gfp

The structure was an accident of history. No fees because he was already wealthy and truly wanted to get wealthier alongside his investors, rather than "off of them." A lot of people say that line, but Warren is the only one I've seen actually do it. I personally manage large sums for a few people for no fee - it actually costs me money - but I can't do that for everyone. So much of what they do - the $50,000 reimbursements for "postage" and personal use of secretarial services, etc - is just to set a good example. They can afford to do that. The ridiculously low salary is to set an example by using an extreme. He doesn't think Jaime Dimon should get $100k, he is using an extreme to set an example. Berkshire is an accident of history, but the track record and communications record are all in one place. It's his painting, as he says. It is valuable for his legacy to have a single long term repository of his life's work and the scorecard. To answer my own question a few posts ago: Fairfax India, Greenlight Capital Re, Third Point Re, etc, ALL have more egregious and costly fee structures than the one shareholders of Biglari Holdings are paying. The only difference is that investors put up their money with that fee schedule fully disclosed ahead of time. It was their money and they chose to pay the fees. Biglari chose to add fees (however competitive with the above examples) on other people's money, after the fact. And that is - one of the many things - that rubs people the wrong way.

How is Greenlight Re any better than Biglari Holdings' comp structure? Or fairfax india for that matter?

Is the current market cap $875m ? 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?

thanks for the heads up, I hadn't noticed this. got filled on a small amount of HRG at 9.555 Off to buy some more kwikset products..

http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/seekingalpha-turns-evil/msg327744/#msg327744

EUROB - EuroBank at 91-91.5 euro cents is my jam today. as they say, this could be their year..

Yeah - he was already pissed at that point because they did a horrible deal for DiGiorno frozen pizza with Nestle. It was hasty, fully taxed, etc.. That's when he made the TV rounds telling everyone he felt "poorer."

latest bond offering priced (and previously hedged) - https://www.fairfax.ca/news/press-releases/press-release-details/2018/Fairfax-Announces-Pricing-of-Senior-Notes-Offering/default.aspx

Todd Combs article in Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-27/what-do-bezos-buffett-and-dimon-have-in-common-meet-todd-combs

I'm sure Buffett would much rather receive calls for him to buy large German family owned companies, rather than sell to one. But maybe it helps again to raise his profile a bit in that group.

That USG filing is great. They're like, "can we get a commitment from you for your block?" And Warren's like, not for free silly!

You can sell cash secured puts in an IRA at interactive brokers and others that offer that trading approval. You cannot borrow in an IRA, so you need the cash unencumbered in the account. Which is one reason shorter duration is better. Also the last month or two is when you get the most premium decay or whatever they call it

For boilermakers trades, it's much better to sell puts with duration of 2 months or less, over and over again. It's not riskier than buying shares, assuming you are interested in buying additional shares and size the trade appropriately. If you get put to, you are happy to own the underlying and if you own a bit more than you intended, you start a covered call selling regimen against the excess shares. If he's the one that got $1.85 for a 3/29 expiry 190 BRK.B put, he's buying BRK.B shares at $188.15 next week - worst case scenario. It's only risky if you don't want to buy BRK.B shares for $188.15 in a few days time. Selling LEAPS puts two years out on a single company ties up a lot of capital for a long time for a comparatively small upfront premium. Not a great trade.

What mjohn said. Little arrow in the top right corner of the site. If it's pointing down, you have no search bar, if it's pointing up you do

That's in the ballpark of what I was assuming. Pretty reasonable if you assume they are making somewhere around $500 million each year, 14-15x earnings for the first chunk. Implied market cap will probably be higher for the next shares that Berkshire buys, likely based on some pre-established formula based on earnings like the Marmon deal. If they had auctioned or shopped the entire thing with a banker it would have gone for more October 03, 2017, 06:19:03 AM October 03, 2017, 06:06:25 AM

Another low risk public bet by Warren comes to a close, all brackets busted for the company pool -> http://www.omaha.com/sports/ncaa-tournament/winners-will-split-in-warren-buffett-s-ncaa-bracket-challenge/article_7688236e-1074-5c3a-9212-a5732b70d766.html

Berkshire proxy filed yesterday. Standard stuff year to year but with the board changes and appointment of Greg Abel and Ajit Jain to the board, there is some additional discussion of their responsibilities. Next year it would show their salaries and bonus as well. Berkshire goes out of their way to be a model for director compensation and Warren and Charlie both continue to reimburse BRK for personal use of taxes and secretaries, $50k each per year. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000119312518086050/d526293ddef14a.htm

I was filled on orders for Charter and Liberty Sirius K today. There ya go

Back when this happened I ended up switching to Digg Reader. Today they say they are shutting down the RSS reader March 26th... Anyone have a current RSS reader favorite that doesn't cost anything per month? Doesn't seem like it should cost $5 per month to use RSS

Those ads are custom for you Cardboard... from your browsing patterns

When Fairfax chose to delist from the NYSE the options and LEAPS on the NYSE shares went away. As far as I know there have never been listed options on the TSX shares, so that was the end of that. There may be some big guys that can get an investment bank to make them an option on FFH but most of us don't qualify for that kind of service

And if you are not a shareholder you can buy meeting credentials directly from BRKA on eBay every year

It would be nice if Cargill, Bosch and Mars phoned, but I don't know why they would. I don't think the Koch brothers are going to call anytime soon. Unilever would have been fantastic for KHC, but even that deal was only going to be structured to put $20 billion or less in by Berkshire. Not even soaking up the cash generated while they waited for the deal to close..

Just to update on this - the primary Berkshire 13F contains some shares held by pension funds. The New England Asset Management listings are not the holdings of the pension funds, but some number of shares on BRK's 13F linked below are held by pension funds. ( https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000095012318002390/xslForm13F_X01/form13fInfoTable.xml ) Combining all Apple shares together form both 13Fs (as of 12/31/2017) gives a total of 169.55 million AAPL shares, where Berkshire's annual report shows 166.713209 million AAPL shares (which excludes pension fund holdings). We know that Todd and Ted manage assets for the pension funds of the various subsidiaries, so the difference could be the shares 'owned' by Todd and/or Ted's accounts. So it makes it difficult to get a 100% accurate spreadsheet going for Berkshire's look through holdings / real time book value. But roughly right is good enough for analyzing BRK. Thanks Dynamic, for sharing your work

Brief notes from Buffett's CNBC interview this morning - - wouldn't rule out owning 100% of a major airline - will spend "probably all day" reading coming GE 10K "very very carefully" - accounting at GE "has not been a model" - "we haven't bought any stock at GE" - might have to change 120% buyback threshold "a little bit" to get shares. specifically mentioned 125-127% of book as examples - on above, sounded like something he would change if a large block became available at those prices, as before. Not necessarily in advance of a block becoming available. Subsidiary founders passing away, etc... - Set up a $6 billion liability at Berkshire Hathaway Energy for a portion of the tax windfall from deferred tax liability adjustment, in anticipation of regulators properly deeming that it should ultimately go to the customers - net buyer of equities for the year, even including the large block sale of PSX stock back to the company.