adesigar

Fory anyone that missed it, heres a Kmart ad from last year.

So correct me if I am confusing this. You spent 30 minutes to get $1 in cashback. You also got $100 in coupons. To use these coupons you need to buy $350 in gas (if they stack) or upto $1000 in gas if they don't. You need to stop every 15 gallons to make a new transaction or else you end up buying full priced gas for the remaining 15+ gallons to fill the truck. The gas prices at this station are going to be higher than other gas stations. And you bought $50 worth of stuff from Sears. That is funny. Yo ho ho. :P

Thread for Dumb Sears jokes, Troll posts, Mustache references and other crap to keep it off the main thread.

For me the main question would be Do I want it as an investment or to use/enjoy. 1. If its to use/enjoy and the price feels good then buy. Even if price is not good but you will really enjoy it then buy. Life is not all about money. 2. If its an investment then a. Just because it was selling for 14k/sqmtr doesn't mean it was worth that much. It could be bubble pricing. b. Why aren't other people interested at the 7k/sqmtr price if its so cheap? c. Will you be renting it out? d. In 10 years what will be the total value of your investment in apartment vs holding the current stocks? Total value needs to be adjusted for Real Estate agent fees and taxes on apartment vs only taxes on stocks. Lots of assumptions go into this. How many years till economic conditions recover? What rental income you get? What is vacancy? What will you pay some to handle rentals/maintenance etc? Which stocks will you sell? If its something like BRK would you sell the apartment and end up buying the same stocks? The calculations will have to be adjusted for how sure you are about the predictions you are making. Like you are 60% sure about economic recovery vs 80% sure about your stock gains. Sorry im rambling its 1:20 AM. Time to sleep. Maybe ill edit it later to clarify what I meant.

for 10 years id be in 1. Stocks Berkshire Hathaway, Leucadia, Sears Holdings, Markel, Coca Cola, Proctor and Gamble, Johnson and Johnson Goldman Sachs, Costco, Microsoft, Walmart. 2. Funds Fairholme, Yacktman, FPA, Fidelity Contrafund.

Yes but you are comparing 4K on a single screen for a 2hr movie. People using cloud Pcs would use multiples of that. I use 4 screens for 10+ hrs a day. I know companies who have bought racks at hosting companies and moved their servers offsite because it was cheaper to pay for hosting/bandwidth than to pay for office space, electricity etc.

We've been doing that for audio and video. On the audio side you have Pandora, Grooveshark, Spotify, etc. On the video side you have Netflix. But the thing about streaming audio and video is that there are limits to how much bandwidth we need. For audio we don't need quality that is better than 192kbps mp3s. For video we don't need better than 4K. Once we get close to the limits of human perception, the demand growth for bandwidth stops. I don't think he is talking about streaming Video and Audio. What I think might happen (and its probably what merkhet is talking about) is all our devices are like Chromebooks but more than just Data is in the cloud. We have an interface and the CPU/GPU/RAM/HDD/VideoCard/OS/Software(Office/Databases/Games) is all in the cloud. No need to maintain hardware or upgrade it. Interface separates data storage from Hardware layer. Rent it by the month switch to a different configuration/OS at anytime.

You are comparing how someone would value a mutual fund v/s a company. Isnt that a really dumb way of viewing it? When you buy shares in a company run by an exceptional manager you pay a premium not for the assets of the company but for the manager. There are a limited no of shares of the company it doesn't create shares (like a mutual fund) just because you want to invest some money in. You also cant match future buys and sells at the exact same price as the manager so you can never track the returns exactly. you can only match buys and sells after they are reported and for the best managers with special exemptions like Buffett/Berkowitz/Ackman that could be months after they build their position and the stock has run up. If 2 companies have the same amount of assets say 1 Billion and hold all their assets into just one company - Bank of Ireland shares for example but one is run by someone like Buffett/Berkowitz/Watsa/Pabrai and the other company is run by XYZ would they sell for the same price? Also think about this, would you have avoided buying Berkshire/Leucadia 30 Years ago if it had traded at a premium to book value of assets held?

My largest and only TV is 32" too. I guess we're TV brothers :D Only on a value investing board would you find such people, every house I go in besides mine has a monster TV hanging on the wall in every living room. My kids were literately jumping for joy and high-fiving one another when we replaced one of our 2 tube TVs with that 32" HDTV two years ago. We still have the tube TV in the other living room though, I didn't want to get too crazy. That's my experience too. Even the poorest people I know have cable (which we don't have) and a TV larger than 45 inches. We actually bought our 32" as a floor demo with a small scratch on the non-screen part, so we got a discount. It was a good value... I still don't have a flat screen TV, still using an old tube TV. Prices are dropping to the point where I think it's worth it for me to upgrade. My wife really wants one :) What do you guys watch on tube TVs ?

