I typed this up in late February and just found it as a ‘draft’ in my blogger. I thought I posted it already but didn’t. So here it is: So Buffett has a nice tutorial on investing in the most recent letter to shareholders (2011), available for free at the Berkshire Hathaway website. He says…
Financials Still Cheap
The financials have really exploded this year as unemployment and other economic figures continue to show some decent recovery. Europe doesn’t seem like it’s going to blow up tommorow. China seems to be going into a hard landing but China might be a laggard to what has happened in the U.S. and Europe in the…
Quick Comment on the Market
So the market has come up quite a bit since last fall when I made a bunch of posts showing that the market was reasonably valued and there was too much pessimism. I think the market still looks and feels fine. There are people who say it’s getting bubbly and bullish consensus is too high,…
Markel 2011 Annual Report
Markel’s annual report was released and it’s a pretty good read. For fans of Berkshire Hathaway, this is a company that is following a similar model; insurance company with emphasis on underwriting profits instead of premium growth, investing float unconventionally (more equities than most insurance companies) and is even starting to invest in operating businesses…
JPM Investor Day
So J.P. Morgan had their investor day yesterday and Dimon was pretty optimistic about J.P. Morgan and even the economy (I wasn’t there). He does see a lot of businesses so has a good feel for what’s actually going on in the economy than economists that just sit around inputting data they get from the…
I Am Out
I don’t mean to make this a trading journal or stock buy/sell recommendation site, but I thought I’d mention that I am a bit less enthusiastic about AAPL now as the world seems to be quickly agreeing with the bullish views. I never intended AAPL for me to be a long term investment as it…
Cracker Barrel / Biglari Holdings
To continue the story, Biglari Holdings (BH) bought 1.05 million more Cracker Barrel (CBRL) shares in January for $54 million. So that sort of changes the composition of the balance sheet. At the end of December 2011, BH had cash and investments of: Cash: $115 million Investments: $119 million So the above transactions changes that to:…
GSVC Update
So I noticed that GSVC is down 20% into the $15 range as they priced the follow-on offering at $15.00/share. The stock is trading now around $15.80/share, down from $19.50 yesterday. Why did they price this so low below the closing price? The registration statement had an assumed price of $18.75 or something like that,…
Biglari Holdings: Real Deal or Phony?
Biglari Holdings (BH) is a Berkshire Hathaway like investment vehicle run by a young manager named Sardar Biglari. Actually, BH is what was Steak ‘n Shake (SNS), a hamburger restaurant chain that Biglari’s hedge fund owned. After a bunch of transactions which merged the hedge funds with Steak and Shake and another restaurant chain, Western Sizzlin, SNS was…
Gold Standard?
I already wrote about what I think about gold here and here and that’s actually more than I want to say about it, but since there is more talk again about going back to the gold standard, I thought I’d make a couple of quick comments. I actually don’t care too much about this topic as I…