Jurgis

I can't drink sparkling water (does not work for me). I stopped drinking sodas by switching to tea. Even sweetened tea - I drink both sweetened and unsweetened about half/half - has way less sugar than soda. Now I drink some plain water too, but still mostly teas (black, green, white, herbal). Diet sodas always tasted like crap, so never drank them. Sorry, Warren. ;)

Great letter. Way to go Melinda, Bill and Warren!

Since we have a bunch of poker players and a bunch of Canadians on CoBF, this might be interesting: AI wins poker tournament: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/01/robot-knows-when-to-hold-em-wins-huge-in-poker-tournament/ Most articles don't mention this, but currently poker AI can handle only one-vs-one play. It cannot handle one-vs-many play yet. U Alberta poker research ( http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/ https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.01724v2.pdf ) promises to run on laptop (vs. CMU supercomputer above) and still win. Disclaimer: I am not a poker player and not an expert in the research above.

In private I'd ask if he really believes that you don't need superhigh IQ to be great investor. It seems to me that this would be hard for him to judge without bias since he ... well they ... do have superhigh IQ ;) In private I'd ask the following: he suggests that 9X% of people should be passive investors. How would he help someone self-evaluate whether they should be the active investor? Are there qualities that would answer this question for the person themselves or for an intelligent knowledgeable external observer such as him? My comment on this: if you have to look at 10+ year return, then you're pushing a lot of 9X%ers into spending 10 years and subpar returns to determine that they are indeed 9X%ers.

Depression: not a solution for everyone, but check your vitamin D levels. A friend ;) had depression (not medically diagnosed, so can't say how bad it would have been judged, but with suicidal thoughts, etc.), was suggested to use vitamin D for unrelated issue (elevated blood pressure), depression was gone in couple months.

I bought a timeshare without reading fine print. Now I'm myself only one week a year. Rest of the time I'm somebody else. (see also "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell")

I just realized that to be a great investor one just needs to get stoned once in a while. 8) It's just that simple bros. OMG these effing liberals in blue states figured it out first. Again. ::)

Fidelity rule. Apparently the firm that would not be named allows it. Push Fido to change the rule. I try to once in a while.

Do you think that govt can afford the return of full NWS to GSEs without a big budgetary issue? If you think the return of full NWS to GSEs is easy/affordable/won't crash into congress/debt ceiling/etc., then yeah, "par" scenarios are more likely.

IMO, it's somewhat hard to evaluate probabilities in this case. Let me try to enumerate possible "not-par" scenarios: 1. Plaintiffs lose at court level, government does not withdraw the case. This is probably 5-10% chance right now. Although I am probably biased by the echo chamber of this thread which doesn't even contemplate such case. Possibly the chance is higher. 2. Govt cancels NWS, does not reinstitute pref divvies until GSEs have sufficient capital (in 5-10??? years). I think this is quite likely. Possibly 40% or higher. What is the pref valuation in such case? I guess plaintiffs continue suing for return of all NWS money since it was instituted... but then IMHO case 1 has much higher probability. I don't see how govt can afford to return all NWS money since it was instituted without a big fight. 3. Recession with house price drop and GSEs are insolvent again unless government backstops them. Yeah, new govt backstop would not negate previous legal case, but it still would complicate things enormously. How can govt backstop GSEs if they don't know their standing from previous court cases? I'd say this is something like 15% chance within next couple years. Note that this is independent of scenarios 1 and 2 somewhat. 4. Congress decides to close GSEs, nationalize them, or redo them into new-GSEs. These probably does not invalidate the legal cases, since they have past priority, so perhaps this is not worth inclusion into probabilities. 5. Govt removes GSE govt backstop. Where would prefs/common trade without govt backstop? Even assuming reversal of NWS and return all that money to GSEs (which I think is unlikely)? I'd say this is unlikely (5%?). There's likely some convoluted legal/political scenarios that I am missing. Now for the "par" scenarios: 1P. Settlement that does not invalidate NWS. I see how this is reachable for prefs (just return par value). I am not sure how common shareholders would agree to this. So IMO this is something that govt would like, but I am not sure if it is reachable now that the plaintiffs smell profits. Plaintiffs probably would have agreed on this with Dem administration, but not sure they would agree now. 2P. Invalidate NWS. I don't see how govt can deal with this, but perhaps people here assume this is workable. Anyway, I think that market is valuing prefs pretty efficiently right now with ~40% chance of par return.

Thanks for your thoughts and numbers. I am more skeptical than you (and most of this board). I realized that I'm getting close to negative Kelly's. Will probably sell (part or all) if we get more runup. Within some model perturbations Kelly's at current prices goes positive/negative at ~0.4 probability of success.

OK. What is the probability of pref return to par?

For US investors it would be interesting to figure out which ones of these would be considered PFICs. US legalese hitting Swedish legalese, oh my. :-\

Thanks. I think. 8)

Mags for miles caveat: WSJ and Barron's are theoretically available "for new subscribers only". I have a bunch of name/miles that I rotate through, so I have not been declined. Not sure what happens if you sit on the same name/miles. Mags for miles sub takes ~2-6 weeks to activate. You may or may not get digital sub: in principle you should, but sometimes they don't send you email credentials. Then it might be tough to get, since digital sub asks for your print sub number, which might not be available on the delivered paper. I guess you can call the paper...

I don't believe that's the one. :/ Shoulda asked for reference. The one you mention is also interesting. 8) Pointers to it?

+1. I get Barron's like this. It's available for miles from pretty much all major airlines (United, American, Delta). If you have friends/family who don't fly a lot, it's a great way to keep miles from expiring and get something useful back (for cheap option to keep miles alive, subscribe to Money - it's actually pretty good and useful in some ways).

I like how everyone gets trolled by ScottHall. Yeah guys, ScottHall is completely serious! Nobody can criticize the zommander in Chief, least of all some kind of puritan roundhead from beantown! Arrest him immediately and force him to disgorge his tax returns investor letters! Throw him across the wall and make him pay for it by reprinting his book!

There is the Marshmallow Experiment, you don't eat one then later you get two, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment Yeah, I know the Marshmallow Experiment. The one I refer to was something different and pretty recent AFAIK.

I did not get impression that Klarman is great marketeer. I got more of an impression that he does not give a f. Yeah, my book is selling for $3K, I could reprint, but who gives a f. I got impression he was also rather bland about his book rather than pumping it as some kind of miracle. Is his fund even looking for more investors? Isn't it closed? I never got a feeling he cared about getting more investors either.

I've said it in the past, but I'm not really impressed with WSJ. I've had free copies of it at hotels/companies/airlines. Every time I've read a copy I felt it was not worth it. I have a subscription to Barron's and I think it's worth it. I have subscribed to digital Washington Post this year, but I don't read it cover-to-cover and I'm not sure I'm gonna renew. I got free x-week subscription to digital NY Times. Not sure gonna renew that either. Just my opinion.

Training pigeon to receive reward by not pecking on the light: I've been told that in experiment with US university students about 2/3 could not (would not?) learn the pattern "if you don't do anything, you get reward". I don't have reference to the experiment unfortunately.

+1 Google better watch their hindside, they are inviting big troubles in this area. Expect to see some major litigation. You guys are aware that all ad money allocation for this goes to original content owner as soon as the content is claimed by such owner (possibly via automatic tools) and retroactively? There is a reason why there are takedowns, but there's pretty much no litigation.

Nice documentary.

Here you go: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/your-20082009-experience/ Maybe different from what you want.