Ballinvarosig Investors

His letters are about as public as you can make them. The SEC requires/required accredited funds to have a separate log-in to access information from advertising (newsletters, performance numbers, etc). If you are accredited and contact Pabrai Funds to access the letters, I'm pretty sure they would grant access. This rule was loosened up a couple of years ago, so I'm not sure why most funds still use the password protection. Cheers! Speaking of letters, will you ever be making the 2016 Corner Market Capital letter available? :)

Getting back to the original question, would a "superstar" investor be beneficial to investors? Honestly, I am not so sure. I will give you my own example. I started off in the market over 10 years ago now. When I look back at the first stocks I bought, I wince at just how naive I was. I bought Bank of Ireland based on a 20+ year record of growing earnings, excellent returns on capital/assets, high quality (relative to peers), and great dividends. Within three years, I lost most of the money I had in that stock. I owned GE, another company where investors gushed about how great management was, had Buffett has an admirer and a long outstanding track record. That also went into the pond and even today has still not recovered. I owned Marstons, a UK based hospitality business that had shown really positive earnings growth. Even after dividends it has delivered an awful capital return in 10 years. The funny thing in all this time was that I had a mentor who I would have spoken to about these trades. I asked him much later, why didn't you warn me off these value traps? He laughed and told me I should be grateful as he had taken similar lumps before for far greater sums. In hindsight, he was completely right, for me at least, no amount of teaching would replace the experience I learned from picking those losing stocks. To be honest, I think there is far too much focus on "gurus" and "superstars". In the last few years especially there has been an explosion of books, quotes, podcasts, articles in the value investing universe. Honestly, I think much of it is regurgitated garbage. I say this as someone who used to buy about 20 investing books a year as well. As if the monetary cost of my folly wasn't bad enough, the time I lost reading these books was even more wasteful. I'd say 75% of the books I read delivered no value whatsoever, 15% maybe had a few useful crumbs, 10% at best would have been worth reading again. A much better investment of my time would have been to just read more annual reports. In my opinion, if you want to be a better investor, stop reading all the books and listening to all the podcasts. If you're accounting isn't strong, then that's the first thing you need to look at it. If you have ok accounting, then just get stuck into reading annual reports. Once you're comfortable, you can start picking a few companies out. Either keep a virtual portfolio, or use SMALL sums. Keep a diary/spreadsheet of everything you buy/sell. Say why you invested, say what it's worth when you invest, say at what price you will get out. Always do post-mortems on your selling. This is the best way to get familiar with companies and industries, it's the best way to understand risks/opportunities of the business cycle. You will make lots of mistake to start with, but as time goes by, you will develop your own style of investing that works for you. Charlie Munger is right when he says to excel in investing, you need to be a learning machine. The thing a lot of people seem to miss is that you need to be learning the right things, ie the companies themselves.

This sounds like a very cynical view, but unfortunately it's pretty accurate. One of the greatest investors ever, John Templeton, was only able to increase his AUM over 20 years from $7m to $13m despite out-performing the market by 3% annually. It wasn't until he got a salesman on-board that AUM really started to explode.

Can someone help me see the full article?

Part 2 http://www.pbs.org/video/3002306670

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/america-stand-just-wealth-says-warren-buffett/ Buffett on PBS discussing the economy and inequality. Not too much new there.

It looks like this is a Ted Weschler pick. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-26/buffett-s-bet-on-store-shows-not-all-retail-real-estate-is-equal

I had never seen this interview with Chou before, it's three months old, but still interesting. https://robinrspeziale.com/2017/03/02/my-interview-with-francis-chou/

I don’t get it, where is his own thinking? On one hand he is talking why it is always better to focus on compounders, then he said he look for cheap and good companies. When I saw this thread, I thought "here we go again", more people ragging on Pabrai. He clearly said that he wants quality that is also cheap AND could potentially become a compounder. He is not interested in classic cheapness metrics like net-net, or stocks that are priced at $12 and have the possibility to go to $16. He wants things that in 10 years time could be trading for 10x what he paid for them. Not only that, but he wants to be able to put a huge percentage of his portfolio into them. Personally, I could not do what he is trying to do. In fact, I think only a tiny, tiny number of people could do what he is trying to do.

Wow. I did not expect this. You can buy Atlas Mara on the London Stock Exchange - https://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=LON%3AATMA I own a small shareholding in this company, not because I think it's a good company (it's not) but as a part of a basket of stocks that trade well below tangible book value. Management have been useless (look at the cost/income ratio), strategy has been bizarre and uncoordinated (buying up stakes in lots of African banks) and the dilution below tangible book is destroying existing shareholders. Fairfax putting money into become the largest shareholder is both good and bad. Good because the extra capital will allow the bank to scale up and distribute costs better, bad because it's yet more dilution below tangible book. I will say that recent quarter results were much better and now with Fairfax getting involved, I think they will maintain the pressure to keep the improvement going, so I am inclined to hold on here, and maybe even add a little.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-06-19/why-bruce-berkowitz-still-likes-stocks-others-hate-video Jumbo interview with Berko.

If anything, Buffett 's trying to make it easier for the next guy to pull off a buyback. He talked about the fact that in the coming decade or so, something like $400B will likely have to be allocated. With the buyback left at 1.2x not only will the stock buyback make it easier, one will notice that Buffett is happy to delay earnings realization into the future. Just PCP alone has some$400-500 million in intangibles that would have been reported had it continued to be a standalone company. If everyone's muscles are twitching now for a return of capital, it will turn into convulsions when the poor bastard steps into Buffett's shoes. The board will have to deal with it. With $30B coming though the door on a yearly basis (and likely to grow), Berkshire will have to start paying a dividend. I think it'd be impossible to deploy that much capital into the market and expect to beat the averages.

