Charlie

Buy when the Dollar is low/Euro is high and sell when the Dollar is high/Euro is low. As George Soros said it´s an ugly contest of ugly currencies. ;)

100% of my money in Berkshire ;) My returns should be larger than 16,82%, because I was investing half of my money in Berkshire, before Buffett made the repurchase announcement. Today was a good day :)

Happy new year to everyone. :) I wish everyone a healthy, happy and prosperous 2013!!! Thanks to Parsad for this great message board.

Thanks for your always great answers :)

""This follow the leader strategy has worked much better following Warren than following other value investors because of the extreme standards Warren has used especially in recent years when making a major purchase. The depth of Warren's reasoning is not always obvious. For example, I did not fully understand his key insight into USG until I had spent many long hours studying it. :)" twacowfca, we follow the same strategy :) In terms of opportunity costs I have some regrets in 2012. The biggest opportunity cost was probably not buying USG, after Buffett said the housing market would soon recover and USG was still very cheap. You know probably much more about USG than I do, so did you buy USG and if not, why not? ;)" Since to ask the question is answering the question I will answer my own thumb sucking ;) - rear-view mirror - not looking at the housing numbers and thinking and reading of other unrealistic doomsday scenarios - Management made some mistakes and there´s seldom one cockroach in the kitchen - afraid of cyclical stock - not knowing enough about USG - Buffett stopped supporting USG, after one mistake.

"TWACOWFCA. Caps because your answers are always great! Thanks!!!" +2

"This follow the leader strategy has worked much better following Warren than following other value investors because of the extreme standards Warren has used especially in recent years when making a major purchase. The depth of Warren's reasoning is not always obvious. For example, I did not fully understand his key insight into USG until I had spent many long hours studying it. :)" twacowfca, we follow the same strategy :) In terms of opportunity costs I have some regrets in 2012. The biggest opportunity cost was probably not buying USG, after Buffett said the housing market would soon recover and USG was still very cheap. You know probably much more about USG than I do, so did you buy USG and if not, why not? ;)

I like the part where they say that Warren Buffett is not being underestimated, but Berkshire Hathaway is being underestimated ;)

Here is a good quote from the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway with regards to growth: "Charlie added that the first $200 billion (in market capitalization) was hard for Berkshire to create, but the second $200 billion with the momentum Berkshire has will be pretty easy given Berkshire’s culture." :)

Thank you for posting. Great read! :)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/djia-considering-structural-changes-report-2012-09-22?link=MW_home_latest_news SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The owner of the Dow Jones Industrial Average is considering changes to make it more relevant and will discuss possibilities at its next meeting with major index users, according to a media report Saturday. The changes are being considered by Dow owner Stndard & Poor's because the index is supposed to be a measure of U.S. industrial titans but doesn't include Apple Inc [s:aapl], Google Inc. [s:goog] or Berkshire Hathaway Inc. [s:brk.a], the Financial Times reported, noting they are three of the largest U.S. companies. There would be problems adding them to the Dow bedause they would dominate the 30-stock index that's weighted by price, the FT said. David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee for S&P DJ Indices, said the issue is being discussed, the FT reported. Cheers! :)

"Whether genetic, epigenic, environmental or what, we all have tropisms, or motivated abilities that become manifest at an early age and continue without essential change for the rest of our lives. :)" Buffett said a good indicator for business success is at which age you start your first business. I would say the abilities stay the same for most of your life but your incentives probably change with your age and money dependent of your own needs (Maslow´s hierachy of needs). :)

https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/basf-se-berkshire-hathaway-commonwealth-bank-of-australia-among-five-stocks-added-to-dow-jones-global-titans-50-index-2012-05-31 Cheers!

