west

http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/azp-pr-b-atlantic-power-corp-preferreds/ http://bit.ly/2mVOHfu http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/vsn-veresen-inc/ http://bit.ly/2np33CE And some other stuff that's gotten bought out. Let us know when you come up with your first idea post, Frank. Same goes to you, Mr. Gibbons. I'm seeing you're a member since 2009, but you have no idea posts over the whole time. http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/profile/?area=showposts;sa=topics;u=107 Lol - my fault. My post was partly tongue-in-cheek and partly a reaction to seeing his name reappear whenever a Trump thread starts getting hot again. But thanks for correcting the record. No problem! And I apologize if I came off a little too strong. There have been a lot of good investors on this forum in the past that have been scared off by more... opinionated and loud members of the board. For example, both Kraven and PlanMaestro, two very strong investors, were scared off a long time ago. I was fortunate enough to learn from them, but younger investors won't be. And it's a major loss to the board. So anyway, I guess get a little bulldog-ish when people are coming on too aggressively against people I see as stronger investors... I know politics affects investing results and all, so technically it's something that should be discussed. However, I kind of wish we wouldn't. At least here. It's really taking away from what I think the key focus of this board should be: Finding and analyzing good stocks.

http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/azp-pr-b-atlantic-power-corp-preferreds/ http://bit.ly/2mVOHfu http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/vsn-veresen-inc/ http://bit.ly/2np33CE And some other stuff that's gotten bought out. Let us know when you come up with your first idea post, Frank. Same goes to you, Mr. Gibbons. I'm seeing you're a member since 2009, but you have no idea posts over the whole time. http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/profile/?area=showposts;sa=topics;u=107

Extremely well spoken. And you can tell near the interview that Charlie Rose was sad about the situation, too. Thanks for sharing.

Happy birthday, Sanjeev! And thanks again for starting this board!

Look into (at least what use to be called) the Fax Attack. Have a stock letter that you send out to all the dealers in your area that says "I want to buy a Prius and the current offer I have is $XX,XXX. Can you beat it?" Then take the lowest price you get from your responses and send the fax/email out again. Repeat until you have only one dealer respond. Get a formal offer letter from them in writing so when you go to their lot they don't reneg on the offer. The only other bit of advices are: Dealers have monthly quotas. They'll often take a loss on a car if it makes their quotas. So do the Fax Attacks near the end of the month. Also, bring your own financing (unless they've got a great offer *from the manufacturer* that you know you'll get. Dealers can get money from you via their financing offers if they dom't get money from you in the up front sale.

I haven't hiked it, but I've intersected with it multiple times on mountain bike. (You're not actually allowed to bring bikes on the trail itself). Those few times I've intersected with it have been absolutely beautiful parts of the trails I was on, almost the highlights of them. It kind of makes me wonder if Muir hand picked the best parts of the Sierras to do :D I would definitely do it, especially if you have the time. You won't regret it.

Kind of in the same vein: http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.com/2015/01/overvalued-market.html

So you're saying that KO is not susceptible to fraud or other tail events? Also, this implies that KO will "grow to the sky" and always grow faster (and thus get better returns) than the market at large. Both of these assumptions are very dangerous to make. As a quick aside, part of the reason why Buffett is such a "buy and hold" investor with his funds at Berkshire is that he's subject to corporate tax rates regardless of his holding period. As individuals, we have the advantage of having long-term capital gains rates kicking in after a year, or no taxes at all in non-taxed accounts. There's still an advantage to buying and holding forever with the right companies in a taxed account, but the advantage is nowhere near a pronounced as it is for him.

O'Shaughnessy: "Fidelity had done a study as to which accounts had done the best at Fidelity. And what they found was..." Ritholtz: "They were dead." O'Shaughnessy: "...No, that's close though! They were the accounts of people who forgot they had an account at Fidelity." So that could mean those accounts held mutual funds, ETFs, cash, anything. They didn't necessarily hold "hand selected high-quality stocks". There's a lot that that few sentence quote doesn't say.

