Parsad

He's a turkey. A mini version of the accidental billionaire...Paul Allen. Although, it may just be the fact that I didn't like him giving up on Nash years ago. Cheers!

I'm really starting to get unnerved by some technology companies. It's bad enough that the government knows every little detail about our personal and financial lives now, but it's quite disturbing that Google Ads will change automatically to something I just did or searched for. For example, I just booked my hotel for Omaha, and automatically the Google Ads on here change to Hilton Doubletree ads. This happens almost every time I open a new window and search, or complete some sort of transaction. They have cookies on everything we do now on the internet. Even if you empty and delete your cookies, they are back tracking you the next time you open your browser. Very frightening in a way...to imagine these companies know so much about our daily movements and habits. There is little the government is doing to stop them, because it just makes it easier for the government to track us as well. Cheers!

Interesting little article on Berkshire's businesses and investments. Cheers! http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/01/09/berkshires-business-in-one-great-picture.aspx

Part of the Fool.com interview, but specifically on Buffett & Berkshire. Cheers! http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/01/08/mohnish-pabrai-berkshire-after-buffett.aspx

The vast majority of people who have been involved with Herbalife have lost money. The company claims that anyone who loses money is really a customer (not a distributor), but the truth is there are millions of failed distributors. They lose money because they did not execute on the distribution...an actual effort has to be made on the system package material provided to new distributors. A similar argument could be made that some universities are ponzi schemes...students pay fees to attend the university and receive their degree. What if the student has paid fees for four years, fails some of their courses and does not receive a degree? Should the educational institution be categorized as a "ponzi scheme" because the student lost money? Ironically, what about failed hedge fund managers...should their businesses be deemed ponzi schemes? As they charge 2&20 fees on other people's money, run aground, and then close their funds after realizing they will be a long ways from receiving another incentive fee. But they are at the top of the pyramid and run away with all of the fees they've generated over the years. I like Ackman some of the time, but his hypocrisy stinks big time on this one...that Target fund was one of the stupidest things any hedge fund manager has done in some time and his investors lost a bundle. Cheers!

Nope. And some of the MLM players are better connected than these hedge fund managers. Does anyone think the Van Andel and DeVos families (Amway) are just going to sit around and twiddle their thumbs? What about successful financial institutions like Primerica that are well reserved, very profitable and have clean records? No CEO is going to sit around and wait for fat, money-shifting, "2&20" hedge fund managers who want to destroy their reputation and their livelihood. Cheers!

LOL! Cheers!

The stock will move again as the stress test and capital return results start to leak out to the markets. Cheers!

MLM is just a compensatory tool, like anything else...be it options, interest fee loans, bonuses, etc. It's how it is applied and enforced, and should be exmained on a case by case basis like any overall compensatory plan. Not all businesses applying MLM structures operate the same way. Cheers!

Should make our lives and portfolios better over time. The institutions realize they are the dumb money and are now trying to index the smart money. Cheers! http://www.cnbc.com/id/100360543

That's a silly article. That's a pretty long list of professions already. It seems as though more recent and prolific psychopaths have been video-game playing, Nazi-sympathizing, white males. And where do psychopaths like Willie Pickton from Vancouver fit in...Pickton was a pig-farmer who killed over 50 vulnerable women, and even fed some to his pigs? I don't think there is any clear cut way to define what makes a psychopath. We're animals born of specific genetic material, mutated by the environment we live in, shaped by the experiences we endure. It's far to complex for any idiot to generalize in an article! Cheers!

Yup, got it. I sent you an email as well. Cheers!

The personal funds are significantly smaller than managed funds, as the personal funds have been partly funding my livelihood since I started the managed funds. Cheers!

Nicely done. No leverage either. The day I was buying equity for the funds, I was buying equity only for my personal account. Never bought more again for any of them, as the price never hit our bid and BAC has risen ever since! I've done this three times before...BRKB's in 1999/2000, FFH, SNS and now BAC...I'm looking forward to the fifth time whenever that appears! ;D Cheers! Sanjeev, Looks like you may have bought at the same time we did( the day after BAC closed below $5.00) with our unfortunately micro sized position. Congratulations for going all in at just the right time. Awesome! Yup, pretty much at that time Tim. Unfortunately, we didn't get the lows, but pretty close! Funny, we never hit the very lows of BRKB, FFH or SNS...but always we were close to the bottom. Cheers!

