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Bullshitt. Book value = shareholders equity - intangible assets Shareholders equity = assets - liabilities = paid-in equity + retained earnings Keep trying. Maybe you'll be right one of these days. Martin

Still here, eh? I remember when you were crowing over every scrap of good news from the homebuilders ("Up, up and away!"). Now they're reporting demand dropping off a cliff and writing off assets, and you're reduced to digging up backwards looking statistics to show that the party's still alive...

This is a common misconception. Particularly among experienced and well informed professionals like yourself. :) Book value is paid-in equity plus all retained earnings. The only way book value can be manipulated is by manipulating earnings first. Furthermore, most manipulation of earnings is...

I trade on book value all the time. Ever heard of closed end fund arbitrage? Hint: book value equals net asset value. Berkshire is in essence a closed end fund strapped onto an insurance company. When closed end funds measure their own investment performance they always use net asset value...

<i>Maybe they simply domt believe the "book values" Buffett places on his holdings.</i> Maybe. There's no evidence for that, and I've never heard anyone else make such a claim, so that hardly seems plausible. Book value is much more difficult to fudge than earnings. <i>And by the way...

There's no question that Berkshire has underperformed since 1998 relative to the exceptional standard that was set in prior years. However, in terms of financial performance, Berkshire continues to significantly beat the S&P 500. Between the end of 1998 and the end of 2005, Berkshire has...

I never exit a trade simply because the price is going against me. But, I never enter a trade based on technicals alone, so why would I exit a trade based on techncials alone? I might exit on adverse news, but that's not a stop. Martin

Read the thread. Berkshire has made about $2B through the end of 2005 shorting the dollar. Another $238M so far in 2006. Martin

Seriously? You guys really want to make the case that this unknown kid named Warren Buffett made a $45B fortune through favoritism? You think the counterparties to his transactions intentionally gifted him with billions of dollars worth of undervalued assets out of generosity? I guess the...

I stand corrected. :) In any Unix operating system (including MacOS) more RAM will improve system performance significantly due to uncommitted pages being used for buffer cache. Martin

Tums, I don't know much about the architecture of Windows kernel specifically, but in general I don't think your rule of thumb is good. Most operating systems, and I assume Windows kernel as well, uses uncommitted pages as an IO buffer cache. This can vastly speed up your system since it doesn't...

There are lots of web sites out there still don't forward domain.com:80 to www.domain.com:80, including quite a few which really should know better. Two examples: izone.com and manfutures.com. Martin

First off, guys, please learn to quote. Your posts are unreadable. <i>In between those two points in time, that 40-fold increase is for the most part a rising tide lifts all boats in conjunction with additional continual infusions from CASH cows. Compounding. FORTY FOLD. Dig?</i> In the...

<i>Buffet said, "... "And, again, our usual caveat: macro-economics is a tough game in which few people, Charlie and I included, have demonstrated skill...", which is counter to making buy & hold decisions. If you dont have a long term view, why buy and hold?</i> Maybe this is just my...

<i>Having "a lot of money" would be a structural ADVANTAGE in a secular bull market.</i> Why? The advantages of a small portfolio (better liquidity, lower market impact, wider investing opportunities) apply in any market. <i>Mister Buffett has experienced two, 1949-1966 and 1982 to...

I know this wasn't what you asked, but you can get top 25 holdings on Morningstar in a machine readable form. Etfconnect only has top 10. You can get all holdings from fund sponsor or SEC filings but if you want something machine readable, try Morningstar. Martin

I use bundled commissions so I don't get hit with that specialist fee. I think in that case IB cancels and reissues the order every 5 minutes. But, I might have misremembered. Martin

I agree with nazzdack. Just reduce your position size. I do not believe in stops. In my opinion, stops are a crutch. Whenever I get tempted to put in a stop it's a good sign I'm over leveraged. Stops may be useful for uninformed trading, trend followers, and day traders. I don't know...

Ah. I understand. So, you wish to talk down to me rather than engage in a discussion. I wonder why that would be. Here is one reason why it is much easier to manage small portfolios to market beating returns than large portfolios: http://www.stanford.edu/~wfsharpe/art/active/active.htm...

<i>For all his hoopla, he could present two sets of numbers, one GAAP, one GAAP according to Warren. Its not a big deal to do.</i> He could, but he doesn't, because nobody can legitimately accuse him of hypocrisy for following GAAP. Doesn't stop them from trying, apparently. <i>All...