zarley

Interesting. I don't use an app -- I'm an old fogey who goes through proxyvote.com. Fortunately, there is a prompt there to request printed materials. We'll see if it sticks. Thanks for the suggestion.

Side note . . . Having trouble with my brokers getting physical copies of AR and meeting materials. I own BRK through Vanguard and Schwab and both have refused to mail me a physical copy of the AR. Who here still receives the physical AR, and who is your broker? Also, if you have an extra one lying around, would you be willing to share? TIA zarley

Awesome. Thanks for the heads-up.

A one man shop had overhead of more than $500,000 per year? I think I may see part of his problem.

Honest question about efficiency and transaction costs: Given what I've read about the transaction costs for bitcoin and the amount of computing power needed to validate transactions, it seems like these two points are potential problems, not solutions. Seems like infrequent, high-priority transactions might be well served, but small and frequent transactions would get killed by the transaction costs. Is that a bitcoin-specific issue or a more general block-chain challenge?

Can I get an Amen? Thank you for that tip.

Drzola, Thanks for the clarification. I'm sorry for misinterpreting your post. Intent can be a little tricky to determine in this medium. I probably should have been more charitable to you in my interpretation. To be honest, if last week was the near-term top in the market, on the front end of a significant correction, I wouldn't be too sad about it. it seems necessary at this point. Zarley

Can't tell if your "words of wisdom" comment implies sarcasm, but to be fair to Jim, I'll link the post in question and add the rest of what he wrote, in response to another poster declaring that today's break was the top: http://boards.fool.com/brave-man-calling-a-market-top-is-much-harder-32741038.aspx?sort=postdate Since we just had a fresh all time high today, there is no *pressing* worry. Probably. Anyone thinking of sidling quietly towards the exits before the party ends can probably do it gradually. Most parties end pretty slowly at first as people drift out one by one. It's the late-night drunks who stay too long that can stampede. Jim Jim is one of the most thoughtful and generous posters at the TMF BRK board. Selectively quoting something he wrote to perhaps use as some sort of I told you so reference later is pretty bad form, IMO.

As I recall it, Munger's moves at DJCO were somewhat known through the quarterly filings for DJCO. The wording in the early filings was vague, and didn't identify what was being bought, but based on the public comments of Munger and Buffett, alert investors who followed the pair could guess that Wells Fargo was the likely target. From memory, confirmation that it was Wells Fargo (and possibly one or two other positions) didn't happen until much later. So, "in the know" investors could surmise what was going on. However, that time in the market was so volatile and gut-wrenching that even those who knew, may not have wanted to act on that knowledge. While I knew Buffett and Munger were happy to buy as much Wells Fargo as they could as it slipped under $10, I didn't do the same (for a variety of reasons). It is hard to overstate the emotional impact of what happened in the second half of 2008. There were days I felt sick to my stomach and worried about the possibility of an implosion of the US financial system. The hardest thing to do was to sell something good that was down 50% to buy something else that was even cheaper. With all that said, the idea of portfolio cloning, or riding coat tails isn't new. Sites like Dataroma (http://www.dataroma.com/m/home.php) are useful for tracking this sort of thing. To me it's useful to see who's buying what as a source of ideas, but wouldn't suggest anyone buy just because someone else is buying.

From the consolidated statements: BRK shareholder Equity = $255,550 A Share Equivalents = 1,643,183 BV per A share = $255,550 / 1.643183 = $155,521 BV per B share = $155,521 / 1,500 = $103.68 Is there something you deduct from the shareholder equity line? ---- Edited to clarify share count and to show math on BV per A share

-9% +/- in my personal accounts. Up a percent or two in indexed retirement accounts. Easily my worst year since 2008, mostly due to a lot of BRK and little time devoted to managing my accounts. Not terribly worried about it given that BRK is undervalued and I'm not graded by anyone but myself on the year to year performance. I may have missed a few opportunities due to the lack of time/effort on my part, but that doesn't bother me a lot either.

Usually I look for a meaningful number of reviews and then scan the best rated reviews (rated most helpful) for consistent themes (good and bad) or areas of specific interest to me. I'll often look at the 2's and 4's for the good and bad of the item. I find 1's and 5's can be irrational and unhelpful. A 2 is someone who isn't just blindly rating 1 because something made them angry or sad; there are usually one or two specific things that are negative about the item that makes it not work for them. Similarly, 4's are very positive reviews, but will usually highlight one or two areas where it might fall just short, which is useful. After reading a handful of 2 and 4 ratings something like a consensus starts to emerge about the general strengths and weaknesses of the item. If the weaknesses are related to my particular need, then I need to think about it more, or consider other items.

