CorpRaider

Thanks for sharing. Hang in there, we are probably closer to the bottom than expected if people are feeling like this.

Yeah I am well into the book and the construction of the Standard (he's already the largest refiner and richest man in the U.S.) and he has yet to invest in any E&P ops. He's building up via the downstream and midstream. Crazy booms and busts in oil were going on. One month they are running out, then someone hits a new well and prices drop by 75%. One funny/interesting thing I didn't know is that "experts" were calling for peak oil from about the time of the first strike in PA.

Nicely done. Do you find Fido to be accurate in computing the returns?

Haha. Please someone be kind enough to remind me of this in the next bear market (I will be around; fates willing and the creek don't rise). New contrarian indicator: number of posts/length and/or existence of summary of annual returns survey thread.

I haven't gotten comfortable with IVAL yet. Prof. Greenblatt shut down his foreign fund and I notice he hasn't launched a new one at gotham and there isn't any good data on the international application of the formula in Quantitative Value, is there? I looked at the live results and they are underperforming, albeit over a little more than a year. I would also prefer if they had some country limits.

http://www.alphaarchitect.com/blog/2014/04/01/etfs-tax-efficient-mutual-funds/

Ditto. Problem with google adsense according to interwebz.

He might go to switzerland with keith richards every year to get all his blood swapped out for fresh stuff.

2014 performance frame of reference via a few funds that I use as measuring sticks (figures are from the respective sponsor's website): RSV 14.07% VO 13.75% VLUE 12.29% USMV 16.34% PRF 12.63% PRFZ 4.70% VTI 12.57% VIG 10.06% VOE 13.95% VBR 10.54% IWD 13.21% IWM 4.94% RPV 12.27% RFV 8.44% EFA (6.21%) EFAV 4.61% GARIX 9.31% GENIX 17.05%

He's behind the call-out box. Heh. http://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T052-C000-S002-carl-icahn-better-investor-than-buffett.html

Finally reading this one. Pretty good so far. Interesting that John Jr. wore handed down dresses from his older sisters until age 8 even though daddy already owned the largest refinery in america. Also, all 4 (or maybe 5) kids shared one bicycle.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, but Arnott is co-founder of RAFI and "created" the rafi index methodology. Schwab and Powershares have ETFs tracking these indexes (each with small tweaks). So does ishares via tracking the MSCI "value-weighted" indexes. I think he has stated that dividend weighting, as championed by WETF and others, should outperform over the long term as well (so should volatility weighting and revenue weighting, according to some...basically anything that doesn't systematically overweight the glamour stocks like cap-weighting does).

Yeah, my point was sort of if you subscribe to either of the two preceding narratives, why then is he investing in marketing, profile raising, PR campaigning or whatever you call building a huge building to "house art" and btw your offices, and reopening his fund while launching hedge funds, all with the result of raising additional AUM?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/30/us-usa-lng-excelerate-idUSKBN0K81CP20141230

Thanks, Liberty. :) One of my New Year's resolutions is to go back to putting more of my investment thoughts to paper, as I think it helps to keep the mind sharp. Finance Twitter is very fun and valuable, but it's obviously very difficult to lay out nuanced arguments there. And the snarkiness is fun but not necessarily helpful when trying to get the truth of a situation in order to profit. Also, re: my post, I mention POSCO as the closest analog to O&G. But, duh, WEB is invested in XOM, so . . . Haha. I was all geared up to mention XOM, but you beat me to the punch. He also didn't get totally out of the sector with the like-kind exchange of the COP stock for the (or the railroad investments, really). I caught an article somewhere yesterday about an LNG export facility getting scrapped to collapsing prices for LNG which are apparently set off the price of oil in asian markets. Hopefully, more companies survive the oil and gas revolution than made it through the internet revolution.

Interesting that: 1 - All of your winners are North American and IP or brands. 2 - Most of your losers are foreign or commodity-based This might suggest one of two options: 1 - Foreign and resource-based companies are outside your circle of competence 2 - Your losers just reflect that it was a bad year for commodities and international stocks It's funny you point this out because I experienced this exact revelation a few years ago and now I refuse to invest in int'l or commodity companies (among many other "No's"). It's too hard to predict commodity prices and unless you are in the low-cost producer, bankruptcy is always an option (US Energy will be interesting to watch un-fold; although, POSCO can certainly go belly-up as well). There's a few int'l companies I'm really interested (L'Oreal is really shareholder friendly) in but with so much available in the US why take the chance with currencies, laws I don't know or understand, and lots of other factors I don't need to consider with US companies. I was pretty royally screwed by accounting fraud by a Chinese RTO company in 2010 and I realized how valuable the basic protections the US provides shareholders are. This is extremely uncommon but investing in the UK or any other country (maybe ex-Canada) leads to a LOT of small, hidden risks that are ignored when picking US stocks. Yeah, I prefer to stick to countries with several hundred years of experience with the rule of law/capitalism. Sooo, the Netherlands, UK, US, Canada, Australia, etc...

Maybe. But he told the Fortune reporter a few years ago (when he as putting up numbers) his wife made him buy a measly stereo because he was too obsessed with investing and had no hobbies and never left his home office. Now he's a museum curator, architect and model who is devoting additional resources to marketing his firm and making sure he's a big Papi in the Miami scene. Maybe he should move back to Connecticut to drown out the noise. Does not compute for me. Although, the same thing happened to Tubbs and Crocket.

Looks like about a +23% in my primary discretionary account. Big ups to my main man Richie Kinder and his warrants (really I suppose I should credit hedge eye and barron's for the buying opportunity). I gave a material portion of that gain back on the TLM takeunder, but it was a much smaller position, thankfully. Could have been a real nice year, as I had an order to double down in TLM at just about the low tick for the year, approximately two days before the Repsol offer but I didn't get a fill. Maybe CPP will come in with a $10-$12 bid and light up my life.

Haha, awesome! I'm afraid those are not as rare as the other one, but I'm sure you can work them into the rotation. Happy Holidays!

Berkshire is a bit of a straw-man. I would just focus on the totally illogical comparison to the actual previous Fairholme funds site, which was just upgraded with lots of pithy catch phrases, multiple cinematic head shots (I mean look at those monochromatic glamour shots) and pictures of his sand-crawler coincidentally, when his numbers went into the tank and he happened to launch a hedge fund with heightened marketing strictures? It just strikes me as some panty-dropping, asset gathering fever activity. Of course most mutual funds do it, but its not totally consistent with the persona BB had me buying.

I just don't see how the slick new website and high profile office space reconciles with his statements about closing his funds to prevent hot money from coming in and diluting performance and creating tax bills for the long term investors, if and when he starts to outperform again. Most of his funds are already closed now an he just did his flip-flop on closing FAIRX within the last year. I sort of prefer crappy marketing and websites with great numbers to the inverse. That being said, I doubt I'm his target demographic.

I didn't know you had a blog. I will check it out!

;D Nice list Kraven. It is fun to read an authoritative sounding post on the meaning of life or something light like that and then have a little whisper of recollection, "Wait, wasn't that the guy who just posted a question about shaving for the first time?"

Bbby isn't bbry Hah! So full of fail! ;D

I find it difficult to believe that oil can continue to crater in the face of 5% US GDP growth (that's the 3Q print).