benchmark

With the impeding rise of tax rate, and the additional health care tax (3.78%), what's the board's opinion on selling to lock in long term gains to avoid the tax hike?

I remember that BRK sold/trimmed GE common -- maybe it's not Buffet's doing.

Yet another discovery -- CA's proposition 30 means a potential 2-3% more tax on the conversion -- on top of 10% state tax. :(

One of the shows I always hated was Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Champagne days and caviar dreams. Yuck! That was a very tacky show. At first I was mentioning NetJets metaphorically, but since moving to Santa Barbara I'm finding it to be practical (albeit very, very expensive). The airport here is awesome but it just doesn't fly directly to many places -- everything is a connecting flight. And I'm terrible at planning -- if it snows in Tahoe, I want to be able to make a Thursday night decision to take the kids skiing for the weekend. That means picking them up at school at noon, driving 10 minutes across town right to the plane, getting on, and being in Truckee 1 hour later. Driving to Truckee from Santa Barbara is a non-starter. Flying commercial means getting a connecting flight in Los Angeles and then on to Reno, then we're still at least another hour from Truckee if we're lucky to get our bags right away. So it's like a 4 or 5 hour trip probably counting the connections. Maybe 6 hours including early checkin with security and all. Compare that to just 1 hour on NetJets. Move to SF, you can drive to Tahoe in 3 hours, a few friends do this every other week during the winter.

I like USB, and my investment has a higher gain on USB as well. Buffet seems to have trimmed USB in the last quarter, while continued his purchase on WFC. I'm wondering what he sees in WFC that's not in USB (except scale).

do you have a pointer to the original speech/video?

I've bought some USB, WFC at the lows during the crisis. Given that I have too much in financials, I am thinking about selling some to move to AIG warrants. Though WFC has Buffet endorsement, but USB is much smaller, and can grow a bit faster. I'd like to hear board's opinion on which one to sell and why? TIA.

However, when you leave your employer and rollover a 401k to a Rollover IRA, you can have 100% of the after-tax money go directly to a Roth IRA, and have 100% of the pre-tax money go directly to the Rollover IRA. The after-tax money from the 401k can go straight to the Roth IRA even though you haven't yet decided whether or not to do a Roth Conversion on the pre-tax money. That's what I did :) EDIT: Actually, it might have just been the Roth-401k contributions that went straight to the Roth IRA. I had both Roth-401k and the regular pre-tax kind in that company plan. One other thing that I realized was that if you convert this year, you'll avoid the obama health care tax on the conversion amount, which is 3.8%, no small percentage.

Interesting observation. Agreed on immigrants are more hard working than average american, but i think they tends to vote democrats because they are often the ones benefits from the social safe net, as most of them are low income.

Completely agree that both sides are full of it. However, I don't think defense spending is the only reason. Revenue needs to be raised (by cutting deductions or a flat tax), as well cut spending (all able-citizens needs to work for their food stamps,no more freebie).

I'm surprised that he trimmed USB, which I thought is similar to WFC, which he added

http://www.mercurynews.com/mike-cassidy/ci_21648602/cassidy-apple-woz-steve-wozniak-live-australia-new-zealand

This makes perfect sense -- if the rate is the same or higher. If the rate when you retire or convert is lower, then it might not (let's say that you stop working and has no income except the conversion amount).

In the last statement, I assume that by "Traditional IRA", you actually meant "Roth IRA"?

I rolled my 401k to a Rollover IRA at the beginning of 2008. I waited until the end 2008 to convert the first 1/2. That was my first mistake as it appreciated a lot in 2008 while I sucked my thumb. My second mistake was waiting until 2009 to convert the second 1/2 of it. I was planning to not book any gains until 2010 (to keep my income below the allowable conversion limit) but then Fairfax bought out Odyssey Re and blew my income sky high. Then I had to reverse the conversion and do it again in 2010 (with no income limits). I wound up paying tax on 5x as much conversion principle this way, compared to if I'd just converted the entire thing on day 1 in 2008. Don't wait is my advice -- you never know how much gains you'll make. After paying taxes, do you think that you are still ahead comparing to invest that amount in traditional IRA?

