Jurgis

This comparison is not correct. Unlike swimming which is unlimited sum game (if you teach everyone to swim really really well, there is no limit or restrictions how well they can do apart of human capacity to swim), salaries are limited by the revenues of the businesses. Even if you taught everyone to be Buffett or Jamie Dimon or John Malone - which is admirable and I would be very happy if this happened - some people would still have to serve Big Macs, some would have to assemble cars, and some would still be CEOs. And unfortunately, even if you are trained to be Buffett, you will not get paid CEO salary while serving Big Macs. Tech startup model with options is the only model that somewhat pays low level workers big bucks. But this is not gonna happen in other industries. So the problem exists even if you trained and educated the workers as much as you can.

It's interesting that T&T are investing in Liberties while Buffett talks against leverage. ;) I know, I know: Liberties are "good" leverage and T&T are independent. But still. ;) Disclosure: I have positions in BRK and Liberties.

Where do I apply? :o :-*

IIUC compensations of Berkshire unit leaders are nothing interesting/special. So I guess Buffett doesn't work on having interesting compensation plans for his sub-CEOs. Apart from Todd and Ted. Or am I missing some interesting stuff there? (I might, since I don't follow the buyout agreements of some BRK subs in detail).

Possibly OT, since I'm not retired or close to, but I'd probably keep 200K in cash if I was retired. Right now I keep less than that.

I forwarded to some people who might be interested in this opportunity. I'll let you guys know if any of them contact Doris and get a position. :)

Well, I vote against the compensation proposals of most companies where I hold shares. However, like Buffett said, it's very hard to change anything. Boards are usually management friendly. Most shareholders vote party line or don't vote at all. In big companies big shareholders are index funds that vote party line or don't vote at all. Government can't do a lot. There is already a salary limit of $1M (or is it $2M?) above which company faces some tax repercussions IIRC. This does not matter, since companies just make CEO salaries $1M and pay the rest as easy-to-get bonus. BTW, like Uccmal said, it's very hard to legislate or even devise a scheme that cannot be subverted by smart CEO/board. And we already had VRX's Pearson who was taking no salary and just stock compensation - which is thought to be ideal by a lot of people - and look how this ended. There is also the fact that some superstar CEOs are worth their pay (Buffett says he'd pay the multimillions to Jamie Dimon), though most are probably not worth it. In general, we need humankind as a whole to step up in ethics (including altruism, generosity and more concern and support for others). And not only because of income inequality, but also because we might blow ourselves up if we can't temper our conflicts in the coming century or so. But it's very hard. Changing people's morality and attitudes is very slow. And our combative and egocentric nature reasserts itself given opportunity or conflict situations.

Tipping a lot benefits quite specific socioeconomic slice. If that's what you want to achieve with your charity money, then OK. Otherwise, not. Personally I donate to charities that are likely very different from what I would do with tipping more. Apart from some charities that I have personal connection with, I donate to WWF and some charities from http://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/

Perhaps we should split this into another thread. Comparative valuation is not easy. Let's take BRK and a number of "Buffett-approved" companies. By "Buffett-approved", I mean companies that are owned by BRK, Munger or where Buffett talked positively about management and owning the stock but doesn't own it for some reason (usually we are talking banks here - Buffett just buys more WFC instead of something else). So: AXP, BAC, JPM. I don't believe the following are cheap, but they also have been mentioned/approved/owned by Buffett: MCO, KO, DIS, V, MA, COST. Buffett approved, cheap, but I don't like them: DE, IBM. Feel free to add others. So how would you compare valuations and quality of these companies to BRK and would you invest in them rather than in BRK at this point in time? Personally, I hold some AXP, BAC, JPM, MCO, DIS, COST. All things being equal, I'd probably just buy BRK instead of all of these. But things are not equal - I am concerned about Buffett's mortality (and this is yet another thread, but I'm am gonna sell BRK the moment Buffett dies and I'm not changing my mind on this). So things not being equal I could add to AXP, BAC, JPM now rather than adding to BRK. What are your guys thoughts though? Are any of the Buffett-approved companies attractive enough for you to buy them instead of BRK? Or even sell BRK and buy company XXXX? Why or why not?

He's saying that people are buying other (worse) companies for worse valuations at the time they could buy easily analyzed (by Buffett himself) BRK at 1.2-1.4 book. At least that's my interpretation. :) I somewhat agree that if you buy non-BRK, it may be worthwhile to compare it with BRK and decide if the non-BRK is cheaper and/or better company than BRK. Otherwise why buy the non-BRK?

Picasso, you go man! 8) ;D 8) Harambe lives!