West, are you saying that you think large caps need to be watched more closely than small/midcaps? Seems counterintuitive to me. There's more stuff going on in large caps, so I don't see how you can't pay attention to them more (if you're being responsible). To a certain extent you can "set it and forget it", but I think that's a very dangerous assumption to make. This might work great for ten years, but all of sudden, in year eleven, chicken grease might splatter in the wrong vent and cause your house to burn down! Ok, maybe that's a weak analogy metaphor (?.. English majors, please help out here), but I think you get my point :D

If you do a fundamentally weighted index, make sure to buy an ETF if you're buying in a taxed (regular) account, NOT a mutual fund. You'll save yourself a lot of tax drag.

I would add if you're not watching your investments regularly, especially large caps, you're doing it wrong. Especially with your parents' money. Assuming they're not doctors or successful entrepreneurs, their remaining "human capital" (the present value of future earnings) probably isn't much anymore. Do you really want to stake their lifetime earnings on something that you're putting zero effort into? I second the fundamentally weighted index approach and, considering today's market level and the fact that risk-free rates are (most likely) only going to up over the next ten to twenty years, I would definitely spread your purchases out over a year or two at this point. I also would not be adverse to advising a quant approach. But only do this if you know what you're doing, programming-wise, and have access to professional level data, not the free stuff. The free stuff isn't *that* bad, but after playing with some of it, big bugs do pop up. I've found a few in Google Finance and MSN Money. You don't want some junior level programmer's bad day at the keyboard to turn into a bad retirement for your parents.

There is. Go to Profile -> Account Settings, then Modify Profile -> Buddies / Ignore List. I don't use it myself though since most of the people that I'd want to ignore still have enough good posts (perhaps too many?) that if I ignored them outright I might miss out on something that I wouldn't want to miss out on. But that being said... Happy (soon) New Year everyone!

Can we stop this please? Kraven has helped a lot of people on this board, myself included, and I'd prefer not to lose his input due to some stupid flamewar. If you disagree with his thoughts, be a good person and disagree with them inside your head, and then move on. You don't have to add fuel to any fires just because they're there. In fact, it's pretty amazing how fast threads, good or otherwise, die down on this board when no one is actively replying to them.

Is Sues's fund available for purchase? Probably? Maybe? I didn't even think to check.

If you don't mind going with a younger fund, you might want to look into the Yacktman Special Opportunities Fund. It's run by Adam Sues, who used to run the blog Value Uncovered. If you dig through the funds holdings, a lot of them appear to be easy doubles: http://portfolios.morningstar.com/fund/holdings?t=YASLX&region=usa&culture=en-US I don't know how well his current strategy will scale, but as long as easy doubles (or more) are available through the fund, you might as well take advantage of it.

My guess is that 75 of those 75 made their money from fees rather than investing their own capital. I remember seeing an article that mentioned if Buffett hadn't opened a partnership and only invested his own capital and earned the returns he did he'd have a few hundred million now. The only way to a billion is on the backs of investors. Oh yeah. OPM is where it's at. You guys beat me to the punch saying it .

I'm actually researching the industry now, too. I don't think you need a book to understand it tough since there are lots of good free resources online. Here's some of the ones I've found so far: - FlightGlobal.com - General aviation and aerospace news - Boeing's "Current Market Outlook" - Airbus's "Global Market Forecast" - TeamSAI's "Global MRO Forecast" - ICAO's "Medium-Term Passenger Traffic Forecast" - AirFleets.net (database of aircraft in use) - AIA (Aerospace Industries Association) compiles data on orders and backlog numbers. - The Federal Reserve (oddly, but perhaps not, collects data about capacity utilization at aerospcae related manufacturing companies) It seems like it's an *incredibly* well documented industry. More: - www.iata.org and www.airlines.org track air traffic statistics - www.gama.aero - General Aviation Manufacturers Assoc. Tracks # of airplane parts/units sold and dollar amounts. - www.avaiationweek.com Also, I hear you should watch out for "Programming Accounting", which is special to the aerospace industry and allows significant earnings manipulation.

