It takes a certain kind of person (read: bold, sharp and witty) to single out Warren Buffett in a book title. New Orleans writer LouAnn Lofton did just that. Since its release last summer, Warren Buffett Invests Like a Girl: And Why You Should, Too has been flying off bookshelves, finding permanent homes on the desks and nightstands of men and women everywhere. The premise of the book is that women invest better than men because of their thoughtful, discerning temperament. How did Lofton become a finance guru and eloquent wordsmith? Her mother is a writer, so Lofton shared that passion from day one. But, like many success stories, Lofton’s began with a tragedy. Lofton’s father passed away when she was 14 growing up in the tiny town of Monticello, Miss. When she turned 21 she received an inheritance. “It was not a ton of money, but enough that I didn’t want to screw it up,” she recalls. “I wanted to be disciplined and learn about investing, so I took it upon myself and read a lot of books.”
Many of the world’s best-off billionaires got even richer last week (StarTribune)
The world’s richest people added a combined $21.4 billion to their collective net worth last week as the wealth gap between billionaire Carlos Slim and Eike Batista widened to more than $50 billion. Global markets surged Friday after European leaders reached an agreement that eased concern that banks will fail, erasing losses sustained by some billionaires earlier in the week.
Watch out for monsoon, crude price and low rates (Business-Standard)
Warren Buffett once said that the one piece of macro-economic information of paramount importance to an investor was interest rates. Even if an economy is growing fast, it may still be an unattractive investment destination if the interest rates are at the wrong level. Interest rates determine the asset mix. Every investment strategy starts with benchmarking to the risk-free interest rate. If that’s high, the return from other riskier assets has to be even higher. The ideal situation for equity investments is an economy with high growth and low, preferably falling interest rates. There may be times in the business cycle when real interest rates are negative and growth is high. That’s the sweetest of sweet spots for an investor.
Ackman Like Buffett Buoyed By Fracking In Bakken: Freight (Bloomberg)
Bill Ackman, the largest investor in Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. (CP), is following Warren Buffett in profiting from growing oil and gas production in North America’s Bakken shale. Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP, which bought most of its shares in late 2011 as the stock rebounded from a two-year low, stands to benefit as CP expands operations in the Bakken.
Graham Number and Warren Buffett Portfolio (Forbes)
Graham Number is a concept based on Ben Graham’s conservative valuation of companies. It calculates the intrinsic values of companies based on its earnings per share and tangible book value in a formula like this:…Unlike valuation methods such as DCF or Discounted Earnings, the Graham number does not take growth into the valuation. Unlike the valuation methods based on book value alone, it takes into account the earnings power. Therefore, the Graham Number is a combination of asset valuation and earnings power valuation.
Short Apple And Go Long On Facebook? (Forbes)
Investors like Warren Buffett don’t buy Apple or Facebook because they are left scratching their heads as to how these companies can be worth so much. To old school value investors, as I write about in my latest value investing book, these stocks just do not make sense.
It takes only $5 to break the ‘cycle of poverty’ (NBR)
I felt devastated by the trauma borne by retirees. They had done all the right things, worked hard, saved money and invested their money. Only to see their nest egg vaporise with one poor investment decision. For two years I kept asking myself the question, “What can I do about it?” Finally I concluded nothing! There was nothing I could do to help the victims of the financial crisis. But I could teach their grandchildren about the habits of Warren Buffett, known as the “Oracle of Omaha.”
Breakdown Of Berkshire’s Investments In Boring Broadsheets (SeekingAlpha)
Recently, we wrote about Berkshire’s recent newspaper investments. We received a boisterous level of feedback and were inspired to follow-up on our initial research report. In this report, we were interested in examining further the newspaper portfolios of the companies that Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B, BRK.A) have invested in the past and have invested in recently. The consensus behind Buffett’s boring broadsheet buys was that the papers were primarily “small-town community newspapers”, which were less vulnerable to the newspaper industry shakeout in comparison to the largest national papers, such as The New York Times, and regional papers, such as The Boston Globe.
The rocky road to big gains that might not happen (FT)
Let´s play a game. Imagine I offer you the following alternatives: make $100 every day with the possibility you may lose $1m in one go; or lose $100 every day with the possibility you may gain $1m at once. Which one would you choose? If you chose the first alternative you would be in the company of the following well-known institutions: Wall Street investment banks, AIG, Long Term Capital Management, and Barings Bank. They have something in common: they all went bust or suffered huge losses. …Famed investment sage Warren Buffett, like many before him, decided to sell options. Veteran trader and renowned intellectual Nassim Taleb, on the other hand, decided to buy options. While Mr Buffett would have gone for the first choice in the game proposed at the beginning, Mr Taleb would have gone for the second choice.
Ironwood Plastics adding new markets (HTRNews)
TWO RIVERS With a year of new ownership under its belt, Ironwood Plastics, a subsidiary of CTB/Berkshire Hathaway, is thriving, according to company officials. In December 2010, Ironwood Plastics was purchased by CTB, Inc. CTB’s promise was the same as that practiced by Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway: To buy and keep good companies, and let them do what they do best.
Coty Files for $700M IPO (Pehub)
Beauty company Coty Inc. on Friday filed with U.S. regulators to raise as much as $700 million in an initial public offering of common stock, more than a month after it pulled a $10.7 billion unsolicited offer to buy Avon Products Inc., Reuters wrote. Coty is majority owned by German conglomerate Joh. A. Benckiser. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and private equity firm Rhone each own a 7.5 percent stake in the company.
Boards must accept blame on debt row (Businessday)
AMID the recent string of profit downgrades and equity issues, companies have sheeted home the blame to external factors such as the weather, cost pressures, the debt crisis in Europe, structural changes and the slowing economy. None have mentioned the role of poor management, weak boards or deficient strategy. …As Warren Buffett once said, ”Only when the tide goes out do you discover who is swimming naked”. Over the past 20 years a strong economy that navigated its way through the GFC became a fig leaf for Australian executives and boards. But as the economy slows, investors are starting to get flashes of many naked men – and a few women – desperately swimming to shore.
