rb

upload images upload Blue = DJIA Red(?) = SP500 Gold = Gold Silver = Silver I said I was going to leave this alone but the fact that you shared a graph of the price return of the Dow Jones and S&P as a comparison to Gold and Silver just blew my mind. The correct chart to share would be total return since as an owner of a company you benefit from dividends and buybacks. Also, my point was that people who say Gold is a hedge against inflation are wrong and as you will see below if you go back to 1980 and adjust for inflation Gold has a negative return! The following is the CAGR of Gold and DJAI Total return with dividends reinvested from dates shown to Present (11/25/2020) adjusted for inflation. BOLD = Gold return 01/01/2010 = 3.45% 10.85% 01/01/2005 = 7.89% 7.33%* 01/01/2000 = 7.43% 5.08%* 01/01/1995= 4.25% 8.49% 01/01/1990 = 2.88% 8.26% 01/01/1985 = 2.73% 9.41% 01/01/1980= -0.18% 9.12% You probably should ding gold with storage costs as well - the thing carries a negative dividend.

Please, tell us more oh ye great one! While we wait: https://www.statista.com/statistics/609158/number-of-immigrants-in-new-brunswick/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/609156/number-of-immigrants-in-nova-scotia/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/609153/number-of-immigrants-in-prince-edward-island/#:~:text=This%20statistic%20shows%20the%20number,immigrants%20to%20Prince%20Edward%20Island. https://www.statista.com/statistics/609051/number-of-immigrants-in-newfoundland-and-labrador/

Or you could just use IB and not have that problem.

What did Chris Christie about mask say after meeting the virus? Never has so little been asked for the benefit of so many? Imagine if people actually have to do something mildly difficult. On a side note, in my country of Canada women are not mandated to wear bikini tops. Because men can bear their chest so can women. Yet another reason to be proud to be Canadian ;D. I just wish we had a longer warm season. Here's hoping for a quick recovery Eric!

Simple answer you don't know. Economics is a social science whose basic whole purpose is the study of recessions. I got a couple of degrees in that. After 100+ years the conclusion that was arrived at is that recessions happen due to exogenous shocks. Exogenous shocks by definitions are impossible to predict. Ergo you can't predict the next recession.

Guy's, stop it! Jules Verne invented the internet. For real!

rb just got disqualified from CoBF. ;D :o Did I miss a dividend in 1966 or something? 1967: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/041714/how-warren-buffett-made-berkshire-hathaway-worldbeater.asp#:~:text=The%20only%20time%20Berkshire%20Hathaway%20actually%20paid%20a,bathroom%20when%20the%20dividend%20was%20authorized.%2015%20%EF%BB%BF I was close eh? I beg pardon to the CoBF gods. Stil I think that the method would work pretty well instead of trolling through the new york times stock pages of the 60s.

rb just got disqualified from CoBF. ;D :o Did I miss a dividend in 1966 or something?

Berkshire posts in the annual report a per share market value change at year end going back to 1965. Since they never paid dividends you can just pick a recent price and work your way back.

Jobyts, Please don't take this the wrong way and don't take it to hear because I suspect that you are well intentioned. We have been debating here whether it is a smart thing for you or others to manage friends' money. I have previously said that I have had great result (though I've proceeded with great caution). Others have been steadfast against the idea. But if you need to ask an investment forum whether you need a series 6, 7 or 65 license to do it, I just don't think you're ready for it yet. I hope you take some time to consider that fact. P.S There's an SEC exception for friends and family (it's been mentioned on the thread). You don't need a license. If they're ok with it you can blow them up as far as the SEC's concerned.

Makes sense, rb. In terms of minutes, (1) how many minutes max would you have commuted when you had to work in office every day, and (2) how many minutes max would you be willing to commute if you have to work in office only half the number of days? Well I don't have a boss so I can do whatever the hell I like. But if I had I'd say 20-25 min max I would be willing to add. However this is how I think this looks more in reality. In places that actually have those 30 minute commutes, I'm thinking here places like Raleigh, Pittsburg, Omaha, you could probably go an extra 15 minutes and get your dream house. But in those places housing is pretty affordable so if you really wanted to you could have done it where you are anyway. Places with long commute, I'm thinking here places like Toronto and Los Angeles, housing is really expensive so a somewhat longer commute doesn't really get you anywhere close to your dream house. That place would imply an untenable commute and you're likely already as far away from work as you can possibly take.

