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Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

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Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

#121

Post by imron »

xapata wrote: post #119
imron wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except that all the numbers on his net worth are based just on his word and he's clearly a serial liar. No they're not, the link I provided also showed figures based on Forbes estimate of his net worth. $40,000,000 (Trump's share of his father's fortune) invested in the market in 1974 would be worth $1.22 billion in 2015 (when he announced his campaign). Compared to Forbes estimate of his net worth at $4.5 billion…

> Art of the Deal The ghostwriter of that book says he made the whole thing up, because Trump got bored so quickly he wouldn't sit for an interview longer than 10 minutes.

Regardless of whether or not his ghostwriter is telling the truth, Trump didn't need to write it in order to follow the book's advice.

If you look at what the book talks about and you see how Trump acts, there are many similarities.

Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

#122

Post by imron »

xapata wrote: post #120
imron wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See the other comment about how he'd have much more money if he'd plowed his inheritance into an index fund See my other comment about how that's not actually true, but in any case we are not talking about how much money he could have made, or whether he is the most intelligent out of all businessmen, but whether or not he is intelligent. I would argue it takes more intelligence to run a multi-billion dollar empire…

> conspiracy No conspiracy, just one guy. He's said in court deposition (for a lawsuit he lost) that he claims his net worth is however he's feeling that day. > 6 out of 100+ Not all the businesses are equivalent, nor are most of them really his, beyond selling a license to his name. The Trump Organization is less than 200 people, closer to 100. It's mostly real estate deals, not even building management. Not really…

> Not all the businesses are equivalent

No, they're not, but the fact still stands that bankruptcies make up only a small portion of his total businesses, even when taking away ones he's only licensed his name to.

> The Trump Organization is less than 200 people, closer to 100.

CNN (notoriously anti-Trump) calculates Trump has created around 34,000 jobs.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/03/news/economy/donald-trump-jo...

Not sure where the 100-200 people statistic comes from, but it seems a little on the low side.

There are plenty of things to criticize Trump about, but making things up to make him look bad reflects badly on the person making things up, not on Trump.

Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

#123

Post by willvarfar »

harshreality wrote: post #66
dsjoerg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the Hans Rosling video explaining why that's not a problem: https://www.gapminder.org/videos/will-saving-poor-children-l...

Seems like he's assuming changing one of these changes all: child mortality == poverty == lack of education == large families High fertility rates, poverty, low education, lack of affordable birth control, child mortality... these and other things cluster together. What's causing what? If you found a genie and wished for an end to kids dying in Africa, with no intervention in any other parameters, how much do you rea…

The harsh reality is that Hans spent his life trying to educate people and get them draw conclusions from data instead of repeating their prejudices.

Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

#124

Post by alykhalid »

ams6110 wrote: post #71
robocat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of this particular philanthropy is just giving back money that those countries spent? I.e. Microsoft licences, or balance of trade with the donor countries? A kind of benevolent taxation?

I'd be more fearful of corruption in those countries. This is where so much foreign aid falls apart, it's siezed by the government, distributed to their favored constituents, and never makes it to the people who really need it.

Bill gates talks about corruption in his 2014 annual letter (1). Search for the word "corruption" if you don't want to the read the whole letter. TLDR: Its manageable.

(1)[http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Medi...]

Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

#125

Post by pg314 »

imron wrote: post #116
Locke1689 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that all the numbers on his net worth are based just on his word and he's clearly a serial liar. Interestingly, I think the fact that he's quite stupid may be how he succeeded at the presidential election. An intelligent, principled person would have a vision and philosophy that guides their actions. When questioned on details or specifics they would use their philosophy to arrive at a reasoned answer. Trump h…

> Except that all the numbers on his net worth are based just on his word and he's clearly a serial liar. No they're not, the link I provided also showed figures based on Forbes estimate of his net worth. $40,000,000 (Trump's share of his father's fortune) invested in the market in 1974 would be worth $1.22 billion in 2015 (when he announced his campaign). Compared to Forbes estimate of his net worth at $4.5 billion…

> $40,000,000 (Trump's share of his father's fortune) invested in the market in 1974 would be worth $1.22 billion in 2015 (when he announced his campaign).

How did you get that number? Did you include re-invested dividends?

If you start in October 1974 and end in June 2015, you get a return of 9817.096% with dividends reinvested and only 2923.171% without [1]. So starting with $40 million you would end up closer to $4 billion. Admittedly that is after fiddling with the months to maximise the return.

> Compared to Forbes estimate of his net worth at $4.5 billion ...

