wescobrk
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Posts posted by wescobrk
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Hi Sanjeev,
I will be visiting Seattle for the first time next year. I also want to come to Premier's meeting.
My guess is it will be in April?
Any chance you can provide the date and location very soon?
I apologize if it is already in a letter or post somewhere. I didn't see it.
Thanks!
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Thanks, Gio, for the recommendation.
I finished it rather quickly.
It was a good read.
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'"Well, that's alright in practice, but it will never work in theory." ~ Warren Buffett, 1984 Letter to Shareholders
Bernanke stole that quote from Buffett.
He should have given credit (he said almost the same words regarding QE)
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Hi Gio,
Is this from Stiles' First Tycoon book?
If so, which page?
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I bought the last shares of MCF at $12.80. It's a full position now.
So far my timing has been brilliant, ha.
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I saw Miller speak about a year ago and he said he was the happiest he's ever been.
He's extremely bright but his weakness has always been he's always bullish and aggressive.
He always keeps the pedal to the floor.
Obviously that will at some point almost destroy you over a long enough time frame.
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When BAC was at half of tangible book, the posts on here were gold, mainly from eric.
It's a tough environment with BAC above TBV and the market at 17x forward earnings.
It's hard to generate alpha in this environment.
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I don't like posting to the FT for copyright reasons but I 100% agree with Dimon calling out shareholders.
The shareholders that turn their brain over to Glass Lewis and other firms are lazy.
They should just abstain if they are too lazy to read a 10q and k.
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I bought more mcf today at $13.80.
Now I need to figure out how to raise some cash as I get nervous when I don't have any.
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I'm certainly no expert on it but they don't have any debt or derivatives that can be called this year. Their debt should stay stable and their working capital will improve throughout the year all this is from the call a week ago roughly.
Tangible book is $550 million. My average cost is $15.30. I bought around 55% tangible book.
I think it's similar to what Buffett thought of Berkshire. An easy 30-35% upside.
We'll see if i'm brain dead or not.
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It was downloaded to my kindle at 11pm on Monday.
I can't wait to read it.
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I don't but I always get interested on close to a 10% drop in a single day.
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I'm sure a lot of people more able than me figured this out a long time ago but it finally hit me why Moynihan gave away 8% of BAC to Buffett when he swore he didn't need capital--job security.
His job is immensely more safe with Buffett in his corner, thus, it was rational for Moynihan to do the deal.
Obviously, the shareholders are on the other end.
Citi has ROA of .9 (I think based on last q)without any fed approval and BAC is still around .6 after buybacks and dividends in the past.
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I can't find any news.
Can anyone else?
I'm starting to nibble.
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Good comments Picasso, don't forget there are other issues as well, the most frightening it seems (after costs of rates normalizing is medicare) over a 50 year time frame I believe it'll consume more than 50% of the annual budget. Of course, the country will do something about it at some point but it is frightening as well.
Another thing I'm concerned about is the lack of productivity. Is anyone else conncerned about this?
I think the FT had an article today about averaging .6% a year since I think around 2003. This is very concerning as well. Instead of the long-term rate of 2%.
As far as Yellen, I think stock valuation calls are a bit outside her job description. She talked about biotech and social media being too high a few months back, as Buffett and Gates said, if rates stay low for a few more years, stocks are actually quite cheap.
We all know the Fed has been too optimistic on growth for the past 5 years. Their forecasting skill is not that good. As Gundlach put it, they haven't added any value when you compare with the futures markets over the past several years, of course, no one else can forecast as well it isn't just the Fed, it always pains me to see the conviction they have when their record is so poor.
I remember Bullard called for starting up QE again in Nov then he said we should raise rates in March. Some people on the Fed are almost nuts, but I digress.
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haha, nice one palantir.
I haven't seen many boxing fights but did it strike anyone else as odd as how much Manny was smiling?
He didn't look like he wanted to kick Floyd's ass.
I'm sure someone will say "I would be smiling too if I just made $100 million" and I get that, but I still thought it was odd.
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haha, so it is 100% men.
oh well.
