Jurgis

I quite enjoyed that. Thanks! I enjoyed it too. But to dissect the lessons: 1. Buy when things are in ruins. 2. It's great if you have money when nobody else does. 3. Location, location, location 4. Price, price, ... not as important as #3, but still. The most recent no brainer was Florida after the 2008 bust. I almost bought. I hate dealing with physical business though, so I did not. OTOH, usually if there is RE no brainer, there is also stocks no brainer. See 2008 bust. I think investing in stocks in 1949 Italy would have worked too. Maybe not as great as the prime RE, since RE gets levered returns, but still. So ... who thinks Athens right now? ;) ( did anyone think I'll say "Detroit"? ;) )

No. There is not enough time to "read anything and everything", even if you wanted to. Even cleonard12's set is about full time job every day.

Emphasis mine. Wait what? Source for this?

HOWEVER, you are most assuredly wrong about it being a nano-cap. If this is not a nano-cap, I don't know what is....It's market cap is under $5mm. Was a joke. ;)

Yeah, pretty much this. And now you can buy back the position again. ;) And it's not a real nano-cap if it's trading couple hundred shares a day. Real ones don't trade for weeks. :P But yeah, happens. Sold most of my positions in two nanocaps recently. One ~100% up in two days. One maybe 25% up. The second one back down (I'm not rebuying since I don't like it that much). Was small positions and even with that it took effort to sell close to ask in reasonable size. I kinda see how oddball likes these. 8)

You buy notes and the company issues second lien or secured above you. You buy notes, company goes BK and most of the new equity goes to DIP. Interesting one: you buy notes, company goes BK and the common holders get a better deal than you (see Swift Energy). You are not institutional investor and you can't participate in DIP, conversions to secured, etc.

Munger quote at 10:30 is something like: "In terms of credible institution that serves the wider world, I think, Berkshire's contribution after Warren is dead will utterly dwarf the contribution made while he was alive". I wish I was as optimistic as Munger. I think I've said it before, but I give about 10 years after Buffett dies for BRK to disintegrate into pieces at best.

Thanks rb and Richard.

Get WSJ for miles. Then you don't have to cancel. ;) I'm getting Barron's, Fortune, previously Economist for leftover miles that I would not have used otherwise. I have accounts of 4 people who don't travel enough for miles to be used elsewhere, so that helps.

Sorry for possible OT. We subscribed to Fortune recently. I think it's mostly crap. IMHO, most of it is Wired level infoporn. There's usually maybe 1 serious article and even that usually referenced on CoBF or other place and available through online. So, IMHO, don't waste time trying to read Fortune. I subscribe to Barron's and IMHO it's worth reading, though I do skip through some of it and I find Tom Donlan's editorials to be crap. I don't read WSJ except for few articles posted/referred here. Not enough time. Love Economist, but not enough time to read it either, so stopped subscribing. Edit: I think the time would be better spent reading ARs, 10Ks, 10Qs and really working numbers and understanding the businesses. However, it is easier to read infoporn (even "informative" infoporn like CoBF - sorry guys ;) , Barron's, Economist) than to DD 10Ks/10Qs. With all the encouragement to read, I think that doing stuff is much more worthwhile than reading stuff. But doing stuff is much higher cognitive load (IMHO), so back to infoporn... :'( I think I'd be a wreck at the end of the day if I tried to spend the time I spend on CoBF/Barron's/BRKvideos/etc. on doing heavy accounting or heavy programming instead. ;)

Make a positive impact on the lives of people on this planet. 8)

I don't directly invest in meat-product related companies either, but as you say, this is difficult to avoid in indexes or BRK, FFH. I would not directly invest in tobacco companies. I have some investments in alcohol companies. I would possibly invest directly in KO/PEP, especially since I think that they are moving to more healthy mix due to public pressure (although I don't know if that's true outside US/Europe where the pressure is less).

Great article and as doughishere said fair assessment. +1.

FYI Yahoo newscaster said that the replay will begin shortly for anyone who missed any parts of the webcast. Not sure if this means that recording will be available at any time or if this is just one-of replay.

Thanks to Buffett for webcasting this. 8)

I think Charlie's was a great answer, perfectly summarizing why they're okay with KO. Everything in life has a trade off and it really is about risks vs benefit, in this case that benefit being the pleasure derived. Why is the air travel comparison stupid? Air travel provides benefits that would be impossible without it. Business benefits as well as efficiency benefits. This is very different from "pleasure derived" benefits. You are pretty much saying that Coke is like cigarettes and drugs. OK, I'm fine with that, but Buffett explicitly said he won't invest in cigarettes and the questioner even mentioned it directly. Second, air travel was not engineered to add to fatalities just to increase "pleasure derived". Coke pretty much did the same thing as the cigarette companies by pumping extra crap into drinks to make them more attractive and addictive. Third, I could argue that Coke could try to find the way to maintain or increase the "pleasure derived" while increasing health benefits. And perhaps they do it somewhat now that the pressure is on. That might have been a good direction to take this question to. So, yes air travel comparison is stupid since it's completely different. Its defense here is completely Munger-hero-worship bias. If someone else rather than Munger did it, people would say "apples to oranges" and other non-complimentary things.

To balance: /support Buffett on renewables

Sorry but Coke answers from Warren and Charlie are again totally biased. You'd think they'd be rational. Warren is skirting the issue again by going anecdotal and joking. And Charlie... come on "benefit"? Loading fizzy water with tons of carbs is not benefit. Comparing that to deaths in air travel is stupid (sic. I'm free to use the word he used).

Me. Let's have a powwow. We can stay up late, swapping manly stories, and in the morning, I'm making waffles! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126029/quotes

Prem's explanation of "100% hedging of equities" is that he doesn't want to wake up to 40%+ drop in the markets, very little to invest and need to get additional cushion for insurance businesses in the worst possible time. Of course, I'd say he probably should just hold cash then. He has not shown himself to be a great market-neutral investor. There might be people who can show positive results with 100% hedges, but he doesn't seem to be one of them. Disclosure: I hold a large position in FFH. I don't subscribe to a lot of Prem's theories, but at current market valuation, FFH may be pretty good investment for majority of scenarios. Rabid bull market - which is one risk for FFH - is quite unlikely at current valuations (at least in US).

Settlement negotiations? Who needs settlement negotiations. That's low energy. Listen, GSEs are very successful businesses, they employ thousands of people. Is it a crime to take these low energy profits from them? Well, maybe it is, maybe it isn’t—who knows? We gonna make GSEs great again. We gonna make Obama administration build the capital and pay for it. They say "how’d you gonna do it? How?” And I say one word: “leadership.”

$30 or so used on Amazon.com Though now the price will probably go through the roof...

That's an offer my wife cannot refuse. 8)

Somebody offered you millions for wife and kid? Can I get a contact number? Maybe I'll sell mine. 8)

I doubt that the wedding size or "quality" (in terms of food, glitz, whatever) has big correlation with the happiness of wedded life afterwards. So I partially agree with Dshachory. But then also as I said in other message, do whatever makes you guys happy. 8) I suggest going for the naked underwater wedding in Antarctica