I don't think that that's the right way to think about it. In percentage terms. If you're talking about some average commute of 30 minutes then 50% or 15 minutes is not bad. That's like stopping for milk. You can rectify the morning part by bringing coffee from home instead of staying in like at starbucks. But if you're commute is one hour then that's an extra 30 minutes or an extra hour per day. If it's an hour and a half then that's an extra 45 minutes or an hour and a half per day. At that point your whole day is probably totally shot and it becomes unacceptable. I'm not just talking about this theoretically either. In a place like Toronto a one hour commute is not that that bad. A 30 minute commute is freakin fantastic.

I think that's a swell idea.

Well it's a safety thing. Med staff is at risk cause they are exposed to it every day. What Eric says has some logic from an efficiency perspective. But to use an imperfect analogy it would be like sending soldiers into battle without body armour because you'll bomb the enemy's bullet factories.

we all did. but truth be known, we are better off for it OH YEAH!!! I'm from about the same cohort as merkhet, pupil and BG. I'm had shall we say a similar experience. Great times! But I've done my banking "apprenticeship" in London so it was a different vibe. I didn't feel I had the right to talk about it since this is a thread about the city that never sleeps. Though I didn't get much sleep in London either ;D

+1 to both -- if you're a young and single person, you will almost certainly be back in NYC in a few years regardless of whether you can do your work from Des Moines -- because then you would have to live in Des Moines. thepupil inspired me to take a look at my old apartment in NYC. https://bit.ly/2IMTBJ8 The gross rent is maybe two hundred bucks north of where it was when I moved to NYC in 2007. As a 24 year old newly minted lawyer, I was more than happy to apply part of my $160k salary (now $190k for anyone starting NYC Biglaw) to a nice crib. Y'all are crazy if you think people won't want to live in NYC again. Merkhet and Pupil, You guys lived in way too fancy digs for me. I was living on 9th Ave between 55th and 56th or maybe 54th and 55th. It was a fourth floor walk up (European floors, so it was really 5th). The place was a dump. It was a long rectangular one bedroom where the bedroom is on one side and the living room is on the other side. I was first subletting from a gay guy who taught ballet. Then rent got too expensive for him. I moved back to Queens. Then I talked to the landlord and he let me rent the whole apartment. I then sublet the place and posted an ad on Craigslist. 30 people showed up all ready to give me first month rent. It was literally a reality show. This was a shit apartment on 9th Ave and 50s in Hell's Kitchen near a row of restaurants. But the rent was $1,900 and we can split it between 2 people and it functions like 2 separate studios on 2 opposite ends. I first rented it to a female Cornell grad and I quickly realize I was becoming her relationship therapist and she quickly wanted out of the deal. I was annoyed because I passed on an Apple tech guy in his late 30s because I wanted to live with someone younger. I probably could've gotten it rented in 2 weeks. But I was working IB hours and I had the girl's deposit. So I took my time and ran another open house. 30 people showed up again. People who work in the theater district, girls who were going to the Alvin Alley dance studios, finance people, and generally people making $50-100k who need a cheap place that was convenient. I worked on 7th Ave and could just walk over to work without getting on any subways. I used to ride my road bike in Central Park in the morning or go up the west side highway and go over the GW bridge to Jersey on the weekends. I would carry my road bike up 5 flights of stairs while strapped to my bike shoes which is probably not smart. Everyone wanted to sublet. I winded up subletting to an African American man in his mid 20s who was working at a middle office job at JP Morgan. So, in my short time, I had a gay Asian American roommate who taught ballet, an Asian American woman who couldn't get over her ex, and an African American man as roommate in a matter or 2 years. How bad was the place. Paint was falling off the ceiling. The tub needs a mat or it didn't drain well. The place was old. The doors to my bedroom didn't go all the way up or down. My roommates' ceiling was falling off. But did it matter? A few things stood out. I once somehow bought home 3 different girls in one week. I peaked that week. I also once convince a girl living in Delaware to board an Amtrak train to come to Penn Station at 7PM. So she got ready at 7PM and arrived in NYC at midnight and we went out and had a great time. My apartment was gross and she knew. But she was coming to go out in New York city where you can stay out till 4AM. My African American roommate would have random "strange" that he picks up at bars. I would get up at 3am to use the bathroom and some late 30s woman would be stumbling out of his room to catch a cab back. It was kind of hilarious. He was a large tall man with a bit of a stutter. But he got ripped in 6 months. Freakish genetics and he always had a smile. So he went from looking like a friendly overweight dude to someone who was tall, dark, and handsome as Adele would say in her SNL skit. That dude got so much action, it was crazy. My red haired Irish friend and I went out and will get a dozen drinks in us and we will bar hop to 4-5 different places. My friends from HS was in the city. They were always throwing a party from time to time. My college friends were all in the city. I can't imagine being anywhere else. Yeah, New York City sucks for now. But I am willing to bet that 24 years old want to get laid or AT LEAST GET WASTED AND HAVE a SHOT. So I was paying $900 and making $75k base with $25k bonus in a middle market IB before my whole group was gutted in early 2009. Ahhhh.... to be 24 again! What a life! But 75/25? Seriously? I thought you worked at Citi.

