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General Discussion / Re: opportunities in portugal?

« Last post by AZ_Value on Today at 10:18:46 PM »

Nate,

Just want to say that I really enjoyed your write-ups on COR on your blog a few months back:

http://www.oddballstocks.com/2011/07/looking-at-hidden-champion-corticeira.html

http://www.oddballstocks.com/2011/07/hidden-champion-corticeira-amorim-part.html

I don't have a position myself, mostly because at the time I think I was buying a few other names but one thing your blog posts did was make me buy that "Hidden Champions" book, and I think I really should have COR on my watch list.
Another thing is your blog made me want to start my own blog, seems like it will force me to be more disciplined and write down my investment thesis on various stocks in a blog post format.

General Discussion / Re: Compilation of all Leucadia shareholder letters

« Last post by moore_capital54 on Today at 09:59:33 PM »

I just spent the evening reading all the letters. I had previously read the ones from 1998 onwards as they were available on sec.gov.

Just want to thank you guys for making them available.

There is much to be learned from these letters, and it is very obvious to me that LUK has really messed up having owned and sold some incredible assets, I don't really understand why they would ever sell some of the real estate they owned like the French Properties (2.1m square feet) and the Park Avenue/Chicago Skyscrapers. It also behooves me why they sold their retail banking operation.

I would much rather own the LUK of 1986-1994 then the one today.

What kills me is that they obviously understood the merits of investing in assets that protect against inflation but somehow decided to dump their exquisite property portfolio. You could have had here another Brookfield properties inside of Leucadia worth at least double of the current market value, + everything else.

Berkshire Hathaway / Re: Christie: Buffett Should ‘Just Write a Check and Shut Up’

« Last post by AZ_Value on Today at 09:48:56 PM »

I'm also seriously getting tired of people, who otherwise seem pretty smart, thinking that "Just write a check Warren!!" is anything more than a childish and useless answer to Buffett's proposal.

Given that WEB's proposal revolves around the fact that in order to get its fiscal house in order, the country will soon be enacting policies that will inflict some serious pain on sections of the population, take for example retirees who will undoubtedly see their social security and medicare benefits take a serious hit; and WEB's point is that since you're asking all those people to bear the pain of balancing our finances,why not ask the richest of us like me to shoulder some of that pain and pay more than 16% in taxes.
If you all allow me, I would suggest that WEB offers this as a rebuttal to those idiotic "write a check Warren!!" arguments:
"Since you want to make it the country's policy that, I will shoulder some of the pain of righting the American fiscal ship only on a voluntary basis, I will go ahead and write a check to Geithner that will take my taxes from 16% to 30% ONLY if you also make it that the coming cuts to social security and medicare are on an "opt-in" basis! Meaning retirees will have to voluntarily opt-in for their social security payments to be cut."
I wonder how that would go...

Investment Ideas / Re: GYRO - Gyrodyne Co. of America

« Last post by eclecticvalue on Today at 09:47:27 PM »

Ok guys, I decided to exit out of this one. Luckily the court ruled in GYRO's favor again. This time I will not take the chance and wait for the liquidity event (if there will be one). The current market cap is reaching the high end of the valuation. One could wait for a higher amount. if a liquidation occurs. I have estimated it at $109 per share.

This position has been successful and tested my patience. At one point I was down 40% luckily I did not lose my cool and it has turned out to be a great one.

Books / Re: 100-to-1 In The Stock Market - Thomas William Phelps

« Last post by eclecticvalue on Today at 09:38:04 PM »

oops I should not have mentioned it

Berkshire Hathaway / Re: Christie: Buffett Should ‘Just Write a Check and Shut Up’

« Last post by AZ_Value on Today at 09:27:10 PM »

Quote from: RichardGibbons on Today at 08:48:04 PM

This nicely sums up the conversation, from the third reply on this thread, by hardincap:

Quote
im always surprised when people use the "if he wants others to help, he should just write a check himself!" argument. the point of policy is to achieve critical mass in order to make a difference in scale.

What a nice statement -- totally summarizes and refutes all the opposing arguments, so that really, you have no choice but to understand.

But,

Quote
Not one person has answered a simple but straight-forward question put forward by another poster, "Are you going to offer an argument for why Christie was wrong for what he said, or why on this issue Buffett isn't more of a demagogue than Christie?"

Hmm. I'm not sure if it's deliberately not reading the other persons said, or just simply misunderstanding. It's hard to imagine that it's the latter, since hardincap explained it so clearly and concisely.

My working hypothesis is that the right wing media, with its one-sided view and demagoguery, has made people believe that they don't need to make sensible arguments when discussing an issue, but that shouting down is sufficient. Hence, the Christie's comments and the response of some people on this thread.

The really unfortunate thing is that there are actually good arguments against Buffett's position. It's just that nobody's making them.

I think Munger summarizes the situation very well:

Quote
Another thing I think should be avoided is extremely intense ideology because it cabbages up one’s mind. You see it a lot with T.V. preachers (many have minds made of cabbage) but it can also happen with political ideology. When you’re young it’s easy to drift into loyalties and when you announce that you’re a loyal member and you start shouting the orthodox ideology out, what you’re doing is pounding it in, pounding it in, and you’re gradually ruining your mind. So you want to be very, very careful of this ideology. It’s a big danger. In my mind, I have a little example I use whenever I think about ideology. The example is these Scandinavia canoeists who succeeded in taming all the rapids of Scandinavia and they thought they would tackle the whirlpools of the Aron (sp) Rapids here in the United States. The death rate was 100%. A big whirlpool is not something you want to go into, and I think the same is true about a really deep ideology. I have what I call an iron prescription that helps me keep sane when I naturally drift toward preferring one ideology over another and that is: I say that I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who support it. I think only when I’ve reached that state am I qualified to speak. This business of not drifting into extreme ideology is a very, very important thing in life.

Berkshire Hathaway / Re: Christie: Buffett Should ‘Just Write a Check and Shut Up’

« Last post by ERICOPOLY on Today at 09:12:42 PM »

Quote from: misterstockwell on Today at 08:33:01 PM

He knows, in reality, that the current administration will blow it, spend it, redistribute it, and we will have nothing to show for it.

A pretty good read here if you have the time (I'm hoping it changes your tone):

http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp87.pdf

quote:
On spending, both parties have blended together to form one giant Republocrat party.