alwaysinvert
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"We've seen a 75 percent increase in first quarter '10 versus '09," said JetSelect CEO Robert Austin. He said business travel is driving the growth, in particular because of the return of initial public stock-offering activity. He said JetSelect does a good deal of business with companies doing "road shows" to potential investors ahead of going public.
I actually laughed out loud cynically at this.
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Handball court wtf? Didn't realise anyone plays handball in the US, much less a soon to be 80-year old guy.
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Regarding Gladwell's book, the thing about the right place at the right time being so very, very major fascinates me very much. Bill Gates being born to relatively wealthy parents and attending a school with a computer, Buffett being too young to serve in WWII and being of perfect age during major stock market booms etc etc. Munger said it was absolutely apparent that the kids he had when he was poorer worked harder in their lives than the kids that came later, and he has no idea how to change that.
The scope of this problem on society level is almost incomprehensible. Just think of all the talent that goes to waste due to a huge number av variables interacting with each other (since there are lots and lots of them in each case and they must all function at the same time to generate "desired" effects naturally the lollapallooza effect generates a negative outcome more often than a positive one).
Regarding nature being a major component in investing ability I am absolutely positive that that is the case, though that is hardly anything controversial. Myers Briggs test would seem to be a good indicator in spotting highly disqualifying traits in people, like high scores in feeling and so on.
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KERNEN: Hey, Warren, Warren, were you using the rule of 72 there? You were, weren't you?
BUFFETT: No, actually, I was calculating the distance of the moon and dividing by the speed of sound.
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Thank you very much :) Some old saying containing the words "money" and "mouth" seems appropriate here...
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And it's rather interesting because one of the greatest economists of the world is a substantial shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway and has been for a long time. His textbook always taught that the stock market was perfectly efficient and that nobody could beat it. But his own money went into Berkshire and made him wealthy. So, like Pascal in his famous wager, he hedged his bet.
- Charlie Munger
Could anyone enlighten me to who this might be? Eugene Fama?
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Well, if anyone in this story is making stupid statements for the purpose of self-promotion, it would be this person. At least now I know better then to pick up the book that is conveniently mentioned.
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Found the link to the video where he was discussing Buffett 2 years ago:
http://fora.tv/2008/02/04/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb_A_Crazier_Future#chapter_20
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Taleb is as far as you could come from an economist.
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One of the things that Taleb talks about in one of his books is blow ups. People who make 100 million for 10 years straight and then blow up and lose it all in about 10 minutes. Remember that Buffet almost blew up at least 2 times. Soloman and Gen Re. I seem to remember there was a possible blow up with one of the newspapers as well. Still I agree that Taleb doesn't know much about Buffett, and is pretty full of himself.
This is right to the point and a huge reason why Taleb is making this statement. There is just no way we could quantify Buffett's blow-up risk, in particular that of his past, because now a blow-up wouldn't affect as big a part of his holdings.
I am by the way getting sectarian vibes by the people who are making this an issue about Buffett's person. You are reading so much in to this statement that is not there, probably because it gets so much easier to repudiate. Taleb has not put forward any criticism at all (and I am seriously wondering about this article since I saw a video one or two years ago where he made the exact same statement, newsworthy now, eh?).
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Taleb and Soros have a mutual intellectual inheritance, both being Popperians.
Also, the superinvestors story does not provide rigid evidence of Buffett and other value investors non-luck, merely circumstantial ones (which may or may not be subject to different biases). For Taleb that makes all the difference in the world. Although, I still believe that if he were to GUESS he would rather guess that Buffett was not only lucky. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from this. The only thing he says is that Buffett has made far fewer bets than Soros and that the combined outcome of them is not statistically significant as opposed to the Soros case. I find it very hard to disagree, although I am more in tune with Buffett's investment style as such.
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Oh, actually forgot my stupidest mistake of them all, bar none. I bought a shipping company just because it was selling for about half book. Buffett would have laughed himself to death. Didn't lose much on it in real money, but major opportunity cost and even more major embarrassment when they started burning money like there was no tomorrow. Buffett would have laughed at me for a month.
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There were a couple of fine looking small caps with strong balance sheets that I was looking at and neglected to invest in, which later rose 200-400%. But in the long run I don't see them as very major mistakes, me being a relative beginner and all. My biggest mistake was not liquidating more of my money to put on the market in the winter and spring. I don't even want to think about the opportunity cost of that...
I was also looking at buying calls on some major Swedish companies with high debt, but in the end chose not to for some obscure reason.
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Welcome, alwaysinvert. :). If I could communicate in a foreign language half as well as you do in English, I would be very proud of myself.
Thank you. Coming from a small European country, mastering English to some degree is almost a must (and getting bombarded by American culture helps alot!). If you already are fluent in the most important language, there isn't that much of a problem in not having a second one, I would say. Oh, and i cheated and lived in London for a couple of months some time ago :P
Regarding Toyota vs salad oil; I do agree they are far from the same kind of animal due to the reasons arbitragr stated. And I don't know how to get a good handle on the changes in the company's reputation without it being common knowledge. So probably this will stay in the too hard-pile (unless stock plunges alot more and risk/reward gets good anyway), but nothing bad can come from monitoring the situation. And you should know that this is not at all well covered in Europe and I suspect the same goes for Japan, so the question is if it will affect sales in those regions at all.
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There were some personal things regarding other people which I reacted quite a bit towards; Charlie making a fool of himself (at least in Alice's opinion) speaking at his birthday party, Susan using Astrid to control Buffett and some other things which I don't remember at the moment. Maybe that is unavoidable to some extent when writing a biography , I don't know. Though I do think far better of Buffett after reading the book. And the book itself, though clearly not written by a very skilled pen, is at least competent and well researched.
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Funnily enough I was looking at Toyota these past few days because of this situation (reminiscing reading the salad oil scandal as well), and what do you know, of course there was a thread on it here :) If they drop down a bit further I might pull the trigger... I guess I am as weary as the next person of auto manufacturers, but there has got to be a point where you can own a quality one like Toyota too, even if not for the very long term. For Toyota I guess that point would not be thaaat far below book value but who knows. With me current knowledge of the auto business I guess the safety margin would have to be way high.
Long time lurker btw. Hello to all of you :) Oh, and please do shout at me if I don't make any sense or my grammar is unbearable in this or future posts. I am not a native English speaker and need to keep learning.
Li Liu Lecture
in General Discussion
Posted
Great lecture, thanks for the links. Too bad it's so hard to make out what the students are saying.