Jurgis

I disagree. :) I think there is a subset of people who believe Buffett is key to BRK (there was even a poll on this site about it). And these people will unfortunately dwell on it. Personally, I also believe Buffett is key to BRK. Also personally, I would not constantly ask him when he's gonna die and whether he has a successor. I don't care about the second (I am pretty certain to sell BRK when Buffett dies) and I think the first one (asking him constantly) does not accomplish anything. So, yeah, I'd rather people stop asking him that, but I don't see it happening. Peace

I have saved BRK annuals that I have in paper form, but I don't intentionally collect them. I have some WSC annuals. I have recently gone through my old annual pile and threw away tons of stuff: really eclectic collection from 199X to now. Don't remember exactly what I kept. Perhaps some mutual fund reports...

Some great info (p*87 8) ) Can you elaborate on: Is this from captive businesses? How did you account for BRK selling stocks and reusing this in internal businesses? Thanks

Yeah, poll would have been better. But any new people can still vote on rkbabang's linked thread.

This is a strawman argument. First of all, you have no data how often such situations happen. Second, the same situations happen with human drivers on board and obviously they cannot make any choice - they are not fast enough or clear headed enough or aware enough. So it is obvious that automated car will make a better choice whatever it chooses. Like JBird said, it could just slam on breaks and hope for the best. Note that it will detect the person faster than human and it will slam on the breaks faster than human. So even if the person on road dies, they would have died with human at wheel too. You could as well make the same argument to prohibit humans to drive cars. Cause obviously they cannot t make decisions in situations like this and liability may bankrupt them. Yet, we allow people to drive. If you are concerned about liability, let car manufacturers and insurers work it out. It's not your problem. I am sick and tired of hearing this old and - sorry to say - broken argument.

OT. I completely agree with Petec.

I will answer this during a scheduled slot for answering questions like this.

Will look forward for the wall print online sales. Please post here when you have it available. Thanks

Wow, it looks like NetJets continues to be a headache for Buffett. I wonder if he's gonna throw Tracy at the problem and if she's gonna succeed in solving it somehow...

I looked at Google Fi. The rates are good and I like the international coverage (this comes from Tmobile - that's why I currently have Tmobile). The only issue right now is that Fi only supports Nexus 6 which is $649/699, which is too expensive IMHO.

Cut couple years ago. Current setup: Roku + Netflix + Amazon Prime Instant Video + Netflix Blu Ray.

AtlCDore, thanks for your post, some good thoughts. :)

Now that you put it this way, I am gonna pack my bags and go sip mai tais in Hawaii waiting for that big crunch. Screw working and investing! 8) Edit: OMG really worthy 500th post!!! 8) ;D

Yeah, I held HOG around 2008-2009, sold close to lows. For a small justification, they did change CEO and the new CEO presumably cleaned up the company quite a bit. Of course now Barron's does a spread on the new CEO and they almost immediately hit a tough patch again. :) Currently no plans to buy. I think I'll just say that it's not in my circle of competence. :)

Yeah, there are two schools of thought on this: - Personal engagement is better than giving money. (There were couple people on this forum who supported this on another thread) - Giving money is more efficient than personal engagement if you have highly paying profession, investing income, etc. There was a talk on this during Peter Singer's Coursera course I believe. I could try to dig it up if there's interest. I think this goes down to personal choice, preferences and perhaps where you are in your life (working/retired/etc.). Personally, I am involved in some nonprofits, but not much. No time and not really my thing. I can see where that could change if I retired and/or started spending less time on investing. ;)

Adding http://givingpledge.org/ link to this thread.

Yep, givewell is another good website to use.

