Kapitalust

After the removal of the buyback announcement and Buffett essentially saying the stock is cheap, I increased the entire portfolio's weighting to 60% Berkshire.

Or that Apple was going to be a mistake, a la IBM... yet the stock price has doubled since the first batches they started accumulating over 2 years ago...

ScottHall for President! 8) You heard it here first Seconded. People take things way too seriously and have difficulties reading between the lines...

I'm with RBC Direct and all you have to do on this platform is buy an interlisted stock on the Canadian side and then immediately sell it on the US side, or vice versa. Been doing it for many years now. Once everything settles, you have paid $9.95 for buying and then $9.95 for selling, and whatever spread occurred in the 15 seconds or so when you hit buy and then hit sell. I use RY as it's got tons of volume on both the TSX and NYSE. Easy peasy.

I tried to read Collapse but I just couldn't get into it for some reason. Tons of details in The World Until Yesterday, but I sort of like that, makes me feel it's more empirical and I can sort of draw my own conclusions The Easter Island case study was the most fascinating one for me as an example of societal collapse due to ecological damage. It's actually the only one that I can remember off the top of my head after more than a decade since I read Collapse last.

I loved Guns, Germs, and Steel, although a lot of that love may have been due to being 18 years old when I first read it. After that, read Collapse and The Third Chimpanzee. Guns, Germs, and Steel has always been my favourite of those 3. I slogged through The World Until Yesterday last year. It is very interesting although I found it quite drawn out. I think it is worth a skim: skip through areas that bore you and read in-depth in areas that capture your fascination.

What ratios do you look at to determine value? I mainly use P/E (price / earlier price) but more suggestions would be appreciated. I take a more technical approach: chartin... er, technical analysis. It's easy to predict where support is with the long history of data available, and I like to trade in and out as the momentum swings. It's akin to picking up pennies in front of a steamroller!

The part of me that wants to believe in aliens found all the recent stuff super fascinating.

As much as I would love to believe that aliens with super-advanced vehicles are visiting the earth and jacking off navy pilots... extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And I don't believe for a second that any of the recent stuff constitutes extraordinary evidence. I'll pull a John McAfee right now and proclaim that I will eat my own dick if this turns out to actually be aliens, as in advanced, intelligent beings from outer space.

I read a lot of Chomsky in late-high-school-and-early-into-university and my greatest takeaway from him was to always question those in positions of power: what they say, what they claim, what they decree. Very clearly a genius. However, I think Munger's comment that ideology can turn your brain a bit mushy is somewhat applicable to Chomsky. That radical side of Chomsky was somewhat appealing as a teenager but not anymore.

2017 Q2 is out: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/news/aug0417.pdf $99.7 billion in cash by the end of June :o Berkshire's cash pile represents 5.4% of Corporate America's total cash pile (https://www.ft.com/content/2cbc02d4-e0bf-3ece-9f5d-b9b063561e2b)

Maybe... but I'm hoping someone from our glorious west coast can explain to me how someone can qualify for a 1.5 million mortgage at 5% once B20 takes effect without being a serious 1%er Not us and we are in the lower end of the upper middle class in terms of income. I would never liquidate the majority of our stock, bond, REIT, and cash assets to sink into a house, only to end up with a house and no other asset.

I recall Buffett saying he would never trust himself to write an honest autobiography, thus hiring Schroeder and giving her the golden keys to the kingdom. She explicitly had his permission to talk to any and everyone on all subject matters, a fact that even surprised a lot of long time friends and associates. The personal aspects are the best things about the book, in my opinion; you can read about the financial stuff everywhere else. I was intrigued by how much he loved his wife Susie but loved money more, and thus allocated his limited time to money and neglected Susie - thus leading to their drifting apart, with her singing career, moving to California, etc. It was very tragic from what I gathered of how much they really did love each other.

Agree that I don't come here to read up on politics - plenty of other websites, blogs, forums, avenues for that. I think a compromise solution could be that there is a separate section of the board dedicated to off topic, "water cooler" topics that is only viewable and accessible to members. You can throw all the random, hot topic issues in there like politics, climate change, diet, favourite celebrities, etc, etc.

We are but the inanimate universe that has become animate, wondering such questions; we are but the dust of dead stars that gaze upon burning stars, pondering such questions... Terrible philosophical poetry aside, I'd like to add to the point that meeting your partner - the one who you truly were meant to be with - is insanely, unimaginably soaked in luck. When I think about how unlikely the series of events (and events that could have transpired to thwart our paths crossing) that led to my wife and I coming together, I am left speechless. However, it takes enormous amounts of hard work and skill to maintain and grow that partnership once you have found it.