Money and Finance
A great business less from Peter Drucker- it's amazing what you can achieve as a team if you don't care who gets the credit. A related theme for individual investors is - its amazing the ideas you can uncover if you don't mind cloning. This time of year is always interesting. Charlie Munger and Mohnish Pabrai talk about the virtues of cloning ideas:
Pabrai says most of his investment ideas come from other great investors -- though I think he's being modest. "God bless the SEC for their 13-F requirements," he said. "In fact, Nov. 14 was the last time when the 13-Fs came out, and you know, I'm like a pig in [expletive]. It's just great because there's so much to look at. That keeps me busy for a few weeks, and then the next 13-Fs come out."
Sites like Dataroma and GuruFocus do a great job of summarizing the information. Given the energy washout and other knock on events, this season figures to be more interesting than most.
Two investment operations that I follow are Tom Gayner at Markel and Berkshire Hathaway.
Tom Gayner had a couple of large and somewhat surprising moves in the last quarter. First, he sold out of all of his Coca Cola and sold out 74% of Markel's Berkshire Hathaway holdings. Reading the tea leaves is always hard. Coke was a relatively small position and so perhaps it was just time to move on. However, its does not appear overvalued to me. The Berkshire selling is harder to figure. Granted Berkshire appreciated quite a bit last year, but I assume that Markel incurred a fair amount of capital gains on the transaction. The sells were the most interesting events, Gayner did not make major investments in energy, though he did nibble a bit in energy. The biggest buy was Deere which takes advantage of the weakness in Ag stocks. Raven has been suffering for similar reason.
- Warren Buffett Looks Ahead To Berkshire’s Next 50 Years
Link to article: Warren Buffett Looks Ahead to Berkshire’s Next 50 Years Warren Buffett says that lately he’s been pondering the future of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. more than usual. Like in years past, he has been busy composing his annual letter to...
- Mohnish Pabrai Interview Segments On The Motley Fool
Thanks to Will for passing these along. Links to: Checklist Investing: How to Avoid Errors and Learn From Mistakes The Number One Trait of a Successful Investor How Investors Should Think About the Economy The Untraditional Path of Becoming a Great Investor...
- Markel Brunch Notes
I spend most of my time in investing looking for excellent dividend growth opportunities. However, there are two exceptions to this. One is Berkshire Hathaway, why should investors want a dividend from a company that has Warren and Charlie reinvesting...
- Markel Annual Letter
The motto of this blog is Safety, Dividends, and Growth, but the overall goal is total return. Safety is a hard and fast rule, and generally dividends are excellent path to total return. But there are exceptions. One is Berkshire Hathaway which offers...
- High Yield Reads - 4/5/14
Summary of recents posts and pieces of interest, sometimes enduring, to dividend investors: Base Hit Investor on Markel - as you might guess from the title, I am main interested in dividend stocks, but there are one or two exceptions, Berkshire comes...
Money and Finance
Some questions on an above average interesting 13-F season
A great business less from Peter Drucker- it's amazing what you can achieve as a team if you don't care who gets the credit. A related theme for individual investors is - its amazing the ideas you can uncover if you don't mind cloning. This time of year is always interesting. Charlie Munger and Mohnish Pabrai talk about the virtues of cloning ideas:
Pabrai says most of his investment ideas come from other great investors -- though I think he's being modest. "God bless the SEC for their 13-F requirements," he said. "In fact, Nov. 14 was the last time when the 13-Fs came out, and you know, I'm like a pig in [expletive]. It's just great because there's so much to look at. That keeps me busy for a few weeks, and then the next 13-Fs come out."
Sites like Dataroma and GuruFocus do a great job of summarizing the information. Given the energy washout and other knock on events, this season figures to be more interesting than most.
Two investment operations that I follow are Tom Gayner at Markel and Berkshire Hathaway.
Tom Gayner had a couple of large and somewhat surprising moves in the last quarter. First, he sold out of all of his Coca Cola and sold out 74% of Markel's Berkshire Hathaway holdings. Reading the tea leaves is always hard. Coke was a relatively small position and so perhaps it was just time to move on. However, its does not appear overvalued to me. The Berkshire selling is harder to figure. Granted Berkshire appreciated quite a bit last year, but I assume that Markel incurred a fair amount of capital gains on the transaction. The sells were the most interesting events, Gayner did not make major investments in energy, though he did nibble a bit in energy. The biggest buy was Deere which takes advantage of the weakness in Ag stocks. Raven has been suffering for similar reason.
The Berkshire 13-F should be out very soon. Its always interesting to see what they do with buying new positions or managing existing ones. Given the context, this year there are a lot of interesting questions:
* Did they buy more IBM. Buffett laid out a great case for IBM when he bought it and said he did not expect a ton of growth in the near term, but I doubt he expected the challenges they faced. For one thing, buybacks were a big part of the thesis and those are halted. IBM is one the largest single buys he has ever made, and the price has gone down. Did he buy more?
* Energy - Exxon has only gotten cheaper, did Buffett buy more of that? Ted Weschler and/or Todd Combs own CBI also in energy, price got cut in half - did they buy more? Same goes for Suncor, National Oilwell Varco, and other evergy holdings.
The 13-F will be followed by a special 50th anniversary letter by both Buffett and Charlie Munger, so February promises to be a great month for reading.
- Warren Buffett Looks Ahead To Berkshire’s Next 50 Years
Link to article: Warren Buffett Looks Ahead to Berkshire’s Next 50 Years Warren Buffett says that lately he’s been pondering the future of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. more than usual. Like in years past, he has been busy composing his annual letter to...
- Mohnish Pabrai Interview Segments On The Motley Fool
Thanks to Will for passing these along. Links to: Checklist Investing: How to Avoid Errors and Learn From Mistakes The Number One Trait of a Successful Investor How Investors Should Think About the Economy The Untraditional Path of Becoming a Great Investor...
- Markel Brunch Notes
I spend most of my time in investing looking for excellent dividend growth opportunities. However, there are two exceptions to this. One is Berkshire Hathaway, why should investors want a dividend from a company that has Warren and Charlie reinvesting...
- Markel Annual Letter
The motto of this blog is Safety, Dividends, and Growth, but the overall goal is total return. Safety is a hard and fast rule, and generally dividends are excellent path to total return. But there are exceptions. One is Berkshire Hathaway which offers...
- High Yield Reads - 4/5/14
Summary of recents posts and pieces of interest, sometimes enduring, to dividend investors: Base Hit Investor on Markel - as you might guess from the title, I am main interested in dividend stocks, but there are one or two exceptions, Berkshire comes...