wescobrk

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-06/warren-buffett-market-beating-skills-revealed-cutting-research.html Kinda funny they did a study. I guess next they will do a study to see if Michael Jordan was better than average basketball player.

I don't think that applies to the massive market cap today. They have been saying that since the 90's. I think it was accurate when it was below 100 billion. Obviously it helped for them to get where they are but growth now is difficult because its mostly operating companies and not stocks. Web wants that trend to continue per his shareholder letters. Washington post and geico I think were his two most additive to Berkshire security investments. Geico and wash post were greater than 50 baggers for him and the company was still pretty small in the mid 70s

"this one's easy. because like buffett, he's a great compounder of money. so the more money he has to compound the better off society, which will continue to have massive issues to deal with, is going to be when he's done compounding. To illustrate, what if Buffett had given away half his capital at age 45? Would society be better off? Or is it better off that he waited till he was 75? I think the answer is quite obvious." True, but Buffett announced at age 76 he started to give a material amount away each year. If you want to compare to Buffett, at age 98 to have 99 percent and distributed less than 1, even compared to Buffett, that is extreme.

It appears at age 98 he hoarded the capital and distributed a minute percentage each year of his net worth. He was a great man but that looks odd to me.

After looking at the article again it looks l like he gave a very small percentage of net worth while alive (536k) and 187 million after he passed. He gave away less than 1 percent while alive? Ill play devil's advocate and ask the board if that was a wise thing to do? Why not give at least half in your old age to see the benefits?

Sounds like a great man. It would have been nice to know how much he inherited originally but a great story to read. Nazism taleb would probably criticize this man (he criticized Buffett for living frugally and amassing great wealth), sounds like a great man to me though.

Sounds good. I'm still greater than 100 per cent notional in taxable account but only about 10 percent in Roth. The stock could continue to climb but I'm hoping the market starts to discount in the taper in jan or feb. We saw 6 percent pull back in general market starting in late may of this year on news of a taper. I think we will see at least 6 percent this time. The 100k question is if they will actually taper in march. We'll see.

Bought some BAC commons, yesterday... Feat warriors, thanks for sharing. Just curious, what do you see today that you didn't see a month ago regarding bac or did you just have some new cash come in and not able to buy 2 weeks ago?

What do you plan to use the computer for? That's pretty critical. Do you care about OS / applications (is MAC OS ok, iOS, Windows... ) Ben Some light spreadsheet and some writing but mostly reading with some occasional printing and scanning. I'd like to have Microsoft excel but other than that not partial to any OS. Thanks for all the responses!

I received it for free at a century management conference. It's mainly about 1-2 page on each investor. Just a quick read. Nothing substantive. More of a book distributed to freshmen in college. I'm not complaining as it was free.:)

I wish the iPod with audible.com would let me speed it up faster than 2x to go through it even quicker. LOL!! I have never even tried to listen at 2x speed… That’s why it takes me so long to finish an audiobook!! ;D ;D ;D Gio I discovered it by accident s few months ago. It's a lifesaver. Especially for the books that are longer than 20 hours or I probably would never finish.:)

Thanks for telling us about the audiobook! I believe I have gio to thank. I've been listening to it the past two weeks in the car. Almost finished. I wish the iPod with audible.com would let me speed it up faster than 2x to go through it even quicker. I intend to start on the frackers next.

I mean combination of personal and business. I was thinking of apple but wondering if it would be a pain to use windows and Microsoft excel. I'm not that technical. I don't want to partition for two operating systems. I guess I can just install excel and use apple os.

I need to buy a desktop, laptop and maybe a tablet. Just curious if you guys wouldn't mind telling me what you like and dislike for the above? I will use all three for a combustion of personal and business. Thanks!

