gfp

Buffett also used short puts to acquire a bunch of the original BNI. Assuming they are cash covered, you are risking your great purchase idea going up while you make a couple of bucks and watch from the sidelines. Writing puts on companies you want to own at the strike price is a fine way to generate income, but can obviously leave you with a bunch of stock and no cash in a downturn.

What do you hate about Dairy Queen International? I'm sure you know it's a licensing / Franchise business... Expanding into China, Egypt, Macau, Saudi Arabia, etc... Very little capital employed in the business and the dough keeps flowing up to Omaha with little need to reinvest a cent. Plus it's minuscule inside Berkshire. 31.7% return on capital employed when we purchased it. Year after year...

I've been picking BRK over FFH at recent prices, so far not even l'affaire Sokol has allowed the purchase of BRK shares at below 200 Billion market cap. With the annual meeting around the corner, which includes pre-release of first quarter earnings, and most of Berkshire's Japan exposure coming through their Swiss Re quota share agreement - folks might actually start to focus on the business again. Gotta love that the 1.64 Billion Goldman windfall this quarter will be taxed as a preferred dividend due to the clever structuring of the product.

I know that's from a while ago, and I've seen it a few times by now - but listening again I hadn't caught his comment on predicting coming disappointment among universities that all invested in timberland at the same time ("they all purchased in the same groves"). There was a similar sentiment expressed in one of the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing newsletters, where the 'short' winner of Ackman's pershing square prize was a timber reit short. (the long winner was BR)

http://www.morningstar.com/cover/videocenter.aspx?id=375858

I recently got the new book too - and it is really nicely done. A great buy for those that appreciate the minutia of what Buffet is up to. You get a real sense for the insane amount of energy he still has. It was interesting to read the details of a few of his previously undisclosed Korean equity positions: "Buffett said that Berkshire had bought shares of Kia Motors Corp., Shinyoung Securities, and Hyundai Steel in Korea earlier but now owned only shares in POSCO. He personally held one additional Korean stock in his own portfolio." Has anybody checked out a price chart of Kia Motors recently? It's, um, up and to the right... My favorite typo / "damn you auto-correct" moment so far is on page seven where they refer to Michael Milken as "former punk band king". Rock on.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I thought they were not convertible - i.e., unlike BRK you cannot convert BH class A into BH class B. I know his reasons for the dual class voting are shady, but it doesn't sound horribly different from the voting rights disparity at BRK. (I am not defending his actions, I really dislike this guy)

Not that it really matters, but why does he use the wrong share count and the wrong Shareholder's Equity? Tilson's BRK shares outstanding: 1.636 million Actual BRK shares outstanding: 1.6486 million Tilson's BRK equity: $163 Billion Actual BRK equity: $157.3 Billion Using $163 B ignores the 5.6 Billion that doesn't belong to BRK shareholders.

http://www.deepcapture.com/michael-steinhardt-when-the-bad-guys-came-to-town/

Seems like JNJ usually ends up on these lists.

I always read the most recent one first, then in order from the beginning. This week, I read KFT from 2001 and it was sort of a depressing experience.

sokol just won't quit his insider trading ways... http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/914138/000114036111019608/xslF345X03/doc1.xml

Lubrizol was not "for sale" anymore than every public company is "for sale" on any given day. It was on a list of chemical companies, not a list of chemical companies being 'shopped' by Citi. LZ was, in fact, considering a very large acquisition. It was arguably undervalued and fairly un-leveraged, which would make it a target - but the company was not being shopped and the management was not considering a sale.

Actually, he owns 20.24% of MBRG now according to their recent proxy

Yep, and the CEO (Shook) was the best man at his daughter's wedding... Sounds like a family enterprise to me. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/914138/000114036111017348/xslF345X03/doc1.xml

EASTERN TIME

Also, a heads up: Sokol will be Live on CNBC at 7:40 am tomorrow morning

the "curse of netjets"!

All the equities were always being marked to market and all changes were reflected in quarterly comprehensive income and, of course, book value on pg. 1. Berkshire isn't a trader using mark to market accounting and it shouldn't have to pass unrealized losses through the income statement if there hasn't been a material permanent impairment (like AIB) just like it doesn't pass unrealized gains through (besides rare exceptions like the Gillette-P&G merger and the BNI write up). If KO goes up 2 Billion dollars in a quarter and USB declines 500 million, running -500m through the income statement doesn't communicate anything useful to investors.

Finra has an ok bond search, select 'Corporate' from the top radio button and give it a try. http://cxa.marketwatch.com/finra/BondCenter/AdvancedScreener.aspx

Why not use Interactive Brokers and just buy FFH in Canada?

Was that the entirety of your trading in company A last year? If not, more information is needed to answer your question. 500 shares of stock sounds better than '500 stocks', fwiw

The only Nikkei 225 etfs that I know of are traded in Japan - the iShares one is jp:1329 EWJ, that you mention, is the most liquid US etf, but it tracks the MSCI Japan Index. There are mini-Nikkei futures traded in Singapore and larger contracts available in the US. DFJ - the WisdomTree small cap dividend etf is also pretty active.

Yes, they most certainly have exposure to losses through their enormous global reinsurance businesses. They will probably give us a preliminary estimate in their first quarter 10Q. It won't be a big deal for them.

I don't have a link to the ned davis version, but the difference between the two is from the Guru Focus graph using the Wilshire Total Market index, which contains 98% of all US stocks, while the Ned Davis Research version adds the other 2%. By Ned Davis' method, we were at around 101% at the beginning of this year. Sorry, I don't have anything better than the gurufocus chart you found.