gfp

ERIC, when Buffett talks about selling securities, he is referring to his work as a stock broker, not liquidating stock ownership positions.

As a person who does similar things, please share them! Here are a few but one blog tends to lead to another and there are thousands out there- http://tomtarrant.com/ http://shaunsre.blogspot.com/ http://www.biggerpockets.com/dashboard (forums) http://www.123flip.com/blog http://buildbankroll.com/ This is some kind of listing of a bunch of them - http://www.reiclub.com/realestateblog/contest-best-real-estate-investing-blog/ Ragnar - check out this little gem we looked at this morning. My friend got this place for back taxes and narrowly averted a city demolition. This is a warehouse from the 1800's that will be turned into commercial up front with 8 residential units behind. The front collapsed into the street in the middle of negotiations to purchase! http://tinyurl.com/bguhte8 http://tinyurl.com/bbpww86

Ragnar has some RE stuff on his blog, although it doesn't focus on passive investments outside of Sitestar. TWO harbors is planning to spin out a residential real estate subsidiary soon which could be interesting, depending on price. I've also owned America First Tax Exempt Investors (ATAX) for a while in income portfolios and it has been decent for a passive investment (it's an LP though). My wife is a full time real estate investor focusing on complete renovations of blighted properties in New Orleans, so most of the blogs I follow focus on renovation/construction.

Lowest p/b on that graph was September of LAST year - also the exact moment Warren announced the share buy back.

Get yourself a generator to run the refrigerator and a couple lights. Still got time to get one from Amazon or in person at a big box store...

I am also a fan of the Brother duplex monochrome laser models for home office use. I've had great results from mine. Automatic duplex printing is a great feature for large reports and saves a lot of paper. The only downside is not being able to use the backsides of old printouts as scratch paper, but occasional one sided printing will keep up your scratch paper supply... I have the HL-5370DW, but I don't think that is a current model. There are several newer options with many reviews on Amazon and NewEgg. If you use Apple products in the home as well, look for one with AirPrint compatibility. On my printer, I just plug it in to the wireless router so that it is available for any device on the network (except iPad because it is pre-AirPrint).

Sure seems like these guys are going to bid a lot higher than Warren & Ted. (for the servicing business) Coming up pretty soon now - http://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/dailybriefing/Auction-of-ResCap-may-take-five-days-1032394-1.html

Weschler / Berkshire still buying DVA - over 10% - http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/315090/000118143112052344/xslF345X03/rrd357100.xml

For 10-Ks / Annual Reports, go to the best Business Schools in your area and ask at the BSchool library if they have microfiche of historical Annual Reports. Many business school libraries have a decent collection so keep trying until you find what you need. They might have Value Line archives as well, doesn't hurt to ask.

Michael Smith of MFC Industrial (MIL) ended up with some of the scraps of Bre-X (and the tax assets, I believe). He just did an interesting deal for Compton Petroleum this month. http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y01/dec01/21e9.htm

Maria did finally shut up for long enough that it was an excellent Dalio talk. Thanks for posting this - I only wish politicians watched this stuff.

There's an entire online class for contract adjustments - enjoy! http://education.optionseducation.org/course/view.php?id=5

Couldn't it possibly have something to do with potential changes in the carried interest partnership taxation going forward? It seems like he has been transferring a lot of long term positions into his personal account over the years and I assumed it was to safeguard their eventual tax treatment as personal capital gains.

Love Charlie's quote from that 2002 meeting - "growing float with extremely low cost is difficult. We intend to do it anyway." 2011 BRK Annual Report: "Though we are sure to have underwriting losses from time to time, we’ve now had nine consecutive years of underwriting profits, totaling about $17 billion. Over the same nine years our float increased from $41 billion to its current record of $70 billion."

my bad - made an error up there!

Outside of researching promotional rates for money market accounts at various financial institutions, there are not a lot of low-risk, deposit type options that are worth the effort. I use a strategy like this in similar situations. This is just one example, using American Capital Agency. The numbers vary and there are other securities that might be better choices, but you could do something like this: This assumes 100 shares / one option contract - long 100 sh AGNC: 3389 buy 1 AGNC Jan 13 34 Put +290 sell 1 AGNC Jan 13 34 Call -98 ------ Net cost would be around $3581 You would collect two dividend payments of 1.25 each in that time, or $250, plus the $11 from selling at 34. 261 / 3581 = 7.28% [EDIT - this is incorrect, I messed this one up as you can see] To get the options prices I listed, you would want to enter the orders together as an all-or-nothing spread order for a net debit of 1.92 or so in this example. You could run a similar strategy with other high dividend payers that you think will maintain the dividend for the next 6 months. There might be better choices out there, but you get the idea.

From BRK's latest 10Q - "Subsequent to June 30, 2012, Berkshire entered into an agreement with the counterparty to certain of the state/municipality contracts to terminate contracts with notional values of $8.25 billion. Future loss payments, if any, related to the remaining 50% of the notional value of the state/municipality contracts cannot be unilaterally settled before the maturity dates of the underlying municipality obligation, which range from 2019 to 2054." This is about half of the notional value of the BRK Assurance muni bond insurance business. Is Fairfax the only counterparty that holds this big of a position in BRK-insured bonds? Think it was FFH that terminated the coverage?

Google didn't buy Motorola Solutions

JUSH is BKW on the nyse as of today

Is that what caused the strange, high volume run-up in HRG shares the last couple weeks? I couldn't figure out what happened there. Thought maybe it was a newsletter or manager write-up.

FMD one of them?

Yeah, I noticed it wasn't working correctly yesterday either. Must be all that fancy programming and graphics bringing the servers to their knees

These articles are funny. Makes no mention that less than 30% of the headline number of planes are actual firm orders as opposed to options to acquire planes. All these articles cite a meaningless "retail" value of 425 planes when NetJets is only committing to 125, and at a huge discount to "msrp." Last I checked the railroad didn't cost $44 Billion either, but it's certainly worth at least that today!

White MacBook was discontinued Feb 2012. I believe you are thinking of the MacBook Pro. MacBook was plastic. Not that it's important

Ummm. I agree it's definitely not a macbook in the picture, but MacBooks were only available in two colors and one of them was white and glossy.. http://tinyurl.com/7wnqfrc