Jurgis

The implication seems to be that you had to wait 25 years to break even! But adjusting for dividends and inflation, it only took 7 years for investors to break even!! The dividend yield at the stock market bottom in 1933 was close to 14% !!! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/your-money/stocks-and-bonds/26stra.html?_r=0 !!!! A better measure of market performance would be from Shiller data or even simulated S&P 500 numbers, since Dow is not a good representation of the market and it was unduly impacted by its decision in the late 1930's to drop IBM from its index! Thank you! Vinod! I love the exclamation points!!!! 8) +1 !!!!

You seem to forget that SP500 operate internationally, so equating their growth with US GDP growth is rather tenuous. Most of their growth could come from EM that could grow 5%+. That said, I won't argue with ~5%'ish return for SP500 for next decade from here.

And I was not answering to you. Have a good one.

Since people are asking, I pretty much agree with maverick's, morningstar's, and Picasso's positions. I also find the propaganda of some longs that government's actions destroyed US, capitalism and apple pie to be distasteful. It's pretty much mind f*cking for your monetary and ideological positions. Edit: I think that government probably should have nationalized GSEs from the very beginning instead of current semi limbo state and 2012 (?) NWS - not that this would have made longs happier. That said, I have a not-16% position because I believe the expected probable return is somewhat attractive. And I will abide with whatever judicial outcome we get. ;) It reminds me, that it's not so bad, It's not so bad

BTW, Bruce can blow up even if he wins litigation eventually. All that needs to happen is continued redemptions from his funds because of bad performance. Assume that litigation win comes in 5 years (yeah, I know people suggested that things will resolve faster - do you legal types have a litigation maturity graph? what's the best/median/worst case?). If FAIRX continues underperforming for couple more years, he can lose enough capital to need to sell FNMA positions into weak market. That's one of the reasons I think his position is crazy. Anyway, I should shut up. Yo.

Value is a funny term though. Do you meant market value or intrinsic value? Because I could make a good argument for intrinsic value being higher than market value for a number of stocks. (Jeez, I hope I can -- otherwise, we're all in the wrong business...) I meant 2x book. I know that there's a good argument for paying for the jockey and buying a mutual-fund-alike (sans redemptions) for 2x book. And yet, would you?

Somebody asked if Bruce was crazy to put 16% into this. OK, I will answer without resorting to Eminem: IMO, he is crazy. That's somewhat based on his other positions too, BTW. The counterargument to the "Bruce knows sh17, so he increases position" is "Bruce is blinded by his positions and biases and so he increases position". I'm in the second camp, but I don't give a crap about Bruce, his motivation, his performance and his fund, so I'm not gonna argue about it here. You can do anything you set your mind to, man Yo

Yes, also for mutual-fund-like companies (like PSH and perhaps old BRK), there is a question why would you pay more than 1x the value of market-traded-investments. People pretty much laughed at Ackman when he suggested that PSH should trade at 2x. Perhaps they did not like the jockey though. ;)

People who think that BRK was worth 10x book value in 1965 should buy their favorite platform company at 2x today and hold forever. 2x for PSH anyone? 8) No, seriously, I'm only partially sarcastic. If you believe in the jockey a lot, you could assign them a lot of value and buy their platform for 2x or 3x or whatever. Personally, I don't have confidence in any jockey to do that, although I think some of my purchases (FRMO, PRDGF, etc.) may look as if I do.

Quicken. Requires work though.

Are you implying that they will do more than 10-12% compounded if interest rates stay low? If only it were really that easy. Why would anyone buy any of these stocks if they did not expect at least 10-12% compounded for long period of time? So, yeah, I think he's implying this and I would imply it too for the ones that I hold from this list: aapl, bac, brkb Although I don't hold wfc, axp, ibm, xom, I can see reasonable scenarios where all of them return >10% for coming 10+ years.

Oh, there goes Berkowitz, he choked He's so mad, but he won't give up that easy? No He won't have it, he knows DC's whole back ropes It don't matter, he's dope, he knows that, but he's broke He's so stacked that he knows...

We need Picasso quoting Eminem here pronto.

I'm just happy that I live in a "global city" Boston and can buy an OK house in OK burbs for $400-500K or so. Not sure what I would do if I was forced to live in the "global city" of Silly Valley or some other multi-million $ place. Of course, part of my choice was not to live in Silly Valley. Price ranges differ for different people. For me, the RE is not worth it when you have to pay an amount of money that you could just retire on in cheaper but still OK location. Somewhere in the range of US$1M-2M and up. Just for fun in OKish exurbs of "global city" of Chicago, you can buy places for $200K or so... Climate not much different from Toronto. ;)

No. This rally is for real Slim Shady. All you other Slim Shadys are just imitating. including the one one with orange hair toupe

I dont think you have met Amazon or Facebook investors. :) Vinod OT. Unfortunately I have. Google, Apple and Netflix investors too. :/ Seriously though - (still off topic) - you look at this and say: OMG, this is so simple; it should be so simple; if only I bought any of FAANG 10+ years ago and held... (no really this is OT and should be moved out if we continue this ;)).

