John Hjorth

I would like personally to add to your list : The Delusions of Crowds - Why People Go Mad in Groups - Willikam J. Bernstein. Really understanding the concept in the book likely requires you - to stay rational while reading the book! There is nothing like 'getting in' at a wrong price! It by doing so fucks up your brain, creating a virtual reality, likely telling you : 'This is not the 'real' reality, somewhere, there excist a [copt] really real reaity for me, provided by you, and when yo ask for it at your investment bank, the answer is always : 'No', based on personal discretion.' Banks are just so f**king earnings advancements creatures! - Never gong to rely on anthing!

New YouTube video by Anders Puck Nielsen about 'the digital war' [I'm not sure I understand any of its basics, nor its contents,-so, let it hereby be up to you, to judge and decide] - Please be aware: This is [to me] personally severely biased towards / against X - please make up your own personal mind about it, and take care!: Anders Puck Nielsen [November 17th 2024] : Twitter and responsible social media.

Charlie [ @dealraker ], What is it really, you're attempting / trying to provide to 'anti-sell' [Yes, you're a 'seller' of sentiment here on CoBF]? - And to who here on CoBF? - This topic is about the book by Jim Collins 'Good to great', not what you feel inclined to talk about in this topic by actual and present sentiment! - in any sector. -The book is about a proposal for a mental framework, which everyone here on CoBF personally can ditch totally, or try to apply, to various degrees, based on personal will and determination. The choice and discretion is fully at the reader! I'm not going to spend time furnishing your request with digging up anyones 'super investment performance'. [Please give me a break here.] It's not that complicated. - This is also why we have a 'Books' category available for us all here on CoBF : Try to share what you're reading, to the best of us all, based on personal personal experience, by studying and reading. With no strings attached to sharing.

Thank you for the flowers, Brett [ @Brett], I'm one of those 'Berkaholics' around here at CoBF, who really enjoys new stuff about Berkshire! This book is, to me personally, exceptional, as expressed above. What you also have alluded to in the above mentioned Redeye podcast episode, is that the verbal presentations of 'the good old days' as it was 'a game of shooting fish in a barrel', perhaps mostly here alluding to statements by late Mr. Munger [may he rest in peace], buying net-nets [also] 'back then' wasen't without challenges and problems at all. PS: Thank you for sharing all that great Buffett / Berkshire related stuff, you have shared in your LinkedIn feed recently, due to all your work related to the book, that eventually ended up about not to meet your criteria to get included in the book, for the reasons explained by you in the book! [For my fellow CoBF members : Link ]

Thank you, @Gamecock-YT, Related to Brookfield, or Apollo? [No matter who of them, or both, an awesome client to have and nurse in the stable].

@Xerxes, Yes, promotional salesmen they are, or have become. I'm thinking we observe them as DIY investors, -if we're good, or old, or both, with 1+ million in the nest egg. Their game is with multiples of billions, obviously growing fast by now, with basically [give or take], none the money their own. In this 'Wealth Solutions' business - with a margin, small and about fixed - everything earnings related, turns into talk and disccussions about volumes [Race to the bottom?] So is the dissemination of all those promotional interviews for us? I speculate : 'Not only for us', also 'for clients, or especially potential clients', to kick in new doors. That may also be why we consider them extremely repetitive over time [All promotional activity possess this property.] - - - o 0 o - - - To me, Mr. Watsa is running a totally different game - much more skin in it. - - - o 0 o - - - The fact is also, that you bump into promotional sales people wherever you go, whereever you are, or whatever you do, and you are - more or less - under influence of them constantly in life.

@Gamecock-YT, I'm personally not sure what you're alluding to here. Pardon my ignorance, and thank you in advance for your elaboration.