Get more than a few pages in and you'll recognize at least one very familiar name. :)

Interesting that the delivery time varies so much. Perhaps I'll be patient for another week or so.

Has anyone received the printed 2014 AR from BRK yet? I usually get the printed copy directly from my brokerage account. I haven't seen the 2014 report yet and am starting to worry that I've somehow missed it (curse you spammy e-delivery!!!). Have I missed it, or am I just being impatient?

The Omaha World Herald does a good liveblog as well. Also, in the last couple years twitter activity has centralized around a hashtag for the weekend's events. #BRK2015 looks to be the tag for this year.

Redskin, thanks for your additional comments. My intent for creating my spreadsheet was to take readily available financials that could be tracked over time to ballpark IV in a simple and conservative way. It's a relatively small adjustment to the two-column approach outlined by Buffett and produces IV estimates that are consistent and not wildly out of line. It seems to work well enough for my purposes. I know it's overly simplified, and probably a bit too conservative. But, seeing how the IV pieces develop over time is interesting, as is tracking that against historical prices.

I don't just use the value of investments; I look at the equity of the insurance operations instead. Then I add to it the value of the pre-tax operating earnings (annualized pre-tax earnings x 9). It's still a simple order of magnitude measure, that is purely mechanical and partially fitted to the past data. I don't think this is a good way to value the company. I believe a lot of the operating companies are owned by the insurance subsidiaries, including BNSF. Therefore the book value of BNSF would be included in the insurance equity. You could do this but you would need to exclude BNSF operating earnings and all other operating companies owned by insurance subs. I'm aware of the odd ownership structure of some of the subs, but if you look at the consolidated balance sheets, Rail, Utilities, and Energy assets are separated from the insurance operations. The insurance assets are almost entirely financial, so I don't think I'm double counting significantly there.

I don't just use the value of investments; I look at the equity of the insurance operations instead. Then I add to it the value of the pre-tax operating earnings (annualized pre-tax earnings x 9). It's still a simple order of magnitude measure, that is purely mechanical and partially fitted to the past data.

I have a simple spreadsheet that does a modified two-column valuation based on the current financials. The current, imo conservative, IV estimate is: Per A share = $ 219,000 Per B share = $ 145 Somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 x BV I would say BRK is, at best, only modestly undervalued at current prices. You might say it's in the low end of the range of fair value. My little spreadsheet goes back to around 2001 with its calculations. By this measure, BRK was clearly undervalued in 2011 and 2012 and has moved towards fair value since then. Not a huge revelation given the buy-back activities around that time and Buffet's own discussion of BRK's valuation. In mid to late 2012 you could buy BRK between $70 and $80 (per B share) while my simple estimate of IV was slightly above $100. It was around that time that some people (including myself) were going long BRK Leaps, which turned out pretty well.

Go through Costco and get a no-haggle fleet price from a local dealer. My last purchase was for a couple hundred $$ over invoice. On a car with an MSRP of $36,000 I paid something like $32,000 and was out the door with tax and title around $35,000. Perhaps not the best deal in the world, but it took virtually no time, didn't need to deal with a salesman, and I know I didn't get totally ripped off.

Seagate and Western Digital in the HDD space are pretty close. Those two control a little more than 80% of the HDD shipments with Toshiba at around 15%.

Wtf does Buffett's appraisal of Berkshire have to do with Fairfax? They're not even close to comparable. Also, it's not clear why a fair to mediocre insurance operation that has hedged away hundreds of millions (billions?) in investment gains over the last five years should be worth much more than BV. Certainly not because Buffett thinks Berkshire is.

I know the ball park net-worth and the general trajectory. That's enough. The idea of tracking monthly or quarterly in a spreadsheet seems weird to me. I closely track thing's I directly control (bank accounts and investments), but leave the rest (pension value, home equity, retirement accounts, etc.) in the roughly right pile. I look at them from time to time, but I don't specifically account for them in a spreadsheet or other calculation. To me the number doesn't matter, it's the trajectory and the implications of where it ends by the time I need to retire.

Lightened up again on Western Digital (WDC). Down to just a few hundred shares now. Was the second largest holding for me, but that's harder to justify at $97. Cash position up to 17%