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505268_162-57612947/warren-buffett-talks-all-time-record-highs-on-wall-street-stock-prices-in-the-future/ For interview

"Look at a 1 yr chart -- it was right about now a year ago that it took off. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=BAC+Basic+Chart So, been there and done/doing that." I know! I posted that I would buy more and you responded it was at tbv. That was a few days ago. My point is I'm ready to do it again! As mike said in rounders, "I can bust you up all day long" (to KGB at the end of the movie) I can bust up the S&P all day if it keeps doing that with bac:)

"He could have bought a lot more, and he still can. Can't he buy until he gets up to a 10% total ownership stake?" I believe he can but I think it's virtually zero probability he will. The only financial he adds to is wells. I guess anything is possible if it drops below tbv but my guess he won't ever buy common and he will defer the exercise to 2021 unless there is a large dividend as he said recently in an interview. If he is still alive he might exercise just the amount that he doesn't have to put any up front cash if he follows his GE and Goldman plays. That will probably go to his successor unless he can live past his early 90's. On a selfish note, I hope bac drops back to tbv before ccar so I can load up again for the annual pop. I realize it seems unlikely as the market should discount that in and not drop but mr market tends to do things like that.

When bac hits 20 a share his massive 9 billion profit is a measly 3 percent of the current market cap.

In the partnership days and even into the 80's he bought everything half off or more, now it seems the best he can do is buy dollar bills for 90 cents. It's been pointed out his universe is so small now with a near 300 billion market cap. A nice problem to have but obviously returns will be pretty pedestrian in the future (as he has warned) especially since he thinks its reasonable float has probably peaked and may start to decline slightly.

11. "Tell her you are very interested in getting married because you're running out of clean socks and underwear and that fridges don't stock themselves. " Hilarious!

Instead of putting our focus into growing the economy we are spending 10 years suing companies. Maybe the value investing community has a friend in Obama because if we had some leadership like Clinton and less focus on suing companies for a decade and there was leadership with a focus on the economy the market would probably be 30 percent higher and then we definitely wouldn't be able to find anything to buy. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-06/wells-fargo-said-to-face-u-s-mortgage-bond-probe.html

"There was every possibility that they were too late once they got to Steak'n Shake...it was closer, very close to going under. The tax reassessment gave them a lifeline and some time. Sardar had to work incredibly quickly at that time to save the company...I gave him credit then, and I will still give him credit now for doing that. Why do you think the compensation structure changed? Because he was the one who would have lost everything and had nothing left to show. He wasn't the only one responsible for the turnaround...there were two other people that played a big part. But going back to the original decision to put everything into SNS, or now into CBRL...these are not good decisions from a risk management point of view. Hey I'm friends with Allan Mecham, and I would not have done that either with Berkshire, nor the correlated risks in Mohnish's portfolio before the credit crisis. Mohnish learned from that...Prem learned from C&F & TIG. Let's see if Biglari does? Cheers!" I think munger would disagree with you. He said multiple times at annual meetings he put more than 100 percent of his net worth in a single stock on more than one occasion. We know Buffett did it a few times with the partnership at 40 percent and he bought a huge amount of geico in 76 when it was probably 50-50 it would avoid bk. Buffett can't concentrate anymore because brk is so damn big. I don't think sardar has exhibited poor risk management with cbrl. Berkshire is the result of about 15 decisions munger said. There was risk of a huge market decline but I don't think there was much risk with insolvency for cbrl and since sardar has permanent capital, he can wait it out. His lion find limited partners are very loyal and that is akin to permanent capital. I think only one partner left after the severe drop with sns. I think there are different views on this subject and it has more to do with the comfort level around market volatility since the definition of risk is permanent loss of capital which there really wasn't any with cbrl, maybe there was a decent amount with sns but even with hindsight I don't think it was a bad decision to put the amount he did if the upside was to get control of the company. That is huge upside! I do think it was a mistake to pay the high price for sns that he did but he has acknowledged that.

with his son and grandson

"BH has $100m in cash? I just checked their latest 10-q (July 2013) and it says $22.358m in cash and equivalents. Have I been looking in the wrong place all this time?" They raised 75.7 million in a rights offering. The company received the funds 7-10 days after sept 16. Special div info is in proxy filings for cracker barrell.

"What is Biglari's angle here? He owns ~6.3% or has ~$1.5m invested in CAW. BH has $23m in cash and equivalents and $131m in investments. How will a double, triple or even a quadruple in CAW move the needle at BH? This doesn't really seem like a good use of time for Biglari." Actually they have 100 million in cash, They will have 195 if the special dividend is approved. The investment is down in value about 45%. Not sure why he went after something so small.