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Massive hindsight bias. TSLA has teetered on the edge of BK many times, if the breaks came out differently, easily could have gotten there.

Ackman is trying to play kingmaker. I guess Tilson is no more of a con / salesjob than Trump was in his heyday.

@dealraker (the wise man of this board as far as I'm convinced) is making the simple and correct point: "If you're so smart why aren't you rich?" If Jim Collins has an algorithm to predict what makes a great company, why isn't he an immensely successful equity investor/venture capitalist etc.? Is there any evidence this is the case? Anyways, G2G was debunked by The Halo Effect and similar.

Don't tell me you don't believe in his asymmetric super-nova opportunity??

Indeed, would be similarly depraved logic to what the IDF uses. (We may also bring up that the "human shield" genocide propaganda doesn't make sense since Israel has slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians - often in a targeted way, s.a. the report made by dozens of returning American and British doctors about children being targeted by snipers - so I guess they aren't "shields" at all.) Oh yeah, which Hamas "HQ" was under a hospital? al-Shifa? No, some small weapons, computers, and tunnels which criss-cross the entirety of Gaza. And what about the two dozen other hospitals bombed into uselessness? And who gets to decide the completely arbitrary standard you've just laid out? Israel? No, thanks. Just a reminder for anyone following this thread that, that earlier in the thread the above genius and genocide defender/denier said "If Israel was committing genocide, there would be no population in Gaza" an idiotic (and false) standard which would invalidate every recognized genocide since the Hutus, Jews, Armenians, Cambodians, Bosniaks all seem to have populations left. I'm not coming back to this thread because I will only engage genocide deniers ONCE on the behalf of an open-minded third party reader (you don't change the mind of the morally incapable), whom I encourage to do their own research in case they encounter this BS thread that is a stain on the entire forum.

And caught him naked short selling?

So since IDF HQ is in and around Tel Aviv (the Kirya), Israel uses human shields and many areas of Tel Aviv are legitimate targets for 2k ton bombs, am I following the logic of this thread correctly?

Patrick Byrne has been half-batshit for about 20 years. Remember the Dark Sith Lord of naked short selling or whatever he used to go on about? How could any of this be a surprise?

Yes agree and GE is a great example - worked under Welch, fell apart under Immelt and immediate successors, then a bargain again under Culp...etc. World keeps moving.

Is this what Bitcoin people are on to now? Bitcoin is valuable simply because it takes a lot of computing resources to maintain the network? Sort of like saying if I hire a few million laborers to dig up ditches and fill them back in, my ditch-digging company should be worth trillions because of the labor power I have under my control. Well, no, they aren't producing anything of economic value, they're just wasting calories. Buying a bitcoin doesn't give you *access* to those computing resources. If I had a few trillion to buy Amazon and Microsoft I could *use* the computing resources.

Yeah no don't apologize I watched it independent of this forum - not blaming anyone here at all. On another note, I watched Mulholland Dr for the first time last night. Oh my god!! Fabulous...must watch again ASAP.

Allied is great, always liked that one. I watched Rebel Ridge which some of you spoke about. I honestly thought it was one of the worst movies I've seen in some time. Very simple, very predictable, evil villains, Mary Sue good guys, etc. Quite surprised the positive reviews. New season of Slow Horses is great so far.

Excellent! I do like that. Chopin is great.

Never been into classical but I found some Bach I like late, the keyboard concertos specficially. F Minor (all the movements) is great! G Minor too. I'm hoping to land and expand and find some other stuff I like - I have enjoyed some Rachmaninoff in the past.

Have lived on the East Coast my whole life and cannot imagine why I'd need a 2MM house for any reasons, there are plenty of <1MM houses w/ 4 br in nice areas of this country. Not sure why you'd need to commute to NYC if you're functionally retired but that's attainable even in the CT suburbs. One should be able to get a decent ACA plan for $1,500 esp if your income isn't super high. Which in the scenario we are contemplating, it wouldn't be. Try the ACA calculator kff.org. To be fair I'm not currently using an ACA plan so maybe I am overestimating but I don't think I'm far off. $1,500 is a good chunk... I included things like home repairs in the extra 1k/month I chucked in but of course once in awhile you might need to withdraw 4.5% instead of 4% to cover those things (that'd be an extra $15k), or one can borrow on a HELOC and pay it back over time, etc etc I don't think it changes the point.

Where? My 4BR is ~13k in taxes. >4k sqft. Wouldn't say I live in a low tax jurisdiction at all. Supposing I could get family healthcare for 1.5k/month, that would be ~2,500 for healthcare and property taxes. Add in 500/wk for food (w/ kids at home, going out etc.), that's $4,750, utils another ~$700-800 (heat, AC, electric, internet), that's $5,550 for the "basics". House maintenance/mowing/pest control adds another ~$200-300. Add in $1k/month for other stuff and basic fun living and that's ~$7,000/month, maybe $10k/month pre-tax (assume all-in 30% tax rate), so roughly $120k/yr gross needed if no mortgage/car payments. At 4% withdrawal that'd be $3 million liquid to be financially independent, plus a free and clear house. Not too easy a bar for most, but not totally out of reach either. Obviously I'm painting an upper-middle class lifestyle.

Oh, thanks - sorry did delete my post as I saw you answered above. Thanks!

That SA article is atrocious and doesn't do any real analysis. The first one alone (BNSF) he failed to notice with his "thousands of hours" that BNSF paid out a bunch of dividends in the early days reducing BRK's cost basis almost immediately. It has also distributed substantial cash and would be worth >$100B at market today. Where is this in his "analysis"? Also, BRK has tax advantages to owning something 100% versus owning the index, which he doesn't mention. PCP and Kraft were disasters as everyone already knew. I agree that BRK's disclosures suck but WB seems to do that purposely for competitive reasons.

Fascinating! I imagine you had some false starts along the way but both impressive (as well as BRK and MO) especially if you held on to them all these years. I’m attracted to the idea of buying things to hold for life, difficult to put into practice though. Appreciate you sharing.

Thank you. When did MSFT & AAPL first become investable under your framework? (eg quasi monopolistic etc)

Thanks for sharing your experience. Have you made any significant errors along the way? (Of commission) How often do your purchases come along and what sort of stake (as a % of your net worth) do you generally take when you do go in? Thanks again.

Have to double this take. Einhorn is saying all that fresh powder lying around doesn't want to make money because they don't seem to be interested in some of his stocks. Seems a lot more likely that he made some bad investments. (And some amazing ones) That said, he's picked it up a lot lately so his switch in approach, theory aside, has been a good one.

Akre is a great. I do wonder about his successors though. I'm not sure their decision making has been as sound.

Fairfax wasn't convicted of fraud but the substance of much of the accusation was true and solid. Fairfax has a history of being very aggressive. Had their CDS positions not worked out so well in 2008 this whole conversation could have been very different. And just because they were clear in 2005 doesn't mean they are clear now - this shouldn't have to be said. For the record, MW is only accusing Fairfax of being aggressive and that the stock is overvalued - I can't see why he's not allowed to make that accusation when bulls will make the mirror image case all day long, happy to push the stock up. But again, I repeat, short sellers are there as an alarm system to flag issues - holding them to the standard of "There are examples where they were incomplete or wrong and therefore they shouldn't exist and/or are a corrupt institution" is unbelievably false. That's Soviet style condemnation - find a few salient examples and condemn the entire system.

Here's a great example of an "enforcement action" - from the SEC website: Charges against Deloitte’s China-based affiliate for failing to comply with fundamental U.S. auditing requirements when auditing U.S. issuers and foreign companies listed on U.S. exchanges, allowing clients to select their own samples for testing, and having clients prepare their own audit documentation. You mean the stuff that short sellers have been calling out for ten f*ckin years?!