Jurgis

Well, at least you have bragging rights, right? Or is it worse to be right but have made almost no money than not to have invested at all..? :-\ Nah. I'm happy I invested. I'm happy to have made some money. And I'm happy to tell people that I have a legit 30x bagger. 8) It's like that 70 year old who had sex with 20 year hottie told the priest at confession: "Telling you? I'm telling everyone!" 8) ;D Additional disclosure: it's dinner-tab sized because I sold a bunch at 2x and 10x and whatever... Well at least it's not like AAPL/ARMH(Y)/GOOGL/FB/Hansen(Monster) where I sold everything at minor percentage gains or even losses at various times.

I am positive on DIS, but I don’t think that DIS streaming channels will be much of a competition for Netflix. Netflix offers you a tremendous amount of content to watch for $10/month whenever and however you like. DIS will offer you some of their content, as well as sports (via ESPN) in segmented plans (I suppose). It will be a much narrower and spezialized offering. AMZN is the real competition to Netflix. AMZN lineup was crap a year or two ago but they have been adding shows and movies rapidly. If it was me, I'd cancel Netflix right now (actually keep their DVD service, but that's that). My wife does not allow me to cancel Netflix though. So I guess that's the moat... :-\ Disclosure: I still have about 30x bagger on NFLX ... on a dinner tab sized position. :'(

I'll just +1 vinod1 posts. 8)

They post their top holdings here: https://www.orbis.com/uk/institutional/strategies/global-equity I am a client so I receive a monthly report with the details, but I know for a fact that they used to publish a monthly factsheet showing all the holdings, or at least the top 10. They have just completely revamped their website, logo, presentation etc. so frankly I also feel a bit lost navigating their website now. Thanks.

Can you post a link? I can't find this. Or do you have to be a client?

Caveat: must like thinking and reading. Caveat: productive thinking and reading can be exhausting even if you like them. So maybe not work by definition, but nonetheless work in terms of how long and how much you can do.

Hear, hear. Which might be an issue/question with new Sequoia...

RIP.

I think I should incorporate myself and my gun as LLC and when I shoot someone, the gun should take the responsibility and be jailed. 8) There goes the thread.

LOL, this is huge outperformance IMO. If you find someone who can do this, send me a pointer. I might even give up on my principles of not filling K1 and beg them to take my money... 8) Edit: I assume you meant 7% annual. If you meant 7% total over the 10 years, then I'll edit/remove my comment. Sorry if I forget someone from CoBF or outside CoBF (feel free to speak up for yourself or anyone you know 8)), but from people managing other people's money I may not know anyone who had such outperformance. I'll take that as a compliment. 8) Now get off my lawn! :P ;D 8)

Just to be clear, I never said that. 8) What oddball and ScottHall say IZ DA TRUTH. 8) But even though I know that, I choose not to spend time on selling or on honing the sales technique. I don't find that interesting and/or exciting. Yeah, I know if I focused on sales more, I'd likely be richer (have better job? maybe; have higher salary? probably; have better wife? no; have better friends? maybe). But I'm fine with what I have. And honestly if I really wanted to make my life better (TM - in some way), I'd find a way to spend less time on investing and more time on doing AIish projects. But then I am at a point in life/wealth/etc. where I am mostly fine with what I have and what I will have, so maybe it's OK if I slack off on selling. 8) For young people and overall people who want to achieve something: listen to oddball and ScottHall! Dey are da messiahs! 8) ---------------------------------------------------- On the topic of performance, management letters, clients and niches: Some time ago I was looking for an outside money manager(s) and even did invest with someone. I pretty much gave up on that, so possibly I'm very bad and very non-representative client, but here are some thoughts. Performance matters - a lot - for me. If performance was better, I would not have walked away even though I had other reservations. Letters matter for me - I do read them, racemize. 8) Cloning Buffett is possibly trap - if you clone Buffett, I can clone him too. If you invest in BRK, so can I. So... OTOH, if you go full Bruce Berkowitz and stuff your fund with Fannie/Freddie, Sears, etc., you'd better be generating these 30-50% per year returns, cause otherwise I'm definitely not investing with you... 8) If it's SMA and you trade like there's no tomorrow, please don't. I'll hate you at the tax time. 8) Minor quibbles why I don't invest with outside managers (just ignore this paragraph): I hate doing the whole accredited investor paperwork - some people don't ask for much, but some require info/papers that I'd rather not give; I still hate the whole K1 form, so no hedge funds... ; majority of my money is in IRAs/solo-401(k) which are a pain to move and a lot of SMAs/hedge funds don't handle. OTOH, if stahleyp is looking for huge outperformance, most of the time you can't get in: the outperforming person gets swamped with money. Also, you have to think what you gonna do when/if that huge outperformance craters... Pull out? BTW, if a non-investor friend or relative asked me for advice on investing, I'd decline to give one. But if I was pushed, I'd suggest XX% in market index, 100-XX% in bond fund. I would not suggest any hedge or mutual funds. Sorry guys. 8) Anyway, sorry for ramble, don't get offended, have fun and lots of performance and fees. 8)