Charlie [ @dealraker ], I'm not sure I understand the point of your post above here related to the book. Is it about Jim Collins being promotional? Or is about about doubt about if the content of the book can be used as a basis for evolving a personal investment framework? Or something else? Edit : Isen't your personal awesome long term track record principally about this? :

I ordered and read this book in September 2023, based on Lars [ @Viking ] mentioning Jim Collins' authorship in a topic in CoBFs section for Fairfax Financial Holdings related to considerations about the quality of the company from an investment perspective. The book is based on empirical studies of a row [28] of exeptional successful listed companies for a long term period - study work in progress period of 5 years says a lot about the extent of the work underlying the book - performed not by one person, but a research team - up to the year of the release of the book - 2001, with also a stab taken on reverse engineering the causes for the exceptional success of these companies, by The really mindblowing and striking exercise is then - after reading the book - to take that particular list of companies and to try see 'where' those companies are today, - now 20+, almost 25 years later - and also to try to figure out why! The subtitle to the book is : 'Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't'. From Chapter 1, - called ' Good is the enemy of great' -, the start, - here meant as a teaser :

This is 'great' : Reuters [ November 15th 2024] : Putin tells Scholz that Russia is willing to look at energy cooperation, Kremlin says. Agreement among [just] 'businessmen', to obtain 'sustainability' among trading partners? German T2 tanks [very successful] at work in Ukraine to destroy Russian forces and gear by now? - Please give me a break! - Those who are in need of energy to survive and to get on the other side of the coming winther is Ukraine, - not Germany!

@Luke, Who are 'we' in the above post by you?

Again a new topic, embracing a whole sector, [, or you may call it an industry], as a placeholder for posts related to the sector, not individual names [tickers]. I'll along the way adjust the topic title, if it becomes prone for adjustment, ref. below about 'change'. Just for starters here, here an interview podcast with Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, already posted and commented on today in the APO topic in the Investment Ideas forum here on CoBF, which I think actually provides a true and fair view of the sector by now, from the perspective of an insider and sector participant & competitor : Norges Bank Investment Management - Nicolai Tangen - In good company [November 13th 2024] : Marc Rowan - CEO of Apollo | Podcast | In Good Company | Norges Bank Investment Management. - - - o 0 o - - - One thing that really strikes me here, is how things continue very fast to evolve, constantly and eternally changing over time, while the whole sector is growing pretty fast. Has this something to do with the last 'violent', 'volatile' - now almost - four years? The striking part to me here is Marc Rowan has actually been what I would dub 'press shy' for years [In the above interview he is mentioning it himself], while i.e. Mr. Flatt at [Canadian] Brookfield has been very 'outbound oriented', extrovert and promotional in a similar period.

New podcast episode about the book : Redeye - Nordic Growth - Investing by the Books [November 12th 2024] : Investing by the Books #64 Brett Gardner: Buffett’s Early Investments.

The Berkshire 2024 EOP Q3 13-F/HR is now available on the SEC website, and on Dataroma, for those interested.

It's OK, @Buckeye, Short term sentiment driven content here on CoBF. [So much for Germany here, with their automakers and all related to that, I'll give you that.] Now you please try to think about an universal future, without the goods and services of : ABB, Siemens and [French] Schneider? [All listed, no talk, really, about them here on CoBF, except @dealraker some time ago mentioning buying Siemens, according to my personal observations here on CoBF.]

Luca [ @Luke ], Please don't take it too seriously, what I was posting here [above]. You have a personal obligation to your own self to weed out information - at your own discretion - read by you here on CoBF -, that does not provide any value in any way to you. In that perspective, I may to you appear a representative of the past, while you constitute the future here on CoBF. Now please go grab it ! : - The future! To win in this game, you have to stay in the game : Get rid of your margin! -If you excuse yourself with being young as 'an explanation' to being able to come back after a 'blow up' [because of your use of margin], you still haven't really understood how 'the World' works for a young promising guy like you. Such an event would haunt you the rest of your life, and affect existing and future client relations, thereby your future earnings in your lifetime. - - - o 0 o - - - Stay cool, man!

James [ @james22 ], You're killing us! - It's all about marketing!

