DCG

The one thing I've questioned about Buffett in recent years is his purchase of companies with hard-to-predict earnings. BNI is a very cyclical company. Holding stock in BNI, he could buy during downturns and sell (or lighten up on his position) during good times, but BNI could weigh down Berkshire in future recessions. Purchases of cyclical companies like this, Conoco, and the carpet and housing material companies he was buying in 2006, goes against Warren's primary investing focus, no? I understand he's changed his approach over the years, but it seems like he's been buying more and more companies that that seem difficult to predict. BNI at this price does not seem like a bargain to me, but who am I to second guess WEB.

I don't really understand objection to the split. The B shares will still follow the A shares over time, so I wouldn't worry too much about speculators. I'm more concerned with the share dillution and BRK taking on $10 Billion in BNI's debt than I am with a stock split.

I'm having a hard time finding any great companies cheap enough to buy right now. Anyone on here buy anything lately, or what companies are on your close radar?

I don't understand it at all. Dell has been one of the worst-run computer companies in the world over the last decade or so.

In all fairness, not many people did (including Buffett). Miller's fund got hit hard last year, but most money managers did. Miller has always been largely a buy & hold guy, so he's not someone who typically sells all his stocks heading into a recession.

I don't have the % breakdowns handy right now, but here are my current stock holdings (held between an equities account and an IRA): AAPL BRK.B FFH GE GOOG HANS LOW PAYX USB USG V DIS PG AAPL & BRK.B are my largest holdings by $.

Among the few professional fund managers I follow, Legg Mason's Bill Miller is one of my favorites. His quarterly reports are real good reads, and his most recent one is no exception. I've attached it for anyone interested.

When do they report?

You want to buy when the future looks promising. Many of GE's industries show no signs of turning around for a while and do not look promising at all. You want to buy great companies at fair/good prices; but one can make an argument that GE is no longer a great company.

All the industries you mentioned are struggling big time right now, and will probably be struggling for a long time. CNBC is a very small part of GE and replies on Ad spending, which is down a lot, and will be hurt by a continuing shift from tv to online advertising. Wind Turbine sales are highly related to the price of oil. Their wind turbine sales will be down quite a bit this year from last year. Jet Turbines? Do you realize how much Boing (a huge customer of GE's) is struggling, and airlines around the world are reducing their future orders for new planes. Locomotives? The Rail companies are struggling and their profits are partially based on commodity prices, which aren't going to recover anytime soon. Sales in this area will down down significantly form 2008. How about their appliance business? They tried to sell it and were unable to. Its appliance business revolves around housing, which is going to be a long and slow turnaround. Their financial division (40% of the company) is a mess. How about Health Care? It should be a good division in the long run, but hospitals and medical companies are greatly reducing spending right now. Infrastructure is the one area that shows promise, but they probably won't see a significant impact until mid 2010-early 2011. I like that they're trying to become a player in China, but growth in China won't be enough to offset there many other struggling businesses any time soon. Again, I'm unortunatley a GE shareholder. I made the big mistake of starting my position at around $28, and bought more at $25, and then more at $13. I think the next few quarters will be bad, and am worried about the solvency of the company with its enormous debt load.

I own some GE and USG, but am honestly real worried about GE. I think it another major U.S. company goes under, it can easily be GE. Their enormous debt load of near half a Trillion dollars with a relatively small amount of tangible equity could make it very difficult for them to survive a prolonged downturn in the economy.

Scorpian, GE is nearly as diversified as it gets as well and someone who put a large amount of their worth in GE a year or so ago would be down over 60%. There are not any conglomerates that are anywhere near risk-free.

I agree. I think Yahoo should drop their search business entirely and focus on content. Their content has resulted in them spending a lot of money to maintain it over the years, but they have to try to focus on things they can do differently than Google. And its not like their content gives them much of a competitive advantage over anyone..as lots of companies can produce the same content. Yahoo is still the 2nd most frequently visited site on the internet, so there's obviously potential there for them to continue to make money, but it's tough to say what they can do to grow in the future.