I think what Liberty wrote raises a number of topics (he may not have intended all of them though): - Separating "investing" from "spending" that couple people commented on - Spending X amount of time deciding whether to spend Y amount of dollars vs. spending Z amount of time deciding whether to invest W amount of dollars. I think we think that the rational thing would be if X was proportional to Y and Z was proportional to W, but perhaps not at the same ratio as X to Y. In reality, sometimes X is not proportional to Y and Z is not proportional to W. Which may be good: there's a tremendous bargain and there's no point to spend days on deciding whether to buy a huge amount of it. Or it could be bad: risky big bets in investing, spending large sums of money without thinking enough. - Overspending time trying to optimize/decide insignificant amounts of money. Anyway, it's good to be aware of these and figure out what works for you. :)

This thread is about giving away. I did not search if this has been asked before. :) The poll is a bit unscientific since I ask percentages of income or wealth, but I was not sure if restricting to either one was the way to go. I am giving away too little - about 1% a year. I plan to give away more in the future, but I don't have a specific pledge. Relevant link/image: http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/ http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/portals/0/images/resources/item_78.jpg

Let me start another thread about giving away. :)

This thread is not about being happy, financially secure, etc. :) It's about being on top. :) (Not that I will try to enforce this - OT's are totally fine and encouraged :) ) Sure, we can argue whether Einstein or Hawking is on top, but we pretty much know they both are. Similarly Buffett in investing. Elon Musk in space business and electric car business. Jobs in leading integrated gadget design. We might know the best in more restricted fields that are familiar to us. E.g. the best low power GPU designer, the best researcher in TaiChi medical applications, the best vegetarian chef in NYC, etc. Edit: so yes, it is about .000001% and our attitudes towards it: do we care/don't care, want to make it there, not, etc. It would be great to know what the people who voted "I am the best" think they are best in. :) (Mr. Buffett, did you vote? ;) ). I doubt they will speak up though. :) Maybe they were just taking it lightly and voted for fun. :)

This feels especially stupid if you just made a few thousand on a stock that you just bought and made a quick gain on by nothing more than pure luck (that it appreciated so quickly thus the much higher CAGR). On the other hand it's probably sensible to review all expenses versus what you make in your day job and not versus temporary portfolio successes or drawdowns. But what Liberty does is totally normal. The fact that your account went up (or down) $20K a week does not mean that you should suddenly buy a new car or eat caviar at the restaurant. If fact, there is a known psychological bias to "spend" any "bonus" money multiple times. "Oh, I got this money, so I can buy a computer" and then couple days ago "I can get a vacation", and so on where in the end the money spent is larger than the money received. So it's good to go against it.

Well, as Buffett has said: "In the world of business, bad news often surfaces serially: You see a cockroach in your kitchen; as the days go by, you meet his relatives." Perhaps Heinz took his teaching a bit literally. ;)

Good thoughts, writser! 8) I'd still love to have the 10 year streak of 30-50% returns like Joel Greenblatt and/or Stan Druckenmiller haha. Or a knockout 10x (?) like Mike Burry big short. But yeah, slow and steady is not bad in the end... if you're not Joel/Stan/Mike. Edit: Aside (?) - I've never been good with microcap investing. I prefer "Buffettology". I think my only claims to the very limited fame are keeping at it for almost 20 years now and buying-buying-buying in 2008-2009. ;D

Starting thread from: difference between being in top 2% versus top .000001% ? i think being in the top 2% is not a bad place to be :) I agree. 8) Maybe that's the end of the thread then. :) We'll see. So personally I grew up with some indoctrination that I am the best. There was even some factual evidence for that - in a small pond. Then I went to a big pond and realized that I am far from the best. :) Since then I've done various things in various areas and periodically I get that thought "hey, what are you doing in this area, you're never gonna be the best in it". Which is right for a couple of reasons: first, I am not necessarily the most talented person in area X; second, I do too many things while this age rewards specialization to the hilt; third, I am a bit ;) lazy. Anyway, this came back on the other thread where we were discussing the "he who dies with most toys wins" and chess/poker/bridge championships. I also watched "Jobs", "The Theory of Everything", and "The Imitation Game" in last couple of days, which also brought back this theme. Anyway, Jim Rogers said - talking about expats - that it's better to be medium fish in big pond than top fish in small pond (I am paraphrasing). I actually agree - so I agree with rohitc99 too. But perhaps people have interesting insights from their own life. 8)