Jurgis

Yes.

Not that it's the right way to value BRK, but if you take $16B of earnings as CF and run a 5% growth for 10 years DCF, your hurdle rate is only 7% to make current price cheap. If you use 10-15% hurdle rate, it is quite overvalued. That's why you have to bring other parts into equation to persuade yourself that it's rather cheap. Or just go with P/B. ;) Why would you use a 10-15% hurdle rate for BRK? Because I want to have 10-15% return. Hurdle rate == return rate.

Not that it's the right way to value BRK, but if you take $16B of earnings as CF and run a 5% growth for 10 years DCF, your hurdle rate is only 7% to make current price cheap. If you use 10-15% hurdle rate, it is quite overvalued. That's why you have to bring other parts into equation to persuade yourself that it's rather cheap. Or just go with P/B. ;)

OK. :)

Currently even the big company documents have zero comments. ;) I wonder how much their traffic spiked due to mention at CoBF. ;)

My answer to myself: most likely algos will grab the bad guys' 10000 shares at $10 and sell them to you at $11 or whatever. This won't ruin the day for the bad guy though.

Just for fun. 8) There's a security A. Trades at $1, 1000 shares a day. Bad guy has accumulated 10000 shares. There are 2 sellers at $1.10 1000 shares and $1.50 1000 shares. Bad guy puts limit sell order at $10 for 10000 shares. Bad guy puts a market buy order for 12000 shares from your account. How exactly algos are going ruin this? Curious minds want to know. To simplify there are no options available for this security. Also to simplify, it is very unlikely that non-algo people will look at it, see a market buy order for 12000 shares and manage to get their sell orders in time. ----------- BTW, without one-time passcode, they don't need to break IB encryption. They just need a keylogger on your computer that comes with any virus or malware. If they zombie your computer, they can even execute the trades from it, so IB won't even notice "it's a different computer, alert". I agree that if you're not liable due to Canadian laws, then you don't give a crap about inconvenient security. ;)

I'd say over 50% chance we have practical immortality in 50 years. About 90% chance we have it in 100 years. Both probabilities assume that we don't blow ourselves up in the meantime due to social issues that such developments create. Please adjust the probability by chance that we do blow up. IMO these probabilities are also quite high, perhaps in 10%+ range for 50 years, 25%+ for 100 years. Yes, I am optimist. ;) ** If you want to continue discussion, please open a new thread ** ** Disclaimer: practical immortality means that you won't die from disease or old age if you have enough money and you don't miss irreversible issues. You can still die from accidents, murders, suicide, having bad doctors, not having money for medical support, etc. In case of longer term (over 50 years) future, consciousness copying/upload might become possible too. **

Sorry, rb, but in this case you are just not thinking it through. A trivial way to get money from your account is to - Post a limit sell order of illiquid security at let's say 10x current price from their account - Post a market buy order for same security from your account. Poof, money is theirs. I'm sure there are other ways too.

No problem. :) Think "immortal" though. ;)

Ah, possible. :)

If that occurs then I would have failed as a parent anyways which in my mind would be worse then losing money. Sorry, I don't understand what you mean here. :) Good luck.

Possibly OT, if so, please ignore. There is a high probability that current generation (and even higher probability for next generation) of kids will be practically immortal. That's gonna make intergenerational transfer quite interesting to think about.

Not really. Read the article. That's about 10 years from start to completion.

Actually US also has pretty good demographics due to the birth rate. http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=us&v=25 Not exactly sure why. Europe has much better social/monetary support for having kids and yet people in US have more of them. Anecdotally even my Euro friends in US have more kids even though it makes no sense (they would be better of having kids back in Europe...).

Right. BRK ROE has been low for long time, IIRC that's because of the investment side and maybe (re)insurance. WACC is rather artificial anyway, so garbage out. Cash Flow calculations do now work straightforwardly for insurers and financials.

Wow, these guys are smoking some pretty strong stuff. Nope, it's just mechanically generated numbers and text. Does not work with BRK.

Right, what I was trying to say is that T&T could have bought it for short term gains, but since Buffett did it (apparently), we can exclude short term gains as a reason.

OK, but refining is periodically very crappy business. And I don't believe even Buffett can know that we are in sustained low oil price environment. I'd not be surprised if T&T bought this for a short term play. I'd be surprised if Buffett bought it without some kind of an angle, and I mean more than "refining is gonna be great business now for ... forever". I'm not completely joking that he might be looking for another stock swap for some part of the business. But this is of course just pure guess.

BUT "plagiarism is the highest form of flattery" ;D and it works for Buffett. ;)

Maybe he'll swap the stake again for another piece of PSX business... ::)

With all respect, this is an old story. And the fact that great investors use it in their reports is nothing to be happy about IMO. I'll just write it off as a filler material. For anyone else in the business: telling old jokes does not improve your reputation.

Not really so trivial. PMT has bunch of debt, almost no OCF and a bunch of capex. Buying PMT assumes that: - They won't sell TOU shares low - TOU will go up - PMT won't spend the gain to capex and pay off debt It might work, but it's not that they have TOU 3x in their market cap unencumbered. It is kinda levered bet on TOU as well as PMT treading water with their own properties at least.

People in the past considered XOM, CVX, OXY greatly run companies. Not anymore?

The problem with O&G is that even Peyto is forced to sell the product at low prices if the prices crash. I understand when Darren Gee argues that it is time to buy properties and invest when commodity prices is low. This is rational. But that's just one side of the coin. At the same time he is forced to sell the product for crappy prices. There is no option to dictate the price or not to take crappy prices (like Buffett does in insurance - not write losing business). Peyto will survive longer than other companies, but still if O&G prices run up, it would be a sell, since in next downturn the shares will drop (again). And BTW even with the argument "that it is time to buy properties and invest when commodity prices is low" Peyto dilution is nothing to be happy about. Anyway, this is not particularly criticism of Darren Gee. It's a criticism of the industry. Obligatory Buffett quote: "When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact."