Ballinvarosig Investors

Whitney Tilson's parents were both teachers and certainly not rich.

Lucked into some good trades? He has beaten the pants off the s&p.

Like Putin is a good guy, and everything you hear about him and his despotic regime is all propaganda? Magnitsky, Crimea, Donetsk, South Ossetia, Syria, Skripal, Litvinenko, Kara-Murza, the dozens of journalists killed in Russia, and numerous other minor Russian political opponents who have found themselves shot, disappeared, hanged mysteriously, thrown off buildings, etc. No doubt, all these things are Western fabrication, lies, propaganda. Liberty, I think you were right the first time. The fact that Putin is fighting back so vociferously, it makes me think that maybe the politicians are actually doing something right for once.

I believe it was something more like 2-3 times per year. We know they have been together at least once a year because of the annual meeting. And it turns out there is also one off-site directors meeting each year. Apologies, yes, twice in the last year.

Interesting comments for me were.. The economy is growing slightly faster than in previous years. Charlie and Warren have only met once in the last 2 years. Warren seems to like Apple a lot. Warren also seems to think that USG should look at a "strategic alternative" - in other words, he does not like the business in the long-term, he would be happy to be bought out.

Here's a preview - https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/05/04/buffett-interview-.html Interesting comments for me were.. The economy is growing slightly faster than in previous years. Charlie and Warren have only met once in the last 2 years. Warren seems to like Apple a lot. Warren also seems to think that USG should look at a "strategic alternative" - in other words, he does not like the business in the long-term, he would be happy to be bought out.

Is it really that cheap though? $1.05bn investments, take out $270m for deferred taxes and debt and you have net investments of $780m. Add in $500m valuation on fast food biz (12x normalized earnings), $50 first guard (12x normalized earnings) and a $0 for Maxim. Using a 2m share count (to prevent double counting as repurchased stock is included in investments), you get a total value of $1,330m. Take 20% off that for the Biglari greed discount and you have a valuation of $1,072m. Current market cap is $875m. This looks a little cheaper than it should, but is it really worth getting involved in for such a small discount? Oops, typo in my calculations, $685m looks more accurate. Hmm.

Is it really that cheap though? $1.05bn investments, take out $270m for deferred taxes and debt and you have net investments of $780m. Add in $500m valuation on fast food biz (12x normalized earnings), $50 first guard (12x normalized earnings) and a $0 for Maxim. Using a 2m share count (to prevent double counting as repurchased stock is included in investments), you get a total value of $1,330m. Take 20% off that for the Biglari greed discount and you have a valuation of $1,072m. Current market cap is $875m. This looks a little cheaper than it should, but is it really worth getting involved in for such a small discount?

Good article on Tilson and his shutting down of his hedge fund. http://www.institutionalinvestorsalpha.com/Article/3795338/The-Last-Days-of-Whitney-Tilsons-Kase-Capital.html?ArticleId=3795338&r=notverified

Please elaborate a bit about your line of thinking here, Ballinvarosig Investors, It would be much appreciated, thanks. Do I really need to go there? There is just so much wrong with what Warren Buffett is saying these days. For a start, he continues to beat the very worn drum that a basket of hedge fund, fund of funds will under perform an pre-specified index of his choosing. What's worse, is that he conflates that statement with the notion that all types of active management is bad. Not only that, but he states that in all his career (60 years plus of being in the market), that a maximum of ten people he has ever met can hope to achieve the goal of out-performing the index. It seems to me that he is in complete opposition with his previous teachings, namely that an investor with a small amount of capital has a very realistic chance of out-performing the market. John Hjorth - I take it that you are an adherent of the cult of Buffett? If you are a devotee, then may I ask, have you adopted the advice of your protegé (excuse the pun) and adopted the index strategy? From the recent statements of Buffett, I think it's fairly clear that the circle of ten people that he identified as having the ability to out-perform the market are extremely unlikely to be inhabiting this particular discussion forum. It seems to me that yourself and other adherents of Warren Buffett would do much better in your present investment strategies than to sell all your holdings and adopt index weighted holdings in the likes of Tesla and Snapchat, companies that truly represent the dynamism of American business (clearly, anything that is not American is abysmal by the standards of Buffet).

Yet another poor letter, filled with horrible contradictions. The only thing that was honest about the letter, was that the negative undertone about the ability of Berkshire to acquire businesses at a reasonable price.

Does anyone find it interesting that their overall equity position has gone up quite a bit (yes, I am aware that equity is only a part of their portfolio). http://www.dataroma.com/m/hist/p_hist.php?f=BAUPOST

http://www.cornermarketcapital.com/annual-reports.html Now in the public domain.

I was thinking the same thing how about something like this: Portfolio Over Time Works better for portfolio's where you don't have lots of smaller positions, ie. search for Allen Mecham. I would say it's a graph that's worth including.

Meaning my screen could be improved or Dataroma's screen? There are some performance-related issues with letting users see the entire portfolio history on a single page (rather than having to filter to a specific quarter), but long-term it's something I would like to do. FWIW I never found the Dataroma history page all that useful just because it's presented poorly. But I think given enough time and resources I could improve upon it. This one for example, like you said, it could be better. http://www.dataroma.com/m/hist/p_hist.php?f=aq

One thing I like looking at on Dataroma is the portfolio history of a "guru" at a glance. They have a nice screen with all quarters of portfolio history with a total size of portfolio, and positions sized from biggest to smallest (without % sizes though). I wonder could that screen be improved to add the weighting of the actual position size?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-16/berkowitz-liquidates-hedge-fund-that-owned-sears-holdings-shares Another active manager biting the dust?

I haven't read the book yet. I've listened to a bunch of Dalio's talks and discussed the principles he mentioned with some people. I have some previous experience with radical transparency from another context. As a management handbook, maybe it has some sort of value, but I really don't have any opinion on that.

Am I the only one who read Ray Dalio's book and thought it was a joke? 95% of the book consists of Dalio name dropping or talking about how great he is.

Here's Yusko's performance. https://www.morgancreekfunds.com/global-equity-longshort-fund/

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/10/03/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-warren-buffett.html?play=1 Full video, enjoy.

I don't blame the guy for quitting. The US market in particular makes no sense whatsoever at this time. Things that are clearly overvalued like Tesla, Netflix, Wingstop, and Wayfair which Tilson was short, have rocketed.

Vadim Perelman