Jurgis

So a mathematical construct that you proposed and that does not work for n==2 somehow magically starts to work for n=500? Really? I could construct an example with 500 stocks and real world, but it's a waste of my time if you don't understand math. Have fun.

Not true. Let's say index is two stocks: C1 10 shares at $10 C2 10 shares at $10 and we have two investors: I1 holding 10 shares in C1 and 9 shares in C2 I2 holding 1 share in C2 C2 goes to $20 (nobody's selling, nobody's buying and the bid/ask just goes there OR we can have a bunch of trades where I1/I2 are trading and run up the price to $20 - just have to be careful to set this correctly). I2 outperforms the index. I1 underperforms. On dollar weighted basis I2 is < 1/10 of the index and he's the only one outperforming. BTW if you say just "half investors outperform", that's wrong too.

The following is going to be controversial. Don't read if you have dreams of working as value investor. You've been warned. 8) For young people who are thinking of becoming great investors (value or whatever other approach), I would say that this is a crappy life plan. Couple reasons for that. First, very very very few people outperform. Most people on CoBF don't outperform. Most of 0.1% of 1% don't outperform. Sure you can gather fees without outperforming, but if that's your life plan, then just call the spade a spade and call yourself a good salesperson or a good financial advisor (yeah, the kind who is part trusted financial person, part psychologist, part priest). Don't call yourself great investor. Nothing bad in being good financial advisor. They are rare breed IMO and definitely needed. (Fee gathering salespeople... CPA's them...) Second, even if you're one of the people who will outperform, IMO the outperformance will become harder and harder going forward. There's maybe 10-15 more years of viability. After that - if we get superhuman AI - and we will - kiss this good bye. Maybe even way before superhuman general AI. Want proof? Poker players can already say goodbye to their jobs ... Of course, AI won't be allowed into poker tournaments - they are for genuine humans only - but in the market nobody knows you're a dog AI. Third, even if you're one of the people who will outperform, most likely you also have IQ and capacity to do great things in other areas. Choose something productive rather than moving money from point A to point B and earning fees and/or cap gains. Go into computer science, biotech, robotics, space, boring company :P, energy, etc. More on the entrepreneurial side? Go start a company. Build something. You'll make tons of money in it too. And you'll probably make a world better place. Way more contribution than just investing. (Yeah, I know Buffett's 90%+ donation is also making world better place. You gonna sign a pledge to follow his footsteps?) And if you really want, you can still value invest on the side. 8) Not that the above will persuade anyone to change their path.

Do you mean you can't buy stocks that are trading in the OTC? Fido does not allow you to buy OTC stocks with No Info and some other designations (Grey Info?). You can buy OTC stocks with current financials. Some OTC stocks may fluctuate between the two as/when they file financials with OTC markets (I guess).

Go Fido! Screw that other firm that should not be mentioned. 8) And just when I got a distribution of past bankruptcy in stock ~$90 value and I was thinking whether to waste $7.95 to sell it.

No symbol anymore. Arm Holdings sold to Softbank last year. Previously traded as ARMHY, ARMH, ARM (London).

7% boundary in the poll was not chosen accidentally, you know. 8)

My mistakes similar to yours: buying at cheap (or somewhat expensive) price, selling within a year or couple for wash or minor gain, then watching X-baggers roll in: GOOGL, AAPL, ARMHY, FB (at IPO), Tencent (somewhat - I think I got out with ~2-3 bagger out of 200 bagger). In case someone wants non-tech example: HANS that became MNST. ARMHY was possibly the most egregious one, since I bought it really cheap close to bottom in early 2Ks. Long term similar mistake: BRK in the 1990's. What make these possibly worse than yours is that I "knew what I was doing" when I bought and sold.

Yeah, it's not business as usual, but as others have said, he's likely still buying. Or negotiating a full purchase of LUV? So he won't say anything until that's resolved... Overall, don't expect him to mention any investment that he's still actively changing (buying/selling).

We should probably move further discussion to General and start new thread. So, please teach me how to make better decisions in selecting investment managers. My goal is to beat SP500 after fees (preferably by x%+). I am willing to pay fees for that. What's next?

I'd rather buy this house for 13.5M rather than lunch with Warren for 3.4M. 8) We are talking relative value though... ;D

At the risk of inflaming this thread to another 400 pages, here are couple things that Mnuchin can probably do that won't make current shareholders happy: - Stop NWS as of now, but not roll back past NWS. Yeah, this is not a quick solution and I know everyone criticized me when I suggested this as possible step. - With weak legal situation, perhaps Mnuchin can settle for sub-par conversion of prefs to common plus huge common dilution with govt position, etc.? The argument against this is that this would be "Obama/Clinton" thing to do, but why not? Yeah, his buddies are screwed... but shareholders might take scraps now that legal situation is weak. Anyway, I'm not arguing the above solutions are high probability. But IMO between this and potential Congress "input", there might be some not-so-great outcomes for shareholders. Let's ask this differently? Who still thinks that par-solution has higher than 40% probability?

Well, apparently legal expertise was either outcome biased or the dice just fell on "low probability" scenario. ;) I mostly agree with you. :) I still hold position, but might trim/sell depending.

Cause obviously Warren fans will plonk down $XXX per night to stay in a house Warren owned. ::) Even if you got $1000 per night 365 days a year, your yield is something like 2.7% without any costs accounted for. IDK, maybe you can rent this as a posh vacation rental... but not because of Warren connection. The house is huge to get a high rent, but otoh the location and neighbor overlook does not really make it a posh high price rental...

This as always been "coin toss type of investment". You made some kind of estimate of probability of court win and/or administration settling/etc., you calculated market-assigned probability and you compared the two for investing or not investing. Edit: For prefs Kelly's threshold probability has now dropped to ~0.25.

Wow, so pretty much a single court opinion changed the tone of this thread from "100% illegal" to "obama administration may have had power to do what it did with nws". I thought you guys had way more arguments for legal victory. OK, so now the investment is at Mnuchin decision only?

Hah, I guess I should have followed my own suggestion and lightened up. ;) Well if you guys loved the prefs at ~35% par, you should buy by the bushel at ~25% par... 8)

The Omaha house next to Buffett was probably a better deal...

People are talking about the 1993-2002 ::) 2002-2015 is available even through Amazon both Kindle and hardcover...

Re ordering, let me Bing that for you: WSJ: http://www.djreprints.com/framed-reprints-descriptions/ - IMO crappy website, not clear what's available, crappy prices NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/search/archives/archives.html - much better ;)

Munger is being a bit disingenuous when he says that BRK, Costco and Li Lu's fund ::) is just three stocks... Clearly Li Lu's fund is not a single stock. And BRK is not really a single stock either ... hey it's more like a fund that has over 50 stock positions by now plus what 20+ operating businesses? It's almost the same as saying, "I just hold a single stock and it's called SPY". ::)

Prem stated the same goal in last year's AGM.

LOL ;D

Fnuny you aksed: http://export.arxiv.org/pdf/1608.02214 In general the spelling checking/correction state of the art is likely way better than what you get, especially in a browser editor. However, there's likely hundreds of "spell checker" codebases in the world and probably none (well maybe 1-2) use anything close to latest technology. If I had to guess, some mobile typing apps should have close to latest technology, but I can't say much more.