I like the New Buffettology. It's not perfect or anything, but good. It covers actual valuation formulas to use, which very few other books do.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?guid={2EB89FCA-82CB-4DF2-8AAF-D3102CD649A5}&siteid=rss

I did a search and couldn't find any other threads on this. What do you guys think are the best books on investing out there? My tops are: The Intelligent Investor - Ben Graham (especially the version with commentary from Jason Zweig) The Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing - Pat Dorsey The Essays of Warren Buffett - Warren Buffett Buffet - The Making of an American Capitalist - Roger Lowenstein The New Buffettology - Mary Buffett & David Clark One Up On Wall Street - Peter Lynch Sensible Stock Investing - David Van Knapp

checking out Valuecruncher right now. I don't know about this. Some of it's valuations are really out there, especially if you compare it to Morningstar's evaluations, for example. Valuecruncher says CIEN is valued at $641 a share. Morningstar values the company at $11 a share. ;D

They're doing an offering between $20-$22 a share. Is there an easy way for 'home-gamers' to buy at that price?

I think trying to merge Sears and K-Mart into one store might be a good step. They're heading that way with their websites, and I think combining the retail stores might be a good option. It would of course take a lot of money, but combining them and trying to revitalize 1 store with a new image might be better than trying to come up with plans for 2 crappy stores on their own. I think they should try to sell off the Kenmore, Craftsman & Diehard brands too, as as I mentioned before, I don't think they add much value to the company.

They can be bought on the pink sheets under BYDDF.pk or dyddy.pk (1211.hk as well). It's up over 200% already this year, so it's tough to say how great of a buy it is at the current price.

yeah, but companies like Walmart already do that, and are able to offer better prices. Sears doesn't really seem to have a concrete plan. They seem to just keep trying different things.

Will they be putting any money into renovating Sears & K-Mart stores? I know Eddie has said in the past that he didn't that that would be a good investment, but almost all the Sears & K-Mart stores I've been in in the last several years are disasters. They haven't been renovated in what looks like 20-30 years. On top of that, they just can't compete with Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, etc on pricing. SHLD has been looked at as a real estate play more than anything else, but in order for their real estate to have value, that assumes companies would want to by their stores. Many of their stores are in beat-up old buildings and not always in great locations. I think people overvalue their real estate. Otherwise, their top brands like Kenmore, Craftsman and Diehard aren't really that good and have no competitive advantage. You can easily find better alternatives to those brands in each of their categories (Kenmore and Craftsman more than Diehard, but still). Other than the stock being below book value, I see no reason to want to own their stock. I think it would take a very large amount of money for them to turn the company around.

My issue with Google is they're a one-tricky-pony in terms of sources of revenue. I own a (very) small business and have a good amount experience with Google Adwords and Adsense, and advertising on Google has been much more profitable for Google as it has been for me (I usually don't get back the amount spend on Google Ads in purchases). I have pretty much stopped using it. Google spends a lot of time and money coming up with things that are 'cool' but not really big revenue drivers. I think it's a great company, and I own a couple shares of it (wish I bought more when it was $250 of course), but would like to see part of their earnings be from something other than advertising. They do have a huge Moat, but it's whether they can use that moat to keep growing earnings. Right now, most of their growth is coming from expanding internationally, rather than a large increase in advertising spending.

What do you guys think is a good price to pay for BYD? I'm having a hard time finding financial info on them to try to value it. It looks like it's currently selling for 35 X earnings with a market cap of near 17 $Billion. It's up over 200% since december when Berkshire bought it, and no doubt most of that move can be attributed directly from the PR it's recieved from Warren and Charlie. It is still a good buy at this point?

Hi everyone. I was a long-time 'lurker' on the MSN boards and then on here and finally decided to register. I've been following both BRK and FFH (and own a bit of each) for a while and am generally a 'value-minded' investor. I like the actual intelligent discussion on here, compared to the cesspool of pumpers and spammers most other investing message boards have unfortunately become. Anyway, my name is Dustin (DCG are my initials - couldn't come up with anything more clever as a handle), I'm 33 and live in Denver, CO.