adesigar

What do you mean, they quit before their 401K is vested? No, left the money in their former employer's 401K plan. Kinda like an orphan, unattended and under the watchful eye of plan administrator fees. Depending on the state you live in keeping money in a 401k provides better protection of assets than an IRA.

Watched the BBC documentary. Didn't get what the point was.

I read latticework so i think Charlie Munger

Most people buy homes more as a place/community to live in and not as an investment. Sometimes you end up losing on the investment but it because you are paying to live in a low crime rate area, send your kids to great public schools, live near friends/family, close to the beach or a hub of activity and you don't have time to wait. That said I drove my wife crazy looking at houses in our area for almost 2 years. We ended up buying our first home in Q3 of 2011, Refinanced Q4 2012. Now the Mortgage+HOA+Taxes+Insurance+Maintenance for our 1700+ Sqft house is less than the rent for a 1100 sqft apartment in my area. Home prices are up 35% since we bought it. Lady luck helped and so did Berkshire Hathaway. Used Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary Homeservices and it was an excellent experience.

Do you need the money? Are you just bored and need something to do? Since you are thinking of a 15 year loan and think that AT&T is really stable could you look up the Price of AT&T 15 years ago? I believe in the “Don’t risk money you have and need for money you don’t have and don’t need.”

500 pages per week would be extremely low. Im really surprised people think 500 per day is a lot to read. 500 pages per day sounds about right for someone who spends a major part of their day reading.

Maybe you should have mentioned in comparison that the territory got freedom from decades of being treated as second class to the main country or that they gave up their defenses on assurances of protection from the people Invading them. That their country has been meddled with since it was formed. So imagine it from the points of view of the Ukranians like you said Invert, always Invert.

Have you thought about what it means to "defend Ukraine's sovereignty"? We are talking about a country which they used to call "little Russia" a century ago. And you think the EU and US would draw the line here, on Russia's front porch, and threaten to go to war over it? What would they have to gain and would it justify the risks? Should the US have some jets circle over Ukraine to project force? What if one got shot down? This is a high stakes game with potentially terrible outcomes and it's very easy to maneuver yourself into a corner. Best not to buy into the game if you're not prepared to see it through to the end (which nobody in the West is). I can guarantee you every actor in this play has carefully considered what they are willing to wager. And Putin's conclusion has been he can make a move. That should tell you all you need to know. I would also reiterate that Crimea is a sideshow because it's pretty clear that it's Russian now and will remain so (nobody can force them to leave by force and they will get a majority of the people to vote to split from Ukraine). The real question is what will happen to Ukraine East of the Dnieper river (and Kiev which sits on top of it..). Just my opinion but in my mind its simple. Every country bordering Russia/China/etc is watching. If Russia gets away with this, it will say to the countries watching that their only defense is Nuclear Weapons and assurances/treaties/documents from the US/UK/France/EU are meaningless. The world can forget Iran/N Korea ever giving up nukes. Rather other countries will try to obtain them for deterrence purposes from countries who have developed such capabilities.

What about it? Do you think the US will go to war with Russia over Ukraine because of a treaty? Do you think the EU will? I think if/when Russia makes a move on Eastern Ukraine, the West will get serious with economic sanctions to put pressure on Russia's oligarchs. What else could they do? If the US/EU don't defend Ukraine's sovereignty do you think any other country will trust a treaty signed by US/EU providing them protection? Do you think any other country will ever consider giving up existing nukes or plans/ability to develop nukes?

As shown by the fact that a lot of people found discussing Buffets Farm purchase as the most interesting topic from the annual letter there was nothing much in the letter, same old same old. Nothing about failing his 5 year period (Its obvious to us why it happened but he should have mentioned it). No explanation about the reason for 1.2x book for Share buybacks. Only points of any interest was Todd and Ted have 7 billion each to manage and they outperformed him by a lot. 3 Billion in bolt on acquisitions was good. Hope for a nice Warren and the 3T's (Todd, Ted, Traci) interview on Monday.