There is a good chance that the $4.5 billion Forbes estimate is a significant overestimation. There is no downside for Forbes to overestimating his fortune, but a significant one in underestimating: they risk getting sued by Trump. See [2], on how he lost a lawsuit in 2006 when a journalist claimed that he was only worth $250 million. It also contains examples of how Trump inflates his net worth. The fact that he still hasn't released his tax returns and has no plans to do so, also speaks volumes.

> ...and Trump's own estimate of his net worth at $10.0 billion at the same date.

Given his long history of lying his own claim is useless.

[1] https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/

[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2016/03/31/how-dona...

Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

#126

Post by adrianN »

lostlogin wrote: post #79
obilgic wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue the otherwise. Imagine the resources and the influence power he would have on both U.S. and other nations, compared to few billion dollars spared by few people.

How many would vote for him if they knew he hoped to help non-Americans with US txpayer dollars?

That depends on how good his marketing team is.

Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

#127

Post by cleansy »

wallace_f wrote: post #97

It is an envious position to be in where you can positively impact such an incomprehensible number of human lives in the best of ways. It's incredibly heart warming how many people have been saved by the Gates Foundation. Although, the realist in me worries about the possibility that in the long-run, civil liberties and human rights are also of importance to humanity in saving human lives, and human dignity. Without…

> Without going into an argument about the relative importance, shouldn't at least some significant portion be distributed towards solving the human and civil rights, liberties, and justice abuses here in America?

I would guess that a country with stable institutions, high GDP per capita value, democracy and the highest absolute military spending this issue could be addressed in the ballot box. In the richest democracies on earth fixing these issues is a question of resource allocation. And plenty of organizations are working towards that already.

Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

#128

Post by WalterBright »

Nomentatus wrote: post #95
WalterBright wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every illegal trick? Come on. I competed against Microsoft (compilers) and they were a tough competitor. But I never saw anything illegal. Microsoft benefited a lot from their competitors simply being incompetent (see "In Search Of Stupidity" by Chapman.)

Compilers were one thing they didn't bundle. Whether they let you know everything about their operating system they knew is quite another matter. We now know there was no "Chinese Wall" between OS dev and app dev. Then toss in FUD for good measure, OED contracts that got them a DOJ consent decree for illegal activity and more...

I'm familiar with the famous IE "bundling" thing that the case revolved around. Microsoft gave away IE for free. How this was supposedly different from Microsoft giving away a long list of other tools, like a text editor, escapes me.

As for me, I started with Netscape (free). I switched to IE (free) because IE crashed less often. I eventually switched to Chrome (free) because IE hung accessing github. Every operating system I have (OSX, Linux, FreeBSD, Windows) comes with a bundled browser. My phone comes with one. My Kindle comes with one. Most of the software I use daily is free.

There was no evidence of monopoly pricing. The very fact that IE was given away was de facto proof they did not have a monopoly. The case never made any sense.

Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

#129

Post by imron »

pg314 wrote: post #125
imron wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except that all the numbers on his net worth are based just on his word and he's clearly a serial liar. No they're not, the link I provided also showed figures based on Forbes estimate of his net worth. $40,000,000 (Trump's share of his father's fortune) invested in the market in 1974 would be worth $1.22 billion in 2015 (when he announced his campaign). Compared to Forbes estimate of his net worth at $4.5 billion…

> $40,000,000 (Trump's share of his father's fortune) invested in the market in 1974 would be worth $1.22 billion in 2015 (when he announced his campaign). How did you get that number? Did you include re-invested dividends? If you start in October 1974 and end in June 2015, you get a return of 9817.096% with dividends reinvested and only 2923.171% without [1]. So starting with $40 million you would end up closer to $…

> How did you get that number? Did you include re-invested dividends?

From the site I linked to above (which incidentally is the site [1] you linked to in your post). It includes re-invested dividends and also taxes, which were significantly higher in the late 70's and early 80's compared to what they are now. The page I linked to goes through their methodology.

You make good points about his net worth, but even if I was to concede that, I believe my main point still stands.

He might not be an astute investor, but even if his entire businesses are only worth hundreds of millions, you can't run a company of that size for so long if you "lack intelligence" - even more so if you're building it back up after losing a billion dollars a few decades earlier.

Re: Warren Buffett’s Best Investment

#130

Post by JetSpiegel »

vkou wrote: post #58
vacri wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of Catholics on the conservative side of things, and contraception has been verboten to Catholics since the early days ("sex is for making babies, not fun" is the company line)

This is quite false. Catholics split the democrat/republican vote ~50/50. They voted for Gore, Bush, Obama, and Trump with small margins. [1] They care about this question, but not very much. Evangelicals, on the other hand overwhelmingly vote republican. Catholics, in general, are the most liberal religious denomination in the US. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-fait...

> Catholics, in general, are the most liberal religious denomination in the US.

More than Jedi? Or even Scientology?

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