Jurgis

I did not find generic AI thread, so I'm gonna start one. 8) In particular, I wanted to post a link to this: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/the-world-e2-80-99s-dominant-crypto-mining-company-wants-to-own-ai/ar-AAxqyH5 (article connected to cryptocurrencies, NVDA, AI ASICs).

If you want to get a balanced and not-overly-positive viewpoint, you should read Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick Link: http://a.co/6wPVIaU "Surely you're joking..." and others from that series are great and funny, but completely one-sided.

OMG, so many people are salty just because TSLA stock does not drop even they are so f***ing sure it should. 8) Guys, just grow up. Go, outperform and be happy.

Second part of the book (including the new extra chapters) is weaker. It seems that the author had a single "Halo Effect" idea and then just fillered to get to the book length. Some of the company analysis seems to suffer from the same Halo Effect that was the topic of the book. ::)

Scott, where are you? I don't think Scott is answerable to you... ::) If you don't believe his claims, it's really up to you. Others can make their own minds. Nobody's gonna start posting audited returns on this forum just to convince you or anyone else. If you're just trolling, then first (couple) posts were OK, but repeated requests makes it look like you're taking this seriously. ::) Take care 8)

Actually, I mostly agree with ScottHall. 8)

I don't know. Is it really "a lot easier to be careful than to be brilliant"? 8) Maybe what you mean it's easier to be careful about known quantifiable risks: e.g. don't invest in a company with a bad balance sheet, losing money, cyclical if you want to avoid BK risk. The rest is more of an art (like you said): every company that is cheap-enough (and even every company that is expensive) has some risks and only you can try to evaluate if they are big enough to avoid investing or not serious enough to prevent investing. But that's not easy. 8)

The idea is to share data and describe potential outcomes with an audience of independent thinkers. The constructive aim was to underline how short term thinking and performance chasing can hurt returns. The Dalbar studies show this really well at the retail level. https://www.ifa.com/articles/dalbar_2016_qaib_investors_still_their_worst_enemy/ But nobody says that it’s easy. One has to decide if it is worth the try. I think it is reasonable to assume that most “true” value investors, once inoculated, won’t radically change their approach but it’s been said that, historically, bull markets get to their cruising speed when enough “value” investors have switched to the “growth” camp. BTW, I like the way DTEJD1997 says it in reply #22 and it’s important to not let the Market be your guide because it is there to serve you, if you so decide. Peace. Yeah, agreed. Good luck 8)

Show me anyone who can actually measure risk. Really measure it rather than waving hands about margin of safety, intrinsic value and value investing. I'm interested. I'm gonna go ScottHall here and say that FB might be less risky investment than 10 value stocks. 8)

It is also possible that the statements like this are just making people to continue investing badly in a nebulous hope of the "remarkable out-performance".

Clearly I don't have data to prove this. Just to be clear when I said top 0.1%, I meant "top 0.1% of total human population of investable age". Or "top 0.1% of total US/Canadian population of investable age". And I still think that's true. I think CoBF membership is likely better investors than 999 out of 1000 random people. But then if 50 or 100 of these 1000 random people just put money into market-cap based fund, then they might outperform half of CoBF... So perhaps my claim is actually wrong. 8) Another way would be to look at how good CoBF members are compared to active investors. But that's probably not very useful because of two reasons: 1. the number of active investors is likely quite small (unless you count all the people who are forced-active investors since they have to choose funds in their 401(k); 2. even if CoBF members are good compared to other active investors, that does not say much if passive investors outperform them. In any case, you make a good point. 8)

If you look at , a lot of these people are outperforming. If you look at CoBF annual performance numbers, there's a bunch of people who outperform. OTOH, it's still not clear how much of that is selection bias. And how much of outperformance remains after fees and taxes. People here may believe it when they say that it's easy to outperform if you do XYZ (buy cheap large caps, buy cheap small caps, buy international, buy special situations, buy cheap great companies, buy jockeys, buy oil, etc.) and/or that the time of value investors will come (when market crashes, when there's inflation, when there's deflation, when there's recession, etc.). IMO even if we take CoBF population (which is already top 0.1%? top 0.01%? of investors), majority of CoBF population does not outperform and will not outperform even if they try to follow the helpful suggestions above. This is mostly substantiated by 5-year/10-year performance polls I had here accounting for survival and selection bias ( see http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/performance-vs-index-5-years/msg260236/#msg260236 and http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/performance-vs-index/ ) Disclosure: I have not outperformed. Please do not listen to anything I write here. 8) P.S. I should link to racemize's http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/update-of-evaluating-performance-essay/msg330465/#msg330465

I mostly agree with this https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-07/warren-buffett-needs-to-share-the-stage Although I'd add that Warren should have Todd and Ted there too. But then the Omaha circus zoo show is about Warren, so probably won't happen. Maybe when Charlie dies, but even then who knows. At least Abel talked a bit during the official business meeting, which was IMO positive.

Great article. Thanks for posting.

ScottHall for President! 8) You heard it here first

What would those big-picture, difficult questions be?

So far IMO Jonathan Brandt is asking the best questions.

Great topic. We should not allow it to go extinct. 8)

Not a bad PCP question. :)

"Everybody knew that America will win the war" - talk about a backwards looking fallacy... I'm superglad they did. But was it guaranteed? What were the real American win predictions in 1942? Edit: Let's invert. "Everybody knew that Germany will win the war" in 1942. What would an investment into German stock be worth now? ::)

OK, let's get elephant into the room: Buffett looks tired. :-\

Direct link: https://s1.q4cdn.com/579586326/files/doc_downloads/2018/2018-Fairfax-AGM.pdf (unless they change it).

Really great book. I haven't finished it yet, but it's already one of the best. ... And pretty much every single CoBF thread (maybe not counting some arbitrage threads) is heavily contaminated by Halo Effect (both positive and negative and sometimes both at the same time!). I am tempted to write "Halo Effect" every time I post on company thread... but perhaps I'll resist. 8) ;D

Berkshire structure - a company holding investments - makes very little sense from tax standpoint. It started to make more sense when it became (re)insurance company and started holding operating businesses. Munger (and Buffett?) has said this repeatedly. And yet there are still people doing this... Everyone apart Buffett charges fees, since everyone likes to get paid - the more the better. Buffett is one of very few people who believes that he's paid enough through his stockholdings and does not need to charge extra salary/fees/etc.

Yes. Just celebrated 20 years. Cheapest (?) and most convenient (?) way to get all the movies that the SCREWED UP ... sorry ... streaming services don't have. 8) They are cutting on inventory though. There's more and more stuff that is "not available" with no availability date. :'(