ERICOPOLY

Why not, instead, focus on dividend payers? Or both at the same time? Those are the two ways to return excess cash. It's probably less likely for a company to issue debt in order to pay a dividend -- so perhaps it"s truly "excess" cash. Is there any evidence that cannibals outperform dividend payers?

I suppose if the stock is expensive then what management does from there (buy stock or not) is only a secondary concern. The primary concern is that one shouldn't even own the stock in the first place. So management's actions on this subject aren't really an issue IMO if you are selling holdings as they get "too expensive". The debt level, if too high, is also a reason to sell the stock (no matter what the debt is used for). That solves that issue. Too high is too high.

Defensive holdings (huge amounts of cash to return) should (in theory) outperform the market when purchased towards the end of bull markets so long as you get out of them when the market is at the bottom of a following bear cycle. It's the sketchy companies that do the worst heading into a recession -- and then the sketchy ones that have survived the ordeal then lead the way out of the recession.

I can sort of understand why there are Tesla bears. Basically, it's because there are so many long established car companies and put together, they comprise the entire auto industry. The bears are conditioned to this level of industry ambition and execution. It becomes fairly reasonable for them to assume that if the best car companies can't achieve X, then how could a newcomer upstart possibly achieve it? The difference here is that Tesla has a much higher level of ambition and execution. Much higher than the rest of the industry. So the question could be turned around... how can the existing industry leaders survive long term under this newly higher level of ambition and execution? How are they going to reinvent their cultures?

Section 102 of Internal Revenue Code is "gifts and inheritances". Lot's of companies retain earnings instead of paying them out -- Apple for example. Or Microsoft. They had huge piles accumulated long before their dividend policy.

A Tesla is probably not an effective suicide vehicle, for that matter. It is probably one of the safest cars made in a collision with a solid wall (as was the case here), and you certainly can't kill yourself with carbon monoxide in the garage unless you have a BBQ in the back seat or something. GM is probably cringing at the fact that a person has selected one of their cars (a Chevy Tahoe) as a sure fire way to end their life in. No pun intended (I noticed the pun when I previewed my post).

Unrelated completely to the man himself... but his car burst into flames and it wasn't a Tesla. Well, actually they didn't even bother to say what type of car it was. But that it burst into flames "almost immediately" -- Tesla's don't do that. There would have been a second major story running in the news about how a Tesla had caught fire, if it were in fact a Tesla.

Maybe not? Vicente Fox: "I'm not going to pay for that f***ing wall. He should pay for it," http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/25/politics/vicente-fox-donald-trump-wall/index.html

Trump is a developer. That wall with Mexico is going to take a lot of bricks -- good for Berkshire.

Well, the "sell everything" guy was correct, but he'll probably miss the "buy everything" call.

Actually, same question about MBI. Looking back 5 years, which (if any) of the stocks that he talked about with Consuela Mack have turned out to really be heavily below intrinsic value at the time. I think AIG potentially. But there seem to be an awful lot of misses. I'm really quite interested in which of these investors really is making money from below IV investing versus great trading.

I'd also ask him about BAC's value in early 2011 (when he paid $14 or $15). I'd ask him if he was right about his IV estimate back then... knowing what he knows now.

An exception would be the building of the Panama Canal. Good book: A Path Between the Seas.

Jesse Jackson -- can you guess what his comment would be on that one? Something about enslaving those from low-performing inner city schools -- disproportionately targeting a particular minority.

People invest a lot of private money to go to university. Often they go into debt. In theory this capital expenditure will produce a higher future income, but it may not. Regardless, there is much future personal revenue to be earned just to recover the sunk costs. Now, if people were corporations, (the reverse of corporations are people argument) they would be able to amortize the cost of their education -- enabling them to pay it off with future pre-tax income. Presently, the tax law allows for a relatively meager deduction for interest payments on student debt. My thoughts: The entire cost of the education (whether debt financed or not) should be recouped with pre-tax dollars. Progressive taxation -- it's really only a fair system if education had no cost. Some people might not really be making all that much money if you think about how much expenditure (cost of education) is associated with that higher income stream. Under this system, everyone paying for an education would get tax relief... presently, only those who have established 529 plans get partial tax relief (the contributions to those plans are done with after-tax dollars, which is why it's only partial relief).

Anyone is welcome to take advantage of me in this manner -- please come and offer me 0 money down non-recourse loans.

I have a sinking feeling that we'll look back on this wishing we'd all sold everything (except our puts). I have no mood to buy anything and usually I do after a pullback.

The search for new leadership in this country is about on this level:

George Soros recently said (this year) that QE worked.

+1! And in worst case scenario, you can eat cash...high in fibre. Try passing a gold bar through your colon! :) Cheers! http://www.dudeiwantthat.com/food/novelty/sht-gold-pills.asp

More people work in solar than in oil -- why not let oil do it's thing and increase the subsidies for solar? That's where the jobs are and it's good policy. Solar energy jobs double in 5 years http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/12/news/economy/solar-energy-job-growth-us-economy/index.html?iid=surge-stack-dom

With commodities it goes like this: First you speculate on the future price of the commodity. Then based on that speculation, you state how much margin of safety there is in the stock. Therefore, tons of varying views among value investors. And the views are based on speculations. I think this is why Buffett wants to avoid "price taker" businesses. Commodities seem cyclical though. What if you assume low prices (close to marginal cost of production)? There is a degree of gravity that affects prices, no doubt. But the price of Coca Cola at the grocery store doesn't swing as much. I think Buffett has a point. If you truly want to be a value investing "monk", you would do best if you could seek out a company that was an absolute price setter, with a massive moat, trading at a discount to IV. No argument there. Commodities undergo long periods of "price taking", and these fragile leveraged commodities companies are toast -- so they aren't "value investor" fare.

With commodities it goes like this: First you speculate on the future price of the commodity. Then based on that speculation, you state how much margin of safety there is in the stock. Therefore, tons of varying views among value investors. And the views are based on speculations. I think this is why Buffett wants to avoid "price taker" businesses.

That's assuming the lower energy costs are a bad thing. Perhaps... Less money spent heating homes, driving cars, and shipping goods around the world may lead to increased spending by consumers, which would lead to more broad-based factory utilization. The factory utilization problem was a result of too much on credit (having temporarily too high spending power) -- and then when oil prices went up in 2007 it didn't really help... it made it worse. So it could be reasoned that spending budgets are freed up when oil prices fall.

He's an old-timey style value investor would be my guess. ZINC P/E: N/A according to Yahoo Finance. Alright, low blow. Agree with Picasso's general point.