@Luke, You gotta be kidding me here, right? Again, who are you, where you're employed right now, to serve who, and with which goals and watermarks, to calculate your bonus compensation just after year end!?, right? One of the eternal topics surfacing in my own personal household is the Lady of House going off-the-rails when somebody [typically over the Internet], has been embezzeled other somebody for some money, to which I ask : 'What has that to do with us?' Then : <No answer> - just silence. The first thing one learns in the education of becoming an advisor actually is : 'You simply can't fix everything.' I don't know anything about Li Lu, and honestly, what he's done etc. does not matter one whit to me. I simply don't care about it. Performance [net] is what it is.

Today the English copy of the book I ordered in Helsinki, Finland on eBay arrived locally to nearest pick up place [No personal delivery included in p&p here]. My significant other picked it up for me. Absolute mint condition! - Still in the original plastic crimped wrap! - I suppose somebody got fired in Danske Bank, Finland, and recalculated severance pay by monetizing [off-loading] the book, handed out as an employeé gift back in June 2024, Anyway, I'm now happy owning both versions of the physical book [English and Danish versions], however with this version,I had to pay up a bit. [USD 60.00 plus p&p]. Life is great!, ... but somehow I managed not to get any kisses today? -I'll be back with revenge on that tomorrow!

@Luke, It's not in any way fruitful, nor constructive, here, to try to manuduce anyone, - including me -,about personal circles of competence, which I am for my part very well aware of, and attentive to. Were you in kindergarden or elementary school the first time I here on CoBF had an exchange with James [ @james22 ] here on CoBF about Berkshire ? [Back then, James was an oil bug working his a** of in the middle east, steadyly accumulating Berkshire shares, I'm confident James is doing well in his retirement by now in the US, alone because of that fact. Being somewhat humble is a great hedge against appearing like a fool 'afterwards' /' in retrospect', I would say. And now we are it, Luke [ @Luke ] : The best is yet for you to come! [But you don't know it yet, and perhaps you don't understand it by now : 'An existence [ a beeing, a life] without clients!' It's just so great! The second boss I had in my work life after university once said to me : 'John, remember, that if we did not have all those cumbersome clients, we would have absolutely no problems! - None, what so ever! - But [- and here is the catch - ] we would also be on public welfare, and we would immedially default on our unpaid *booze* bills at <omitted>, right?'

I took delivery of Brett's [ @Bretts ] book a few days ago. I'm reading it in the nights and early mornings, where I can't sleep atm. I haven't finished reading it yet. To be totally honest, I think it contains claims / assertions, that related to Mr. Buffett [Warren Buffett, the young guy, back in the beginning and the early days, pre Berkshire] may seem provocative. Investing back then in net-nets was simply put - hard, cumbersome - actual work. The book portraits a young man, who in his early innings was overall successful, but also did not not experienced everything he touched as investment successes [please read : headwinds and bummers], to enjoy as his platform later in life, when his approach to investing changed, because of AUM. I read it as Mr. Buffett wasen't a 'savant', 'natural talent' or a person 'wired to generate alpha' [from birth]. It [the extraordinary returns] all came from [hard, sometimes cumbersome] work and due diligence, and an intellectual framework evolved over time, combined with a personality, that if you are right, [based on reason] nothing can stop you, being it an incompetent, high paid CEO, or a chairman, with an outdated world view , and likely also a lot of shares. The message to me personally from the book is 'Investing can be learned', and thereby also - by inverting - 'Investing can be taught'. To me, personally, that's something really special.

James [ @james22 ], Take it easy. Over the years [- now actually many years!, James], I've always enjoyed reading your posts here on CoBF. And I still do, while I'm personally not able to comprehend your posts about cryptocurrencies. And that's on me, not you.

I've never thought of things that way, but to me, it's true.

Thank you, @Xerxes , Important, to remember, so one's mind doesen't stray too much away from reality.

This is somehow funny.