Do you have concrete examples of this or are we talking completely abstractly? Without examples, my reaction is that it might be obvious to you what x is, but it is not necessarily obvious to everyone and especially not necessarily at the time when stock is bought or sold. Assuming that x is obvious, people would not buy it at 2x, but they might sell at 0.5x if they believe that price is going to 0.2x or if they are scared or they see other opportunities at 0.3y or they need money for something else (like covering margin, paying mortgage, etc.).

Investing is hard. Outperforming is very hard. Good luck to them. You can see what they hold (held?) at http://chouamerica.com/

Did you ever look at oil co prices recently? ;) You sell because: 1. What you thought was cheap is not really at current oil price/economic conditions/etc. This applies not only to commodity businesses, but I won't give other examples not to stir hornets' nests. Check out some of the long threads. ;) 2. What went down 80% can go down another 80% and holding will just make you feel stupid. In worst case it can go down another 100% to zero. So selling at 80% down is not necessarily a mistake. 3. You sell because you just give up. No longer believe in value, in your analysis, etc. Might be mistake, might be not. But, yeah, we've been having a very nice scare recently. Not in US indexes though. Disclosure: I hold some oil company stocks and bonds. Some of them went to almost zero and are/will be BK. I have sold stocks/bonds in the past at 80-90% losses. I have held stocks that went down 80-90% and then went up 10x. I have held stocks that went down 80-90% and then went down another 100%. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe ... ... sorry wrong movie. 8)

And then Kernen weaseled into March Madness ticket. Some guys get everything it seems. :P ::) ;D

The most exciting part is before Buffett joins: JOE KERNEN: 06:02:38:00 ... So I said, "You know what? I can't-- I'm not gonna choose, I'm goin' to bed." And I went to bed before 8:00, so (LAUGH) I have no-- I have no idea-- what-- BECKY QUICK: 06:02:52:00 Well, I was with you. JOE KERNEN: 06:02:53:00 Huh? :o 8) ;D

As usual, great article by The Economist. A+++. I probably should subscribe (again) just to support them.

I would. But it would depend on the government - and that's clearly your chance to say "Aha, EU is not the good government" - and I may partially agree. :) And, yes, I might be biased, because I believe that EU government is better than Lithuanian or Hungarian governments. In case of UK, my guess that there are parts of EU rules and regulations that are better than what UK has had, there are parts that are bad and negatively impacting UK. IMO, pro-exit'ers are closing their eyes on benefits and perhaps some pro-EUers are closing their eyes on negatives. I don't know exactly what the balance is for UK, but even if the balance is somewhat negative (not overwhelmingly negative), I'd stay with pro-EU. BTW, I may be exaggerating, but a lot of arguments for Brexit sound like arguments that could be used to argue about splitting USA or Canada into pieces. I don't think that would be a great idea either. ;) Edit: BTW, I should acknowledge that there is some reason in your 2 counterarguments. I don't think I agree with them completely - my counterargument to a) would be USA, my counterargument to b) is that I am not talking about bailouts but rather about rules/laws and moral/ethical/philosophical influence. IMHO, young generation of Eastern Europeans benefited a lot from the EU values, rules and laws, even if sometimes there are countermovements against them.

And that's the nationalist egoistic argument to exit. "We would do better without EU". Maybe - although I think ni-co is right and you won't. But then let's split England from Wales, London from the rest of the England, and so on. Cause why support those less rich and less productive regions? They just benefit more from you than you from them. ::) The whole reason for EU is that it improves Europe on average. There are some benefits for rich countries, there are some benefits for poorer countries. There are benefits for well (or OK) governed countries, there are benefits for less well governed ones. But yeah, the benefits are not equally distributed and some of them are not even acknowledged as benefits by some (like internal job migration). It's an easy and wrong solution for rich country/region/etc. to leave just because they are presumably getting less than they are putting in. In my opinion both sides lose from this decision. But even if only the "poorer" or "more bureaucratic" side lost, the decision would still be wrong.

Possibly OT: IB amended their 1099 on Feb 22. I was lucky that I did not file last week. Amendments suck. Hopefully they are done. I'll probably wait couple more weeks though.