Intrinsic Value- Part 2 : Berkshire Shareholder Letter Hightlights

A follow up to this post. In it, the more quantifiable aspects of intrinsic value were covered while noting that meaningful estimates of value must go beyond what can easily be quantified.In fact, I chose to use an example outside of the investment discipline -- Lord Kelvin's error in estimating the earth's age -- in an attempt to illustrate the point.Berkshire's insurance 'float' is one example of a tough to quantify but important contributor to value.The Insurance section of the latest Berkshire Hathaway (BRKa)shareholder...

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6 Stock Portfolio Performance: five years later

It has now been five years since I first mentioned the Six Stock Portfolio. At that time, I considered those stocks attractive long-term investments, if bought at the then-prevailing price levels, for my own portfolio.* Back then I felt the share price of each represented a very nice discount to likely intrinsic value a few years out (and beyond) and said as much. No estimate of value can be perfect, of course, but each seemed oddly cheap back then compared to even the most conservative estimate of their intrinsic worth.None are now selling...

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Buying back into emerging markets

After almost a year of selling emerging markets, investors seem to be returning in force. The latest to turn positive on the asset class is asset and wealth manager Pictet Group (AUM: 265 billion pounds) which said on Tuesday its asset management division (clarifies division of Pictet) was starting to build positions on emerging equities and local currency debt. It has an overweight position on the latter for the first time since it went underweight...

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When Mutual Funds Outperform Their Investors

From this MarketWatch article:"...the typical investor booked a 4.8% annualized gain over the last decade, while the typical fund gained an average of 7.3% a year. The same article goes on to point out the following based upon research by Morningstar:"...investors do a good job of picking mutual funds, but a poor job in timing their moves between asset classes."Russel Kinnel of Morningstar explained, as one recent example, that, in terms of fund flows, mutual fund investors "were going in all the wrong directions entering 2013."Basically,...

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