rb

Yep!

I think you're looking for marketwatch

Nobody wants Florida. You guys are too weird.

I would like to challenge you on that. :) I work under the assumptions that 1-debt over GDP should stop growing at some point (and maybe that point has been reached?), 2-payroll taxes account for only about a third of revenues and 3-aging demographic pattern will cause a disproportionate increase in Medicare and other mandatory spending AND conclude that the fiscal gap has been and, absent major changes, will continue to grow larger and larger. Where am I wrong? This "unfunded" question is interesting. I've been looking into GE (I assume you are also) and have spent some time on their unfunded (assets-liabilities=a negative number) pension situation. Last time I looked, there was a 29B gap and some suggest that the gap is only theoretical and one should not worry if GE continues as a going concern and, in a way, that's fair. But why let such a gap build up? What if interest rates go down instead of up? What if markets fall (for real)? I would say GE will be interesting to follow and boring, it probably won't be, cashflow wise. Isn't it easier to deal with a growing gap early on? You haven't really challenged anything. All I did was explain what is the unfunded liability number and why it's face value is meaningless due to the semantics around the issue. I makes for great copy though. The GE comparison is and isn't relevant. The only way it is relevant is that GE for YEARS elevated its profits at the expense of its pension fund. Now the company will (hopefully) have to catch up on pension contributions and will underearn its potential. So you had wealth transfer from current GE shareholder to the GE shareholders of the past. Similarly some people were undertaxed creating deficits, gaps, etc and because of that others will have to be overtaxed to make up the difference. Is it fair? No, but what are you gonna do? That's where the similarities end. The diferences are many. GE isn't a sovereign and the US is. That comes with a whole host of tools and some problems as well. Also the US liabilities are a whole lot more long lived than GE's. That gives options. I don't think that thumb sucking should be encouraged or ok. But since you're talking about a sovereign things get complicated because the sovereign is also in charge of the wellfare of the people, not just an actuary. So should you cause another great depression in order to balance the accounts or better not? In Shakespearean terms that is one of the questions.

I apologize. I realize now that I should have expanded on it. So there is such a number that is called unfunded liability and I think from memory that 120 Trillion sounds about right. But the only useful thing about that number is that you can use it to write scary headlines. 120 trillion sounds very big. Then you add the word unfunded which sounds very scary. But the unfunded liabilities number is meaningless in itself. Here's why. The unfunded liabilities counts the total future payments under a number of programs - though social security and medicare make up the bulk of it. The present value of the unfunded liability I think is around 50 Tn. But the real reason the number is meaningless is that it doesn't take into account the payroll tax the the US government collects to pay for these benefits. If we would shut down the US economy today, then yes you would have a 50 trillion liability. However the US economy will not shut down today. It employs millions of people and it will employ more people every year in the future. These people, as anyone who gets a paycheck knows, will pay lots and lots of trillions to offset that liability. Looking at the unfunded liability is like looking at a the liability of a life insurance policy and ignoring the premiums. It's meaningless. What one should look at to get to any sort of meaning is a sort of funding gap: PV of unfunded liability - PV of future payroll taxes. But then the stories would become a lot more boring.

The unfunded liability headline number is bullshit.

Take a look at Lake Forrest, IL.

Never had a reliability problem with windows 10. In fact it never froze/crashed/ etc any of that. I find the experience very similar to windows 7. The updates can be a bit annoying in default mode, but they can be configured so as to not be inconvenient. The one big improvement in 10 over 7 is Storage Spaces which I find awesome. There may be others and I don't know them because I don't use the features. The annoying bit is that since 8 solitaire has ads. Seriously Microsoft? That's where you're gonna make money? Solitaire ads?

Believe me, it's not that hard.

I genuinely, truly like Microsoft products. Though I only use the desktop/laptop stuff. I like Windows and I really like office. As a power excel user nothing else comes close. I would get really frustrated if I'd try to do something that excel would have no problem doing but this other thing can't. It's just not worth the hassle for me. Also I don't like the cloud stuff so I use office on prem not the 365 stuff. That's big for me. With Windows I really like that it lets me do computing however I like, not how a bunch of engineers in California or wherever think that computing should be done. Sure windows 8 sucked, but that didn't bother me too much because I just stuck with 7 which was perfectly ok. Then they came up with 10 which works great. I also never experienced much of the business from windows that others have been complaining about. It's true that i have a somewhat powerful rig, but it still cost significantly less than what a mac would have. Otherwise I don't think much about Windows, it's there, does it's job and doesn't bother me. Which is great in my book. I agree with others that bing is crap. But hey, what can you do? On the enterprise side, I haven't used the products but they're doing great. SQL server in particular is killing it. They have been crap in the past but made great strides in in the past 10-20 years and clients are pretty happy with them. Are they the best? I don't think so. But they're pretty decent and soooo much cheaper than what the best would be. It's all in the value prop i guess.