"blaming the real estate bubble all on Spain when German money was all behind this." Why should German money be the cause of the real estate bubble in Spain? :)

"value investors need to accept uncertainty in their investments, always." If you want certainty buy Berkshire Hathaway at P/B of 1,13 and relax. :)

"When Snowball came out I was surprised by the amount of risk Buffett took prior to the 80s and 90s. He did not get rich by avoiding risk. He got rich by taking calculated risks. Dempster, Sanborn Map, Amex salad oil, Berkshire, Geico (twice), Wesco, Wells Fargo (1990s), Washington Post - during an advertising collapse, Salomon Bros, Buffalo News - everyone of these had risk associated with them at the time - sometimes potentially fatal risk such as Geico, and Buffalo News. Even in the 2008 collapse he went against the grain and propped up GE and Goldman Sachs - both were extremely risky at the time." I remember a comment form Buffett when he said he is a "No-Risk Guy". I also remember Munger discussing the Coca-Cola investment. He said it was extrem low risk. With Buffett investments/Berkshire Hathaway the perceived risks seems always high, but the real risk is often extremely low, especielly with the big investments. ;)

Buffett talked after the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting at CNBC about holding cash: ;) BECKY: Warren, we've been watching oil prices this morning, too. And as we've seen, the risk off trade with stocks under a lot of pressure this morning. You've got Treasuries here in the United States a bit higher. Oil prices have been coming down. And this started happening on Friday after we got that lousy jobs number. Right now you can see it's trading at 97 and change, just below $98. You've got a big stake in Conoco. How do you see oil prices going from here and how does it play into your investments? BUFFETT: Well, I— the truth is I don't have the faintest idea, which is probably why I shouldn't have phoned Conoco in the first place. We did not make money with Conoco. And this is— you talk about risk off... BECKY: Yeah. BUFFETT: ...if my understanding— if they take— risk off is selling and going into cash... BECKY: Yeah. BUFFETT: ...that's risk on for me. BECKY: Yeah. BUFFETT: I think— I think cash is probably as risky an asset as you can own over time. So you're not taking risk off when you— when you go into cash. You are going into something that is sure to decline in purchasing power over time. So that is the biggest risk on trade I know is to own cash.

http://www.poseidonpalace.gr/ :)

hotel room per person with all inclusive and flight.

€630 for 15 days :)

The best bargain I have found in Greece is to make holidays in Greece with my wife. :) At the moment I´m in Leptokaria a small city between the sea and with view at the Olymp. Great weather, beautiful landscapes, great food, great wine and reading about the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. It doesn´t get much better than that. ;) Cheers!

Munich Re reports good numbers: MUNICH, April 26 | Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:29am EDT (Reuters) - Munich Re expects net profit of more than 750 million euros ($989 million) in the first quarter, above expectations, helped by a drop in big damage claims and financial market tensions, its chief executive said on Thursday. The figure is well above the 681 million euro average expectation of analysts' forecasts in data compiled by Thomson Reuters. Munich posted a loss of around 948 million euros in the year-earlier quarter. "We assume that we've earned more than 750 million euros in quarterly profit," Nikolaus von Bomhard said in the text of a speech to the annual meeting of shareholders. The world's biggest reinsurer repeated that it sees net profit rebounding to around 2.5 billion euros this year from 712 million last year, when results were hit by a slew of natural disasters and financial market disruption from the euro zone debt crisis. Data from StarMine, which weights analyst forecasts according to their track record, show Munich Re trading at 7.7 times 12-month forward earnings, on par with world No. 3 reinsurer Hannover Re but at a discount to Swiss Re's multiple of 9.0. ($1 = 0.7585 euros) (Reporting by Christian Kraemer, writing by Jonathan Gould) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/26/munichre-earnings-idUSWEA948420120426?feedType=RSS&feedName=financialsSector&rpc=43 Cheers!

"Today, with Berkshire even more a bargain than in 2000 and Warren once again willing to repurchase Berkshire's stock near the current price..." perhaps after Fidelity have their investor day with Warren they can value the stock better ;D

Charlie Munger once told the story at a Wesco Meeting, how Andy Kilpatrick bought Berkshire on margin and made a lot of money and Charlie thought that that was a very smart investment from Andy ;)

more insider buying :-) http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000118143112015000/xslF345X03/rrd337310.xml Cheers!