ScottHall

I really don't need your or anyone else's sympathy. I'm better off in life than most.

Could you elaborate more on how you got into this style of living and what impacts it has had on your life? What are the downsides? I moved out of my mom's house when I got a job on the other side of the country and was too lazy/cheap to buy anything. Also, I'd never had a job before, so I didn't know if my employer would want to keep me or not, so I didn't want to sink anything more than necessary in just in case they didn't like me. I decided I liked the lifestyle better after I settled in on the job, so I just kept it. What impacts? I can quit my job anytime I want and be out of the state within two hours, so that's cool. I have a lot of discretionary money to invest (I don't have pay television either), buy books with and get snacks with. One thing I don't deny myself is good food, so I eat a lot of Skittles and pizza. As far as downsides... I haven't seen any, personally. My back feels a lot better now that I've been sleeping on the floor than it did when I slept on a bed, which is nice. I have no interest in men or women, so I don't care. Yeah, I've posted a picture or two on here before. It was in a thread about desks or some dumb thing. Most of my friends are on the internet, and those that aren't are from work. I'll go out with my friends from work for drinks on Fridays - they have beer, and I have Diet Coke. I'm not a fan of alcohol after seeing alcoholism cause major problems in my family. As for my internet friends, I'm in England visiting a few of them right now. I'm sleeping in a sleeping bag on their floor. I have no idea who that is. I can't speak for you, but glamor plays no part in it for me.

Thanks for this. I may check it out. I personally own no furniture and sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor of my apartment, so this is not a concept that is new to me. A lot of people think I'm crazy, but I look at my bank account and think they're just projecting.

snowball? Is that a book? http://www.amazon.com/Snowball-Alice-Schroeder-ebook/dp/B009MYD9F8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394422465&sr=8-1&keywords=the+snowball

Decent article, but it focused too much on generalities for my taste without going deep enough in the specifics for the industry or the companies in it. Still worthwhile, just not one of my favorites. I think one of the biggest troubles Valeant bears have is not understanding that their acquisition spending essentially is their "organic" (though obviously not in the literal definition of the term) growth, which is understandable on account of Valeant strips the associated expenses away when reporting adjusted EPS. I would ignore Valeant's reported organic growth rates since they strip out a lot of stuff, so I would probably assume some runoff over time as has been the case recently. You'd have to make some adjustments to Valeant's adjustments in order to get an idea of what the "maintenance" vs. "growth" portion of those acquisitions is, and use that to also get some idea of how much of the acquisition "restructuring" expenses will be required essentially indefinitely, if you accept my previous statement to be true. I would suggest that Valeant's "cash EPS" on the basis of my suggested adjustments above probably isn't quite as high as Valeant says it is. That's just how I'd approach the situation with my process, if I was valuing Valeant and trying to get a better understanding of the business model. I think the idea makes a lot of sense intuitively and they obviously have some pretty bright people on board, but of course only time will tell how sustainable the model is. If you put a gun to my head right now I'd say they'll probably do well over time (I liked the stock a lot about $50 ago, though never bought it for professional reasons), but I can definitely understand where the skeptics are coming from, having read Billion Dollar Lessons. Just my back-of-the-envelope thoughts...

I don't really see any problem with this. She appears to be doing a good job, so what she's done in her personal life should be irrelevant.

I'd recommend reading Poor Charlie's Almanac before anything else, personally. Having an understanding of mental models - and business models - is so much more important than being able to evaluate the safety of a railroad bond. Try not to think about investing purely from the point of view of rudimentary valuation metrics like P/E, P/B, EV/EBITDA or whatever your favorite metric is. Valuation is very important, but the key drivers of a business and their sustainability is even more important. Otherwise I would agree with the Berkshire letters, and I would add The Outsiders by William Thorndike and When Genius Failed.

Hi Saidal, I'm actually going to Columbia for the CSIMA conference in February. I'm going to see if they'll let me make copies while I'm there. May as well kill two birds with one stone.

Hi Benny, So, I'm not one of the older, more experienced folks around here - I'm actually a couple of years younger than you - but I have some thoughts that I thought I'd share anyway. I'll put it as succinctly as possible. At 25, you're very young, and if salary is a motivating factor for you at this point, you're probably handling your career in a manner that won't benefit you the most over the long run. You might want to consider working where your learning opportunities are the greatest, doing what you love, and focusing on developing mental models that you will be able to use throughout your life. Do you remember when Warren Buffett offered to work for Ben Graham for free? Why do you think he did that? Certainly, money wasn't the direct motivating factor there, as he wouldn't have been paid anything. He did it because Ben Graham was the best in the world at what he did at the time, and Buffett wanted to learn from the master because he thought that in the long run he would be better off for it than he would working for money at a certain securities brokerage in Omaha. As far as we know, you have just one life to live, and every day that you're not doing something that you're intrinsically motivated to do, that's a day that you will never get back. By focusing so much on extrinsic motivation, I can't help but think you could be cheating yourself out of one of life's greatest pleasures: doing work you love with the people you love to do that work with. Personally, I am open to working for free for any person or organization whose mission I respect and who I think I could learn a lot from, because I love to learn. If I was in your shoes, I would think about what my intrinsic motivation was, and focus on finding something that enables that motivation to be fulfilled. You're welcome to take or leave my advice as you will, but I have found looking at life through this lens to be more satisfying than any other I have looked at it through so far. I wish you all the best.