You mean you started a hedge fund? Go to some meetings with CoBF folks (like DJCO, Fairfax, maybe Berkshire). Get them to know you and like you. If oddball or someone recommends you on the forum, you might get a bunch of investors. Or maybe various parties in SYTE orbit would invest directly... I can't speak about the limitations of advertising. If you write good letters with good results and they are posted here by people who get them and there's interest, you might get some investors too. Good luck. 8)

A hole in jeans is a fashion statement that makes jeans more valueable. So I smell win-win solution. 8)

I just read info porn. 8)

Ed Thorp seems like a nice guy and I liked his approaches to beat casino and stock market. However, the book is rather boring and IMO pretty basic. Maybe it's just that we've all heard this in other places multiple times. Maybe he was trying to get his writings to book length with filler material. It also is not quite a biography (which I would have liked) and not quite a how-to-invest book (which I am not really interested in). IMO both halves suffer from rather so so treatment. It might be that this is a good book for someone who have not read about Ed Thorp previously and/or have not read about how to invest (and how not to).

It's also possible to look at CoBF Macro threads a year or two later and read what you or others have written there couple years ago. Pretty good source material too. 8) Not that my company-specific writings from past years lack comedy material...

BOMN 8)

BG2008, great suggestions. I hope tol1 does not mind if I OT a bit. I might be too picky or in wrong circles or whatever, but I don't know a single person "who will pass the first test by a mile". Well, maybe one person and even then I'm not sure. And this includes CoBF crowd - sorry guys... ::) Well, you said "compound" not "outperform", so perhaps I'm being too picky... I guess tol1 has to be an optimist though if they plan to start/join a HF. 8) So good luck! 8)

Shows for me. Is that on your browser? Mobile device? Can you try different browser? Maybe you or adblocker blocked that page element...

Yes. Also IMO Buffett undercounts (knowingly or not) what is essential. He says "rationality" and "temperament" (or some synonym of that). But IMO you have to have great memory, attention to details, attention/memory for numbers, possibly also business sense in various aspects. Some of which is likely not captured by 120 IQ and "rationality"/"temperament".

Nah, I think your post had good and valid observations. Carry on. 8)

Cigarbutt, you raise some reasonable questions. Some of them are due to extreme overloading of the terms "passive"/"active": they are just used too much and for different things. E.g. does a person means passive == "market cap based", passive == "no human active manager", passive == "buy and hold and not sell"? And so on... There are yet other questions similar to yours that I am aware of, but I won't mention since they would muddy the water further. 8) I just think that people should be careful with their definitions and the products they discuss when they talk about passive/indexing and price discovery/price influence. Otherwise we get quite a few misleading and unsubstantiated claims. 8) Peace.

Because the market cap based index matches the market and does not influence relative security prices when people buy/hold or sell it. That's the definition of it. And that's the reason it's truly passive. Everything non-market-cap based does influence relative security prices when people buy or sell it. And by that fact it's an active fund. Active means that you are trying to get a different result than the market - and you get that with non-market-cap based weights. It does not matter whether your weights are fundamental (P/E, P/B whatever), technical, arbitrary (Scrabble), based on some manager's picks or whatever. In all these cases, you are taking an active position that your weights are different from the market's. Edit: to rephrase the above: if you buy/hold/sell anything that is not market cap based index, you are engaging in price discovery. Even if it's a Scrabble index. If you buy/hold/sell market cap based index, you are not engaging in price discovery. That's IMO very significant difference. I'm kind of surprised that some people do not realize that there is this difference between market cap based fund vs anything non-market-cap-based. And conversely that there is pretty much no difference between mechanical weight determination based on some factors and what people call "real active" stock picking. This is rather basic definitions + math... ::)

I have listened to him talk live. It was pretty good talk though very reminiscent and perhaps overlapping with Hans Rosling's presentations. He pretty much showed the graphs of progress in all areas of life through last centuries.

Non-market-cap weighted indexes are active strategies by definition since they do not track the market. There is no point to include them into passive-index total or consider them as passive for any other discussions.