Hi RJ, No, not currently. I don't think George puts the conference presentations online. Prem also doesn't like videotaping the AGM, and because they attend the dinner, we don't record that either. We will have photographs from all of the events on here, and I'll get a volunteer from each event to write up a summary for boardmembers and post it on here. Cheers!

It seems that way...at least at the ones I swing at! ;D Cheers!

If I mistake in my own portfolio, I live with it and no one can fire me. Even if I institute a lock-up, if I screw up with a big position, when that lock-up comes due...those partners will leave regardless. So, while I may be able to take a slightly bigger position than I currently do now (our max is 25% right now in a single idea), it won't really make a huge difference because I'll be inclined to still not go to 50% or better with other people's money. The obligation, if you are honest and ethical, is to do them no wrong. So you do no wrong because you want to be able to live with the worst case decision. To put it as simply as I can...I would feel ten times worse losing someone else's money than my own! Alot of people don't feel that way. Cheers! You could always have a separate public fund that is more concentrated -- Berkowitz does something like that. You could claim it's your "single best idea" fund and that it would be concentrated in a single stock. This puts it up to your fund's investors to decide if they are comfortable putting a sizable amount into just one position. Takes all of the pressure off of you -- the ball is in their court to appropriately manage their exposure. I guess the time will come when I'll put some money into the funds of a few different managers and I'd actually prefer if they offered something like that. I feel like I'd rather get the best out of each manager, and spread the risk by putting money with more managers. Hi Eric, That may very well be what we do in the future. I like the way we manage this fund at the moment, because it really allows any accredited investor to invest with us...people like my Mom or even older investors...where they want above average returns, but not necessarily out of the park. They want to be able to access their capital if they need it due to ill health or whatever emergency may arise. Can you imagine a hedge fund manager telling a "Sandy" victim that they cannot redeem to rebuild their house or for other needs? But we may start a second fund, with a clear mandate for investors that there probably is going to be far more volatility in this fund due to concentration, and that there would be a 3 year lockup. It's something we've pondered and thought about. Who knows, we may start it even sooner than most people expect! ;D Cheers!

No that is public money. As long as you can track it, and you can eventually have the results audited, I think it would count as public money. It's because the psychology of investing is different than your own money. Your behavior with that account is more in line with how you would do as a fund manager with public money. Of course, the more people you deal with, the more personalities and tolerance for risk you encounter, but it is certainly a more accurate gauge than a personal account. Cheers!

Like I said, dumb money now coming into BAC. Jim Cramer likes it and his target price is $18. Cheers! http://www.thestreet.com/story/11806341/1/cramer-i-wish-i-bought-bank-of-america.html?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO

If I mistake in my own portfolio, I live with it and no one can fire me. Even if I institute a lock-up, if I screw up with a big position, when that lock-up comes due...those partners will leave regardless. So, while I may be able to take a slightly bigger position than I currently do now (our max is 25% right now in a single idea), it won't really make a huge difference because I'll be inclined to still not go to 50% or better with other people's money. The obligation, if you are honest and ethical, is to do them no wrong. So you do no wrong because you want to be able to live with the worst case decision. To put it as simply as I can...I would feel ten times worse losing someone else's money than my own! Alot of people don't feel that way. Cheers!

Nicely done. No leverage either. The day I was buying equity for the funds, I was buying equity only for my personal account. Never bought more again for any of them, as the price never hit our bid and BAC has risen ever since! I've done this three times before...BRKB's in 1999/2000, FFH, SNS and now BAC...I'm looking forward to the fifth time whenever that appears! ;D Cheers!

Thanks guys! It looks like Google changed the feed data somewhere along the line, as I cannot find any way to change it from my end. Cheers!

If you want to attract OPM, I would be hard pressed to believe that you could do it with your PA results. It's just not the same thing and no one you talk to will believe that it is. While it wasn't his PA results, Dr. Michael Burry's blog helped him raise tens of millions from White Mountain and Leucadia, so I'm not dismissing PA results entirely. I'm just saying it's a very different animal than public money, and much tougher to raise money using PA results. Cheers!

No, Prem was saying build a track record with public money, but use your own and whatever you can raise to get started. The $400K was from our first four partners...all four who are still with us to this day...we couldn't invest directly into the U.S. partnership, as we were Canadian residents. Actually, one of those first partners, Andrew Cooke, became a director and then minority owner in our small firm. None had any idea if we could actually manage any money! Andrew was a board member on the old MSN Berkshire board and he's on here as well. Cheers!

Thanks Compoundinglife! Cheers!