AZ_Value

Anybody ever found WEB's reaction to this investment a bit "peculiar" I've listened to him answer questions about BYD for a few years now under different contexts from the General Meeting in Omaha to CNBC and everything in between, and every single time we get a version of the same answer (I think): "You really have to ask my partner Charlie as he is much smarter than I am in these things" My personal translation: I have nothing to do with this thing, Charlie is the one who decided to swing and I went along and I've been trying to distance myself for a few years now.

OMG... Why guys? Why would anybody even consider? I don't care if you have billions laying around earning nothing and burning a hole in your pockets, by now, if someone hasn't realized that SINO is "at best" a situation to stay away from, then something is wrong.

+1 I have yet to see him advocate a tax that would materially impact him. I also think this debate will lead nowhere as generally speaking people have their mind made up on this subject and I am yet to see, on this board or elsewhere, a person engaging in this debate for hours (or days) with this sight set on "Government stay away from my money and don't tax me" and walk away convinced otherwise; or vice versa. However, I'll say that I find it a bit disingenuous to say that WEB has never advocated a tax that would materially impact him when in his latest Oped he told us that he paid $7M in taxes which represented 17.4% of his taxable income so about $40M and he was giving as an example how the top earners used to pay about 29% on average a couple of decades ago, so we'll safely assume that he is OK paying that much, that would have meant him paying ~$11.6M. All this math is very high level but take into account how many years he's been advocating for fairness and you'll get to some pretty material numbers in my opinion. Ron

LOL... I've been calling Becky Quick "Buffett's main squeeze" for a while now... ;D But seriously, the whole "Snowball" episode (i.e. letting Alice Shroeder write it) tells us what his little weakness is. I've allowed myself to sometime wonder how wonderful that book would have been if he had given the job to Lowenstein; As far as I'm concerned Lowenstein's earlier work is still the best Buffett biography out there, and he didn't even have access to both Buffett and all his files for 4-5 years.

buffett wouldn't put a dime in prf if he didn't think the equity was solid as a rock. he just endorsed moynihan and what he has been telling us. this is a repeat of 1992. everybody thinks they are smarter than buffett. bulletin. they aren't. he is going to OWN the shorts. again. Agreed. I liked his endorsement of Moynihan as some of us have begun to think that he is definitely the man for the situation; He is not the best banker in town, that goes to Dimon no contest, but just like Dimon I like how does seem to genuinely worry. I like when bankers worry, a good sign in my book, as opposed to those who spend their weekends playing bridge and smoking weed for example and never show a worry in the World ;D Congrats to the Longs... Whatever happens there are worse things that can happen to an investment thesis than waking up to a Buffett endorsement. My 2 cents. Ron

TxLaw - BAC might or might not turn out to be a good investment but I have seen many people pretending to be a value investor but you can generally catch them quickly due to passing some silly statements( like judging the investment merit on short term price movements). It's another thing to not have an opinion or different opinion but if anyone talks about the merit of an investment based on stock price being temporarily being up or down in many threads then you do get a decent idea about how a person thinks. I'd like to add to this. I think it's Myth who mentioned earlier in the thread that it also gets excessively annoying when people simply spend their time harassing others when they've already stated their investment thesis. You all went into great detail about why you thought it was a buy, I'm not the smartest guy in the room by far, but I read it, understood it and moved on. If I was comfortable with Banks I would have actually considered buying myself but fortunately for me it wasn't even an issue as my dry powder was spent going "balls to the wall" in names like SD that I know and own and Mr Mkt sold them to me at lower prices. But, continually bringing up the same thing over and over adds nothing IMHO, as it looked like anything short of an audit ready binder with all the mortgages issued by BAC dating back to the 1950's wasn't going to be enough and make the case that someone could actually look at BAC's disclosures and get a decent idea of what's going on. I know Sanjeev said that the questioning allowed the Longs to fine tune their thesis but I sincerely believe that after the 3rd round of questioning that advantage was gone, but that's just my opinion. As a side note: You guys are better persons that I am for real, as I still cannot understand how you engage in an argument with a person who firmly stated that banks counted their market cap as part of their Tier I capital... I still can't get over it sorry lol :o