Thanks, Parsad! I had no idea a new one was out.

I've thought a lot about this myself, and I think the trouble I've had with convincing myself this is worthwhile is that even if a person was successful in the takeover, the stake could represent the vast majority of their personal wealth. And that's troubling, because if the books are cooked, or you get in there and find out you have no clue what you're doing, or you're at the top of a cycle, or... you could end up losing money you need for the sake of a chance at money you don't. Whereas with passive investments, it's easier to sit back and get "good enough" returns with no where near the same risk profile.

I'm 23, personally.

My grandfather bought a few shares of Berkshire back in the 1980s and, to my knowledge, didn't sell them. He went to the annual meeting a couple of times in the early '90s - I actually have a copy of the 1994 edition of Of Permanent Value signed by Buffett and Kilpatrick that was sent to me because he passed away. I think it is very interesting to try and reverse engineer what investors in Berkshire back then were thinking. There aren't many companies out there that I would bet could match Berkshire's performance from then until today. Markel and Leucadia are probably the closest. I own shares of neither, but am very interested in both.

That's pretty fair....but I'm going to be greedy and wait for sub 170 before I buy. It'd be great if it was just 10% cheaper. ;)

No doubt that'll be a great time for your 9-year-old. ;D

"Coleman, struggling with dementia, was among those who lost a home. His debt had snowballed to $4,999 — 37 times the original tax bill. Not only did he lose his $197,000 house, but he also was stripped of the equity because tax lien purchasers are entitled to everything, trumping even mortgage companies." That is nonsense. Why must a private lender pass on surplus funds from foreclosure to the owner, but when the government does it it just keeps everything? That makes no sense, and should be illegal.

Under $25k, but only just considering I live in the D.C. area.

I think that people should think about the NPV of an education before they decide to receive one. I didn't even get that far, personally - I dropped out of the fourth grade because it was boring.

Redding, CA originally.

I hate articles like this, because they don't accomplish anything. There is nothing said here that doesn't qualify as pedantic tripe. Of course the shareholders don't own the assets directly, the corporation does. But the shareholders have a right to elect the BoD and do what they like with the assets, so they indirectly control them. Then there's your typical conscious capitalism argument about how other companies are creating shareholder value by focusing on customers or employees or whatever else. Guess what, folks, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Whether you put customers first or shareholders first in your theoretical hierarchy doesn't matter if the result is the same. The fact that there is a whole industry shilling this stuff is almost incomprehensible to me. 2 * 4 = 8 no matter which way you arrange the 2 and 4. "Delighting customers profitably" is creating shareholder value. If treating your customers well ends up creating a ton of value for shareholders, great. If you can get away with not investing in your cable systems because you have a monopoly and no one can do anything about it, great. At the end of the day, if shareholders make money, who cares what philosophy is used to get there so long as it's +EV in principle? These philosophical types really do irritate me. They are not adding anything of value, what-so-ever. The extent of their contribution to business theory is taking what amounts to a commutative equation, flipping the numbers around, and then acting as though they're disrupting generally accepted business principles. But what they're really doing is being jackasses, pandering to the uninformed. I want to apologize to any members who found this post to be overly venomous, but these sort of pseudo intellectuals are more annoying to me than just about any other kind of person. In any case, I'm sorry if you found this offensive. Please have a nice evening.

Can someone who's read this tell me more about it? I usually don't much care for ethnic books, but maybe this one's worth reading.

This book is excellent. As a coworker of mine put it, there are many moments in John Malone's career that would be a crowning achievement of most people, but to him it was just another day in the office. I recommend the book.

Please keep in mind that probability doesn't work this way. You are probably aware of this, but it seems irrelevant.

Probably because it's a frickin' 9-foot hurdle! What margin of safety is there in something that may not exist because the government deems it so? Balance sheet and operating risk is somewhat estimable, but business/industry risk is much harder to do with congressmen and senators involved. Contrary to popular belief, Mohnish prefers easier ways to make money...so do I. You can make money trading it like Twacowfca has, but you better be right about the bet within 5-7 years. You can't wait this one out like Berkowitz did with Sears, since the U.S. government isn't worried about investors getting their money back, only the U.S. government. Cheers! I'll be interested to see how this plays out. I briefly owned a small amount of Freddie Mac preferreds before the government decided it was going to take all of the profits as a dividend. The GSEs are pretty good businesses, overall, and if they are ever taken out of conservatorship they could become good investments. Until that happens, though, I have little interest in these securities. I do own some indirectly through Fairholme, but that's in my 401.

You can bet your bottom dollar on that! I have yet to find a single person who is up to my quality standards, though I will admit that the operating leverage of having a partner makes a lot of sense on the condition that you can find a good one. I have not really looked because I am not interested in having sex or spending any money attempting to get the other person to like me. If any of you met me in person, you would figure out pretty quickly that liking me is a pretty big challenge.