mountboney

I don't get the BI insurance fear with regards to BRK. Straight out of his mouth at this years annual meeting: "We are not big in the commercial, multiple peril business. Warren Buffett: (02:49:47) So I mean, this is not like our auto business or anything of that sort, but we will have claims. We’ll have litigation costs, but proportionally it’s not the same with us as with some other companies, which have been much more… Warren Buffett: (02:50:03) …those with some other companies which have been much heavier in writing business interruption as part of a commercial, multiple peril." How much clearer could he be?

Ha. Now i know that if I'm a leech and want to sleep at night I call myself an advocate (but without the self sacrificing salary of course).

Do you have some illiquid stocks? It might be, and Im just guessing based on what Ive noticed over time, if the last trade of a position is significantly outside of the bid/ask spread then it shows your balance based on the bid/ask rather than the last trade.

In my experience they show the impact of aftermarket and before market prices on balances, which is annoying.

I just sent negative feedback. I know it's still available but am assuming it will be gone soon. If anyone has a replacement for quick view of several years balance sheet, Income, CF please post. Thanks

The helpless, widows, orphans, men if they are with their families, the elderly we should help. Single men in their 20's and 30's sorry, you have an obligation to stay and fight for your country and then rebuild. Why is that so difficult to implement?

"a financial crisis is a change in the definition of cash" - what looks like cash equivalent now, for an extra fraction, may not be what you think when you need it most

Curious, what %age of your pf / networth is BRK? Largest position at around 20% of nw

Discovered Buffett (and Valueline) in 1994, 19.7% CAGR for 19+ years, 32X, 7 years over 30%, worst year -5%. Before Buffett I was clueless and sucked, and when I stray occasionally I can still suck. His comments through 08/09 were golden, may he live to be 120. Thank you Warren!!!!!!!

If Geoff Gannon's facts are correct that 100% of profits come from 10% of patients with no profits from the 90% on medicare/medicade then that's roughly $1.5mm in enterprise value per profitable patient. I hope I never have kidney failure.

The Hank Haney book "The Big Miss" is a pretty good read if you're a golfer and want one man's behind the scenes account. Personally I've never liked Tiger - too many F Bombs and club throws on the course.

Colony Financial issued $145 million of 8.5% preferreds about a week ago. Colony was formed in 2009 to buy post-crisis real estate debt. The preferred will be used to payoff a line of credit. In rough numbers capital structure is: $730 mm assets (various real estate debt instruments purchased since mid 2009) $145 preferred $14 mm long term debt $30 mm other liabilities So with the current balance sheet the 8.5% preferreds are super low risk. I assume they'll use the additional equity to add more long term debt and continue buying loans, but I think the market will limit the amount of leverage they can take on. Anyway, I don't see much downside. Currently around 25, no redemption until 2017.

This latest leg down (say 4 to 2.50) surprised a lot of experts. What has become apparent is that the gravitation to liquids plays by so many producers does not reduce gas production very much. These liquids plays still produce a ton of gas as the liquids are largely natural gas liquids. For at least the next year or two I think you can toss the marginal cost numbers that have floated around and think of marginal cost in terms of gas being a by-product like it was in the 50-70's. It won't last forever but I suspect that several debt laden dry gas producers will go bust with $1-2 dollar gas before the reversal starts.

Racemize, I think you found a good board to learn from. As for me I'm living proof that value investing in the school of Buffett and others can be life changing. I started investing in 1994 as a hobby/sideline to my career at the time. I did have an MBA but found that other than basic accounting and finance, maybe three or four classes, most of the formal education was unnecessary or even wrong (I remember to this day the first lecture on the efficient market theory and I remember thinking this can't be right, surely someone with better judgement than average can do better than average in the market). I stumbled on Buffett soon after the MBA and the concept of value investing just clicked and I became super excited and started reading like crazy. I started with fairly modest funds to invest with in my early thirties. Through a combination of reading and learning, passion, and some luck I was able to retire early and invest full-time. The best things you can do in my opinion are: A) Work hard to maximize your income and save, save, save B) Read, read, read Read Graham's Intelligent Investor (especially chapter's 8 and 20) Read Buffett's writings and the earlier books on Buffett Read Klarman Read Greenblatt's first book Read Peter Lynch's 2 books Read other value investors discuss the businesses they own and why (Tilson's Value Investor Insight is pretty good, $350 or so a year, but you have to layer your own judgement and consider if you agree with their philosophy and consider their motives) Read and think about moats - what makes a moat? what businesses have moats? who had them and lost them over time and why? C) Get comfortable with a method that works for you. For me it's finding a business that a) I would be comfortable holding for 10-15 years b) I understand it's moat c) is cheap and I understand why it's cheap (and disagree of course). The best ideas seem to come from forced selling, selling for a temporary reason (bad qtr or two), or selling for a reason I understand and disagree with. Having all these stars line up is rare and when they do I put at least 10% of assets into the idea. Or more if you are really confident in the business. Don't be afraid to sell if it runs up a lot even if you don't have other good ideas ready and waiting. C) Dig, dig, dig for ideas May favorite source by far is Valueline - read it cover to cover every week, go through the low P/E list, go through the highest 3-5 year appreciation list, go through the highest growth stock list, thumb through the volumes to get a sense for what businesses are cheap and what are expensive, and think and read about why. D) Read the company filings, concentrate on cash flow, beware of shareholder unfriendly management - what is management doing with cash flow?, shrinking share count over time is wonderful My biggest successes were loading up on things that I really had conviction on and understood and disagreed with the bear case. I was able to entirely miss the 2000-03 meltdown by focusing on value - there were some real values in small stocks even as the S&P was way overvalued. I was lucky to recognize the coming oil shortage 2005-07 (my background is oil and gas but I normally don't invest much in energy companies). I was lucky to be very conservative going into the 2008 meltdown (I was worried about oil prices not houses). My biggest mistakes were buying things that I was not truly comfortable with and then selling in a wave of uncertainty/panic. Looking back what drove me to do that was putting pressure on myself to beat the market every year - I just have to accept that some years will under-perform and not force it. FWIW I am more cautious now than I have ever been in 17 years. It may be a mistake but I would rather let some values go by right now than be heavily invested given a 25%(??) chance of a very bad outcome spreading from Europe. This is just the second time in 17 years I have let the macro influence my investing in a big way. I think some time in the next 3-8 years will be a great time for stocks again but not now. It will be no fun to under-perform if the market goes up a lot but that's the advantage of managing your own money, you only have to answer to yourself. I've never been successful at picking shorts because I can never get a level of conviction that keeps me in when it goes the wrong way. This may be a fatal flaw for me but I'm going to give it one more try before I give up on the idea given my views on the next few years. Still learning - I hope. Good luck

Next few days will be interesting. Though I don't think August 2nd is the "real" date. It's looking more and more like the only thing that will bring the parties together is a real strong message from the markets. A little Catch 22. The markets have been relatively calm because they are certain a deal will get done, but both sides have dug in because the markets are not showing any panic yet.