Parsad

Students from KU Finance, Creighton, Emory, University of South Dakota, Penn State and the University of Texas had a Q&A session with Warren Buffett. If you have access to the MF BRK Board, Mhirschey has put his post there. Due to copyright laws, I don't want to put the whole thing here, but here are a couple of quotes: Buffett sees things in the financial markets that he’s never seen before, nor did he ever expect to see them. For example, Berkshire recently bought a three-month T-bill that involved a small amount of negative interest. Buffett joked that the mattresses sold by Nebraska Furniture Mart were a better place to put your money. Presently there is a bubble in U.S. Treasury securities. Credit spreads have gone from far too narrow a couple of years ago to far too wide today. Money can be made shorting Treasuries and going long corporate bonds, provided you can play out your hand. “If you were just coming out of school today, would you look for stock-market bargains in the financial sector?” “You don’t get rich by making sector bets,” Buffett replied, “but there are lots of bargains in the financial sector right now. Not just stocks, but bonds and some other financial securities are also cheap. Who would have predicted that Bank of America (BAC) would fall from the 50s to less than 4?” All young people should be cautious about the dangers of debt. He also admonished the students to develop the right kinds of habits, “The chains of habit are too lightly felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” In a joking reference to being hard of hearing, Buffett said he recently told Charlie Munger: “Charlie, we should buy GE at 11.” No response. Moving closer, Buffett said once again, “Charlie, we should buy GE at 11.” Again, no response. Finally, Buffett moved up close and shouted in Charlie’s ear. “Charlie, we should buy GE at 11!” Charlie turned to him and said, “For the third time, Warren, YES.” (Note: Berkshire has disclosed big positions in U.S. Bancorp and Wells Fargo, and small positions in GE and BAC). Cheers!

Bill Ackman's 2-1 levered fund that invests specifically in Target has lost virtually all the capital it raised in 2007 after being down 40% in January. He has said he will commit $25M of his own money to the fund. Yikes! Cheers! http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN0647717420090206?rpc=44

Financial Times article on Warren and Berkshire. Cheers! http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8667131a-f47f-11dd-8e76-0000779fd2ac.html

Good letter! Cheers!

That's a terrific quote! Cheers!

No, I backed off because I just don't have the resources to battle with them. All I can do is bring attention to those that do have the resources and are fighting back. And there's not too many of them...Fairfax...Overstock...the list kind of ends after that! Cheers!

Wow, what world exactly do these dirtbags live in. If you haven't listened to the Sender-Pelicano mp3, you really should. Pelicano was a piece of shit to begin with, but my God Sender is a real dirtbag! Crazy stuff! Cheers!

After Berkshire Hathaway and Fairfax Financial, our board seems to have a growing following of combined shareholders in Western Sizzlin' and Steak'n Shake, both run by Sardar Biglari. That being so, our first interview for the new board is John Linnartz, managing partner of Mustang Capital Management LLC. Mustang was acquired by Western Sizzlin last year as many of you know. I had a conversation with John this morning that lasted about two hours, but would have easily gone on for several hours if we didn't have to work. After talking to him, I knew that John would make a terrific candidate for our first interview and he gladly obliged. In the 2007 Western Sizzlin' Chairman's Letter, Sardar described John and Mustang as such: I met John a few years ago at a Christmas party held by an accounting firm servicing our respective investment companies. As two value investors, John and I naturally gravitated to a corner to discuss pink sheet stocks. His knowledge is impressive; as a sample, I gave him a few facts about a certain stock, and he identified the company simply through my sketchy data. The next time I saw John was last year in New York at Western’s annual meeting, as he then was one of our largest shareholders. Several months later he asked for a meeting and broached the idea of Western’s purchasing his business, a proposition I immediately embraced. To John, price was not the primary factor; rather, he wanted a good home for his business and also wished to continue running it. His investment record, founded on a very stable client base, is phenomenal. He will continue to operate his business as before. Mustang's investor base is only ten families deep, and they've known him for a very long time. Many of them got to know John when he was a stock broker, and have been with him since. He really grew his book of business in the early days by studying and investing in local community bank stocks, and where he also got to know Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf. He bought his first share in Berkshire back in 1987. John is not interested in raising any more funds for Mustang, and is more interested in taking a more activist approach. This being a period of distress for the financial industry, I thought John's expertise in banks, in particular those in the State of Texas, is probably unparalleled. He has no MBA, CFA or business degree. He has a hard-nosed approach to business using common sense as his guide. He gives very frank assessments of things, so I thought it would be particularly useful to those exploring the financial industry these days, as well as giving you all more color on Sardar, Western Sizzlin and Steak'n Shake. Please submit your questions on this thread, and I will compile them and submit them to John. Naturally, there will be some questions he will not be able to answer due to confidentiality regarding Western Sizzlin, Steak'n Shake, Sardar or Mustang Capital, but feel free to submit what you want, and he will answer the ones he is comfortable with. Cheers!

