Jurgis

Good summary.

I got a copy before it was taken down. I won't post it here since IIRC Sanjeev removes it from CoBF too. I don't think there's much in the letter that is not known from Klarman's interviews/articles/etc.

I thought this book was discussed and had a thread, but apparently not. Hans Rosling Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think On sale $2.99 kindle @ Amazon.com now: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0756J1LLV?pf_rd_p=c2945051-950f-485c-b4df-15aac5223b10&pf_rd_r=GEP6GR0S8CMY574BY6PZ

Because my frivolous bet against Jurgis angered the investment gods? :P No but more seriously, even BRK behaves in a strange way from time to time and those tend to create interesting trading opportunities. My favorite is when it sells off with the financial sector for no good reason just because it's a big component of XLF and other ETFs. Just to bring everyone in context I privately proposed to adjust the bet to start at 1/1/2019. I honestly swear I did not look at BRK/SP500 performance since 1/1 and did not try to tilt the bet in my favor. 8) Peace. Edit: Actually I still haven't looked, so I don't even know if I was tilting it in my favor or against me. ::)

IDK what's so hard. I have my 401(k) at fixed allocation and I haven't changed the allocation/contribution/etc for X years I have been in current job. And BTW my allocation is OKish, but not great. It includes 20% bonds and 40%/40% US/international funds. And international funds have returned way less than US market index funds. (I should rebalance, but I don't, since I treat this more of an experiment of what the end result will be with fixed allocation). But yeah, there's a lot of people who just don't do it. Even worse, they don't do anything. Like missing 100% gains that they could get by just doing X% contribution into 401(k) and getting X% company match (yeah that's 100% gain immediately). Or missing on guaranteed Y% gains by buying Y%-discounted ESPPs. Anyway, sorry that's kinda OT.

I'll take that bet. But since I take that bet I'll also observe the tendency of value investors to use BRK and Buffett as a crutch. I.e. Buffett is the only example that consistently outperformed and a lot of other investors performance is based on holding large BRK positions. You may not be doing this in your portfolio, but your bet totally falls into that category.

Others may have said so, but definitely not me! Anyway, here are my two reasons why I believe what I said: One is, there are mechanical reasons why (classical/quantitative/mechanical) value investing tends to underperform when interest rates go down in a big way [1]. And interest rates are now starting to go up. Two, broad market indices like the S&P are now priced at a level where it’s pretty unrealistic to expect great future returns over, say, the next 10+ years [2, 3]. I don’t think that’s true at the moment for many individual stocks. Well, we'll see. But I think it is a common fallacy to say that active investing will do better this time or that time or based on this factor or whatever. You may not have said anything like that earlier and maybe you gonna be the person who picks the (passive investing) top this time, but I would not bet on you or anyone doing it consistently. I've seen too much claims that have been made that were total bunk and the same people come over year(s) later and make new claims without acknowledging that they were wrong and that they are just making WAGs. And not only CoBF people. We can pick on professional investors doing the same. It has been shown that a large majority of active investors underperform long term whatever the factors are. And expecting this to change is wishful thinking IMO. Of course, you can always cherry pick data like Spekulatius did and show how index did really poorly from some market top that is known only post-factum. Anyway, we all know that CoBF investors are special and they outperform .

This has been said every year for the last 7 years or so. It also has been claimed that value investors will outperform when market goes down. Which has pretty much shown to be wrong in the years like 2018 when market went down. (Yeah, I know there's a ton of superinvestors on CoBF who outperform every year. More power to them.)

+1. Sad news.

Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Spruengli https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/lisp?countrycode=ch BRK should start selling real chocolate not the American-made crap. 8) Yeah, I know the price reflects the quality of the chocolate. 8)

Lifco might be interesting although does not seem to be cheap on the first glance: https://lifco.se/investors/ https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/lifcob?countrycode=se (Probably should open Lifco thread if anyone wants to discuss more). In general though, I have gotten somewhat skeptical about family conglomerates. People look at these as mini-Berkshires, but it's not so simple to create a conglomerate with great returns. Yeah, just buy a bunch of good businesses at fair price, decentralize, and you're golden. In reality, there's probably more "mini-Berkshires" that failed than that succeeded. Or maybe not failed, but delivered so-so returns. And so-so returns are likely not considered a failure for the controlling family.

Did anyone understand/figure out the name of the company at 27:10 "Akkermans hundred year old company in Belgium"? I did not find anything called "Akkermans", so that's probably wrong spelling/name.

Gross Financial Product? 8)

Apart from security checkpoint, security screening, and metal detector going into hotel? ::)

There is a thread on the same topic in Politics section that has some additional links. May or may not be useful. Just FYI.

OMFG

I am firmly in the camp of Buffett-key-man-risk. Looking at Munger though, we can possibly expect another 7 years +/- couple of Buffett. And the company won't deteriorate immediately after Buffett dies, so it is still investable IMVHO.

People on CoBF may want a definite answer, but IRL the answer is "it depends". Like vinod1 said, Buffett talks not about definite outcome but about tendencies and trends. As a lot of posters have shown, it is possible to get good (to great) results in so so business. If you don't look for (very) long term, it's even possible to have great results in very crappy business. Businesses (as well as managements) also change. Business may be great then become crappy and maybe even become great again. So can a company and management. If you look for tendencies and trends, there are businesses and business areas that tend to have more moat, higher margins, etc. than others. So naturally Buffett gets attracted to these areas and may talk about them as wonderful businesses. But he is simplifying and exaggerating that you might be fine with a wonderful business run by an idiot or that bad business will always trump good management. So it might be fine to invest in COST or WMT. But while doing so, it's probably worthwhile to remember what happened to Tesco. 8)

Maybe add ticker and move to stock forum?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/science/chess-artificial-intelligence.html - A bit glowy but makes some good observations about AlphaZero vs. older rule based chess programs.

For fun: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/2016-results-thread/ - 2017 CoBF results (ignore the title, these are 2017 results) http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/your-returns-in-2016/ - 2016 CoBF results

https://smile.amazon.com/Tribe-Mentors-Short-Advice-World-ebook/dp/B071KJ7PTB/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546374427&sr=8-1&keywords=tribe+of+mentors - on sale @Amazon today at $3.99. I read the Amazon free sample and decided it's not a book for me, so I did not buy. 8)

https://qz.com/work/1481224/the-most-screwed-up-employee-perk-in-america-and-the-man-who-just-might-fix-it/ - Longish article about Gawande and BRK/JPM/AMZN healthcare effort (no details). Lots of links to other articles.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612644/we-tried-teaching-an-ai-to-write-christmas-movie-plots-hilarity-ensued-eventually/

Barron's had an article this week that closed end funds got superwhacked by recent market drop. So perhaps an area for people to look at. Just FYI.