As I imagined, you haven’t added anything I hadn’t already thought about BH… And I firmly believe you are wrong about it. Gio Since you have thought about it would you kindly share why Management should control a company and not shareholders. Can you also share what's so special about any CEO compared to the ones I mentioned that he needs to be made to feel safe to carry on long term plan for value creation, which by the way is every CEO's job.

adesigar, I think I know the difference between owners and management… But, as I have said, there are very few general rules in business, and each situation requires its own right course of actions. Therefore, let me ask you: do you know BH? Have you studied the company? Its businesses? Do you feel comfortable your knowledge of BH is clear and deep enough? If your answers are: yes! Then tell me why you should prefer to put Biglari in the same position as the average manager. Instead of making him feel safe and able to carry on his long term plan for value creation. Who knows? You might even tell me something I had not thought before… ;) Gio Id have any CEO in that position Buffett, Munger, Cummins & Steinberg, Gates, Jobs, Bezos, Dimon, Sinegal you name it. You can do a google search for any top CEOs select a name and add it to the list. They want control they need to own greater than 50%. If your blanket is too short to cover your toes and shoulders the ideal solution is to bend the knees, don't try to grab someone elses blanket :) . Similarly if your funds are too low to gain majority control of a large company buy a smaller one and work up from there. The only reason (that I can think of) to take control of as large a company as possible with limited funds is to maximize personal gains. The larger the company the more management gets paid. 100 million dollar companies don't give CEOS 10 million paycheques Billion Dollar companies do.

The problem imo is very simple and clear: you are going on and on comparing Biglari to Buffett, he instead seems to suggest “if you are looking for the next Berkshire, look somewhere else!”. Biglari knows very well that in business each situation is different, and the right course of action each time is different. Buffett never had to deal with control. Munger referred to Buffett in the early days calling him “the serial acquirer”, but evidently to buy a very large percentage of Berkshire back then was not so expensive as to buy the same percentage of BH today. There is simply no way Biglari could get control over BH buying its equity today. Yet, control is crucial. Anyone who runs a business finds out pretty soon how crucial control actually is! And, as I have always said, I want him to be in charge and to feel safe. The less time he worries about his position and about someone buying a lot of BH and starting questioning his business decisions and actions, the more time he can devote to enhance value. Gio The problem imo is very simple and clear: you are confused on the difference between the owners and the management. You do understand what a shareholder is right? Each share of a class gives equal rights and equal control. IMO anyone trying to gain control of a company without having majority ownership would be basically stealing shareholder rights. The business belongs to the shareholders NOT THE MANAGEMENT. Management is in charge of the company but The shareholders are in charge of Management. Management is not supposed to be so "safe" that the owners (shareholders) cant remove them or are forced to pay to remove management.

Everything is not awesome.

Thats the IMO dumb plan it seems like. Lets hurt the sensible people who saved. Lets force them to spend, inflate real estate/stock/bond prices.

Yes. I'm glad that Draghi realizes that Europe's main risk is in fact deflation and acts accordingly – and independently from Germany's stupid position. Yep, there is a German professor who is stirring the public debate against mutualizing some of the peripheral debts. The German public needs to understand that their high level of employment depends on selling goods to some people that can't afford to pay them back. Seriously? You are saying its the Germans fault that there are countries and their citizens who have been spending money they don't have and buying things they cant afford?

So it's entirely in character for him, then :) I get that this is a value investing board but its not always about the money. How many of you have bought a useless/worthless pieces of carbon and paid thousands or even tens of thousands?

Yup they needed 55 seats just to be leader of opposition.

Is that a modified version of Einsteins quote ?

Thanks

First time Ive heard of this company. Anyone know more details or have an opinion on it ? http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27372402 http://www.fosun.com/en/news/detail.html?id=1261

Thanks nice notes Answer to Question 9 Buffett says "We are spending close to $3bil on a Canadian company, and we will be better off and that was best thing to do that day with that $3bil." Interesting

Most Valuable company in history. http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/whats-richest-company-world-youd-surprised/

I don't think there is a easy way to go to the last page. Clicking on the encircled arrow link only takes you back to last viewed page +1 (or the last page if there is no next page). To skip intervening pages I just click the dropdown next to "Goto page" at the bottom & then choose the last page number. For some threads which have a lot of pages, the scrolling can get excessive. Overall, the mobile format is pretty cool, I think I like it better than the desktop version. Yup I really like reading using the mobile format its nice on the phone but best on Ipad. While scrolling through numbers 1-528 for the SHLD page I thought im missing something obvious. Its a very minor thing and only on threads with a ton of pages.

Sorry for what is probably a dumb question What is the quickest way to go to the last page of a thread on the mobile version of the forums?

Just to solidify your image of me as an a-hole, I'll point out that you forgot a comma after 'inappropriate.' My references to adesigar's apparent net worth were to demonstrate his relative lack of investing experience and success. A relatively inexperienced investor criticizing one of the all-time greats for not knowing that Coca-Cola was obviously overvalued in 1998 is rather humorous. You essentially made the same argument in your post. Buffett probably held on for tax reasons, but he must have expected more than the ~2% annual return since June 1998. Hindsight is a gem. So you are saying you couldn't find a valid argument so you thought a persons net worth are somehow linked to the validity of his question. Buffett answers questions from students so why not from small shareholders. You completely ignored the main point of contention which was not KO and 2008 decisions it was that small shareholders should not have to make a pilgrimage or attend what has become a circus or over pay for flights/hotels to get access to management because they have some bias against shareholders accessing it from the internet/phone. Some of my sample questions shareholders might want to ask were answered recently Check Question 15 and Question 17 in the pdf linked in the topic below. http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/berkshire-hathaway/web-talks-to-students-transcript-20140131/ About 2008/09. Its not hindsight because I remember being really annoyed by some of the Bond deals back then but no increase in BRK stock holdings. About KO. Buffett has acknowledged he made a mistake not selling KO. The question again was Why? Tax could be one reason but my personal thinking is he has an attachment to KO that prevented him from selling even though he knew it was overvalued. I know I did the same thing with regards to LUK. Didn't sell when it was $50. Followup question would be, How to avoid this?