Brett

BTW, I'm writing a book on ten of Buffett's earliest investments (50s/60s). This is one of them. Happy to send a draft if you'd like.

Buffett bought the stock in '66. Bought $4mm, sold it for $6mm a year later. Disney compounded at around 18.9% from '67 to '95. Berkshire compounded at 24.8% during the same period. Dividends would close the gap a bit, but not much. The investment in '66 had so many ways to win. Theme park business was set to explode. Monetization of the film library. The film business actually was not a good business post the Paramount consent decrees in '48. Disney had a niche in family focused films that allowed them to earn supernormal returns/margins. Animation capabilities no one really had. So cheap. ~4x EBIT. Mary Poppins just came out. But it was still going around the globe in '67. '67 earnings were actually up vs. '66. Walt passed away in '66. You lost a driving force of the film business and strategic force of the company. The 70s and 80s weren't great decades. You needed Roy Disney (Walt's nephew) to replace management and bring in Eisner to turn the company around in the 80s. Look at the current company. Massive amounts of value has been created due to ABC and ESPN. ESPN in particular has driven enormous valuation creation. How can one Buffett anticipate that? I don't think selling was an error at all. My view is Walt drove the film franchise when Buffett bought the stock (he had a meeting with him in California, he made a judgement on Walt). His passing was a huge blow to the upside of the company. You had film in the library you could re-release or sell to TV that was probably worth the entire market cap of the company. You had the theme parks. But underwriting the film franchise growing post Walt was very hard. Forecasting theme park growth was very hard. You knew earnings were going up, but how fast? The price gave you a huge margin of safety for most of these. But it made sense Buffett sold after the pop + Walt's death.

Thank you so much!

I'm curious if anyone here has written to Munger. Did you write to the Daily Journal address? Did you receive a response?

Does anyone have access to HC Wainwright's research on RIOT that they could share?

This is a great suggestion, thank you Brett! You're welcome - I think you probably only need to do it for 10-15 years - I imagine other websites (maybe Bloomberg?) will have it for 1980 onwards.

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. And miss out on all the fun?

Go to the NYT Wayback machine: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/ Type in January 1 or 2 for each year. You'll see the prices in the stock pages. I think Berkshire was traded OTC in the early days, so NYT might not have all of them.

Curious, what investments do you think have been insufficiently or poorly covered?

I'm curious, what will the book focus on?

Does anyone know when Buffett sold Greif Bros., Cleveland Worsted Mills, or Philadelphia Reading? I'm trying to figure out how much he made/lost on these but don't have estimates of when he sold. I'm looking for Buffett's portfolio by year, preferably. I know the Robert Miles book has some years, but not enough to figure it out for these specific names.

In their 4Q 2016 letter, Sequoia pitched 10-year performance excluding cash and Valeant in the second paragraph of their letter as evidence of their ability to pick stocks. If they're going to use that horseshit logic, it should be fair to use it against them by excluding Berkshire on the upside.

I bought it and skimmed it. It doesn't look like he actually went into the annual reports from the year Buffett invested and researched what Buffett might have been thinking at the decision point. The book's very high-level. Oh sh@t, that's annoying. I was hoping for a really in depth treatment. I only skimmed a few sections, though. I was curious on Disney/Hochschild, in particular. I'm curious on your thoughts if you get around to it.

I bought it and skimmed it. It doesn't look like he actually went into the annual reports from the year Buffett invested and researched what Buffett might have been thinking at the decision point. The book's very high-level.

What book did you get this from? Andy Kilpatrick - Of Permanent Value Do you know what edition it's in? I only have older versions. Thank you! I got the 2012 edition, I think its under Kindle Unlimited on Amazon. Its in the chapter Adventure: Big Bang. Thanks! You're the best. Fortunately, that's the edition I have.