tede02

CHK and BXE. Both of which I had no business buying and probably contributed only negative IQ to the threads.

As Liberty said, this is a thorough biography. Lots of details about Buffett's personal life. If you're more interested in his investing and business career, Lowenstein's book is excellent (it has much less about Buffett's personal life so its a lot shorter). I enjoyed Snowball and would recommend it if you really want the full picture of Buffett as both a person and businessman/investor.

Just finished. Excellent read. I'd highly recommend it. It was particularly interesting reading about the history of quantitative hedge funds. This is something I knew very little about. Ed Thorp's life story great in itself. I think you could make a movie about it. Pretty amazing that he identified the Madoff fraud almost 20 years before it imploded.

Relating to examples, I always like to ask, "What investment mistakes could you have avoided by reading more SEC filings?" For me (and I believe most people), far and away its the psychological errors and big picture misses that contribute to the vast majority of investment mistakes.

Have fun guys. This is the first meeting I've missed in ten years. I might check out the live stream on Yahoo.

Apparently Paulson has been getting killed in recent years: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/business/dealbook/john-paulsons-fall-from-hedge-fund-stardom.html?mabReward=ACTM1&recp=4&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine It seems like I read these types of articles regularly. I just read something similar about Jack Meyer who used to run Harvard's endowment. Ackman and Berkowitz's struggles have been covered pretty well on this board. Eddie Lampert, Kyle Bass... Who else can we add to the list? I know there a lot more. It really is remarkable how so many of these guys who, at one time or another, are considered geniuses, and then they just seem to flame out. It seems like the common factor is they string together a few years of good performance, or have a huge payday from something like the housing crash, attract a bunch of money, and then cannot reproduce. I'm just kind of rambling here but this trend never ceases to amaze me. It demonstrates how difficult (if not impossible) it is to identify asset managers that can truly outperform over time. It also demonstrates how unique someone like Buffett (with a 50+ year record) is. Looking forward to Berkshire weekend!

I have accounts at Fidelity and Schwab. Frankly, I like them both. I also use the Fidelity credit card for everything. The 2% cash back is nice. Deposits directly into your Fidelity account.

Thanks for sharing. These will be good to listen to when I'm sitting on the lawn mower this summer.

I have similar sentiments. I've found I spend waaaay more time reading about investing than actually investing. I just enjoy reading all the wisdom from Buffett, Munger, and Howard Marks in particular. When it comes to reading things like 10Ks, I always feel like I should be doing more. But when I look at my own investment failures, none have come from missing some kind of detail buried in a financial report. The mistakes are always big picture or psychological errors.

It was interesting watching the video from the most recent Daily Journal meeting before reading today's annual letter. It's pretty clear to me that Buffett and Munger would agree that the investing landscape is far more competitive than ever. There just isn't much low hanging fruit anymore (Munger talked quite a bit about this). It makes sense. There are so many more eyes (and computers) looking for opportunity today. Any anomolies that come along don't last long. Also, there is so much more capital looking for a home. As I think about this, going back to the year 1990 for example, there was probably very little ownership of US stocks in places like India and China. I have no idea what the numbers are now but the change must be mind blowing.

I have a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. She's about a year and a half old. Always wanted a bird-dog and finally made the commitment over a year ago. It's been a lot of fun, but also comes with a lot of responsibility. She goes back to gun-dog school in April for some advanced training. It's so fun watching a well trained dog work! Bottom pic is of a duck hunting trip in Missouri this past January.

I don't understand why guys like Klarman care if their annual letter gets out in the public. I've read several of his past letters and its not as if he was disclosing the firm's secret formula. I'd be flattered if my content was in high demand. For all the time and money these guys spend trying to monitoring their letters they'd be better off just posting them publicly like Buffett and Howard Marks.

Wow, well said! It never ceases to amaze me how even the most intelligent and successful people can take on the utmost warped views of reality as soon as politics enters the equation. I've learned that regardless of political affiliation, there's always a segment of people who will back their candidate even when they (the candidate) want to argue that the sky isn't blue.

