Jurgis

This is where you hold your assets. 8)

Being hooked on Drew is way more fun than being hooked on Twatter and Facepalm. 8)

To emphasize one thing Tim mentioned: share buybacks at above book decrease book value. So great businesses that are buying back shares at above book will have decreasing book value.

I have a pile of stuff that I should recycle. Thanks for reminding. I will keep BRK/WSC paper reports that I still have. Newer BRK are all electronic though.

This board has quite a few European value stocks. If that's not enough, run FT screener http://markets.ft.com/screener/customScreen.asp with value parameters and go through the results. It's not going to be fast, but you can do your own research and perhaps find something that others haven't found. You can always post your finds here and people will comment. I don't see a problem.

According to this Munger bought BAC at around $5 or $6? --> Q4 2011. No? http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/09/charlie-munger-daily-journal/ You might be right. DJCO did not have to report these positions until 2013, so the price paid is unclear. Assuming we trust the article you pointed to, it might be $5 or $6.

Right, I forgot. He reads 500 pages a day and never suffers from stress. I think I got it now. ;D

Edit: It was pointed out that this is quite likely not true. Yeah, BAC is still trading almost at Munger's DJCO buy price. I have added a bit recently. I also hold some JPM.

Have you held an upper management position in your life? CEO? If you think that he only encountered "a handful of business problems that have occurred over the course of his 60 year career", you are deluding yourself. I could make that list quite a lot longer, but what's the point. And even if the list was just "a handful", I want to see a person who would have handled them with little stress. IMHO you are assuming his cheery TV persona is how he feels every day. I seriously doubt this is the case. But we will never know probably (unless someone really close writes a candid story after he dies)

Rest in Peace

LOL. Maybe you guys can ask him how can he lead a fairly stress free life while running one of the largest companies in USA and periodically running into near-death corporate situations (Washington Post strike in 70s, SEC investigation in 70s, Salomon Brothers debacle, Gen Re debacle, Net Jets debacle, death of all the "made in America" brands he bought, Lubrizol and Sokol, etc.). I would have killed myself multiple times during his career. "Stress free" my a** ??? ::) :-X :'( :o

I'll keep an open mind, wish good luck to cloud... and hope that this thread is revisited in 3-5 years to see how it went for him. 8) Peace brothers. :)

Petec, you expressed my reservations about BRK post-Buffett most eloquently. I'll just +1 and refer others to your post. :)

Yeah, good post. Honestly, that's the picture I had in mind anyway. One of the reasons I don't invest in companies that need an activist to give me good returns. My support is with you guys though. :)

Yeah, it's amazing how badly he eats. It's even more amazing how healthy he is with this diet. I think he's an alien. 8) "Snowball" mentions some more of his eating habits. Presumably he starves at fancy parties if they don't provide his staples.

Thank you very much, but I am not asking for your advice when to sell. 8) And, yes, I will do as I said in my previous message. I believe that Buffett is about 20% value of BRK. I am not going to try to persuade anyone else to agree or whatever. I asked the question just to see how much value sleepydragon puts on Buffett. There is some correlation between that and how much value is BRK transparency worth.

Let me ask provocative question: if Warren died tomorrow and stock dropped 15%, would you buy a load? How about if it dropped 10%? At which level you would still buy a load? Personally, if it dropped up to 15%, I would sell everything. Somewhere between 15% and 20%, I'd hold. I would possibly buy a load if it dropped over 20% (highly unlikely, since BRK probably has an auto-authorization to buyback massively if this happens).

Let's invert: assume you know nothing about Warren and Charlie and you start to analyze BRK as a black box company with no previous knowledge about its management. Would you not raise serious questions about the BRK corporate governance? For example, nepotism in the board: we let Warren slide with it, but it would be a red flag at other companies. (Aside: auditor trouble at DJCO would have legitimately crashed stock of other companies. DJCO shareholders let it slide because it's run by Munger). Edit: I wrote about corporate governance, while the article talks more about transparency. Still the issue remains: if you were to deeply analyze BRK, would you not need the info about its (re)insurance businesses that is not provided? Would you buy the stock if it wasn't "Warren knows what he's doing, so let's pay 1.3 P/B"? Edit2: I thought the article was a bit sensionalistic, but it IMHO raised some valid points. And to answer the question above: if BRK was a black-box-no-name company, I would not invest in it. I think it is very hard to analyze and very hard to predict future returns.

This is sidetopic a bit. Unfortunately, it is not clear that research adds value beyond "buy index funds 80%-100% of portfolio, rest bonds/cash". E.g. I have couple 401(k)s that I have to manage (mine and wife's). Can't buy stocks there. There's a list of funds. How the heck am I supposed to research it? OK, I held index funds 80%, bonds 20% so far. 80% split roughly 40% US, 40% international. Now: - SP500 is high. Should I move 40% US to actively managed funds which might perform better during any correction? - International index funds hugely underperform actively managed funds. Should I move to actively managed funds? - Should I change US/international allocation? - Bonds: should I hold generic bond fund? high yield bond fund? cash? I am sure there are financial advisors who would give me 100 page report on how this should be adjusted. But I am not sure their report will have any insight. And neither do I... Anyway, I don't want to sidetrack this topic too much. :)

Actually, if you read the story of Mike Burry, you make hugely outsized returns for your investors and they still fire you. IIRC, most of his clients complained hugely when they got locked out during 2007-09 crash and left immediately when he removed the lock even though the results were extraordinary. In their defense, they hired him thinking he was going to run a long-short value fund and he style drifted into global macro credit. Just because CDS and sidecars were in the fund prospectus doesn't mean partners actually expected them to be used. Which proves my point: the clients will punish managers who step out of the ordinary.

Yep, I know that is was a bit outside example. In mutual funds, the politics might be more complicated and different. E.g., can you really close the fund before it becomes too big to outperform? Even if you are a great manager and you want to close it, it's not an easy fight. And why would you want?

What they write is known. What are your actions based on this though? Not invest in (re)insurance companies? Invest in BRK/FFH/MKL that hold stocks rather than bonds (somewhat)? Anything else?

Actually, if you read the story of Mike Burry, you make hugely outsized returns for your investors and they still fire you. IIRC, most of his clients complained hugely when they got locked out during 2007-09 crash and left immediately when he removed the lock even though the results were extraordinary.

TLM got bought. PGN bought two-rig operation in Norway. I'll add 4. Companies whose share prices collapsed don't yet want to face the music and sell out at way below last year's prices. 5. Buyers are still waiting to see how the dust (and oil price) settles. Not many companies are like BRK who are ready to pounce during downdrafts. Give it time.

BRK never bought cosmetics companies and somehow I doubt they will start now. It's a good area, but possibly not something Buffett feels to be within his circle of competence? (I doubt he considered PG or JNJ to be cosmetics companies). I really doubt that BRK will reenter media/newspapers. I think that Buffett is out of that for forever. I also really doubt that BRK would buy supermarkets. I think Tesco has left pretty nasty bruise on that area. Honestly, I also think that Buffett has no edge in clothing: his buys there have been lackluster or failures. But apparently he has not given up on that area. I agree with the rest.