zarley

Probably better to not post baseless rumors . . . certainly without a link or any context.

How can you listen to it anywhere? Do you carry around a 2TB drive with you? Slingbox

I really have to agree with VAL9000, peter_burke, and the other yawners. My ordinary response to Apple's product launches is: Oooh. Shiny, I want. But this cloud music idea is meh. Giving up my MP3 catalog to Apple so they can stream it back to me really has nearly zero appeal. I agree that a netflix/rhapsody style subscription is a better model -- certainly for me anyway. In fact, I'm a little skeptical of the benefit of most large scale cloud computing concepts. Yes it makes sense for some things and for some people/firms, but I really don't want everything I do subject to server and bandwidth constraints that are well out of my control, and subject to hacking/loss. Plus, I have way more data (music, movies, pictures, etc.) than I could ever want to host on a cloud. A simple, low cost, cloud based data back-up system might be appealing, but having standard storage options that cost $80 per TB makes it hard for me to even consider that, for now. I guess I'm meh on the whole cloud concept, Apple or otherwise. I'm pretty sure that just means I'm getting old. :)

one curious angle to the Greek debt story is the role of the borrowing/building spree leading up to the 2004 Olympics. How important is that little splurge to the problems the Greeks are currently facing? How many tens of billions did they spend leading up to that little party? Idle curiosity mostly.

LOL. My 5 year old loves Star Wars. And, even though he hasn't seen the movies (aside from the new animated series), he already knows that Han shot first.

The book is excellent.

I don't know LUK, so I don't have an opinion about that one. As for the others . . . I have the most certainty about BRK being undervalued. I think Tilson's approach is reasonable enough, not super-conservative, but not wildly optimistic either. But, BRK is cheap even relative to more conservative estimates. The range of potential values for MSFT is wider, and although it is cheap (I added to my position this week) there are more serious potential threats to MSFT, but also more potential upside. I think FFH is reasonably priced, but it is smaller and has much more room to run than the two mega-caps. I own all three, and like my chances for future compounding.

I'm nearly done with The Most Important Thing and it is very good. The concepts will be very familiar to any student of value investing -- lots of Graham, Buffett, Munger, etc. But, I think Marks has put the concepts together in a way that is really approachable and complete as a framework for thinking of investing. At the risk of hyperbole, I think it's fair to consider it a modern day Intelligent Investor.

Yes indeed.

I agree that AZO is probably the right template for thinking about ESL and SHLD. How good an operation was AZO before ESL got control? Because right now, SHLD is sucking wind as a retailer and it's hard to see how/when that improves in the near-term. I guess I see a repeat of AZO as a best case scenario, of which I'm a little less certain now than I was 12 months ago.

Sears did, up until last year that is. The timing of the liquidation of SHLD assets as a last resort wasn't much of a concern for me right up until their operating results went to shit. Up until FY 2011, SHLD was able to generate about a $1billion in FCF and had almost no path to insolvency due to a very modest debt load. In the past year FCF went to crap and they've added a little debt, so the whole operation looks a little less appealing right now. I'm still an owner, but I've reduced the size of my position and I'm less enthusiastic about it generally. /derail

If this discussion were about anyone other than Bruce, we would all be saying: What an absurd idea that a cash poor company with assets that are dead money would become a dynamic investment vehicle. Bruce or no Bruce, BRK seems a terrible comparison (as has been noted by others) and I'm not sure I buy the conglomerate/holding company concept at all in this case. Mostly, I think Bruce is trying to paint some lipstick on this pig and would accept any complementary comparison at this point. I think it's more like a SHLD with marginal land assets instead of marginal retail assets. It might work, but it needs to start with some stable cash generation. Maybe some day.

How does JOE produce float?

Story of a small village that built a defensive seawall to protect against tsunami: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110513/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_village_that_survived This made me think of one of the many Buffettisms -- Predicting rain doesn't matter, building arks does. $30 million insurance policy against total devastation seems like a pretty good bargain right about now.

The New York Times coverage seemed good. Includes a liveblog "transcript" . . . http://dealbook.nytimes.com/category/main-topics/berkshire-meeting-2011/ Between the NYT and twitter #brk2011, I had more than enough information coming at me on Saturday.

I was bit surprised by the $20 drop shortly after the open. I thought: Wow, that's a bit of an over reaction. But, didn't think much more than that. Back almost to even now . . . quite an odd morning.

