berkshiremystery

I know, Steinberg, the outstanding investor, Bill Ackman, the company stalker, together with the almost bankrupt nobel winner Scholes -- that's what someone would call a weird trio. ::) Hopefully Steinberg doesn't hire Scholes, my daytime naps wouldn't be so pleasant anymore. ;D But don't worry, just kidding. Steinberg knows that Scholes will be unable to hold a candle to him in terms of long term compounding.

I probably take too many daytime naps ;) Anyway, awesome gains in hamblin watsa's bond portofolio. :D And great opportunities to redeploy cash for them.

Moynihan just addressed his staff via a posting on their internal website. He said BAC still remains financially strong. A few facts: BAC continue to build our fortress balance sheet. Tier I Common capital ratio (8.23%) and excess liquidity ($402 billion) are much higher than they were a year ago, and all BAC's capital ratios are well in excess of regulatory requirements. BAC has resolved a large portion of the legacy mortgage issues, and have more than quadrupled reserves for mortgage-related issues remaining to be settled to $18 billion over the past year. http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2011/08/09/bank-of-america-ceo-company-remains.html

The mad crowd of investors are buying 3 yr T-bills at a record-low interest rates these days, in the 1st government debt auction since S&P cut the U.S. credit rating to AA last Friday. The Treasury sold $32 b in 3 yr notes to yield 0.50% today. That's a record low borrowing rate. The further the stock market drops, the easier the funding for the treasury becomes. The 10-year Treasury yield hit a low for the year of 2.32 percent, down from 2.34 percent Monday. I can't see a government funding problem. LOL :D We rather have a mad crowd leaving equities and chasing bonds ;D What a silly human behavior ::) Love to pick low hanging fruit at the equity trees.

Here's an exceptional glimpse of intellectual talk from Jospeh Steinberg (LUK/Berkadia), Bill Ackamn (Pershing Square Capital Mgmt.) and Myron Scholes at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU. Their discussion covers everything from LUK, Berkadia, risks and black swans. The video lecture runs around 90 minutes. Cheers! http://cable.poly.edu/issue/summer-2011/news/campus-buzz/nobel-laureate-economist-myron-scholes-delivers-lynford-lecture <snip>.... The presentation was followed by a panel discussion featuring Joseph Steinberg, president of Leucadia National Corporation and an NYU-Poly trustee, and William Ackman, founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management LP, a hedge fund. Professor Charles Tapeiro, chair of the Department of Finance and Risk Engineering (FRE) at NYU-Poly, joined the two finance practitioners, and together the trio engaged in a lively discussion with Scholes. ...</snip> http://cable.poly.edu/sites/default/files/imagecache/img_half/inline_img/10926scr_f3a2e0269768e50.jpg

David Tepper (aka Appaloosa Mgmt.) CNBC's David Faber has reported that Tepper sold out BAC, WFC and significantly cut some C.

Sanjeev,... these days remind me of 2003 and FFH, the worse the news, the greater a bargain BAC becomes. ;) I guess the smart money is always down after purchasing, this doesn't worry me, personally. IMHO, at almost 1/3 of book value (~$20 something book, currently trading around $7), BAC represents one of the biggest undervalued long term treasures of all the big cap companies. I give a thumbs up to all of us that are long BAC ;D AIG sues BofA for $10 billion alleging "massive fraud" On Monday August 8, 2011, 10:16 am EDT http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AIG-sues-BofA-for-10-billion-rb-2884649640.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=3&asset=&ccode=[/

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/804/20110707websunvalleypic.jpg busy Warren walks out of the Sun Valley Inn, at the Allen & Co's conference last month http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/5082/20110707sunvalleypic04.jpg Gregory Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media,.... where is Dr. Malone ::) http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/7537/20110707sunvalleypic05.jpg Oprah http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/6674/20110707sunvalleypic06.jpg the Governor of Idaho chats http://img853.imageshack.us/img853/6566/20110707sunvalleypic07.jpg Salma Hayek was also at the conference http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/2061/20110707sunvalleypic08.jpg Mr. Sarofim of Fayez Sarofim & Co.

Well, we had almost the same debt to GDP percentage around 1945, and the U.S. economy flourished decades later. As Buffett would say, long term the U.S. is an innovative country. The U.S. is the breeding ground of innovative, strong and profitable companies like the Google's, Apple's and Amazon's. Can you easy name their counterparts in Greece or Portugal. Don't worry, long term the U.S. will flourish, but we might see some 10-15 years with stalled growth, while public debt and the pompous way of the credit card spending lifestyle has to be reduced. some diagram from wikipedia,.... cheers! http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/US_Federal_Debt_as_Percent_of_GDP_by_President.jpg/800px-US_Federal_Debt_as_Percent_of_GDP_by_President.jpg source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

Apropos,...speaking of books. I got almost myself buried alive below mountains of books in the last 12 months. Some financial books, but mostly interdisciplinary books about complexity science, network science, information theory (i.e. Kelly Criterion), genetic algorithms starting from Kurt Gödel to present days. Some interesting reads are: "Complexity: A Guided Tour" by Melanie Mitchell (Santa Fe Institute) the book also contains a segment on Claude Shannon, the father of information theory and a good friend of John Larry Kelly, Jr.(i.e Kelly Criterion) http://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Guided-Tour-Melanie-Mitchell/dp/0195124413 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanie_Mitchell http://www.complexityaguidedtour.com/ YouTube Video: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan J. Watts (Santa Fe Institute) http://www.amazon.com/Six-Degrees-Science-Connected-Market/dp/0393325423/ref=pd_sim_b_15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_J._Watts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation YouTube Video: here are also some interesting upcoming books: The Kelly Capital Growth Investment Criterion: Theory and Practice by Leonard C. Maclean, Edward O. Thorp, William T. Ziemba http://www.amazon.com/Kelly-Capital-Growth-Investment-Criterion/dp/9814293490 http://stevanovichcenter.uchicago.edu/seminars/Handbook.pdf The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick a book about Claude Shannon, the father of information theory tp://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/0375423729/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Larry_Kelly,_Jr