How do you harvest that return?

That wouldn't bother me too much. AFAIK the restatement had to do with calculation errors on income tax. So not really anything to do with the economics or the integrity of the business. What would bother me is the 5% volume decline for the US.

Isn't that why brands have value?

Fair point good sir!

I agree with a lot of what you say. In my opinion a big problem is the different treatment taxation treatment between capital and labour. Basically if you have money you're a protected species and if you have to work then you're an inferior one. Sort of like the plantation owner and the plantation worker in the past. That's not right. The prevailing view is that the current system is required in order to encourage/stimulate investment to create, build, innovate, etc. That's bullshit. I have been investing for a long time. In that time I have made a lot of money. I've also paid a LOT less in tax than a worker making that money because I'm a member of the protected species. Here's the thing though: I have never finances any new creation, building or innovation. None! I basically got the tax break for nothing. So do hoards of members of the protected species. Here's another aspect. A lot of (most?) of the time the create/build/innovate thing is financed with debt, not equity. Yet debt does not receive preferential treatment whereas equity does. Here's the thing though. I do agree that the create/build/innovate is valuable and beneficial to society. So you want to have as much of it as possible. Therefore it logically follows that you want to incentivize it. Governments do that through tax policy. But me sitting on my ass watching my BRK stock go up doesn't do any of that. Neither does a trust fund baby talking to his broker on his airpods about the performance of his Apple stock while Apple throws tens of billions back at its investors. So here's an idea: incentivize investment in create/build/innovate. If our capital finances a new thing, IPO, etc, i.e. actual investment, then you get preferential tax treatment. If it doesn't you loose protected status and go back to steerage class. That should actually increase beneficial investment while also raising tax revenue. But of course the members of the protected species will fight that tooth and nail because it will mean that in the end they will have less money. The plantation owners can also afford better lawyers and lobbyists than the plantation workers. They'll come in crisp suits armed with decks that explain in vague terms why such a thing is folly. Thankfully our society still has the franchise.

Weather apparently doesn’t count. Now, I'm in a weak position for my argument that it's nice living here (Calgary) because I had to get my furnace serviced today to keep up with the -30 C weather. But, the weather here isn't as bad as people think. We have a significant portion of relatively warm days in the winter because of a weather pattern known as chinooks. Plus, it is one of the sunniest major cities, which I think is relatively more important to people's well-being (and livability) than temperature. But on the other hand its pretty freakin' cold right now. I will still never move. Yep, that's what everyone in Alberta says... Well we have sunny days... or .... But it's a dry cold (yea, right). All you need to know is -30 C. That's COLD! I got a buddy in Edmonton who always fantasizes about moving to Toronto where it's warm lol. He'd do that in a second too if over here we didn't loose our minds with the houses.

I should start by saying that I don't have kids but I'm somebody who wants to have kids. I've actually been thinking about this a lot over the past couple of years and I actually have a few thoughts on the issue. I come from a good family butI was growing up for a number of reasons we didn't have a lot of a lot of money. So growing up for me was kinda tough. When I was younger, my plan in life was for me to work hard and make sure that my kids had a good life and I would provide all the things and that I wasn't able to have and the kind of life I wasn't privy to. Now I'm older (not old) and looking around seeing how some of those people evolved I an CONVINCED that that is completely the wrong approach. I now believe that the absolute worst thing you can do to your kids is spoil them and puff up their ego. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be there for your kids, show them love, kindness, and attention. I absolutely think you should. But it should be in a strict framework. Showering them with cool stuff and undeserved adulation will not lead to a good outcome. Another aspect to not screwing your kids up is to find the right wife which will be a good mother. I assume LongHaul has been successful in this endeavor. But in this day and age it's a lot harder than in the past (even the not so distant past). It is something I wasn't able to do personally. Hence the absence of offspring. It would be crewel to have children with someone who you know isn't right, just because you feel an attraction. I fully agree with Longhaul that as a parent you must invest in your kids in order for them to be successful. This is a reason why I'm quite pessimistic about future generations. After you work 50-60 hours a week (does anyone really do 9-5 anymore?) plus commute, then you have to feed them, bathe them. All of a sudden mathematics starts to really work against the investment part. Anyway, that's all i have for now. Hope someone else writes a more cheery post talking about throwing toasters in a bathtub. :-[

