Liberty

Does anyone has a link to an online video or transcript of the Buffett appearance on Fox? TIA.

That's the best kind of journey to follow along! Sometimes when you hear from someone who seems to have it all figured out, they have a hard time putting on the "veil of ignorance" and actually remembering how it was to not have it all figured out. It's sometimes best to learn in real-time with someone else. I'm still going through the Mr. Money Mustache blog article by article in chronological order. I'm almost done with 2012. It's very motivating. I'm so happy I got on this path almost 10 years ago, then kind of put things on autopilot and didn't think much about early retirement, and now I realize that I'm pretty much there if I want to actually pull the trigger. Going back to the well to make sure I'm covering all the basics and tighten things up in my life feels like a good challenge. I plan to finish reading MMM and then read Jacob's ERE book. I might actually 'retire' within the next year, we'll see. I'm looking at my options and taking my time to make sure I have a good margin of safety (I'm just 32, so there's no big rush).

Sorry if this is a repost, but Gates did a 3rd AMA:

Canadian dollar is now around 79 cents US.

I think the best way to evaluate a fund manager is over one of more full market cycles. If you look at closer to bull market peak or a bear market bottom, you get quite different results. Or a second best way would be to look at multiple independent multi-year periods. Otherwise performance is too sensitive to starting and end point levels. Vinod Agreed. I wasn't "evaluating" Bruce. I know he's good, and I expect him to beat the SP500 over time, and he has a good process. I was just saying that 10+ years is still a long time, and that someone who bought FAIRX 10+ years ago and never touched it might not feel quite as philosophical about measuring only over full cycles. It was just a random thought. Don't read too much into it. Though it's still true that most people should probably just buy a low-cost index.

Yeah, I know it didn't include everything. Even the Morningstar chart is pretty close considering what most people would expect one of the smartest value investors to be able to do in 10 years. I'm not saying he won't overperform over time, and that his holdings aren't much cheaper and lower risk than the average company in the SP500 or anything like that. Just pointing out that this is still a close race even when measured in the decade+ scale.

That's indeed what I tell myself. But still, I think it's healthy to remind myself once in a while of how hard this activity is.

I was looking at the past 10 years, FAIRX vs SP500: http://i.imgur.com/eij3Snx.png You have to go back to 2002 for performances to be equal (and that's not looking at dividends). Sometimes I wonder if I should just index... If Bruce has a hard time doing it, what are my chances over time?

[amazonsearch]Merchants of Grain[/amazonsearch] I haven't read the book but this review almost made me feel like I have: http://y0ungmoney.blogspot.ca/2015/01/book-review-merchants-of-grain-by-dan.html Just thought I'd share it here, and start a thread in case some people have read the book and want to discuss it.

I wasn't trying to restart the arguments for and against Sears. Just making a hypothetical in the "it ain't over until it's over" vein; past success in retail doesn't mean that in the end, he'll be a successful retail investor if the money made there is reinvested in something that fails (that's the hypothetical, we're not there yet, but so far it isn't exactly a great success). But yeah, a lost decade for someone who has a track record of compounding at 30% has a huge opportunity cost. Just thinking of the kind of returns that Sears would need to make going forward to make his whole investment have a good yearly CAGR is pretty intimidating...

Congrats, happy for you! :)

Haha. :) I guess to be fair to ESL, though, he has had a tremendous amount of success in the retail space in the past. AN and AZO were grand slam home run investments. GPS was a great buy, and he also almost stole Restoration Hardware during the financial crisis. But that doesn't mean he can successfully become Bezos with SYW. True, good point. But I wonder, if Sears doesn't ultimately work out, will Lampert lose almost everything he made in AN and AZO?