I'm actually researching the industry now, too. I don't think you need a book to understand it tough since there are lots of good free resources online. Here's some of the ones I've found so far: - FlightGlobal.com - General aviation and aerospace news - Boeing's "Current Market Outlook" - Airbus's "Global Market Forecast" - TeamSAI's "Global MRO Forecast" - ICAO's "Medium-Term Passenger Traffic Forecast" - AirFleets.net (database of aircraft in use) - AIA (Aerospace Industries Association) compiles data on orders and backlog numbers. - The Federal Reserve (oddly, but perhaps not, collects data about capacity utilization at aerospcae related manufacturing companies) It seems like it's an *incredibly* well documented industry.

Thanks!

For #1, that is really the secret sauce. If you create an excel file to show stocks compounding at 6.7% (15x P/E) and 10% - 15% over a long period of time (10 - 20 years) you will see how quickly the high-growth stocks outperform. You will see that an investor confident in company's long-term prospects can pay 25x - 45x P/E and still get 10%+ compounded expected returns. ER = ((1 + ME) * (1 + OR)^N) - 1) where ME = Multiple Expansion. Investor on ME growth is risky and unpredictable in my opinion and will lead to lumpy yet low returns. In my opinion, most wide-moat stocks are extremely undervalued by the market (such as GOOD, JNJ, WDFC, MKC, ect) at 15x - 20x P/E based on the formula above. My quant sense is tingling. Do they discuss quantitative ways of assessing a company's moat in this book? I know that you can look at the persistence of historic ROIC, but if the book discusses more things to look at, I definitely want to read about them.

For my two cents (can I still contribute to this kind of thread after being in a bad mood yesterday?), I think a personality disorder helps a lot if you want to be great. Buffett probably has OCPD. Berry has Aspergers. Being "great" might not be so great though, if you consider what you give up for it. To be the umpteenth person to quote Nate: "Contentment is under-appreciated."

Before this devolves into a flame war, I want to mention the "harrumph" was supposed to be self mocking, the implication being that I'm being curmudgeon-y, and that I really shouldn't be paid attention to. That being said, if people want to discuss this stuff, fine. I'm just sadden by two things. First, these questions repeat themselves. And when you see a question over and over again it starts to grate on you a bit. Especially since, getting to the second thing, all of this "noise" can scare away some of the better contributors to this board, e.g., PlanMaestro.

+1 This forum is starting to turn into AskReddit, where people ask (non-investing related) questions that everyone feels they have an answer to (no matter what their age). Then everyone responds, the thread explodes, and then all the interesting investing related stuff gets drowned out. If people are really interested in these types of generic, everyone-has-a-response questions, check out AskReddit instead of here. Here are some threads to get you started: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=biggest+regret&sort=top&restrict_sr=on Here's all the top AskReddit questions of the last week. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/top/?sort=top&t=week Have a blast! And watch the time fly by... And now, let's move on to talking about investing ideas! Please! Harrumph! This is the "general discussion" part of the forum, no one is forcing anyone to read threads in this section. Harrumph!

+1 This forum is starting to turn into AskReddit, where people ask (non-investing related) questions that everyone feels they have an answer to (no matter what their age). Then everyone responds, the thread explodes, and then all the interesting investing related stuff gets drowned out. If people are really interested in these types of generic, everyone-has-a-response questions, check out AskReddit instead of here. Here are some threads to get you started: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=biggest+regret&sort=top&restrict_sr=on Here's all the top AskReddit questions of the last week. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/top/?sort=top&t=week Have a blast! And watch the time fly by... And now, let's move on to talking about investing ideas! Please! Harrumph!