Liberty

They can panic the other way. That's what people did in the late 90s. "Gotta buy now before it goes up more!"

Can you share with us some of the things you have said that ended up on the cutting room floor?

Congrats Glenn!

Grantham: http://online.barrons.com/news/articles/SB50001424053111904255004580037561004275500

Follow up by Damodaran: http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.ca/2014/07/possible-plausible-and-probable-big.html

I knew you'd like it, Gio ;)

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101839160 Who says things don't change?

Thanks!

I came back here to delete my previous message because I know this will go nowhere. Oops, too late for that. But I'm out, I'm not about to try to explain what logically follows from sentience and empathy ("hey, I don't like when people treat me this way, maybe they don't like when I treat them like that").

Not that poppycock again. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_ethics Frankly, I'd rather live in a world where people are ethical because they use reason to realize that it's the better course of action (empathy tells us most of what we nee to know) than live in a world where the only reason people are ethical is because they're afraid of a security camera in the sky threatening torture, and if that camera was to disappear, they would lie, cheat and steal in a heartbeat (is that really your case? that's what you imply). That's a depressing worldview. I know, I know. Best not to write about this stuff. But some strawmen need to die.

Yeah, because all the single mothers I know do it for the money and life of leisure. If we made that life less attractive, maybe they would stop consciously choosing to become single mothers; heck, maybe it would even force them to stay in bad relationships and be financially dependent on abusive men, like in the good old days...

I saw their explanation, but I thought it was kind of BS to look at it like that just to get a bigger number in the headline. Should be about how they destroyed a business worth around $700m in the 80s or something like that. Otherwise, you can write an article about how someone's grandfather lost the family's millions*. *$1,000 bucks in 1900, and if they only had kept pace with the dow jones, they would have X millions now...

I think that's obvious. It's also obvious that it's a lot easier to be rich if you start out with millions than if you start out with nothing.

Thanks, always interesting to read about big failures. Looks like the never had $9 billion ($700 million in the 1980s), but they still blew through a lot of money and made a business fail through all the usual suspects: diworsification, too much debt, damaging the brand, lack of a frugal culture, replacing the founder with his kids who might not be the best people for the job (maybe partly because they never knew hard times?), etc.

http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/books/business-adventures-john-brooks/

More details on this mess: http://www.businessinsider.com/cynk-founding-2014-7

Daily Closing Prices and Drawdowns for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($DJIA) from May 1885 to July 11, 2014 http://greenbackd.com/2014/07/14/daily-closing-prices-and-drawdowns-for-the-dow-jones-industrial-average-djia-from-may-1885-to-july-11-2014/

One possibility is that Buffett recommends Graham to the larger public because he wants them to learn about that way of thinking, but when Bill Gates came to him, he wasn't going to recommend Graham to Gates - he already knew that stuff - so he recommended something that's less educational/didactic and more what he enjoyed reading (kind of like the difference between how a textbook can teach you more, but you get more pleasure reading Michael Lewis).

Here's a very interesting and very detailed post on Uber by one of the early investors and board members: http://abovethecrowd.com/2014/07/11/how-to-miss-by-a-mile-an-alternative-look-at-ubers-potential-market-size/ Regardless of whether you are interested in the company, I think it's an excellent read. Thanks to Whopper Investments for pointing it out.

Well, Bill Gates and Buffett probably wouldn't publicly recommend a book that is out of print and that most people can't easily get. If it was still in print, maybe they'd have done this 2 years ago or whatever. Maybe they were involved with the reprint, but probably because they want people to read it, not because it's material money wise. IMO this is probably Warren's 'favorite book ABOUT business', but he also has different favorite books about investing (Intelligent Investor, Security Analysis) and such... Everybody has a bunch of favorites and depending how you ask you'll get a different answer, and then the media will punch if up by said it's THE favorite.

Thanks Sanjeev, In part 4 he mentions that he's writing another book, but doesn't really say much about it. Anyone knows what it's about? Has he mentioned it somewhere else?

[amazonsearch]Business Adventures[/amazonsearch] I haven't read it, but it was just reviewed by Bill Gates here: http://online.wsj.com/articles/bill-gatess-favorite-business-book-1405088228 Apparently recommended to him by Buffett as his "favorite book about business". Definitely on my list now. There's a video produced by Gates about the book and author here: Brooks also has a few other books that seem interesting: The Go-Go Years: The Drama and Crashing Finale of Wall Street's Bullish 60s Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920-1938

I think we have to be careful with comparisons based on just 1-2 variables. There are many more things going on. f.ex., of course valuations will go much lower when interest rates are 8-10% or more than when they are 0-2%. The opportunity costs are very different. Of course marco-economic mismanagement can make a bad situation worse. F.ex. the recent financial crisis would've not doubt been much worse if the fed had cut off liquidity instead of adding some, since most of the problem in the financial sector wasn't that everything was worthless all of a sudden (some stuff was, but far from all), but rather that nobody had cash to finance short term obligations and nobody wanted to buy anything from anyone else until uncertainty was lifted and they knew what was toxic and what was fine. GE and WFC and JNJ didn't all suddenly become worth a fraction of what they were worth the week before, their stock prices didn't fall off a cliff because of a nuclear war that wiped out their factories and customers... The 1970s had all kinds of SNAFUs that made things worse than they could have been with saner policies. Anyway, it's all so complex that I don't find it worth trying to predict. It's fun to read about, but I leave it outside my decision-making as much as possible. If a specific business is too expensive, then it's too expensive.

I'm not calling anyone crazy. But consider the fact that some of those same people who got that call right before the crisis stayed bearish after it and missed or partly missed one of the best rebounds ever. Crystal balls are rare (John Paulson's halo certainly doesn't shine the way it used to). I certainly don't have one. Every time I say that I don't know, people seem to read "I don't think anything can go wrong, the bull market will continue". That's not what I'm saying. Maybe we'll drop 20% tomorrow. But I can't invest as if that's going to be the case, because I don't know. What do you think should have happened? 15 years or bear market? A break-down of the economy, with soup queues in the streets and 20% unemployment? We've already discussed this. I find this moralistic approach (people should be punished for their excesses) not useful when it comes to investing. And it did take 5 years for the market to go back to its high water mark, so it's not like there was no pain (esp. considering the bubble's epicenter wasn't in the stock market).

Who says I'm not concerned? But I'd certainly be more concerned if people hadn't been predicting a crash for years now. I just realize that I have no ability to time the market - what if I had decided last year that things were too pricey and went to the sidelines and missed 2013? that's an opportunity cost just as bad as not foreseeing a drop - so I don't try, and that goes for either up or down. And I don't think that much about the market in general when making investment decisions, because I don't buy indexes. As long as I find businesses that I like and that are selling at prices I think are fair, I don't feel I have to wait for the next correction to buy because what if we get a 10% correction after another 30% run up? I bet a lot of people in late 2012 though they should just wait for a big drop before buying something... I wonder if people would be as worried if we weren't in "all time high" territory. I think it's a normal thing in a world where the population and economy are growing and there's inflation to eventually start hitting all-time highs and keep hitting new all time highs for a long time (ie. look at most of the past century). There will be corrections, and recessions, but who knows when? Tomorrow? In a year? We hit a plateau for a while? Doesn't mean the landscape will be like in the 2000s, that's just the recency effect. It could be worse, or it could be much better... No idea. People will always point out the long list of reasons why everything's about to go to hell, but that list has always been there (as Buffett says, look at what the world went through in the 20th century and look at how the stock market did -- now look at what above average capital allocators did over long periods of the same). As long as the people I invest in are really talented at creating value in all kinds of conditions, I think in the long term I'll do all right.