OK, funny things first: Buffett playing Axl Rose is awesome. Less impressive is him playing a hip-hop artist, but it’s alright (both videos embedded inside). Viral videos can be a smart marketing tool, and these work. Back to seriousness: Business Week had a cover article by Alice “Snowball” Schroeder interviewing CEOs who have had Buffett in their boards. Interesting read.
God has spoken, go out and read it. The core is dedicated to welcoming and explaining BRK to its new shareholders acquired through BNSF, so no big news. Buffett complains more about the media and investments analysts, on how they distort things, causing losses to the less diligent and recommends that everybody form their own knowledge base and opinion. Hope he lives to see that happening, but we sincerely doubt it.
Buffett was particularly expansive regarding his processes and methods, and this alone makes this video worth the time (some 90 minutes). The fact that it was October 1998, a pivotal time in the dot-com boom and just after the LTCM imbroglio makes it even more interesting.
Alice “Snowball” Schroeder last month wrote a piece on Bloomberg called “Wall Street makes it hard to earn a legal living”. While IP has always discussed the obvious conflicts of interest for all the market’s agents, and the sell side in particular, Alicemisses a turn in the road somewhere – falls down the rabbit hole? – and turns this article into quite the generalization. The issue of conflicts of interests deserved a better effort.
There is an increasing amount of BRK shares sold short and people seem quick enough to point to the Burlington deal as the culprit, for many reasons (listed inside). They may be missing the number one reason, and it’s one that merits attention.
They took questions from Columbia grad students and the event was broadcast live by CNBC. It has an eerie feel to it – with the whole “must keep spirits high” approach. That said, both men think in the long term (15+ years) and it’s always interesting to be reminded of some basic concepts.
The merger between Odontoprev and Bradesco Dental highlights the advantage of looking at industries and companies globally. The game is NOT about being the best “brazilian” investor you can be. It’s about being the best investor you can be. There’s a world of difference between the two propositions (pun intended).
Quick look at the business and links for follow-up study on Verisk Analytics, a recently-IPO’d insurance data provider owned in part by Berkshire Hathaway.
Read more about Buffett’s newest “purchase”: Verisk Analytics
Some of us attended the 2009 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. It has become a “curiosity show”; questions from the audience (selected by draws) are generally off-topic and the best one was by an 11 year old boy (this has become a family event). During the meeting, we decided to experiment with live meeting “tweets”, so [...]
