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OracleofCarolina

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    Wintergreen Fund

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    David Winters on selling all of his Berkshire, via his twitter feed

     

    Winters: "We no longer felt that Warren Buffett was looking out for his shareholders’ interests."Although Berkshire is still a high-quality business with a compelling valuation,"it no longer met the second principle of our three-pronged investment criteria – management working on behalf of all shareholders.

    Sardar & Cooley to join CAW's board

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Cooley and Biglari resigned from CCA board effective last week.

     

    I don't read much into this, it is such a small position for BH.

    Since CCA recently hired a new CEO and changed the way they are structured, I would guess Phil and Sardar are moving on. My recollection is there are some very expensive change of control rules until 2016 to prevent any buyout of the company, but I could be mistaken on this.

    Worst capital allocation ever

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Native Americans selling Manhattan?

     

    Not so fast...from Buffett 1965

     

    One story stands out. This, of course, is the saga of trading acumen etched into history by the Manhattan Indians when they unloaded their island to that notorious spendthrift, Peter Minuit in 1626. My understanding is that they received $24 net. For this, Minuit received 22.3 square miles which works out to about 621,688,320 square feet. While on the basis of comparable sales, it is difficult to arrive at a precise appraisal, a $20 per square foot estimate seems reasonable giving a current land value for the island of $12,433,766,400 ($12 1/2 billion). To the novice, perhaps this sounds like a decent deal. However, the Indians have only had to achieve a 6 1/2% return (The tribal mutual fund representative would have promised them this.) to obtain the last laugh on Minuit. At 6 1/2%, $24 becomes $42,105,772,800 ($42 billion) in 338 years, and if they just managed to squeeze out an extra half point to get to 7%, the present value becomes $205 billion. So much for that.  Some of you may view your investment policies on a shorter term basis. For your convenience, we include our usual table indicating the gains from compounding $1,000,000 at various rates.

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