Ackman should introduce Lampert to his friend who tells him "stay away from retail" every time they see each other :D

This is excellent. Chou mentioned that q-ratio was the best indicator of a stock market bubble, it's near all time hight atm.... I'm not very knowledgeable about these fancy ratios, but looking at this: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/qratio.asp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin%27s_q It sounds like the kind of thing that should be around all time highs these days because a lot more of the earning power of our economy is now found in things other than physical assets (intangibles, intellectual capital, software, networks, websites, patents, etc). Looking at physical assets might have been a good indicator back before financial, technology, pharma, and other services businesses grew to be such a big part of the economy, but I have a hard time seeing how it could be a good indicator today, unless it was seriously recalibrated to take the changes into account. http://i1.wp.com/www.philosophicaleconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/EPSshare.jpg What am I missing here?

I think it's a case of diffuse interest vs concentrated interest (similar to the situation with farming subsidies). Those who benefit from high oil prices are very visible (high paying jobs, boom towns, etc). Those who are harmed by high oil prices are diffuses, a few hundred dollars here and there spread over billions of people. But what matters is the aggregate number, and it seems like it should be a net positive for the economy over time.

I don't remember the exact number, but it was low. It's because he sold all but 1 of his shares after he was forced out of the company. He made most of his money from selling Pixar to Disney, actually. But he had an owner's mindset (more than many people who own large % of companies), so the number of shares he owned didn't matter in this case...

Thank you for the summary!

I think you should go up one meta-level and figure out how you can make this kind of situation not frustrating, but productive. As Peter Cundill would say, there's always something to do. Go deeper on the stuff you already own, expand your circle of competence, just keep reading up on new businesses even if they're too expensive, because chances are at some point they'll become cheap and if you've done the work ahead of time, you'll be better positioned to take advantage of what might be a short opportunity window. Feeling frustrated, and like you have to do something, tends to lead people to lower their hurdles and buy things that don't meet their criteria, which often results in mistakes. Or just find a new hobby.

"I would rather hold a mix of good businesses then a commodity whose quantity is only increasing or cash in debased currency." Very well said Packer.

You write many interesting things on your blog, Innerscorecard. Thanks for sharing your thinking. This is pretty close to my thinking: http://www.innerscorecard.co/blog/2015/1/5/financial-independence-and-value-investing-are-joined-at-the-hip-but-maybe-only-to-me http://www.innerscorecard.co/blog/2015/1/18/aiming-low I also enjoyed the Marry Poppins post. I probably should watch that film at some point (saw parts of it when I was very young, but I don't remember much except flying umbrellas).

Here's a few that come to mind looking at my shelves. Not every year, but worth re-reading. Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas R. Hofstadter The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman - Richard P. Feynman American Prometheus (biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer) Lolita, ADA - Vladimir Nabokov The Magus, The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles Memoirs - Hector Berlioz The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins A Pattern Language - Christopher Alexander American Ceasar: Douglas MacArthur - William Manchester With the Old Breed - E.G. Sledge Your Money or Your Life - Joe Domingez and Vicky Robin When Heaven and Earth Changed Places/ Child of War, Woman of Peace - Le Ly Hayslip

And he has a sense of humor too. As a tribute to Iain M. Banks, Musk is naming the two SpaceX drone ships (automated floating platforms where the rockets will vertically land): "Just Read the Instructions" and "Of Course I Still Love You" This is a reference to Banks' GSVs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Culture_series#The_Player_of_Games Those two names were used in the book The Play of Games. If you don't know Banks, I recommend those three on the SF side: Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons, and Player of Games

I don't know anything about renting a house, but I know that there's a pretty big community of people who are obsessed with all kinds of real estate investing, being landlords, etc. I'd start by digging around this site: http://www.biggerpockets.com/ http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/01/04/how-to-rent-your-house/ Sorry if it's not what you're looking for.

Personally, almost everything that makes me respect Bill Gates is the stuff that he has done, and is doing, after leaving the Microsoft CEO role and creating the Gates Foundation.

The "You're welcome world" is the part that I read as tongue in cheek. Maybe I have a hard time believe that anyone can write things like that non-ironically until they release an ebook with that title :)