dealraker

Meta was a truly unique situation. A very rare thing that went in many ways extreme, but an easily defined and easily fixable issue. Zuck got himself under control and it ended immediately.

Pardon my medieval wording but I'm an English history book reader. TwoCities, I'm envisioning an online battle between you and your small group of believing knights here and Saul's Investing Discussions on Motley Fool. It would be: Anything But Stocks vs. Only Hyper Sales Growth Stocks With No Profits likely ever. Both sides claim the past as proof of their intense beliefs! Be aware though that Saul, when he's gone way out there with his use of past stats, gets 800 to thousands of likes. So you are up against quite the opposition! My view is that some businessmen, via their reasonably priced stocks, are going to get filthy rich during the years of this discussion.

Guys-guys-guys...just buy Brookfield damn-it. Bruce is and surely will be out-and-about with his overly simplistic spoon fed verbage vividly describing to you that they (you know....that yard sale of entities) only own trophy properties and all is well. Maybe time for some creative distributable funds from operations or a sale, maybe half sale to somebody and itself, of something above IFRS (that surely means all things are worth far above IFRS). Oh lord, I woke up on the cynical side of life today! I'm looking for yet another article on New York office tragedy that includes an upbeat sentence or two about a floor or so at 660 5th avenue, the Kush-Kush bailout (for West nukes in Saudi).

For a further perspective, I 100% disageeed with Kudlow as early as 2004 and had urged all my friends to get out of their bank stocks (of course while holding my CATY and EWBC). I thought, of course, that I was a ****ing genius...and for a while it seemed I was! "It is a housing and banking thing" I thought, one where MY stocks would be just fine. Then...? That was my last "forecast" as I decided I knew just enough to be slightly smarter than Kudlow but still a royal ****ing dumbass --- next to dead last, just above Kudlow in the bottom of the barrel.

For comparison, Larry Kudlow was ranting buy banks in what he called every day "the Cinderella economy" well up into 2007.

For a perspective related to my lifetime (I'm 68 almost 69 and inherited less that $50k of stocks in my teens): This is, by far...by leaps and bounds, the most obsessed over, most predicted rampant inflation and recession in the last 50 years.

Wow Greg...you mean you aren't in awe of someone like Bloomstran ---- who routinely assaults Cathie Woods while citing the never attained value he claims Berkshire is worth along with listing in detail the out-performance of the stocks he owns for the last 10 years...all while his fund (of course) never keeps up with the indexes? How dare you be so radical?

Yes you're right John.

I was interested, yet confused, at what made a few Berkshire people so enamored with Tilson. I am the same way with Bloomstran. If you want some entertainment then read the performance part of his fund reports and note what he emphasizes vs what he doesn't. So you market via Berkshire and make that stock 25%, claim value culture sliding in a fee between Berk and its shareholders, and sledgehammer anyone saying anything at all that isn't basic worship. So far a small boutique of cultists.

Speck your posts are terrific so you must be well-read from somewhere. Often Angela is sitting beside me these days as I type. When I see her looking at me with the ole smush face side-eye I know I've gone off the rails with my posting stuff. This is the woman who made me more money than my actions ever made - when she said (her tax awareness), "If you don't merge you haven't done anything worth doing."

During the late 1990's I absolutely loved Bill Fleckenstein, the cynical manner in which he wrote was really entertaining. Much of it about tech accounting and valuation was correct. Then Fleck just kind of got stuck in that era, things moved on, and he became one of the most boring writers ever. The cycles of life I guess.

Find a business/investing subgroup and sell some ads to make a profit. The news hole is just that, make-it-up-as-you-go pain in the ass to get the $ flowing.

Again, drops in price that result in realizing you don't know what the asset is worth are different than "everything drops 20-25%" from time to time. Buffett himself found that out in Irish-land.

Yea when the reserves disappear we are heading towards my theme with banks. Better that, those one day smash downs, than the GE thing. I am so glad Munger finally stepped up to say something accurate about Jack Welch is his Combs interview.