I disagree if you are talking about value investing theories and practices. Change is required periodically maybe, but not always. If it were always required the framework would be useless since you would be reevaluating it everyday, instead of using it for evaluating companies. I was referring to change from a continuous improvement stand point. Not changing the current framework but constantly trying to develop other frameworks. Adding arrows to your quiver so to speak. The business world is continuously changing as investors we have to adapt.

While I agree with most of you just said. I think you picked the wrong example at the end with communism. While communism is certainly an ideology, there were very few communist ideologues during communism. I am not sure of the percentage of people in favor of communism prior to countries becoming communists. But I suspect it was quite high as it was sold and seemed to offer the masses something and that is why so many fought for it. I think it is a great example of the danger of an extreme ideology. I think it was a disaster for a host of reasons resulting in millions of deaths, poverty, loss of freedom, etc. I agree it was a bad system but you suspicion is incorrect. Communism's spread in Europe for example was done through military conquest. The United States gave (gifted?) half of Europe to the USSR. At that point the countries had two choices: they could become communist or Russian tanks would roll into their countries and become communists. The second choice is actually a bit dramatic as at the point these countries became communist the USSR actually had armies stationed in these countries and the controlled the governments. They merely appointed the communist party as the ruling party. It's pretty obvious that when you have to use a gun to get people to do something it is because they're not convinced by your ideas. You are right that many countries in Europe became communist through military conquest. Good point. But then there was Russia, China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba. Likely a bigger percent of the population believed Communism would be better in those countries. Would have been better for the populations if the leaders just threw out the Communist ideology and picked the system that worked the best. Ok, let dig deeper. Russia and Cuba were revolutions. In these cases you are probably right that communism was accepted by a large part of the population. Though I doubt it was really the ideology of communism that did it. These revolutions were brought upon by extreme inequality. Most of the population was living at or below subsistence level. So you have a large mass of population with nothing to loose. If it wasn't communism it would probably have been some other ideology that would have done it. This brings me back to the theory overplayed on ideology issue. Communism as an ideology was not crafted for agrarian societies like Russia and Cuba. It was crafted for industrialized societies like Germany and Britain. But in Russia Lenin and the gang decided to toss that out take the kernel of ideology and overlay a new theory on it to make it work there. So it's not so much the ideology but the theories that go with it. Now past that it all changes. One mistake that people in the west made about communism is that it was the ideology and communists were ideologues ready to die for communism. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Was Lenin an ideologue? Probably. But not in the ideology of communism but in his own theory of communism. Past that come the next generations. Was Stalin a communist ideologue? Not for a second. He was a power hungry tyrant. As a power hungry tyrant communist Russia had a pretty good system set up to achieve his goals. Why would he want to change it? I have to admit that I don't know as much about Asian communism as the European one. In China I know the communists fought a civil war and they won so communism it is. If you fight a civil war you don't have that great of an acceptance of an idea. But clearly enough of one for people to fight and die for the idea. Korea, again pretty big war so not overwhelming acceptance there either. Vietnam is tricky because you have so many moving parts: French imperialism, Russian influence, American interests so I'm not even gonna try to venture a guess. In the end it ironically looks like the only place where communism ideology succeeded and was really supported by a large part of the population ideologically was Cuba. But this wasn't really communist ideology that was supported. It was Castro's version of communism. His theory basically. I think there's a fair chance that the people that came up with the communist ideology did not even know that Cuba existed.