Some that haven't been mentioned here already. Berlin station on Epix. Spy stuff. Good scripts and very good acting. Vikings on netflix. Simple comedy but funny as hell. I also enjoyed Narcos on Netflix. Very good production imo. Btw, if you enjoy Berlin Station or spy stuff, I suggest you also check out A Most Wanted Man. Great spy movie and I think Phillip Seymour Hoffman's last before he passed.

There should be no sunk in cost. It should all come down to putting in the work, doing your homework, keeping on top of things. There are no real tricks. Just like every other job there are got investors and not so good investors.

I agree with much of this and also own BRK (but smaller, for various reasons including the impact of geographic exposure on my overall portfolio which has a lot of US as it is). FWIW: - the short wasn't value, it was macro, and I think they were pretty clear on why they did it. - you're right they have a very mixed macro record. They got the CDS bet and much of the bond stuff right, but the equity hedge and deflation swaps wrong (both direction and especially sizing). - removing the hedge was the right thing to do and for the right reason. They said Trump would unleash animal spirits and he did. Holding the hedge through 2900 on the S&P would have been disastrous. They took the long bonds off at the same time for the same reason, a decision which has been lauded on here. They did NOT say stocks were good value - in fact they said they still had worries about valuations, and bought almost no stocks, focussing instead on converts. - I would add to your list of questions "have they learned?". It will be interesting to look back on the next decade. I'm not defending them here. The errors have been gargantuan. I'm just trying to help make the critique more accurate. I wasn't trying to be inaccurate. Let me put it another way. Thank God for shareholders that they took the shorts and the long bonds off. It saved them another world of pain. But I don't believe for one second their explanation. I think by that point they knew they screwed up and they just looked for a way to save face. If that was the case it was horrible behaviour. If they really meant what they've said, then I really think that Fairfax is univestible. Because it means that they make investment decisions based on election results and feelings, not facts, figures, and rational thought.

He isn't qualified to be on the BRK board. That's a pipe-dream that WEB cooked up with the notion that it will perpetuate the BRK culture. Nice dream, but IMO, that culture is toast after a couple of CEOs post-WEB. SJ Howard Buffett did serve on a number of boards over a 20 year period. Some of them Fortune 500 companies. But it still smells like nepotism. At least he won't be wielding a shitload of multiple voting shares as well.

I just took a quick look and I don't think they bought VRX. I think Gregmal may be confusing it with Chou whom I remember did buy VRX.

Well I don't share Gremal's writing style, but he has a point. Yes, mistakes were made. But the type of mistakes matter. For example, Berkshire made a mistake when they bought IBM. They broke even for a few years on that capital. Fairfax shorted a massive bull market. Different sort of mistake. If they didn't think that stocks were expensive, then why short? That's not value investing. Then there's the individual picks. Then there's the macro stuff. I agree that there was a macro case to be made in 2010 that you could have a replay of the 1930s, albeit in a lighter way. But if you're still thinking that in 2014, then you're no good at macro. So did they swear it off? Did they say never again? No. In fact, in my opinion it was shameful the way they took the shorts off. Oh Trump get elected, stocks are good value now. Yea, after the S&P did a 100% run which they shorted. These were big mistakes which should raise serious questions about what they're doing. They can't just be brushed off. Are they still really good capital allocators? Do I want my capital to be handled in this manner? I'm not saying that they're uninvestible. But they're trading around book. Why would I buy them at book when I can buy BRK at 1.3x book? (yes I know both books need to be adjusted). How many fiascoes happened at BRK?

They weren't just getting ready for winter. They were shorting the market. They basically looked at valuations in 2010 and said that stocks are richly priced.

SJ, 10 billion dollars here, 10 billion dollars there, 20 billion dollars there.... Pretty soon we're talking big money. The buyback is what it is. It's been discussed here a lot. It's been suggested it's simple. My feeling, given WB's views of the issue, is that he has designed a smarter buyback system that has been suggested. It's simply not in the man's genes to just do what everyone else does.