Liberty

I've ordered the book on Amazon.ca since I couldn't find it at the local public library. Thanks for the recs.

Thank you, I had put that in my bookmarks a while ago but had forgotten about it until I refound it earlier today after asking here. I definitely won't forget about it a second time! Thanks for the link :)

Apart from the fact that Buffett has already endorsed Obama multiple times, he wouldn't endorse Palin because their political, social, economic, scientific, etc, views are so different, and because Palin lowers the level of political discourse and makes it more adversarial, which is the opposite of what Buffett wants to see happen. It doesn't have to do with the number of X chromosomes or whatever. In any case, now seems like a good time to leave this thread and never come back, because nothing good can come of it. Sorry I even asked for clarification.

That's excellent! Thank you for posting it! Anymore like that, either from Klarman or from other greats?

Was that a joke? I can't tell.

It's an interesting idea, thanks for posting. I'll definitely dig (ha!) into it at some point.

Thanks, jjsto. By "how recommended", I meant, "would you guys recommend it?" :)

How recommended is his book (Applied Value Investing)? Can anyone comment on the content and how valuable his insights are? Thanks.

Here's what I had originally before he posted his archive: http://i.imgur.com/SZJnl.png

Interesting stuff. And I like how it's the raw transcript. Where did you find it?

Any idea how much of the company is held by insiders?

Some of the Gannon on Investing podcasts can be found by looking at his site through the Archive.org wayback machine.

http://www.gannononinvesting.com/blog/investor-questions-podcast-episodes.html I've asked Geoff (and I'm sure others have too) to compile his old podcast in one place because I'm pretty sure that some episodes were not available anywhere anymore. For those who don't know him, the style is a bit dry and he puts a bunch of announcements at the beginning of the episodes rather than at the end (so it slows things down -- feel free to skip ahead), but the content is IMHO very good. Lots of value investing basic principles, nothing super advanced, but the most important things in investing are simple. update: I've just realized that those are not all of the original Gannon on Investing podcasts (I think), so that means that those are more answers to reader questions rather than the more general "investing basics" GOI podcasts. They should still be interesting, though..

I'm having trouble seeing the logic here. Many devices that are running Android would probably be iPhones if Android didn't exist. To say that this doesn't matter to Apple is nonsense. Of course they make a lot more money per phone than anyone, so even with a small market share they can have a large fraction of the profits (they're kind of like luxury car makers), but they'd do even better with a larger market share, no doubt about it. As for Google, they probably make about as much from each iPhone as from each Android phone, so the equation is different. A lot of the value that Android has for Google is defensive; they'd rather have all this influence on the smartphone market rather than let Apple and Microsoft take it all and leave them at their mercy. I'm sure Android will be monetized better over time as mobile advertising technologies become better and more advertisers become familiar with geo-targeting and such, but these technologies will no doubt also run on non-android phones since google is the 800lbs gorilla of online advertising.

All right, I've finished it. Worth reading, IMO. The library version didn't have the extra chapters from the 2010 version. Are those available anywhere online? Can anyone give a brief summary of what they contain? Should I track down a more recent version of the book or they not worth the trouble? Thanks.

Awesome. First Klarman and now this! Thanks for posting!

Still reading this, about 4/5 into it. I got to the part about Pat Byrne's crazy conference call. Do people around here really own Overstock? After that performance (if it really was as described by Einhorn, and he does quote a lot of it verbatim), I'd stay very far away from any business that he's in charge of. I really hope he has other good qualities, because a public conspiracy-theories-paranoid-rant-with-made-up-stuff is enough to put someone off my list of people I would trust with my hard-earned capital...

Thanks, very interesting!

Could you elaborate a bit on why you think TD is different? It's not a sector I know much about, but I'm always trying to learn :)

It would be entirely dependent on what they decide to add. The question is more: Is management capable of recognizing good businesses with durable competitive advantages and acquiring them at good prices. Most managements can't do that, and so it ends up being diworsification. It's the difference between Buffett adding varied businesses to Berkshire, and Coca-Cola going into the movie business or whatever they did back in the day...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-24/s-p-says-may-be-right-it-s-closer-to-japan-downgrade-as-finances-worsen.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-23/china-central-bank-lowers-reserve-ratio-for-some-banks-by-50-basis-points.html

Excellent, thank you! I also loved the podcast about Henry Singleton from a while back.

I'm just curious to know what's the size of the companies most of us are investing in. There seems to be lots of discussion about large caps lately, but I don't know if it's representative. Not that there aren't great deals to be had all over the size continuum, but I'm still curious. I'll start: 100% of what I own is sub-1-billion in market cap. In fact, 2/3 of those are sub-500m in mkt cap. What about you? What's your ratio between small-mid-large? Edit: I expect most people to have all kinds, but if you could provide a rough ratio, that would satiate my curiosity better than "all over the place". Thanks :)

I love buybacks when they are done right, but I agree with others here that unfortunately, that is rarely the case. The best historical example is no doubt Teledyne. Among the companies I follow closely, I really like how Altius bought back over 2 million shares at very depressed prices in 2008-2009. Also love how EBIX just bought back close to 10% of the company way below what I consider to be IV. I think Bill Berkley of WRB has a pretty good record with buybacks too. I think part of the problem (and solution) is incentives. Some managers are probably decent capital allocators, but it pays more for them to reach certain EPS and SP targets, so they do stupid buybacks. This temptation is reduced when you have an owner-manager who owns a large fraction of the business, as in the case of the examples above.