Patmo

I see you chose your name meticulously. Sounds very yummy. I tried brewing out in my teenage years, I was so bad at it the beer was nearly undrinkable. Obviously being teens we didn't waste a single drop anyway... Might I suggest you try out a Tankhouse Ale, from Mill St Brewery out of Toronto. So far I've only ever met 1 person at a beer festival who enjoyed it, like me he'd have everyone he knows try it out. It turns out nobody likes it but the both of us who think it is nature's greatest gift to the world. A very polarizing beer I guess, might be worth trying if you ever come across it.

The obvious challenge is that FASB tries to make accounting objective when it is actually subjective: -- Charlie Munger The more relevant you make your depreciation info source, the more costly and/or unreliable it becomes. Accounting bodies are just trying to make the best of an imperfect world, often having to choose the lesser of two craps. Munger's quote is an appreciation of that fact, not an attack on accounting bodies' competency. A little bit less relevance of information (not even that much, really, SL depreciation has been shown to be a pretty sturdy proxy in general AFAIK) is a small price to pay for a cheap, simple and reliable process. Keep in mind USGAAP also allows the depreciation of cap assets by units of production, which is a halfway-type compromise, but nobody uses it, and there's a reason for that. How would you personally improve on FASB's standards?

What do you mean? Bufet only takes one F?

In addition to the tax implications of going from invested back to 80% cash, is that for the first 8 years they invested mostly in T-bills so most of their returns in those years would be ordinary income (based on US tax rules). It is hard for me to understand why someone who is primarily focused on preservation of capital would choose Patient Capital over BRK. While BRK has had greater volatility, it has meaningfully outperformed PC, and after taxes would have materially outperformed. Obviously it must be the unwillingness to stomach volatility. Some very good points---tax efficiency of any fund certainly needs to be considered however perhaps this is less of an issue if the fund is held within a tax deferred account of some sort. As for simply going with BRK over the PC fund--- this is a possibilty however being a Canadian resident the added issue of the FX exposure (which I briefly touched upon earlier in this thread) adds a level of complexity that needs to be taken into consideration when considering BRK. Perhaps for a US based resident the "go with BRK" decision is much clearer. As for the ability to stomach volatilty---a very valid concern---I currently self manage my family's portfolio (my wife and me) and I can safely say it is VERY concentrated in a few select names. Volatility is truly something I do not concern myself with. Nonetheless---I raised the possibilty of potentially having my wife use Patient Capital as her investment manager should something unexpected happen to me because of that firm's focus on capital preservation and the low volatlity of its results. I help out a couple family members and a friend and I essentially have them on the same book as mine, only they are thinner. I really don't want to build up 20%+ positions on anything at all for them. I wouldn't even do that on a name like BRK. I know I can stomach the ups and downs and I know that they trust me and can handle tough roads themselves, but I would feel irresponsible to do it. The risk of my being wrong on a big position and taking a dump on their future is not worth the potential gain. It's just a different thing to handle someone else's money vs. your own, at least that's my opinion. Not that I condone hoarding 80% cash for a decade straight though....

5/44 from the wikipedia page, but the source link doesn't work so take that with a grain of salt

80% cash is nothing new for him. Damn! Can't say he didn't earn his name!

Did you see the fees they charge? Dang!

I would be more confident putting my money into Patient Capital though. If I am a forced hand when the crap hits the fan, I will not have tanked with PC. If anything they exhibit exemplary fiduciary behavior. I'm not one who shies from variance but I think it matters a great deal when you're managing OPM.

Thank you, I've had too many discussions these past few months where success is always discounted to luck. It's pretty aggravating that so many people refuse to acknowledge success of any kind anymore...

They'll keep going after him as long as Jamie Dimon acts like Jamie Dimon imo...

That depends what standards you're looking for... iasplus.com is what I would recommend...

Karnalyte Resources

Japan fiancial reporting is weird as hell, apparently they can choose from USGAAP, JPGAAP, IFRS or J-IFRS (not even kidding, J-IFRS..... What's the point of IFRS if every country modifies it to their own taste???). Their rules are really ambiguous, basic rule is revenue s/b recognized based on the realization principle which is the accrual basis we're used to but I bet there's a clause somewhere in the JP methods where they can use cash basis accounting in some situations and recognized this cash as revenue earned instead of deferred until services were rendered. So essentially you'd have to back out whatever your estimate of cash balance is deposits from revenues in whatever year and dump it into a deferred liability. Hopefully someone else can confirm as I am talking out my ass a bit here... https://inform.pwc.com/inform2/content?action=resource&id=0000000776625338.pdf and https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CDEQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.shinnihon.or.jp%2Fservices%2Fifrs%2Fissue%2Fifrs-others%2Fother%2Fpdf%2Fifrs-jgaap-comparison-v30-E.pdf&ei=M438VJ-9D9PUoATy3oHgCw&usg=AFQjCNGnN3LeLPgxT3jCAdMYi8oe3BR-RA&bvm=bv.87611401,d.cGU are the only two sources of info I could find from a quick googling... On another note there's a new revenue recognition rule that was put out in mid 2014, effective 2017, which if I understand correctly will be used by both US GAAP and IFRS, and features a 5 step guide for companies to follow. http://www.iasplus.com/en/standards/ifrs/ifrs15 and http://www.mnp.ca/media/documents/Financial-Reporting-Library/IFRS/01_Hot-topics/MNP_A-Summary-of-IFRS-15-Revenue-from-Contracts-with-Customers.pdf for some info.

