Jurgis

CHTR Pretty much all Liberties (LSXMA/SIRI/LBTYA/LILA) GM Airlines I am sure I am missing some more... http://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=brk Care to comment? 8)

;D 8)

I finally read the paper. They have some good results and some very so-so results. First, positives: This is well researched and real issue IMO. These are so so: This is claimed based on stock prices 5 days ( ! ) from the posting. "Strategies" based on sentiment are really crappy IMO ("buy when someone posts positive sentiment on stock, sell when someone posts negative sentiment"). It would be great if they got some long-er term stock return results. But then it's very difficult to research: what is "long-er term"? When would you buy/sell/etc.? This is also not very useful. Clearly if you are value investor, you would have a positive sentiment on dropping stock. Or not. Depends on the reasons for drop. So correlation is not expected and lack of it does not show much if anything. This might be true. Not sure it is useful insight. BTW, there might be 3rd cause that is real cause of both posting activity and future trading volume and volatility. In other words, correlation, but not causation. (At least they don't claim causation :) ).

BTW, two questions: 1. Has anyone tracked their performance while at BRK (as much as it is possible)? I know Buffett says they are outperforming SP500 and their bonus is based on that, but I wonder what are the numbers if it's possible to get at all. 2. Has anyone calculated BRK investment portfolio returns for last 5/10/15 years (as much as possible... I know this might be hard)? Stocks only, no wholly owned businesses, no fixed income. (What do you do with all the prefs that Buffett got in 2008...?)

Hmm. And what have they done lately? Look at their purchases. Isn't every single one of them discussed on CoBF and elsewhere at prices that might be even better than what they paid. Nah, I know that they are hamstrung by having to invest 10B+. So they can't buy obscure stocks that would return 50% annually. And in current information glut it's very likely every single idea is discussed in multiple places. So really it all comes down to execution. But it's still not clear to me that their execution is (so much) better than a lot of people here for example. Edit: this is not to diminish their smarts or their huge advantage of having access to Warren and CEOs of BRK subs. Yeah, you can buy BRK. But you're not really investing in them if you buy BRK. Their 10B investments are unfortunately still mostly peanuts in terms of BRK return. (Although airlines stocks that got picked up by Warren ... well we'll see how that works out ::) ). I'm not against buying BRK. But you can't get them for free by themselves (although you possibly did not mean that). And yeah we can get their advice and clone... Have fun 8)

Everyone just buy Tesla kk thx ok. 8)

How much info you lose if you buy just 2017 book and don't have e.g. 2011 book? I.e. is the book just expanding year to year or do things get removed in new editions too? I have a 1998 version haha. Really haha.

There might be a point to invest in prefs (that are pretty much unlimited duration junior bonds...) at 6% or so yields... Maybe.

I'd rather not get into macro topics, there are bunch of macro warriors who can answer you, but here it goes: Rates go up if we have inflation. Inflation goes up if we have wage inflation and possibly monetary expansion. If we get protectionism, full employment and infrastructure spending (or some subset of the above), we might finally get wage inflation. So. I'm not predicting rate direction, just explaining possible course.

I am not very good in statistics, but it seems to me that what you described in first post is very different from what you described in the last one. To deal with the last one: - You know your own IRR and your cash inflow / outflow times and amounts. - Build a model that buys/sells random stock to satisfy inflows/outflows. Also buy/sell at random other points within timeline (you can adjust trade frequency). You can also adjust size of positions to not exceed X% of portfolio or something like that. You can adjust the cash amount in portfolio to fluctuate from 0% to Y%. - Run this 100K times ... - Profit? - Well, after you've run the 100K times, you should have a bell curve of returns and you possibly can do analysis of where in that bell curve your own IRR is... Or is this not what you want to do? Or too complicated? Or other issues? Edit: Hmm I wonder if anyone has done this for long term analysis of random returns. I.e. do this with a simple portfolio that starts with 10K on year XXXX and has no inflows/outflows (and/or adding $Yk every year). Compare with investing in index? Seems like simple idea so I'd think someone would have done it...

I still have a standing bet that humanity will achieve immortality (yeah, yeah, "living for thousands of years if nobody disintegrates you with laser canon or you don't accidentally drop into Jupiter but even that might be fixable eventually") within 50 years from now. So if you are young, you might still live forever. If you have kids, they are very likely to live forever. It's also possible that we will blow up within the same timeframe. In that case the bet is null and void. Force majeure. 8)

Quotes reordered a bit. Yes, you are right that simplistic numbers analysis can lead to losses due to non-numerical issues. E.g. Magic Formula was largely overweighted by for-profit education names some time ago. And Chinese reverse mergers were all numerically cheap before going poof. Like you say, AI algos may take into account more subtleties of numbers (e.g. Chinese reverse mergers had accounting irregularities that may have been noticed by more sophisticated algorithm). And they might take into account real world knowledge at some point (not yet) that could prevent them from buying for-profit education names because of political/societal/custormer points of view. Arms race it is. Lol The Princess Bride and a codpiece mentioned in one post... Inconceivable! 8)

SD, you really need to find an agent, get it written and option the rites. You can spend the advance on a bordello and make even more money on publicity. And I really should become an agent and start representing people from CoBF. 8)

I just went and bought "Halo Effect". $3.99 right now on Amazon. The interesting conclusion from what you wrote is: don't look at the story when investing; look at the numbers/data. But then computers are much better looking at numbers/data than humans. And computers definitely are not subject to Narrative Fallacy. So... computers (or algorithms, or whatever-weighted indexes) should outperform us, the story seeking humans. Yet, on the other hand, although "Good to Great" mean reverted, if one followed the story and invested in BRK, MSFT, GOOGL, FB, AAPL, Liberty universe, whatever, one would have likely outperformed the computers hugely. (Yeah, I know these come with Survivorship Bias, so I am trading one fallacy for another ... see Fairfax, Pershing Square, ??? ). So do stories matter and continue actually? Or is it just Survivorship Bias at play?

