Carvel46

Jurgis, I suggest calling Fidelity Specialty Trading 800.343.4683 regarding your ability to buy the fund. I have spoken to them in April and Fidelity is now able hold it (I currently hold directly). Fidelity seems to be working out the kinks...don't know reasons. On Sequoia side, Ruane has been doing a large back office and admin overhaul/update over the past few years.

Liberty, where is the feedback link? Thanks.

http://conferencecalltranscripts.org/ is a great tool. Created by Barel Karsan-- http://www.barelkarsan.com/

Appreciate suggestions of good books on value investing internationally. Kind thanks.

LC, What's the ticker for ISE Wealth index etf? I'm not finding it. Thanks! Carvel

Six-Decade Stock Picker Dumps Japanese Small-Caps for ROE http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-15/six-decade-stock-picker-dumps-japanese-small-caps-in-return-hunt.html

Leftcoast/Liberty: Check out Mental Resilience: The Power of Clarity: How to Develop the Focus of a Warrior and the Peace of a Monk by Kamal Sarma http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1577316258/ref=oh_details_o01_s01_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It's more secular, from a former business person and covers the basics.

argonaut: Seattle has https://www.seattleinsight.org/ (i've heard the head teacher once). I learned mediation technique at an insight/Vipassana center. It looks like there are also some zen centers in Seattle. Zen, from my experience, doesn't talk much about technique, although koan interviews and zen practice have been great for me. Just try a few centers and see what style/center/teacher(s) you connect with. In the US, it seems like large metro areas with universities tend to have meditation centers. Here's a video example of zen koan practice - Zen Master Seung Sahn (6 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CUdrd-FsG0 Video--What Meditation Really Is - Mingyur Rinpoche (5 min):

Been practicing daily for about four years. I've found it to be a slow burn positive for many part of life. For me, it's about developing inner skills and qualities over time (kind of like value investing--inner scorecard type perspective). I attend a local zen center and insight center to learn from teachers and practice with others. In terms of books, two that i've enjoyed are: zen mind, beginner's mind by suzuki roshi and wanting enlightenment is a big mistake by seung sahn.

Triple: I try to teach family about basic value investing...encourage common sense. Surrounding them with people of integrity is also my goal (fiduciary, fee only cfp,...). Writing a plan/guideline (of some sort) makes sense. Danger: http://nypost.com/2014/03/01/warren-buffetts-advice-to-his-wife-is-investment-gold/

Very good thread. Been thinking about this also. Top on my list: find a good fee-only cfp (need to interview some people) and find good value shop (that doesn't over charge or try to grow aum to the detriment of current clients).

Packer, You mention that climate change is "not provable hypothesis and not very accurate predictions." Am i right to say you would put climate change in the "too hard" and too costly pile? My view on climate change is similar to the Munger quote: "All I want to know is where I'm going to die so I'll never go there." I'd rather be generally right, than precisely wrong. People make climate change way too complicated. Carvel

Warren Buffett Speech at the University of Florida, 1998: Manual of Ideas recent uploads (playlist):

tombgrt, Bangkok is a very challenging city to navigate. Taking a bicycle tour in Bangkok was the best thing I did in the city in 2006. Biking in Bangkok sounds crazy but check out http://www.covankessel.com/ We biked through areas I would never have discovered on my own. The company was started by a Dutch guy named Co. Sadly, it looks like he passed away last year. Amazing guy and organization.

Why do we sell low and buy high?: The guide you must read before you invest Amir Avitzur (Author) http://www.amazon.com/Why-sell-low-buy-high/dp/0615591078/ref=tmm_pap_title_0 It's short (100 pages) and geared as an intro. Pretty good. I gave it to some friends and family. A few seem to have understood some value investing concepts.

http://www.beyondproxy.com/mannkind-corporation/

"The average, middle class person thinks about education as an expenditure, not an investment. It’s something they have to do because it’s mandated and the lack of the highest quality education hasn’t negatively impacted their lives in a meaningful way. Step back for a second before you judge. Imagine it’s 2005, and you live in a small town in the middle of Ohio (where I grew up) and you don’t get a college degree. If you get a factory job and make $25k/year and your wife gets a factory job and makes $25k/year, you’re making $50k/year. But houses only cost $90,000 and food is affordable and you can get a loan for a car for $300/month. So you’re not doing terribly and the default state for your children is the same life. You can afford a house, food, have a car, and have weekends off. So, what has the lack of an education done to the typical American’s life? It’s removed job security, screwed your retirement, and maybe set you up to go bankrupt if you get sick. There are no immediate consequences, there are no immediate consequences for your children, but there is an immediate cost. So the average person thinks of education as an expenditure. If you get sick when you’re 70, you’re screwed. Or if you don’t save in your 401k, you may have to work till you’re dead. Or maybe your children won’t be as competitive in a global workforce 30 years. Don’t believe me? Only 15% of kids taking the SAT pay for an out of school test prep course like Kaplan. Over 50% of Americans don’t have beyond a high school degree. This fundamental investment vs. expenditure mindset changes everything. You think of education as fundamentally a quality problem. The average person thinks of education as fundamentally a cost problem." http://avichal.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/why-education-startups-do-not-succeed/

I understand everyone has different style. But I'm also surprised how dogmatic value investors get on this topic. Live and let live. I have holdings in three categories. 1) cheap assets (doesn't need current moat) 2) cheap earning, need some degree of moat 3) moat with growth that i'm not paying for. All categories happily coexist. Lisa Rapuano of Five Lane Capital has a good discussion of this, but i can't find the video. Basically, how Mastercard and some education stocks sit side by side and balance each other. Oddball had a blog post about owning Mastercard and small, cheap asset plays. Generally i lean towards quality in the businesses, but try not to pay for it.

My gameplan (Life's too short to own a bad business.) 1) Close or sell business and invest money into a quality business at a good price. Or 2) Hire management with realistic strategy to improve business and properly incentivize. With a commodity businesses, it seems easy to fool oneself about ones ability to improve the business. Awareness of context of the industry seems important... This seems to be happening with Klarman and Micron-- http://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=BAUPOST Plus, awareness of industry cycles.

Billionaire wise hobbit Warren Buffet once told school reformer Michelle Rhee that the easiest way to fix schools was to "make private schools illegal and assign every child to a public school by random lottery." In England, the notion of banning private education—while highly unlikely—has long been a part of the political debate entertained by major-party candidates. http://gawker.com/5943005/theres-a-simple-solution-to-the-public-schools-crisis

Palantir, In your example, you are not properly distinguishing between FCF and FCF/share. After a stock buyback each share outstanding (not held in treasury), now has a larger % claim on the FCF. If it's a 30% buyback, FCF does NOT grow (now or in the future, based on the buyback)! FCF/share does grow!! Try rewriting your example.

This is great! I'm looking forward to reading the old timer stories. What are the LT returns?Thx

BookTV has an interview with the author: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/313280-1%20&buy

I find it helpful to do a probability weighted sensitivity analysis. I think about the key drivers of the business. Then, consider the key drivers under bear, bull and base cases. The process is not about precision, its simply an exercise to help me think about the quality of the business (and nature of the industry) and if it is reasonable to expect the return be asymmetrical. "It would be nice if all of the data which sociologists require could be enumerated because then we could run them through IBM machines and draw charts as the economists do. However, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." ~ William Bruce Cameron (1963), “Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking” http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/26/everything-counts-einstein/

Here he is presenting his African American rags to riches story. I wonder what his education and work background was.