I truly miss the old MSN board days with bsilly and lotsofcoke. Wonder what has happened to them. ::) Maybe they take a 25 years winter sleep to see Prem's next book "The first 50 Years"... ;D Anyway, I'm still sound and lurking occasionally here. Last summer, after I had just purchased some LUK's in the low 20's, I came here accidently back, after not reading the boards for weeks and I saw that Sanjeev had just posted that he also took the opportunity to load up the truck on LUK. I had to laugh while sitting at my screen, reading the board here. Aren't we all connected by telepathy, knowing each other moves without reading the boards here. ;) ah,.... just kidding. --- But anyway,.... Graham value investing is a virus of the mind. Wonder what we all do next without reading the boards regularly :o Can't wait to get a glimpse of the new book, "The First 25 Years". ::)

may I suggest "FundsVille.com", it's a great site for tracking institutional portfolios like Baupost, Pabrai or Fairfax et al Enjoy :) FundVille.com Track 3000+ Hedge Funds & Institutional Portfolios http://www.fundville.com/ Baupost http://fundville.com/fund/271/BAUPOST-GROUP-LLC-MA Pabrai http://fundville.com/fund/2032/PABRAI-MOHNISH Appaloosa Mgmt. http://fundville.com/fund/108/APPALOOSA-MANAGEMENT-LP Fairfax Financial http://fundville.com/fund/932/FAIRFAX-FINANCIAL-HOLDINGS-LTD--CAN

"Tap Your Inner Buffett" is a Forbes Magazine article about this new book. Cheers! The Forbes 400 Tap Your Inner Buffett Matthew Schifrin, 09.24.10, 02:40 PM EDT Forbes Magazine dated October 11, 2010 Years of digital innovation means you don't need an M.B.A. or hedge fund job to become a superstar investor. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1011/rich-list-10-investing-digital-innovation-tap-inner-warren-buffett.html

There is an interesting new book coming out next month called: "The Warren Buffetts Next Door: The World's Greatest Investors You've Never Heard Of and What You Can Learn From Them" by Matthew Schifrin Publisher: Wiley (November 9, 2010) The Warren Buffetts Next Door - Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Warren-Buffetts-Next-Door-Investors/dp/0470573783 The Warren Buffetts Next Door - Wiley.com http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470573783.html ---------------------------------------------------- Marketocracy Masters the "Warren Buffetts Next Door" http://marketocracy.com/mds/wbnd.html Mike Koza - Profile @ Marketocracy.com 10 years - Average Annual Return 30.2% vs S&P 500 Return 0.8% http://marketocracy.com/mds/wbnd_mike_koza.html http://m100.marketocracy.com/mkoza_TGF/1performance/index.html Jack Weyland - Profile @ Marketocracy.com 8 years - Average Annual Return 32.7% vs S&P 500 Return 5.8% http://marketocracy.com/mds/wbnd_jack_weyland.html http://m100.marketocracy.com/jackweyland_VALUE/0overview/ Christopher Reese - Profile @ Marketocracy.com 10 years - Average Annual Return 23.6% vs S&P 500 Return 0.2% http://marketocracy.com/mds/wbnd_christopher_rees.html http://m100.marketocracy.com/crees_10STX/1performance/ Chris Reese... Homepage - tenstocks.com http://www.tenstocks.com/ http://covestor.com/ten-stocks/tenstocks http://twitter.com/Tenstocksdotcom

For those who don't know... Charlie doesn't need the google translation services, because his personal secretary is german born. *wink ;D

Sanj,.... as a matter of fact,... Prem was at the 2009 BRK AGM. ;) Cheers! http://lh3.ggpht.com/_gxkDvCm8FUA/SiU6AVyUNnI/AAAAAAAAGtI/3BRQO0h3Veg/s128/IMG_4785.JPG David Lau & Prem Watsa @ 2009 BRK AGM http://picasaweb.google.com/dahhuilaudavid/Berkshire2009AGM http://picasaweb.google.com/dahhuilaudavid/Berkshire2009AGM#5342740310467556978

vinod,... i just wanted to let you know, that i could print a test page very well (PDF page 6/=AR page 4) with Adobe. just don't want to waste my ink ;) maybe they have corrected the printing/settings error.

Soros was speaking last Friday at Columbia University. He said that the world financial system has effectively disintegrated , and there's no near-term bottom to this financial crisis in sight. Soros actually compared the current situation to the breakup of the Soviet Union and that there's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom. http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9048 http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE51K0A920090221 other article of the same event: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a60APVwmz01g&refer=home The real estate bubble was created as much by “relaxed” lending standards and the valuation of collateral as the availability of credit, he said. The bubble began in the early 1980s, and the subprime-mortgage debacle acted as the “detonator,” Soros said. The crisis was made possible by the globalization of financial markets and securitization of debt, he said. Risk management has become so “refined and sophisticated” regulators can no longer follow what is happening, he said.

Wilbur Ross was on CNBC and shared some of his opinions about the consumer leveraging in recent times. http://www.cnbc.com/id/29278956

Sanj,... I agree with you & zemanovich, the last time when i bought some brk was in the year 2000. brk is quite a bargain at these prices now,... anyway it could drop a little lower. but i'm not becoming a fortune teller for your amusement ;D