Yes.

Said tongue-in-cheek style ICUMD, the words are not meant to be interpreted literally - what scorpion was alluding to and I facetiously promoted was that there's nothing within bank investing that has words available to describe the lack of knowing when the crap hits the fan. I've been a bank investor since 1975 and it gets exciting in new new ways all the time.

Bank investments are a good way to get intermittently reminded not to do this type investing. You wake up to 20% stock price drops and swear it off for years...until you (or me in this case) do it all over again. Less than 3.5% in banks and wonder what the hell got me there. Seriously LOL!

Let me see if I can word this correctly as most of the time I can't. Somehow let's leave out what Buffett and Munger state, it does go both ways with Buffett, less so with Munger as to concentration. But my experience is that those with high IQ's and seemingly incredible ability to get the details in order, to get the details right...well my experience is that they do not experience outstanding investment outcome. I discuss this often and in detail with some local guys who have some serious eggs in the basket. Basically we say the more intense the investor the more likely the pretense. We, this local group, tend to also say or state that those that present their stuff the best either in words or writing also have significant problems with successful returns. Almost to a simplistic fault those that are less sure, less of need to present themselves or their expertise...well this is the model of success. Sometimes it gets crazy, example below. So this guy named Jim, he's close to 90 now, told us in the club for years that his largest holding was GE and in the late 1990's he tried to get the club to buy GE...but we (and some of us had collaborated on our very negative GE report) avoided buying his GE recommendation. This is the same guy that I wrote about here before on COBF, the guy who got a new computer and had me and my brother-in-law set it up for him- he'd gotten so old he was having trouble logging in on his investment accounts. Jim did inherit some years ago....but damn! When we set up his computer we saw he had over $50mil in his accounts. And we also saw he had all kinds of subscriptions to charting sites. He said, "I buy and never sell...but I do buy using long term charts." Anyway Jim doesn't know what a PE ratio is. He did run his own shirt mfg plant with 300 workers off and on (he repeatedly tried selling it, but he had to finance it and the buyers always went broke so he got it back), but he always said, "I don't make a school teachers pay running that place." The building didn't even have a/c in it and that included the "office". But he wasn't the only wealthy guy in my club who could not describe PE ratio...there were many. The intense guys came and went through the years in our club. They were generally severe value investors or hyper-tech growth types. The club was basically a scrambled-egg bunch of guys who moved with the speed of sloth. We weren't exactly attractive to the intense crowd. Our investment returns as per the club organization we belonged to were in the top 1% nationwide. I write this simply to remind us that sometimes writing becomes a contest of who can sound the most intelligent at the time. Whether or not that works out depends on how long the seemingly correct logic of the time holds out to be true. There's not a soul locally anywhere close to my age that doesn't remember Byrd Motor Lines and Glosson Motor Lines both going bankrupt, not once but multiple times. The story there is of course why I never even think about the small investment I made in Old Dominion Freight Lines decades ago. This is the "YOU ONLY RENT ENERGY" stocks mandate in full bloom- trucking and oil- boom and bust. Yet I bought a small amount of Enphase a few years ago and I have quite a few rentals in the energy space that of course will never be rentals because they are fabulous growth stocks. I own almost no oil stocks; not my game. But did I know any of this when messing with energy a few years ago. Hell no, didn't even think about it. Just kept reading where the energy market cap was historically low to the total market cap. I think a 5 year old with average intelligence could understand that. Rambling. But what's the interest rate gunna be and who/what will thrive given high...or low...rates? Do we really know?