Myth, Is that 100 free trades per year?? And all you have to have is more than $25K in total account balances?? What's the catch?? I wonder how come I missed that... Being the exact opposite of a high frequency trader, 100 free trades is all I need. Thanks. Ron

I completely agree with Sanjeev... I cannot even begin to wrap my mind around any comparison to 2008 unless I'm living in a completely different dimension than everybody else. We can talk about BAC's balance sheet, their earning power and Moynihan's skill set as a banker and come up with a value to compare to the current mkt price, that's fine, but wherever we land (i.e. over or undervalued) I cannot understand waking up in August 2011 to find out that the market is pricing CDS protection on BAC bonds at the same level as 2008 (or even higher); To me it's just Mr. Market gone on tangent again; Can someone explain the logic behind that to me? It almost feels like Ajit Jain and Prem's team should be selling that insurance and collecting those premiums given how mispriced those CDS are. Here's what I remember from 2008 (and I'll skip the gradual awakening to the mortgage mess and start with just Bear Stearns): March 16: Bear fails and Dimon gets it for a happy meal July 11: IndyMac fails and is placed into receivership by the government Sept 7: Freddie and Fannie are also taken over and placed into receivership Sept 15: Lehman gone… bye bye Sept 15: Merrill essentially fails also and is sold to BAC Sept 16: Money market funds freeze as $140B is withdrawn that week (vs $7B the prior week) and the best America has to offer (i.e. JNJ, PG, GE etc…) can’t even roll their commercial paper forcing Bernanke to come out and say the Fed Reserve’s balance sheet will guarantee money market funds so people can calm the F down. Sept 17: Fed Reserve lends $85B to AIG to avoid failure and financial collapse Sept 25: WAMU fails, is seized by FDIC and assets sold to Dimon Sept 29: Wachovia fails and is bought by Wells Fargo. All along the Economy was in freel fall and losing between 500K and 800K jobs per month. Now, can someone please tell me who out there feels like something similar is going on? Am I living under a rock? I'm really genuinely asking to understand where the fear that BAC is in a 2008 type of situation is coming from? Europe Debt? Stupid Congressmen willing to risk our credit standing for political points? Seriously what gives? I am neither long nor short BAC but I would love to hear a serious rationale to the 2008 comparisons. Thanks.

Yah, stop looking. This is the best broker. And your capital is totally safe, no matter what happens in the market. Why do you think IB is so safe? They have billions in excess capital and it's 85% owned by the CEO who is a super smart guy and does not take risks. They don't invest the excess capital outside of day to day market making which has never brought big losses. But yah, SIPC will cover your account at any broker. I use Schwab but just like Liberty I generally don't do anything fancy. I recently signed up for IB as I wanted to buy a foreign stock and IB offered the best fees, however I really didn't find their trading platform to be user friendly at all... It was so painful to use that I almost gave up on the trade. Maybe it was just due to the fact that it was a new environment for me.

BRK itself was essentially an activist move :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJKZVP4tX4k Note to CEO's do not cheat a young and hungry Buffett out of an 1/8 you promised him or you'll get fired! Ron

Hello All, Long time reader, first time poster. I had to sign up after reading this thread as I couldn't take it anymore :D Regarding Munger’s posts: I will briefly describe step by step what I emotionally went through after reading this thread http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/index.php?topic=4909.0 that he started a few weeks back where he quoted some Denninger dude who supposedly “does his homework” and said that banks were counting their market capitalization as part of their balance sheet capital. 1) WTF?? He has got to be kidding… ??? 2) Yeah, he’s probably kidding… :) 3) OMG… Dude is serious :o 4) Anger and rage!!! 5) Note to self: Remember to never, EVER, read again what Munger has to say about banks Nothing personal Munger (really) but many of your posts are very short on logic and long on… I’m not sure what, but long on something else. Ron