I disagree with this. Someone looking where everybody else isn't would have automatic advantage only if the pool of companies/stocks they are looking at is of similar quality than the one where others are looking. But that's not true most of the time. Most of the time the companies/stocks in "contrarian pool" are actually (much?) more crappy than in the other pool. So, yeah, the guy gets advantage due to "other people not looking", but they get a disadvantage because the pool is crappier. And I disagree with your claim that the advantage automatically outweighs disadvantage. In other words, if you fish by the known fishing hole, you have more competition, but you also have a tons of large good quality fish there. If you go where people know the fishes don't swim, you have less competition but fewer and smaller fish. The secret of course is to find ignored fishing hole with a lot of large fish, but that doesn't happen automatically by just being contrarian. And yeah, sure it happens that ignored holes exist at various times for various reasons. Whether for growth investing or value investing or art investing. ;)

On the third hand, maybe I should buy Picasso. People say that art is ass appraised which would make it interesting. ;D

You can still access old Yahoo format on https://ca.finance.yahoo.com But it will have Canadian news and such

I vote for Picasso to buy PIR. :)

OT. The issue with reducing fossil fuel consumption is that a lot of solutions have high costs and/or NIMBY issues. E.g. building fast rail infrastructure (costs + some NIMBY), nuclear (costs and NIMBY), etc. They might be good long term in terms of costs. They might be very good if climate change risks are really nonlinear and catastrophic. Unfortunately, it is very hard to convince people that climate change risks are nonlinear and catastrophic. Even people who agree that climate change is happening and is going to cause issues are not very likely to support large very costly projects. OTOH, the "feel good" solutions mostly have very limited impact and/or don't solve the problems. E.g. more efficient cars drop the fuel consumption few percent (that gets immediately reversed by China/India/etc. energy consumption growth). Issues with solar/wind are necessity to maintain the gas/coal generation for peak usage (or develop very-large-scale energy storage that is not there yet even with Tesla's powerpacks) and new costly/NIMBY transmission lines. Not saying we shouldn't do this, but these will unlikely reduce emissions to prevent the climate change. I've just finished watching one of Vaclav Smil's lectures ( ) and even though I find him a bit too pessimistic about technological solutions, he has a lot of good arguments why change is tough and will be slow even if people supported it (which they mostly don't - and mostly for cost reasons). But this probably should be split into another thread for any detailed discussions.

Picasso, you are right. :)

Yawn, I've heard that "buying what no one will own" story 10+ years ago. Yeah, sometimes it works - when someone like Picasso does really deep DD and buys a special situation. And then sometimes it works crap. Buying industries in secular decline, good for you if you really buy it supercheap and get out of the way of the steamroller before it flattens you. Or turnarounds that usually don't turn. The fact that nobody else is touching some stocks or industries does not make them wrong and you right. Contrarianism only works if you have a variant perception. LOL. I said it. ;D Good luck, have fun. :)

Picasso, your spiel is making me seriously consider buying AXP... ::)

Haha lol just saw this: http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.com/2016/07/record-valuation-spreads.html Timely for this discussion, no? ;D

More like "screw that! I'm gonna crap on neighbor's doorstep".

I think I mentioned Wegmans in one of the past threads. Yeah, mostly love it. :) I'll be grumpy old man and complain about some things: (here you go Schwab711 :)) - Their prepared food buffet selections went downhill since the store opened. :'( Indian food disappeared. Fewer veggie options. :( (This might be based on demand - I know I usually like items that are not popular - a bunch of food items that I like have been discontinued in various food stores ... and restaurants :'( ) - Wife buys fruit tarts - more expensive than in small (chain?) bakery... - Pretty far away from us (haha, we still go there once a month or so). - Cheese selection is large, but Romano that we buy elsewhere is either not available or quite expensive. - They don't stock mini bananas - Frozen vegetarian dinner selection is not that great. Whole Foods has better though expensive, Trader Joes has better and cheaper, normal supermarkets had pretty good selection in the past but nowadays it's crap here in MA. - Fever Tree Lemon Bitter was not stocked last time we were there. The guy was helpful, but could not find any. QQ. (BTW, anyone for great and expensive upcoming drinks company: buy FEVR London ... I managed to miss it even though we were drinking the fricking tonic for last 3 years or so... crap). On recent positive notes Wegman's brand sorbet was good. Trader Joes is still great too, although their limited selection means that you have to go elsewhere for a lot of items. And then we have HMart - Korean supermarket - oh la la. :) Plus Russian food store down in Boston for Easter European food... but that's OT. :)

I've seen couple of these on the road. I'm very surprised that this is legal (IIRC they did have local MA license plates).

Unless your inflows/outflows are a large chunk of your portfolio ( either because your portfolio is small or you are getting huge chunks of money from Don Vito 8) ), it's likely that dollar-vs.-time average will be close.

But, I agree it would be interesting to get Allan's thoughts on this. RIP Harambe They shot the wrong ape. :'( RIP.