They're averaging 1 per business day this year. Me likey. 56 closings in the first 53 days of 2014. I like that pace. I don't expect that pace to stay at 1/day, but it is nice to see Lampert making significant moves. We cant be sure that every Sears/Kmart closing is being reported online. It might be higher than 56 closings in 53 days. We will find out more in 4 days.

I have a question. If someone is selling a business for 3-4x owner earnings. Why are they doing it? Wouldn't it be better for them to just hold it? This reminded me of a guy I know. He starts restaurants, gets them running till they are doing awesome business and then sells them around 3 years later. Then he starts another restaurant. He is the reason his restaurant does so well. People buy his restaurants but I don't think the restaurants do as well as they did when he was running them.

Sears to close Sodo store, ending long run in historic building http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2022962507_searslayoffsxml.html

Yup a lot of my friends and family have moved from away from using facebook to stay in touch and share pics/videos. We use whatsapp. We like the individual and group conversations we have, instead of dumping everything on one wall for everyone to see. I personally post and share very little on facebook primarily due to their policies and frequent changes to try and push people into sharing more with everyone. With Whatsapp I know exactly who sees my kids pics, not someones friends and friends of friends or some stranger just because someone hit like.

I would say it would be 3 for me. If previous quarters have no bearing on future ones we already have very little info to predict future earnings. The info/method that we did use to predict current quarter earnings was flawed since the company missed by 100%. Since the ability to predict forward EBITA/Earnings is gone as shown by the large miss we have to build in a higher margin of safety so the price must drop. The exception to this is if the miss is explained by 1 one time event and I mean a real one time event. Not the kind of one time event that some companies regularly have.

I don't have much to add to this discussion except. I tried to search a single thread (the SHLD one) with mixed results so what worked for me was. In google I use the following in the search field. <Words/Phrase searching for> <Thread Title> site:www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca eg : "guarantor/non-guarantor structure" "SHLD-Sears" site:www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca Limitations are 1. I don't think Google indexes COB&F often so latest posts don't come up but then again i am searching for older posts anyways. 2. Sometimes there will be a link to the thread you are searching for in a different thread that has the same Word Phrase but that's very very rare. Hope it helps people searching individual threads.

Small concept store closing http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140214/NEWS07/140219828/sears-closes-craftsman-showroom-in-river-north

Isnt that obvious? Like what happened in Volkswagen. A margin call could turn a 5% exposure shorting Volkswagen into a 100% loss on the whole account. Personally I never use leverage/margin so its simple for me. I also don't think the person who started the thread was thinking about weighting using leverage.

Seems like on a 15/yr mortgage wells would just have to return 5% or so a year (dividends plus share appreciation) for him to be better off not touching his 401k? You also haven't given a lot of relevant info eg 1. How old is your friend decisions are different for a 20 year old vs 60year old. 2. Is the 20,420 account value or it what he will get after taxes and penalties? This is not advice its just an example of how I would think of this situation. Withdrawing 20,420 now will eliminate 22,000 in interest over how many years? say 10 years left on the mortgage(just a guess). Will the 20,420 in WFC stock with dividends reinvested for those 10 years be more than 42,420?

I don't get why weightings is complicated. Out of 100% of your portfolio how much are you allocating for each security? What has weighting of security in a portfolio got to do with capital at risk? From your example. I can have 10% in SHLD and 10% in BAC and that's my weighting. You can have 10% in SHLD/BAC + Puts at 26% or 10% of strike so your weighting is 12.6% for SHLD and 11% for BAC. My risk for both is I can lose 100% and your risk is you lose 26% and 11% so what. The question asked by the person who started this thread was "How you weight your holdings" ? 1. Equal weight like Mohnish Pabrai 2. Weight by relative Value or upside like Bruce Berkowitz 3. Weight by sector

My weighting is based on 1. What is the downside protection. 2. What I feel is the upside. I stay highly concentrated currently top 5 holdings are 92% of portfolio. Cant keep track of too many things. Current weighing is 27%, 26%, 20%, 11% & 9%.

Well if you have a lease on the store. You need to pay the lease till it expires. The annual loss from the store may be same as or less than the annual lease payment. Just a guess.