A few months ago, when I started my heated exchange with convicted felon Sam Antar regarding Overstock.com, a fairly well-known investment manager called me out of the blue. I did not have a regular relationship with this manager, but had met this person in Omaha a couple of times. This manager was concerned for me and said that I should be careful engaging Sam, because they were very good at what they were doing and were very well connected. This manager genuinely just did not want to see me get tangled up into something. So, as unimagineable as Mark Mitchell's scenarios seem, many of the alledged relationships he's throwing around are not nearly as far-fetched as they might sound. Cheers!

Hi Folks, There was an earlier poll started, but only 25 people out of nearly 400 members have voted. So, I'm asking you guys what would you like to see. I'm personally of the opinion that this current format works well...as we have predominantly BRK & FFH shareholders, and then there is a broad discussion on many other subjects and investments. But I will go with the majority on the decision. - Do you like the current format (BRK, FFH & General Discussion boards) - Do you want just one board (General Discussion) - Do you guys want more boards Please vote, so I can make a more reasonable estimate of the users wishes based on a greater number of ballots. Thanks very much! Sanjeev

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Carol Loomis discusses the metric both Warren and Prem have mentioned in the last few years...stock market value versus U.S. GNP. What once stood at 190% in March of 2000 hit 75% in January 2009. I'm sure some will argue that GNP is overstated, or that reversal to the mean usually means overshooting the current 75%, but anyway you slice it, stocks are cheaper today than at anytime in the past. http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/04/magazines/fortune/buffett_metric.fortune/index.htm If you take that one step further, market yields in relation to the risk-free yield of treasuries, is probably the widest we've seen in several decades. Cheers!

I don't like watching Ackman talk his book on CNBC, but that's a good presentation. Cheers!

Tariq, Last night, I was thinking of archiving the old posts in a new folder entitled "MSN Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Archive". Would that work? That way I can have the archive directly on here, and the search engine would pick up the name. Is that correct? Also, this boards own search feature would be able to locate old posts. The only concern I had was that the dates would not be accurate. I have to figure out some way of keeping the original post's dates. Thanks!

Mark, Ah, that's gobbledy-gook to me! Lucy, you got some 'splainin to do! I think you're going to have to explain that to me in laymen's terms. Or anyone else that has other ideas regarding that. Cheers!

Hi KFR, The vote on one "General Thread" or a number of seperate boards seems to be firmly on the side of one "General Thread." So adding more boards probably won't fly. I would suggest if you want to test something, go ahead and then you can delete it afterwards. Feel free to explore the various tools and features. Cheers!

Crip just messaged me and it seems to be working well. You can adjust your own personal settings on your own profile. Let me know if you guys notice other features that you would like to use. Thanks!

Hi Guys, The "PM" feature should be active now. Could one of you try and "PM" me, so I can see if it is working. Thanks very much!

Hi Guys, I had turned that feature off, but I can turn it on. Just to let members know, you can turn off that feature through your profile page if you don't want others to email you or IM you. I don't want people to be inundated with spam. I'll see if I can turn it on, so that only other approved boardmembers can use the feature and that the public cannot access it. Sanjeev

If you guys all want your Fairfax stock to rise today, I suggest you all go for the free breakfast Denny's is offering at all their location in Canada and the U.S. today. The offer is from 6am-2pm and you are offered a free grandslam breakfast! A value investor's delight...free! Cheers! http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hD-CjfIHSk86H_liOUaeDNr6M2SwD96465T80

Lacy Hunt of Hoisington Investment Management is interviewed. Cheers! http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Lacy-Hunt-$pd20090129-NR997?OpenDocument

Berkshire's stake in Burlington Northern is now 22.4%! How about we start a discussion on the merits of this investment on this thread. Cheers!

Hi guys, I've increased the attachment size to 2000KB per post. Hope that helps! Cheers!

Hi guys, Keep the poll going for a while and then I'll decide based on the outcome. I originally did not want seperate threads, but there were a few people who wanted them, so I figured just four would meet somewhere in the middle. But if the votes for one significantly outweigh the other, then I'll go with the majority. Cheers!

I think the investment losses were somewhat expected. They had about $1.4B in equity investments at September 30, 2008. It didn't look like they had alot of hedges. Wipe out about 30% from that $1.4B and you get about $500M in mark-to-market investment losses. There weren't too many insurers like Fairfax...hell, there weren't too many companies like Fairfax out there with their hedged positions and CDS portfolio. Even Berkshire will get sideswiped when their report comes out. Cheers!