Morgan

This is absolutely correct. 12% vs 15% is a huge difference after 30 years. This is a classic quote from Munger.

Totally agree!

Bump. I'm interested in learning more as well.

It's hard not to be surprised by these guys slow behavior. They've done so well, for so long, that going fast doesn't change much in the tobacco world. They obviously missed that the tech world is much different. Sounds like a good book!

@ElstonG, @ValueMaven I read through Combs essay and it was good. It was essentially an outline of his research process. See my notes below. Find a good business Quantitative - What is the competitive advantage or moat? He starts with reading SEC filings, 10Ks and Qs, and trade magazines. Don't bother with management narratives or sell side reports. He says, ROIC is usually a reliable shorthand for the quality of a business. Use 10 years of data to see how earnings power has changed over time. Has the company's retained earnings been flat for ten years, but the debt has increased? That means the company needs to run harder just to stand still. Are the accounting practices aggressive or conservative? Is the debt all short term, or long term fixed? Qualitative - scuttlebutt to see what the company culture is really like, and to see how the company's products are really selling now. Good management Look at management and assess their record. He says, "you cannot make a quantitative deduction to allow for an unscrupulous management; the only way to deal with such situations is to avoid them". (Sardar anyone lol). Is the CEO all promotion or working on the business daily? Good capital allocation is crucial. Review the proxy statement over time to understand management incentives. Speak to former executives to see how the company culture is. Buy at a good valuation The price from the past doesn't matter. Only what matters is the fundamentals compared to the current financial community's appraisal of the stock. A note on compounding - a three fold increase in compound rate (5% to 15%), leads to an almost twentyfold increase in returns over 30 years. I'll try to add more notes from the book as I read more. Morgan

I use OpenMediaVault 5 (Debian based) with Tailscale on a server to manage all my data. I can access it from any device with internet. I had everything spread out for years and it was fairly disorganized. A few years ago I decided I needed a permanent solution all in one place. I bought an old server for $180 and two hard drives. At the time I did it, apple/google/onedrive, etc were too expensive for the terabyte (and growing) of data I had. Plus google was editing my photos badly automatically. I just didn't have enough control or trust that the big guys would keep my data unmodified over the next ten years. Apple has edited peoples music too. OneDrive didn't have Camera upload at the time either. My server has everything digital I've accumulated for the last 20 years. It needs to be safe. This was definitely harder than upgrading storage in a few clicks on one of the big guys, but it was worth it.

Margin of Safety is a good read as well. If you search for it with PDF you'll find it online easily. It's going to take a while to read Security Analysis so don't expect to hear back very soon lol

I just received my copy of the 7th edition. Klarman was also involved in the 6th edition. I don't think as an editor, but as a commenter. I don't have that edition, so I'm not sure exactly. After I read The Intelligent Investor (in 2006 I think), I got the first edition of Security Analysis and read a lot of it. Both books really formed my thinking on investing like many here. I'm looking forward to reading this new 7th edition.

He definitely got a great deal, but that many trips really sounds like a drag. It seems like he's doing it for the miles vs visiting and exploring the places he visits.

His voice is absolutely stunning. Wow. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you guys for the quick replies. Hopefully someone has access to it! Morgan

I'm going to revive this thread for a moment. First of all, thank you so much for all the contributions so far. What a great group! I am looking for info on Precision Systems Inc (PSI). I'd love to read the original Form 10 that covers the spinoff and then any 10-Qs or 10-Ks from mid 1992 and on. It was spun off of the Home Shopping Network in July 1992 (https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1994/04/05/precision-systems-struggles-cuts-jobs/). I checked with all the links from earlier in the thread, SEC.gov, google and couldn't find anything. Thank you!

The Wire had a season where they switched from pay phones to burner phones. Really excellent show. Still had violence the entire time though, but it is a TV show on HBO so...

Rest In Peace. What a legend.

I don't have much to add, but it is clear that LLMs are going to change many things going forward. Check out the nearly hourly new tools and threads on Twitter. Just a few obvious examples: - Therapists will be replaced by LLMs at much lower price points. - Lawyers, doctors, assistants, accountants, etc will all need to adopt this into their organizations/workflow or they'll simply be less competitive. - Tons more junk will be published on the web as the cost of writing will go down by 90% (99%?). - AI voice and video scams will become hugely more prevalent and costly to society. Example 1. Example 2. ChatGPT 4 was released 6 weeks ago, and already there are tons of new tools for a wide range of things. AI is evolving so fast!

From the brief research I did, you need at least $250,000 to make it worth it for a broker to trade on your behalf. Kind of kills options for small time investors. Also, excellent thread guys. Looking forward to learning more about these companies!

@sleepydragon Thank you for sharing!

@Saluki good advice!

I’m very interested in hearing what everyone has to say! Thanks in advance!

Thanks for sharing!

@fareastwarriors Didn't even think about the property taxes. Another thing to lower the price. 80% LTV is ok if the purchase price is low enough. IF the price is low enough 100% LTV is ok. I've been 100% leveraged on numerous deals, but the price was low enough so there was enough margin of safety to deal with all the various problems that pop up. Only 170 units now. Been selling some as prices have gone up. I haven't really seen many good deals since covid. Still waiting.

I found the four complexes in this article. Heights at Post Oak, Redford Apartments, Reserve at Westwood and Timber Ridge Apartments. They are older buildings that have been periodically renovated. They appear to have central AC and heat, pools, workout rooms, allow pets and some other amenities. I didn't see who pays what utilities on the websites, but I assume the tenant pays them. Probably just electric and water. One other large issue is they are two story buildings as opposed to three or four story buildings. That means a lot more roof maintenance expense per unit when it comes due. $230m / 3200 units is about $71k per unit. Rents appear to be $775 - $1200. Rather low for that price per unit. I don't know the unit mix, so it's let's just assume $1000/unit/month x 3200 units x 90% occupancy = ~$2.9/mo in rents. A mortgage on $230m, at 8%, for 15 years is $2.2m per month. Roughly 76% of the rents. Waaaaaaay too high. I normally aim for the mortgage to be 25-33% of the rents. So my back of the envelope value is around 80m to 90m depending on financing. Side note 1: I don't know anything about the Houston MF market, so my valuation may never even be possible. Maybe it was during the 08/09 recession. Maybe we'll see it again soon. Side note 2: The guys who lost the complexes in foreclosure were nuts not to have fixed rate financing. Totally nuts.

Agreed. Apple has definitely made changes seemingly just for the sake of it. Change is necessary over time, but it’d be nice if there was some relatively clear benefit for it. I think part of it is to say they have made 450 changes vs 200 changes.

I gotta complain too. I bought an iPhone 13 Pro when it came out and it wasn’t good enough so I returned it and went back to my iPhone 8 Plus. My iPhone 8 Plus finally started to fail so I bought the iPhone 14 Pro Max and it has all kinds of glitches. Not to mention I spent about 8 hours with AT&T and apple to get my e-sim to work. I feel like I should send them a bill. Glitches: - When I’m on a call with the phone at my ear, all the notifications go off at full volume right into my ear. It’s horrible. Apparently there is no fix for this. - frequently the phone is slow. 1-3 second delay when tapping things. - airdrop frequently doesn’t work or even show up. - lots of the fancy shapes for notifications show up square shaped and with delays. iPhone software seems to be declining and it really sucks. iPhone hardware is good and the new M1 & M2 Macs are phenomenal too.

Hi @Cod Liver Oil, what broker are you using to gain access to the Expert Market?