I think my comment is being taken out of context and this issue is becoming unnecessarily emotional as opposed to invoking rational thought. So let me clarify. My comment of masks not being shown to be effective so far was in the context of multiple previous posts specifically on covid studies that are being cited to argue in favor of or against effectiveness of masks to prevent infection for the wearer (not source control). I am not making any general claims about masks, especially for source control. Also I was clear that so far there is absence of evidence that is coming from gold standard randomized controlled trials that unequivocally show effectiveness in that context. I am fully aware that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. However, given what we know so far, wearing masks just by themselves is unlikely to show very high effectiveness to prevent getting infected in such studies. This may be partly due to difficulty in getting a large enough study going for something that is behavioral or masks may be more effective when combined with other non pharmaceutical interventions. But such trials have not been conducted. By the way, I do wear mask in public. It has more to do with lack of harm doing it and potential for source control (in the unlikely situation of source being myself) than proof of preventative intervention. I think that there's pretty well understood that mask work much better as source control than infection control. That's why it's important that you have a mask mandate. That's also why it works really well in disciplined populations. Even if masks are not very good at infection control, they become very good at controlling the infection if they're good at source control and have a high % of mask wearing. As for a randomized trial for mask infection control I'm not sure how you do that. You get people to cough in other people's faces with covid, some with masks some without? I don't think there's any setup that goes past an ethics panel.

I would say that the ideology is the product and propaganda is the marketing. Sorta like the ideology is the purse and propaganda is the ads.

Interesting! Normally I would say that those bullets are not ideas but propaganda and the social media gun is a better disseminating mechanism. But then you have Qanon which is weird and dumbfounding. It definitely contains ideas. So i don't know what to say about that.

I second that. I'm definitely more careful with clients' money than my own.

While I agree with most of you just said. I think you picked the wrong example at the end with communism. While communism is certainly an ideology, there were very few communist ideologues during communism. I am not sure of the percentage of people in favor of communism prior to countries becoming communists. But I suspect it was quite high as it was sold and seemed to offer the masses something and that is why so many fought for it. I think it is a great example of the danger of an extreme ideology. I think it was a disaster for a host of reasons resulting in millions of deaths, poverty, loss of freedom, etc. I agree it was a bad system but you suspicion is incorrect. Communism's spread in Europe for example was done through military conquest. The United States gave (gifted?) half of Europe to the USSR. At that point the countries had two choices: they could become communist or Russian tanks would roll into their countries and become communists. The second choice is actually a bit dramatic as at the point these countries became communist the USSR actually had armies stationed in these countries and the controlled the governments. They merely appointed the communist party as the ruling party. It's pretty obvious that when you have to use a gun to get people to do something it is because they're not convinced by your ideas.

I have had the opposite experience. Worked out very well. It's just like with regular clients. Pick the right ones, work hard, and treat them well. Everybody's happy. I do say no a lot though.

That's interesting and tricky to answer so here's Li Lu's answer: "I’m not ideologically opposed to anything. I am against any ideology." :) It seems Mr. Munger meant to stay away from 'extreme' or 'intense' ideology. True and a reasonable answer. I meant it more as an exploration of my/our own blind spots as value investors. That is usually unnerving and unwelcome but more productive in realtime than mocking scandanavian rowers with hindsight. There have been many articles and postings about how value investors have suffered because they stayed to close to their "ideology". I wonder if there is any truth in that? rb, agreed. E.g. one of Munger's better known friends used to buy only asset value discounts, but he changed. Is there a change required now? Your question that I've bolded is the problem. Change is not required now or at a point in time. Change is required always. I wrote a bigger post on theories layered on ideologies. Munger's friend was anchored to asset value discounts which was a theory. Nothing prevented him from investing in discounted intangible assets before his "change". I'm sure Coke, P&G and Wrigley traded at discount before the 1980s as well. Similarly I am sure there are better ways to do value today than cigar butts and GARP. The ideology is intact but you must always evolve and be flexible about theory/implementation.