You can also roll your traditional 401k into a traditional IRA and then do partial transfers (or full) into a Roth IRA. I planned mine out so that I dumped a lot of money into a regular 401k right out of college, and then in the year I went back to school I converted everything to a Roth so the tax bill would be substantially lower. I fully intend for my Roth account to create truly dynastic wealth for my family. That's a good idea, I do intend to take some time off travelling in a year or two. So I can rollover now, and do the conversion then.

I have a sizable 401k that I'd like to rollover. I was thinking about rollover to Roth IRA, but the tax bill is huge (I live in CA); Anyone has done research on this vs rolling over to traditional IRA? thanks.

I believe BRK is easily worth 30% more. price/BV is closer to 1.2x atm, maybe 1.25x. The market has underappreciated the excellent safety and high quality this gem offers. Everyone seems to believe BAC will go up to $20 in a linear way in the next 2-3 years. It might but things rarely go as expected. Given the current market level, uncertainty and lesser quality of BAC and others (nothing can compete with BRK after all...), it can definitely make sense to be heavily positioned in BRK (or FFH for that matter). Not that BAC, AIG, ... aren't great value atm, they just bear much higher risk so they require a higher potential return. I don't think that the road to $20 will be smooth, but it will get there sooner (2years) or later (4 years). Comparing that with BRK's steady 8% growth, you'll double your money in less than half the time. The only thing that holds me back is about paying taxes of the gain on BRK. Now you're thinking like a banker of the Lewis school -- taking money out of something that almost certainly will go up at a satisfactory rate over the next several years and very likely will not lose a significant amount, in order to put your money into something that might appreciate at a higher rate for a while, but is in a mediocre leveraged industry that chases yield every decade or two, a business with much more risk of principal loss. Your idea would have been a better one a year ago when the upside to BAC was greater. Why Now? Is it because you are kicking yourself that you didn't buy it then? I bought enough BAC a year ago, but I think that BAC now has less risk and has a great chance of doubling from here quickly. But I understand what you are saying, and agree to some extent. I was thinking about selling BAC when it reaches $20, then look for other investment opportunities.

I believe BRK is easily worth 30% more. price/BV is closer to 1.2x atm, maybe 1.25x. The market has underappreciated the excellent safety and high quality this gem offers. Everyone seems to believe BAC will go up to $20 in a linear way in the next 2-3 years. It might but things rarely go as expected. Given the current market level, uncertainty and lesser quality of BAC and others (nothing can compete with BRK after all...), it can definitely make sense to be heavily positioned in BRK (or FFH for that matter). Not that BAC, AIG, ... aren't great value atm, they just bear much higher risk so they require a higher potential return. I don't think that the road to $20 will be smooth, but it will get there sooner (2years) or later (4 years). Comparing that with BRK's steady 8% growth, you'll double your money in less than half the time. The only thing that holds me back is about paying taxes of the gain on BRK.

That's why I created the poll, trying to raise money to buy more BAC -- 50cent on the dollar.

added, thanks.

I have held BRK for a while. Given its perpetual 'under value' status, now I'm considering selling it for much cheaper financial stocks, given BAC and AIG are very likely to double in 2 years. However, my BRK was intended for retirement, so there is a psychological barrier to get over. I'm wondering if anyone on the board have thought about (or have done it).

Agreed. I can't get my girlfriend to update her SGS2 to ICS because she likes it the way it is. I think most people like a phone that will just work. If you really want the latest and greatest, root your phone and install any number of custom roms. I think most of the complaining about fragmentation is coming from bloggers and sudo developers who use/make custom roms and can't enable new flavors of android without phone drivers spoon fed to them by the phone manufacturers. The technically inclined may cry the loudest, but I have never seen a facebook status from someone complaining their phone is not getting the latest google update. Same here, I was trying to upgrade my SGS2 to ICS, but there is on easy way to do it, and ICS seems to be running slower on SGS2, so I decided not to upgrade.

They are now 3 weeks out on the pre-order, though I don't know how many they had available initially. I'm planning on getting one for my kids, as it can actually be a laptop replacement.

He clearly stated that he couldn't see the future, but in the long run, his AIG and BAC should make money. It's interesting that he said that BAC was worth $20, and AIG is about $65, yet he recommend buying AIG, given that BAC at $9 would be a better value. W.r.t to SHLD, the malls aren't where people go to anymore -- I buy most of my stuff online, so the value/anchoring positions in malls isn't what they used to be.