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Going to a friend's b'day tonight where the Mayweather v Pacquiao boxing will be on. Made a 100$ donation to "Battered Women Support Services" and "Because I am a Girl" to counteract my monetary support of Mayweather who has 7 charges against him for abusing women.
It's good to know there is at least 1 woman on the board.
I was concerned it was 100% guys.
The last thing we need is an echo chamber.
Welcome.
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I remember meeting this gentleman on a flight from Dallas to Omaha about five years back. He was about 90-95 years old, half-blind, but very engaging.
He was going to the Berkshire Hathaway meeting. Lived in Dallas, but had a farm in Omaha and was a long-time shareholder.
I asked him about his farm..."Ohhh, I bought it many years ago...about 50,000 acres!"
I asked him how long he's been a shareholder..."Oh, I owned it before Buffett got involved. My broker accidentally bought me 5,000 shares when I asked him to buy something else, but he thought this was a better investment."
What happened...did you keep the shares? "Yeah, I ended up keeping them. I gave my idiot son 500 shares ten years ago, but he sold them, but I kept the rest of them!"
And the broker? "Oh, I fired him right after he bought me the stock and told me what he did!" Did you ever see him again or thank him years later? "Nope!" as he chuckled.
So why did Buffett buy Berkshire? Perhaps serendipity.
Maybe it was a mistake for Buffett to buy Berkshire, but maybe he would not have turned Berkshire into what he did if he had sold it or bought something else. Thank goodness he made the worst mistake of his life by buying Berkshire! Cheers!
Thanks for sharing, Sanjeev.
Great story!
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Does anyone else on the board use Morningstar premium?
I use a lot of skepticism on their analysis but occasionally they have some reasonable stuff on a company.
I've noticed a higher value recently for a lot of companies they cover and they have put they are lowering their discount rate from 10% to 9% but the only reason they give is "their new methodology and investors expectation of returns." Huh? what the hell?
The Fed is about to raise raise for the first time in 9 years and Morningstar is lowering their discount rate for a lot of companies they cover.
I've never bothered to see if i can call anyone at Morningstar to ask this question but just curious if anyone on the board knows why Morninsgstar is lowering their discount rate?
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What's your source for he tried to sell it in 1968?
THanks.
Damn brokerage firm changed my delivery options to electronic and I never got my hard copy Berkshire report. Ugh.
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I wish he would annualize his numbers like every other investor.
He and his partner, Glenn I think, split a few years ago, it looks like he has lagged a lot since Glenn left.
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Let me know if anyone ever wants to meet up at the NFM in Dallas. It's a beautiful building.
I'm just under an hour away so anytime on a weekend would be good with me.
Thanks.
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He died yesterday.
109 years young.
Irving Kahn was born in Manhattan on December 19 1905, the son of Russian immigrants. After school in the Bronx, Kahn enrolled at City College but dropped out after two years to support his parents, taking a job as a “runner”, or trading assistant, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
He became friends with Benjamin Graham, later the author of The Intelligent Investor, the bible of value investing. They would ride the subway together in the evenings to Columbia University where Kahn worked — often for free — as his mentor’s assistant. Hanging around campus was also a way to spend time with Ruth Perl, a psychology student, whom he married in 1931.
Kahn made his first trade in June 1929, borrowing from his brother-in-law to bet on a fall in the price of shares in the high-flying Magma Copper. When the market crashed just months later, he doubled his money.
In 1938 he borrowed again to buy his first house, in the Belle Harbor district of Queens, after banks — still piled high with foreclosures — denied him a mortgage. This time the source was uncle Harry, whose business had built the foundations for the Chrysler Building.
For the next few decades he bounced around brokerages, doing well through “time-arb” strategies, exploiting pricing differences between the same stocks traded in New York and London, and later trying something similar with companies undergoing mergers. In 1978 he struck out on his own, employing Thomas and his brother Alan to pursue the Graham goal of conservative, research-driven stock picking. (Kahn gave Thomas the middle name Graham — just as Warren Buffett, another disciple, did for his second son.)
In the month of Kahn’s 100th birthday he rang the opening bell at the NYSE and was feted at a party at the elite Harmonie Club, attended by mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Earnings are out
in Fairfax Financial
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How do you do the math on $500 million with a company that has a market cap of roughly 800 million?