I would agree that it is unreal. Watching Trump during the campaign was pure entertainment because he would say crazy stuff that no other politician would ever dream of. Now that he's actually the president, its mind-blowing to see it continue. I would add, does it concern anyone that since the election, Trump has denegrated US intelligence, including calling them Nazi's just last week and implying he has more trust in Julian Assange? Now he says the media is responsible for creating a false narrative that he has a rift with them. Unbelievable. My response, throughout the campaign, and even recently, has been to just laugh and laugh. Over the last year, my wife has found me giggling a number of times wondering what the hell I was watching on my computer. Now she knows if I'm on the computer and laughing, its because I'm watching some crazy ass thing Trump said. But now that he's president, for me, its starting to really become distasteful. It's like seriously, you're the president of the United States and your concerned about television ratings? I was a lost voter this cycle like many. Neither major party candidate was of my liking.

I bet you'd watch if they had Munger on. LOL.

To the corporate finance experts out there, help a novice understand what a US based company does with proceeds from a Euro debt offering? Obviously Berkshire has some European holdings, would they raise capital to use in those subsidiaries or would these borrowings be used for the parent (and therefore have to be converted to dollars). This is definitely an area I don't know much about, not that I know much about anything, LOL. Thanks in advance for the foreign borrowing lesson.

Rodriguez's colleague (and successor of the firm) Steven Romick is worth following. He also writes excellent letters to shareholders.

This article was posted in another thread. It is an excellent article that raises a lot of issues. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2016/12/how_daryl_morey_used_behavioral_economics_to_revolutionize_the_art_of_nba.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_ru One that came to mind, and perhaps its been discussed, but is there any merit to attempting sabermetrics to asset managers? I guess firms like Morningstar kind of attempt this, but it is really more on a fund level. Could individual asset managers (people) actually be statistically evaluated in better ways just as Daryl Morey in the the article had to figure it out with NBA players? Or is there simply not enough information to measure. For example, I doubt measuring someone's height has any correlation to their success as an investor. ;)

This is so spot on. Everyone is a value investor until it comes to investing in stocks. It's amazing how the idea of buying things at a discount and flipping for a profit gets all gobbed when an asset starts trading on an exchange.

This was an excellent article. I'll have to read the book. It absolutely makes me question my own biases in both my personal investments and profession. What am I not seeing because of my psychological blind spots? Its also amazing to me how certain people, Buffett for example, just seem to think differently than everyone else. I sometimes worry that for the vast majority of us mere mortals, our psychological short-falls are insurmountable. In other words, do we stand any chance at making good judgements (or even just better than average). The story of the Houston Rockets' management illustrates how difficult it is to look past your biases even when you're aware of them.

If you're looking for an unbelieveable story, check this program out which I saw on PBS on Sunday evening. This guy basically buys and sells art for a living. He very possibly found and bought a Leonardo Da Vinci work for $22k which could be worth over $100 million. I know nothing about art and don't really care about it but this story was fascinating! Both links have the video. I watched it a few times it was so good. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/mystery-masterpiece.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh350VRTWb8

This is an interesting thread. Reminds me of watching Michael Lewis discuss his new book about daniel kahneman amos tversky. It seems like the most successful people have a way of thinking differently while everyone else gets caught in the same psychological traps. It really is amazing.

There are a lot of awesome companies out there, but virtually none of them are available at an attractive price. You can pick the right business and still have horrible results if you over-pay. The best example is Microsoft circa 1999-2000. The company's profits increased nearly four-fold over the next 15 years and yet the stock price was flat to negative over that period. It wasn't until this year that MSFT's stock price re-visited its highs of early 2000.

The story behind the story. John Carreyrou in his own words: https://charlierose.com/videos/29521

I own a small position and am thinking the same thing! ;D Thanks for all of those who have kept this discussion going. I largely keep quiet and just follow along because you guys are way smarter than me. Just along for the ride. Its been interesting to follow.