Of course I missed Microsoft and Intel amongst others in their early years, I'd surely not be discussing sloth stocks like Berk and AJG if I'd been in those rocket ships. But MSFT did weaken to a 12 PE stock and I waded in; Google(Alphabet) for some reason to me around its $400 range looked good; and I've slobbered all over the place with META including starting to buy at $11-and-something all the way up to $230 or so. And I have a slew of small technology spin-off stocks, those things that just show up in the account one day. But I do own all kinds of what I consider "techy" stocks that aren't considered tech. I think some of the tech (that I really don't consider too techy myself) such as Alphabet/Meta are such now, actually have been for sometime, that you just can't buy in stupid fashion and "come out" way ahead. Being in the right "names" in this bunch as they say is now possibly more of a be in the right starting point. As mentioned I did get some MSFT back in the later Balmer years; damn 12 PE starting point turned out ok...especially when the PE tripled. There is one stock in technology and other businesses that I think gets a very special treatment, that is the use of numbers treatment, as per being a bust-down-the-doors-screaming buy-buy-buy that I think will almost surely be a 20 year no gain thing on the chart at some point. I'll defer from listing that idea just yet, there's never a good reason to stick your hand in a hornets nest. As I ramble off tech, I don't think BN gets a fair view by its followers either. Bruce is a salesman first; value investor comes far second. I debated for years about BPY with a guy who had hundreds of followers who tormented me...me being the idiot with his hand in the hornets nest. I was not at all successful in my debate to say the least. There's a huge belief that Bruce took in BPY on the cheap. I think, and have thought for years and years, that BPY has negative value. I also am also very-very-very-very interested in upcoming interest costs for BN and that interest (so to speak) isn't about BPY or BPG at all. But I don't sell BN. Why? Because again, when I look in to the mirror I don't see a genius...that's why! LOL. Being silly. Have a good day.

Isn't that redundant?

Buffett...99% of his net worth in one stock since 1965. That's called buy and hold.

While I am in the so-called concentration camp, I do not think you initially need to be concentrated early in life to do well. My bias as to this outcome is that selling your best stocks (that's the ones you bought that eventually went up the most - whether you still owned them or not) is a huge detriment to a good outcome. I was trained by Marshall Johnson, the man who introduced my family to what he called "crackerjack Warren Buffett", towards the concept of "you can't make up with new ideas what you lost by selling great businesses." There's all kinds of ways to look at this setting, but this too is surely one of them. If you hold a bunch of stocks for the long run? Oh, it is a certainty: You WILL be concentrated. It is inevitable.

Agree completely with spek's post. The thing that I tend to promote given I'm around (not here on COBF) those who simply don't have the time or interest to "manage" a portfolio - is that a simple buy and hold will do very well over many years. The people who inherit my money won't spend time with managing their money like I do so I'm passing down a model as are the others in my family who are on the upper end of life. I spend a lot of time on Cumberland Island GA, I have a connection to one of the Carnegie descendents who still owns property there (95% of the island is a wilderness area now) and I use his/her house. Basically all the Thomas Carnegie descendents (he was Andrew's younger brother and invested with him- and at one time the world's 5th richest man) say that their forebearers lost the family money from taking it out of the market to do "special deals" of this and that, mostly real estate. Hopefully at least the 2 generations after me are in training mode not to do that. Of course I would not be here enjoying this board if everyone invested like I do. LOL, the differences are the attraction to being here.

Our builders supply and millwork businesses cater to custom build contractors. The builders supply operates and services contractors up to 2 sometimes 4 hours away; the millwork serves a wider geographical range. We are in the middle of NC. We are having our most profitable year...that's this year 2023. And last year was a barn burner as was the year before. Oh...yes to add...lumber prices cycled way-way-way down heading somewhere (up-down-up-down)? Oh yea! The above is still accurate.

Keep in mind that owning a large group of stocks doesn't mean non-concentration. I am 40% AJ Gallagher and 40% Berkshire and lengthy ownership of other stocks has made those dwarf the majority. Yea, if you hold stock for years stuff will happen to you that you'd not recognize! I have a bunch of "stocks" that I can't even identify from the spin-off's. One day a few years ago I saw Otis Worldwide in my list on Wells Fargo. I had not been following the parent company...had no clue there was to be a spin off (or two) and there it was...a small amount of Otis! I instantly felt an elevated mood coming.