Hussman put out another piece of interesting commentary this week. I know most people here think that he's an idiot, but I think at very least he's worth listening to. https://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc170522.htm Basically, he seems to be saying that as long as rates continue to remain low, yield hungry investors will ignore fundamentals (which still matter) and this can drive markets higher. So when rates rise, the markets are going to take a beating. This is a natural enough assumption, especially on the highly speculative, interest rate sensitive end of the market (things like REIT's that have tiny yields and tiny borrowing costs). Basically, he says I was right all along, but made the mistake of standing in front of the steam roller. There's much more in the letter itself that models the future outcomes that you guys can go through yourselves. None of it suggests the market can realistically go higher from these levels based on fundamentals.

If anyone is interested in British small cap companies, then Keith Aswort-Lord's Buffettology fund is definitely worth following. http://www.sanford-deland.com/6/the-buffettology-fund/fund-performance The fund name sounds hokey as hell, but the results that Keith has generated have been sensational. I have personally met Keith too, he is a manager of outstanding integrity.

My minimum standards have deteriorated drastically since 2013 or so when I first wrote them down. A friend's email from the other day made me realize how many of my "rules" I'm breaking at the moment. I will probably be raising more cash in the near future. I've been above 10% cash for at least 2 straight years now. I am right there with you. No good ideas and my current holdings are not ideal. Because I couldn't find good ideas within my typical investing framework, and to make use of the excess cash, I have started looking into m&a arbitrage opportunities for short-term returns. It is a new area for me (and fully knowing that I could screw up) but trying to learn from the experience and hoping to make some returns until I can find better ideas... I am in the exact same situation. I already had a high cash position going into the year at 35%, I really don't want to have all this money sitting there earning nothing. I feel the market as a whole is just too expensive, so I have been kind of compelled to get involved in various special situations. I own a large basket of special situation stocks, so the risk isn't too bad and it's generally worked out ok, but some of it has been real seat of the pants stuff. I own LXB and LSR, two small liquidating property companies in the UK. I know UK property is expensive and these are at a discount to NAV. I own a company going private called Ensor, who have promised to sell their assets after completely delisting from the UK stock exchange - extremely hairy. I own a cash rich oil company called Bowleven who have just kicked out management and appointed unknowns. I owned Argo, a UK asset manager trading below NAV that own some very exotic securities. I owned small amounts of other UK closed end funds that trade at a discount. I have interesting conversations with investors when telling them the kind of things they own...

I am wasn't talking about those questions that he answered.

Listened to the meeting again yesterday. Am I the only person that thinks Munger has slowed down a bit? He's still a killer at the one line quips, but I thought he struggled a little to articulate himself at times. It felt especially painful when just before the half time break he was asked about China, and he stumbled so badly that Warren cut him off and they went straight to a break. He's obviously a company treasure, but if he's in pain (he complained about a sore back) then maybe it's time that he calls it a day? The second thing I picked up on was a possible market forecast from Buffett when asked about what he thought Berkshire's intrinsic value would grow at over the next ten years. As we all know, Buffett will say that future returns are often dictated by interest rates, and he did say he thought that sooner rather than later over the next 10 years, interest rates would rise. So when Buffett previously says "markets are cheap if interest rates stay low" - I think that confirms what I thought in that the current low rate environment isn't going to last into the medium term, and that stocks are at very least, not cheap. I think the questions as a whole were actually a little better than in previous years (not by much).

I am not arguing that the traditional hedge fund structure isn't a disaster. It's definitely very, very bad for investors. What I am saying, is that the bet wasn't even remotely fair. Buffett is an absolute genius who picked the right index to put a 100% weighting into at the right time. This was not luck, he did it because he is smarter than nearly everyone else out there and knew it'd be impossible to beat. Looking at the performance of the opposition, their returns weren't even mediocre, they were diabolical before the ridiculously high fee structure was considered. I take umbrage with his comment the fact that indexing is always great and that active is always bad (except presumably for himself and the 10 other people he talked about as being able to outperform).

Close enough, frrom the NY Times in October 2008 - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17buffett.html

You do have to feel some sympathy for him here. The wager was constructed in such a way that the hedges almost certainly couldn't win. I think when Buffett placed his bet, he knew the S&P 500 would generate out-sized returns (actually, he came out and publicly said the S&P was cheap around the time). Considering he had a 100% weighting to the best performing asset class in the world over the 10 year period, it's hardly surprising that he beat the pants of the hedge funds. As Alice Schroeder would probably say, this bet was like Buffett playing the role of the class handicapper when at the races. Because he picked what was by far the best horse in the race, he was almost certain to win.

Thanks again Dr. Malone.

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/financial-services/us-fund-giant-will-use-machines-not-humans-to-pick-stocks-1.3030623 Ok, it's only 11% of their assets that are going to be moving to the algo-driven process, but quite frankly I am amazed that Blackrock have decided to entrust client assets into such an unproven strategy.

It proves nothing obviously. It's just a warning that when you see private debt and the banking sector grow at a much faster rate than the economy then something eventually has to give.

Ireland's banking sector had about 25 years of similar out-performance before imploding and losing investors 99%-100% of their investment.

https://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc170306.htm