ATLValue

About the same cost as the lunch with Warren

Same!

Regrettably I won't be able to make it to Omaha this weekend for the meeting. Does anyone know any good live blogs that they plan to follow on Saturday during the meeting? Any other way to follow the Q&A session that I haven't thought of? Thanks in advance!

I was listening to an interview from Jeremy Grantham and he made the comment that every single recession is preceded by an asset bubble. If we pay attention to obvious asset bubbles we should have a warning of what is to come. The hard part is timing.

Dalio has some interesting things to say on cycles: http://www.economicprinciples.org/

I cut the cord and added Hulu

Another INTJ here. I used to work as an investment banker and when we did this test one day in the office about 50% of us scored INTJ as well. Thanks for starting this thread!

I'd be interested in Baupost letters, they seem a little hard to track down!

Another megatrend is hispanic population growth in the US. This could be a very profitable trend to exploit, hispanic supermarkets, hispanic products, growth in the south, southwest - lots of opportunity.

I think there will be a secular trend away from established advertising forms. Duh More importantly and somewhat related I think there will be a secular trend away from established Brands in developed markets (it is actually happening already in the US). I'm not talking about luxury brands or aspirational brands like BMW, Hermes or Dior but rather consumer branded products from Kraft, Kellogg and P&G. The internet and social media have made brands less relevant as large companies are slow to follow trends and traditional advertising becomes less effective. http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2012/03/26/only-one-quarter-of-american-consumers-are-brand-loyal/

Thanks for the posts so far, this is a topic I've been thinking about recently as well. I have a few questions and would love to get some outside opinions: 1) Does anyone have a preference on buying condos vs. single family homes. Apart from the additional HOA fees I have heard that condos tend to underperform the broader market but I'm not sure if this was just specific to the area that person was familiar with (Hartford, CT area). 2) What is the right amount of leverage to put on a rental property. 25% with a year of cash to cover vacancies, repairs and other expenses seems reasonable to me but I would love to hear more experienced real estate investors opinion. 3) Say you have accumulated a portfolio of 30 apartments, how easy is it to sell that portfolio? Is there an active market for portfolios like this? 4) At what point does the investor start being able to fund their investment properties with commercial mortgages on the portfolio vs. individual mortgages 5) Have people had more success working with smaller regional banks than larger banks? Thanks in advance!

One key distinction for the auto parts retailers is that they are basically convenience stores. Their top selling products every month are usually motor oil, fluids and car batteries, all high margin products that people purchase out of necessity based on the location of the nearest retailer. Autozone in particular has their branded battery line, Duralast. The most impressive thing about these retailers though is their cash conversion cycle. Their payables terms sometimes extend past 365 DAYS and average over 100!

Parsad, I really like the Grateful Dead never-ending tour comment hahaha I was actually going to make a similar comment about level of exposure, it seems like they are beyond the point of diminishing return. I don't really understand their motives for making so many appearances which raising some red flags in my mind (rightly or wrongly)

My favorite spot for cheap business books is my local Goodwill. I'm lucky because I live in a relatively affluent part of Atlanta and the people who donate to the store seem to donate a large number of business related books. It is really easy to come across a lot of the classic books by Jim Collins and Peter Drucker and every once in a while I'll find a book on value investing. I usually don't find anything but when I do the book is $2.00 max.

While I really respect and feel that I've learned a lot from Pabrai I feel that he is very inconsistent. The biggest example for me was his chapter on the Kelly Formula and concentrated portfolios.

I just finished reading this book after seeing it referenced a few times in various threads. I thought it was one of the better books that I have read about investing. A fault of mine is that I can be quick to judge other investing styles that are different than my own but I found myself intrigued by all of the stories in this book. The author's writing style brings each investor to life and while each chapter is formatted similarly the information is consistently unique and interesting. I highly recommend this book and if anyone has read anything similar to this one that they can suggest please let me know!

Sold CTCM

Also bought some MAT this week

I just took a look at my account to remind myself what my biggest losses were this year and considering some of the discussions on this forum I think it is pretty funny that they turned out to be Biglari Holdings and the Sandridge preferred (SDRXP). With BH I bought a little, kept doing research on the company and ultimately became completely disillusioned with management because of his compensation scheme. I purchased the Sandridge preferred's for the yield and opportunity to participate in any upside with the common and ended up selling after receiving one dividend and seeing some other smart investors exit. I thought I would have some relative safety in the preferred's but considering that they are trading around $39 right now my analysis was very flawed.

Thanks, looking forward to hearing about it!

I wanted to follow up on this thread to see if there was any update on the call. Thanks!

Yeah I don't think it would be worth the trouble

I've been doing some thinking about this subject and one issue I'm confronting as I bootstrap a fund is charging a performance fee. I'm confident that I can raise money from my friends and family but the majority don't qualify as accredited / qualified investors. One solution that I thought about was charging a 3% management fee but refunding 1% if performance was less than 14%, refunding 2% if performance was less than 10%, refunding the full management fee if performance was less than 6%. [similar to Buffet's 0,6,25%] Obviously this is far from ideal but wanted to see if anyone had encountered something similar to this they looked at investing in or starting an investment management business. Thanks

haha awesome

I'd be interested to know as well, thanks!