With all respect to Liberty and MMM, the issue is that their story is not about being 70-80 year old and bed ridden. It is about being young and healthy. If their "retirement" does not work out, they can get a job and continue. Someone who's older and sick do not have these options. Someone in Canada might have social safety net if they run out of money when old and sick. Or maybe they won't run out of money because of the healthcare safety net. But that can be quite different in US. So sure, please listen to Liberty. Just don't extrapolate the story linearly to the future. Have fun.

I feel that turnover argument is possibly quite fake. There is likely huge amount of algo trading on biggest/most liquid ETFs. So people who say things like "Look a turnover of 121 percent in one month" are using a broken number. How do you know what percentage of that turnover are retail investors or any other long-term investors?

So every retiree in the US is a multi-millionaire? I hadn't realized that. No, not everyone in US is multimillionaire. Yes, people suffer because they don't have enough money in old age. Of course, you gonna be different and you gonna be very proud by advising people that they should not be conservative. And obviously you won't see results of your advise since hopefully people won't listen to you. And even if they do, you're not gonna be around when they have to go BK because they listened to you.

Quite. $100k a year is $2k a week on average. Once the mortgage is paid off and the kids are edumacated, the wife's gonna have to buy a lot of shoes to get close to that. Petec, you are not in US. Please research high quality long term care costs and then claim this again. Maybe you and your family won't have Alzheimer's or any other long term debilitating chronic disease. But a lot of people do. Everybody on this thread except Vinod1 seems to forget things like that. And I really should shut up and not interrupt the joyous chorus of healthy people who don't even live in US. ::)

Some great points here. Vinod1 - totally agree, your bullets are my concerns too. Regarding retiring abroad, I've thought about it. However, I am concerned about security/crime. Might be funny for some, but I feel way safer in US than in most expat retirement countries. I know about situation in Lithuania firsthand (or close secondhand) - not a typical retirement destination, but could be one for me. I've been to Mexico, Costa Rica and seen the situation there. So far I'd rather stay in US (and possibly MA). Things may change, who knows. I might be interested in Australia, New Zealand, but I haven't been there, they are currently expensive AFAIK, and they don't like old immigrants (work immigration <50y old, maybe capital immigration not so limited). And, yeah, retirement does not necessarily mean sitting on porch reading paper. I might not retire for long time (or at all). Especially if I'm gonna keep toiling on that $50M nest egg. 8)

Exactly, but anyway not. By that , I suppose, that you measure your day-today return is measured for you in USD by your broker. Yes. I haven't looked at what currencies did.

Considering that pretty much all my Euro stocks are +4-5% today, I think you have French to thank for your trading hubris.

I think that's excessive. 1.5 M for just living? A 4% return on 1.5M will give you 60K a year without touching principle. Social Security will kick in another 30k. Maybe in some cases one would also get some sort of pension from the employer. Assuming you have your house paid off, 90k per year just for living expenses excluding healthcare? Then on top of that 1-1.5M for healthcare? I don't know exactly how expensive services are in the US but again it the amount seems large considering that you have Medicare and Medicare-D coverage. I'm sure some people do use the amounts you've stated but that's definitely not how much you would "need". Further proof is that few people in the US have those kinds of amounts when they retire and somehow they manage to live. I'm not gonna argue with you or Liberty. I fully expected the responses (especially the one from Liberty). Have fun. Just couple notes: - 4% is risky as I said - Social security is nearly BK. I would not expect anything from it - There are no pensions from employers - Medicare is mostly a joke, does not cover a lot of things, and also possibly BK 50M is a good goal. Might not cover all basics though. Gotta go start working on it, you guys can continue the thread. ::)

Assuming not tAIs, I'd say ~$3M to retire in US. This can be analyzed in couple of ways. Simple/trivial: 3% perpetual withdrawal. 4% is IMO too risky for perpetual withdrawal; even with historical data, you can go to zero in quite a few scenarios. 4% is even more risky if you start at elevated market (as now). There's a study somewhere that shows this, no link offhand. More complicated: live on 1.5M-2M and 1M-1.5M for medical/nursing either through a combination of long-term care insurance or whatever. Even more complicated: what SharperDingaan said about 3 retirements. Analyze in/out for each, add inflation predictions, returns, etc. Left as exercise for detail minded.

tAIs. 8)

QFT. I am very pro-US-universities, but it would be great if teaching had bigger priority. Maybe it does in non-STEM fields... not sure. I don't know how music professors are selected, for example. Politics? I think that's what my friend who was music prof said. But even there I think the selection is not really based on teaching. OTOH, I don't think other countries have great teaching traditions either. I know for fact that Lithuania/Russia is way worse in teaching style/content than US. From what I heard about Western Europe (Germany, Belgium, UK), people have said that US teaching is better. The system is different in Europe, but teaching is not prioritized there either.