Voodooking

I would happily pay $2,999,999 for it NOT to include J. Zweig....!!! I always, always buy ebooks, but for TII I searched for an old original copy without any "filler".

Sizable chunk of TWX

This is great news! I can't wait to see / hear them. I'm sure they'll end up on YouTube eventually... my commute is about to get a lot more educational :)

Yeah, that guy Joe always really annoys me!!! You could tell Becky was thinking "WTF?!" too when he was dribbling on about Twitter and tweets etc. You've got an opportunity to ask one of the cleverest, most experienced, knowledgeable and interesting people you'll ever meet about almost anything, and he wastes it trying to make jokes and drone on about things that aren't even funny or relevant to the man in question. Ask your 15 year-old nephew about Twitter ...ask W.E.B. about companies, the economy, investing, philanthropy etc. Please!

I was impressed to see him still appearing to be sharp as a tack. I was a bit worried as I'd seen a video on YouTube of him a few weeks ago and he seemed slightly forgetful and I was upset at the thought of him failing mentally, but today's appearance on CNBC calmed my fears.

I know that Warren has a LOT of respect for Bezos, and both him and Charlie hold him in high regard. I'm sure Warren said that Bezos was the best businessman of his generation, or the last two decades, or some other sort of high praise like that. It will be interesting to see what comes of it. Living in the UK with our free National Health Service, it paints a huge contrast to healthcare in the USA. I love the US, but healthcare for the less fortunate isn't one of its strong points.

You're probably right about Guy. It was a couple of years ago actually that he said he'd never filed one and that's where they must have got his information from his report. He did say that he was going to start filing them though. So I guess there might be a few quarters on record now with the SEC.

Buffett and Munger have both spoken out on Bitcoin. Both have been very negative about it, and described it as a bubble with no intrinsic measure of value to back it up. Both said they would avoid and wouldn't even waste any time thinking about it. Munger also expressed concern that even though 'Bitcoinists' have said there are a finite amount of them, there is nothing to stop someone creating more in the future. Also, not to do it because "even if it works, it's a bad thing because it will lead you to believe in it and lose money next time..." I completely agree with them both on Bitcoin / crypto currency. On Tesla, to my knowledge, Buffett has never spoken publically about the company. Munger has said that (I paraphrase): "I think Musk is a genius, and I don't use that term lightly! However, I'm always wary of someone who's IQ is 140 and they think it's 180. I'd rather it was 140 and they think it's 130, and act accordingly". Personally, I think Musk is such an incredible visionary, and people like him don't come along very often in a generation. I think he's done a fantastic job in his aim to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy production and consumption, and even though I know it's complete (rational) speculation, I am happy to have invested in Tesla.

Insidermonkey is another site that I would highly recommend, if you are not already familiar with it. I find it very useful, and it's free if you sign up with your email address, but they don't spam you. There is WhaleWisdom too, but I don't find it as good as IM.

The only thing I know that may be of use is that Guy Spier does not, and has not ever, filed a US 13F for his Aquamarine Fund. Dataroma et al are able to report on his holdings by obtaining a copy of his annual report. So I guess one way would be to look at individual fund / manager / company reports or information other than 13F's. I do this for a few small European value investors. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has any other advice / tips though...?

Another good one...

Excellent. Thanks for posting this. It's amazing how many of the things Buffett says in 1985 are the same things he also said in 2017!

I also find that I like to listen to Audiobooks while commuting (about 30 mins each way by car, so long enough to get 'into' it, mentally). I've used this time over the past couple of years to read listen to several books that I might not have invested the time to sit down and spend hours reading on the iPad or printed copies. It allows me to listen to a fiction work such as an Ayn Rand book or an interesting biography, and learn something during a chunk of time that otherwise would have just been wasted. I think doing things like this give you a huge advantage over your contemporaries who are not interested in becoming a "Lifelong Learner" to coin a Munger phrase. I also love watching YouTube videos on my lunch break at work and I have learned so much from watching everything I can get my hands on in this manner from Buffett; Munger; Klarman; Greenblatt; Zeke Ashton; Lauren Templeton etc.

