Liberty

I think you are missing my point. Buffett brings something else than money to the table, and BAC thought that it was worth paying for. Should Buffett have paid more just to satisfy you, and if he had, would you be applauding this deal or finding other reasons why it doesn't mean much? Why do businesses sell to BRK for prices lower than what they could get in an auction? Because BRK brings something else of value to the table (different from what it brought to BAC, but there's a parallel there -- sometimes there are intangibles that change the value equation, and if you don't see them, your model to value businesses will have blind spots).

How is this a bad thing? The reason why Buffett can get better conditions is because he's worked all these years to develop a reputation as a good judge of businesses and a man of the utmost integrity. That has value, and people are ready to pay for that value (otherwise they'd be getting value for nothing), so what's wrong with it? I don't get why you seem to upset. Buffett probably said "these are my conditions" and BAC agreed because they thought it was a good deal. No arms were twisted.

The fact is, Buffett's reputation is worth a lot, especially to financial companies where trust matters. Buffett's reputation wouldn't be worth what it is worth if he invested in bad companies, so they both win. It's not because BAC is paying for something intangible that they're not getting something for their money. In fact, I would be surprised if the premium they are paying won't end up being worth it to them...

Berkshire's in it for the long-term. They haven't done well with the common of those yet. It'll take a bit longer than this to determine how good that deal was for BRK.

Bill Berkley seems to also think that, and I tend to defer to his expertise on that kind of stuff.

I use TD Waterhouse in Canada and they're fine, but I don't do anything fancy.

I'm reading it now, about 1/4th through and it is very interesting. Still not sure how I could apply any of it, but more practical investing stuff might come later in the book.

Hindsight is 20/20, though. Back then, I'm sure making sure the company could live through almost anything had priority, and even he probably didn't think Apple would be worth 300+ billion less than 10 years later.

Please elaborate on why you think so.

http://rootzwiki.com/showthread.php?t=3327

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/prudent-man/2011/aug/21/tax-rich-buffett-beclowns-himself-again/ Buffett getting no respect = indicator that BRK is undervalued? Hmm..

I thought they owned around 15+ billion worth of it each (if that's not a financial incentive, I don't know what is). Will have to look it up... edit: Looks like they've been selling some (probably to diversify in other things), but still own a nice chunk: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312510011019/d8k.htm And of course, the other part of the 3-headed leader, Eric, owns a bunch too, though not as much.

I'm not sure the market has much memory. If they could be scared that easily, 2008-2009 would have driven everybody out, yet a couple years of rising markets seems to have brought many back in. They might run now, but if things go up for a while they'll be back... and almost by definition, these people end up selling low and buying high.

Some that I like and that you haven't mentioned: Larry and Sergey at Google Robin Raina at EBIX Chad Wasilenkoff at Fortress Paper Brian Dalton at Altius Minerals Bill Berkley at W.R. Berkley John Michael and the management and employees of RLI (insiders own a big chunk, but it's spread over many people)

Thanks, I've switched back to the old theme, and while doing that I found options to show more threads per page and more comments per page!

The problem is they're probably selling it below cost, and I doubt sales would continue at that level if they brought it back to the price at which they make a decent margin.

HP is too directionless for me to get interested in. I also suspect that they'll be losing (if it hasn't already happened in the past 10 years) a lot of good engineers, and that this'll hurt them a lot. Not saying it's not possible to make money in the stock - like with RIMM and MSFT - but I'm looking to be comfortable with both price and the company's technology/roadmap/culture, and while price is hard to beat, I'm not comfortable with the latter in HPQ.

http://civic.moveon.org/standwithwarren/?rc=standwithwarren_letter.fb.v2.g1 Found this. Not an American, so won't sign, but looks like it gathered a lot of signatures.

Site's down for me too. Congrats Tariq on new gig! Hope you'll still find some time to comment on this forum once in a while :)

It's mostly that a lot of journalists aren't necessarily smarter than everybody else, and if everybody else things that way (doesn't keep things in perspective, overreacts both ways, etc), chances are that journalists do too.

In a way, these people are a personification of Graham's Mr. Market. ;D

BAC cutting around 3,500 jobs: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904070604576516813395283964.html

Wow, down 20%. Mr. Market really doesn't feel good about this. Out of curiosity, what do the HPQ shareholders on this board (and there seems to be many of those) think about this, and are you backing up the truck or reconsidering your investment?

As far as I know, he bought businesses in those countries, not just piles of their paper currencies to hold somewhere hoping to later sell it at a higher price to someone else. I think that's quite different.

Buffett owns businesses that produce products and services of value, and he only holds cash while waiting for those businesses to be available at prices below what he considers to be their intrinsic value. This is very different from "investing" in gold.