Tim Hortons was the ultimate Canadian GARP until it got acquired. You can still own it as part of QSR, it's a significant chunk of it too. Not sure how valuation looks as part of it but the show runners are 3G capital so I bet you'll be paying a premium compared to before.

+1 Yes it's easy to say let's piss away some capital I have plenty anyway. You do that enough times and you won't have that much anymore. The dual voting structure comes back to their attitude that shareholders aren't smart enough to understand the amazing stuff they are doing and they're gonna hurt themselves by voting on stuff they don't understand. Being on the other side of the fence, I love the simplicity of choice that Google's structure gives to investors: You either buy the story or you don't. You don't have to worry about some random activist running in with their amazing insights and breaking things that may or may not be broken, depending on opinion. I happen to buy the story entirely, thus I'm satisfied that Google gets to do what it does uninterrupted.

They are a pretty interesting lot. My grandfather used to walk the whole town over visting all 3 grocery stores to save 10 cents on a can of tomatoes, then turn around and donate the shirt on his back to his community, always behind the curtains.

I'm kind of disappointed nobody mentioned the 4th option yet...

I think Andrew Wellington's interview is also a very interesting read.

My biggest misses weren't in what I bought or didn't as much as when I bought them and the kind of size I made them. All of my positions I still believe are great bets even at the price I initially bought them at, but could have been made way better as I have a natural propensity to invest in stuff everybody else hates, and share price has a propensity to reflect that hate given just a bit of time. Why would I invest in a double when I can get a 6 bagger? Let the market make a bigger mistake is what I tell myself now. So as I saw price get cheaper and cheaper I felt compelled to buy more and more of the same, resulting in positions that are too large for me. Even if it works well I don't want a 5-7 stock book, I would prefer my dome to start showing AFTER my 20's are gone.

2x shadow stock. Don't know who John is but he gave me the only idea to date that I picked up from a blog. It was so straight forward and simple that I bought a few shares just after reading his writeup. Kudos John.

Let's see how you react when 2 of your 3 positions go down 50-75% in price. Are you ready to stand such volatility?

There was a thread just a week or 2 ago about gold miners. Since gold miners require some of the tougher valuation work out there, I mostly looked at the qualitative side of things to identify potential stocks to acquire as I knew all the gold miners were cheaply valued as a whole so I just wanted to make sure I got some form of quality back for my buck. Sometimes you just gotta let go of the models and numbers and put your faith in your judgement. Mine led me to Mandalay resources, which if you look from a bird's eye view is a gold miner with a value investor's philosophy: They acquire underperforming projects in the safest jurisdictions for a discount, then bring them up to speed with their operational expertise. The company has showcased outstanding capital allocation skills (god I hate that word, it sounds like kewl kids saying kewl kid things, only for investors) and is as shareholder friendly as you'll get in this industry. Although that's not a huge achievement given how low the bar is LOL.

Which is really ironic for a value investing board. Some miners trading for less than cash, mines closing, extreme negative sentiment. Do you have some names that trade for less than cash? kobex, ryan gold Not gold, but Karnalyte resources, about half cash

This event has you compete with the most well known investors and enthusiasts alike in the name of charity. Choose your own 5-stock fantasy portfolio and duke it out in the name of a charity org of your choice. https://portfolioswithpurpose.org/ Anybody done this before? Looks like fun.

That's a stock you should short. Barrick passed on the project when the price of gold was much higher. They greenlit a lot of questionable projects. If we assume that Barrick is somewhat sane and greenlit all of their better/less-mediocre projects, then that means that Donlin Creek is even worse than the stuff that they greenlit. So... Donlin is likely hopelessly uneconomic at current gold prices. Barrick is definitely not somewhat sane, it is nuts. Not that it matters though. The 2 issues I see at first glance in this article are that the DCF uses 5% as its discount rate and that estimated project costs use a less than 20% contingency. I'm no expert on construction and whatnot, but as far as I'm aware the tendency is to plan out with much larger wiggle room than that, and everybody still gets massive overruns anyway. Case in point, here is an excerpt from that very article: "Barrick said that the capital cost for their Pascua-Lama project was estimated to be 50-60 percent higher from the top end of the previously announced estimate of $4.7-$5.0 billion" So essentially you would probably be best served to factor in a 50% overrun on Donlin's estimated development cost, including current contingency. Tag on that a 10% discount rate instead of 5% and see where that goes.