I would say my favourite book on investing is Joel Greenblatt's "You Can be a Stock Market Genius". I regularly re-read that if I am looking at a particular situation or just to remind myself about the major concepts. Apart from that I have read Graham's "The Intelligent Investor" (the original one, not the horrendously b*stardised Zweig version!) several times. I also regularly go back and read the Buffett Partnership letters to shareholders. They are incredibly valuable and lay out a huge amount of information on Buffett's early approach. I like Buffett biographies too, but tend to only read things like that once.

Totally agree with everything you mention in this post. I try to hold 20 stocks if I can find 20 good ones, but if I can only find 4 at certain times then I will concentrate heavily in those or hold some cash, but I think what's written above is very sensible.

Bitcoin is not an investment, it is speculation. I personally think it is akin to a pyramid scheme. I would not advise investing / speculating any more than 1% of your net worth in it, and if you are interested in financial gain (which you obviously are given that you are posting on here, I would advise reading You Can be a Stock Market Genius; The Intelligent Investor, and the Buffett Partnership Letters.

Thanks Daniel, that's a very kind gesture from you. I have downloaded the book and plan to read it. I am particularly impressed by the comments from Jean-Marie Eveillard, someone who I admire a lot. If you are able to provide any transcripts from the meetings, either from your own archives or OID, it would be greatly appreciated.

Haha, I'm waiting until the price drops after Earnings (Losses) are announced tonight, then I'm going to load up and increase my position while it is nice and cheap (relatively).

I've watched the past two BRK Shareholders meetings on Yahoo live stream / YouTube, but they were not recorded before that as far as I'm aware. Now that OID seems to have disappeared, does anyone know any other way I can get my hands on a transcripts of any of the shareholder meetings from 197X to 2015? I would love to be able to learn from all of that wisdom.

Idorsia Altaba DXC Technology Cabela's Inc Berkshire Hathaway B Tesla Solar Company SA

One thing I always try to remember when I get excited about a new market / product etc. is what Warren Buffett said about airlines and auto companies in the beginning... In the early days of automobiles and airlines, this was new technology which was obviously going to change the developed world and the lives of almost everybody in it. It would make some people very rich. The problem is, out of the hundreds or thousands of companies at the beginning, how do you know which ones are going to survive, and which ones are going to be profitable? If you'd invested in every commercial airline at the beginning of aviation, you'd have lost almost all your money. If you'd picked a number of auto companies from the hundreds of American auto companies, you'd have lost money if you didn't pick one of the 'Big 3' that survived. This instilled the importance of Value Investing to me, and the fact that the only way to make money consistently over time (unless you can predict the future) is value investing. Unfortunately value investing doesn't work with speculative growth investments, no matter how well we would like them to turn out... With all that said, I have a 5% position in Tesla, and I personally believe they have the potential to be at least a 10x and maybe even bigger than Apple. I think Elon Musk is one of the incredible individuals of our generation, similar to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos etc. and I think his products and business plan (INCLUDING SOLAR ROOFS AND STORAGE) are incredibly good. I may be wrong about this, but I don't want to not invest and miss out.

Seems like I'm one of the few that isn't from The Americas! I live in a small town called Aberdeen in Scotland, United Kingdom.

Did anyone ever take a position in Airmedia Group (AMCN)? I'm looking to take a small position in the stock as a Merger Risk Arbitrage play. The most helpful articles I can find on the subject are as follows: http://en.prnasia.com/story/166631-0.shtml https://seekingalpha.com/article/4004170-airmedia-group-going-private-deal-hits-road-block Stock is currently trading at $2.67 and the acquirer has offered a cash bid of $6.00 for each share. If the merger goes through, I could stand to make a profit of around 125% on my investment. However, the merger has dragged on for a very long time, and there are no guarantees that it will go through... In looking at the downside, by my calculations, although the company is making a loss, it is only trading at 2 x NCAV. My thinking is that even if the shares take 100% loss, and the company goes into liquidation, I should only lose approx. 50% of my initial investment after the assets are sold during liquidation. Are there any major points I've missed here? Does anyone else have a position in it? It seems like a very high upside to compensate for the risk it might break.