos Giant Tortoise Diego Saves Species from Extinction ["singlehandedly"<-??] - - - o 0 o - - - Have a nice weekend to all my fellow board members!

Bought a bit more NVO today.

A bolt-on aquisition for CTB in my back yard . Edit: Article on Yahoo Finance about the aquisition .