Why would this portend an ESL buyout? Is that sort of thing typical in advance of a buyout? I do think ESL, or some other Lampert vehicle, taking it private is the ultimate goal, but how does this move that date forward? $500,000 for a year of consulting services is chump change to ESL and SHLD, so I didn't think anything of it. I suppose it would pay for some staff time and overhead for working out the details of a buyout. Just thinking outloud ... ESL taking SHLD private is the likely end-game New CEO has experience guiding business through buyout process SHLD pays ESL for consulting services that include mergers, acquisitions, etc. Hmmm . . . you might be on to something.

The more I read about this (including Sokol's comments this morning) the more I think this is much ado about nothing. Yes, it looks bad, but this isn't insider trading and I'm not sure it's really even front-running a Berkshire trade. Sokol on CNBC: Is any Berkshire executive going to be prohibited from buying stocks that Berkshire may be interested in? Should an executive who has found what looks to be a good investment be dissuaded from sharing the idea with Buffett (or any other Berkshire executive)? I think the answers are no and no. So, while this looks bad, and perhaps Buffett is upset because it looks bad, it's pretty plausible to me that Sokol really did nothing wrong at all. The resignation may simply be a result of his personal desire to do his own thing and not be "stuck" in a secondary role at BRK, or simply be carrying Buffett's torch once he's gone. Which gets me thinking about succession in terms of how many talented and enterprising executives will have the temperment to play second fiddle for a long while and then be content to carry the torch rather than build something of their own? Perhaps Ajit is the perfect candidate because of his close personal relationship with Buffett and what appears to be a perfect temperment for the job.

Merger announcement indicates May 4th for an afternoon with Charlie. http://www.wescofinancial.com/WescoPress%20Release.pdf

Quick question -- has the date/time been set for the Wesco meeting this year? Since this might be my last opportunity, I fully intend to go.

Yeah, 2011 was a little ugly. Declining FCF resulted mostly from higher pension costs and increasing working capital. They've noted that the pension cost in the next year or two will be as much or worse than FY 2011. But, I think the changes in working capital should return to a more neutral level. Even if you added some of that back in to the results the FCF would be well below the results of the past few years. So, at the end of the day, the results from operations need to improve for cash flow to get back where it needs to be to support the current valuation. $60 is about where adding to shares looks attractive to me as well. My average cost is below that, but over the last couple years I've bought a little near $60 and sold a little over $100. In between, I just hold and wait. As for Lampert's "magic" I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. I think any thoughts of SHLD turning into a significant investment vehicle for Lampert are pretty much dead. I think the plan is still to try and turn SHLD into a profitable $30-$40 billion retailer instead of a money losing $50 billion retailer. He's not done pruning, and the result isn't certain, but magic isn't required.

Yeah, that's been linked around the webs lately. Very good interview. It was my first direct exposure to Jain; he's about as thoughtful/sensible/rational as you would expect. Listening to Berkshire's leaders is always like a fresh breeze of sanity in a financial world swirling full of crazy (yeah, I'm looking at you Cramer).

I tend to lean this way as well, after watching the events in Japan. Having no long-term solution for storing spent fuel/waste is a real problem. And, as you note it will need careful watching over hundreds (thousands?) of years. Even low probability events become something like a certainty over a long enough time period. Punting that responsibility to future generations is no small thing. With that said, some of what I've read about Traveling Wave Reactors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor) is very interesting. In theory, these sorts of reactors can use spent fuel from traditional reactors as fuel, and possibly generate something like a fueling feedback loop that is very waste efficient (I am not a nuclear scientist; I do not know how feasible something like this is in practice). At this point none have been built, but it seems like something world governments should probably put some money into for real-world testing. I'd bet for the cost of dealing with Fukushima you could do a lot of testing for new reactor technology.

I don't follow that particular advice. However, in my retirement accounts where I have limited choices, I do use index funds and a slightly conservative asset allocation approach. I will make occasional tactical allocation shifts depending on my view of the markets. Right now, in those accounts, I'm at what could be considered normal allocation given my age and account goals. 15% cash 25% Bonds (TIPS and total bond market index) 40% US stocks (S&P 500 index) 20% International stocks (Dodge& Cox Intl) My non-retirement accounts don't really follow allocation rules per-se, but I'm around 20% cash there.

Despite the ongoing problems at the Fukashima plant (no sign that the situation is getting better), I did find this transcript from the British Embassy in Tokyo somewhat reassuring (from March 16): http://ukinjapan.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=News&id=566811882 It's an interesting read in whole because it appears to be the current opinion of the UK and what they're telling their people in Tokyo. I think this snippet succinctly sums up their position.