wescobrk

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.

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.

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.

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.

It was downloaded to my kindle at 11pm on Monday. I can't wait to read it.

I don't but I always get interested on close to a 10% drop in a single day.

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.

I can't find any news. Can anyone else? I'm starting to nibble.

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.

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.

haha, so it is 100% men. oh well.

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.

Thanks for sharing, Sanjeev. Great story!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

I enjoyed all 42 pages but I really enjoyed the buying of Nico for Berkshire and not bpl. You have to admire Buffett candor.the answer he gave was basically a dumb decision. I'm sure more nuggets will come to me later.

More bac I think ubs analyst is obtuse. He cut price from 20 to 16 because of capital levels. I didn't think it was worth 20 but certainly 18. Bac will probably pass on div increase but I bet they get at least 3 billion share buyback. Thanks ubs "analyst" for giving me the 15.70 print.

Dimon said on the Q&A a couple of days ago he thinks JPM within 2 years will see better environment with regulators and they have have a premium PE in 4 years. He sounds exhausted with Justice Department. Do the government a favor and then take a pound of flesh for 6 years. Hopefully he is right and in 2017 the taking of flesh will be largely done. Banks will definitely have vastly higher P/E ratios in 2-4 years but we have to keep in mind the ROE the regulators will allow them to earn. If one forecasts an ROE higher than the low to mid teens, I think will be overly optimistic.

BAC down 3% on no news. I bought a ton in the late afternoon. CCAR phase one comes out Thurs.

He's very successful and good at what he does, but I agree, a lot of times he contradicts what he says. He's very confusing to me at times. His latest interview about not giving stock picks but then he does nothing but gives stock picks.

Apple is amazing what it has accomplished but at some point it'll have several years of sideways movement. i'm certainly not smart enough to know when, but I wouldn't bet on a lot of growth if I was forced to wager, from this price anyway. I was thinking the same thing after Mohnish made the comments about Google recently. The growth from here isn't clear, at least to me. Those companies aren't my game though so take my opinion for what it's worth, which is about nothing for those companies as I didn't buy them years ago when an intelligent investor should have.

Been thinking about doing the same. But wait... http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-more-evidence-that-apple-could-be-working-on-a-car-2015-2 If it drops, I hope it happens in late March after my BAC might hit $18 :) I'll sell some bac and buy something else. i wanted to buy somepriceline this week but damn expedia boosted the bid offer, telsa's bid dropped today, thus I went with the latter, at least for now.