Very nice comments on "Berky." It is mind-blowing. Your accurate
perception of the amazing difference of fractions of a percent, over
time, is true. Another amazing thing is the production and growth of
the companies. They were there. Buffett recognized them. Your post
inspires new insight into how carefully Buffett must analyze dynamics,
markets and products, quality and competition - it's true, he doesn't
buy the stock, he buys the company - and its future. He's a super nice
guy to post all those letters, too.

Express Scripts earnings have grown 34% since 1997, revenues from
1,230m to 17,660m. I remember National Medical Enterprises went from 1
to 100 over a 16 year time frame. No dividends, in either case. Not
the only companies to do so well, either.

I just thought maybe I could help someone analyze a company and
perhaps eventually make some money and enjoy life a bit more. A little
positive outlook, you know? Encouragement to look at and analyze
individual companies, for fun.

I've never used screens. The first seven companies in the article
aren't extraordinarily compelling, but TRMD is a Danish shipping
company with a story to tell - it's been around since 1889. Today it's
mostly oil tankers, owns 56, and I believe 44 leased. They probably
ship sweet light crude out of Norway (I think the world's top producer
of that premium grade). Next time you use an e-fax, it's probably
JCOM.

------ Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive
to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting
guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to
which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE
MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the
Newsgroup.

dapperdobbs <GeorgeCFL[at]hotmail.com> writes:

- quote -

Those numbers aren't quite right. According to the 2007
BRK shareholder letter, the compounded gain from '65 to '07
was 21.1%, not the 23+% you suggest. Either way, it's
astounding, but the end result is vastly different over
the course of 43 years (period inclusive):

At 21.1%, $1,000 grows to $3,760,000
At 22.9%, $1,000 grows to $7,091,000
At 19.2%, $1,000 grows to $1,904,000

The shocking thing is that to do twice as well - over
43 years - as Berkshire did, all you had to add was 1.8%
to your annual returns. To do half as well, you still
had to manage 19.2%/yr average - only 1.9% worse, but
still an astounding feat.

If you actually did half as well as Berkshire - 10.6% -
over 43 years, you end up with only $76,115 from your
initial $1000.

The article may have pointed out to some good ideas for
stock screens - there are many out there, and lots of places
have "buffett-like" screens already set up so you can just
click on them. But the numbers he's starting with to
entice you to play with his screen are just insane. It's
like telling folks they can hit like Barry Bonds if they
take a couple of lessons.

[footnote - in the Berky letter, Buffet quotes cumulative
overall returns of 400,863% for BRK and 6,840% for the
S&P500 (incl. divs) over that period - not quite the same
cumulative total I note above, but he's almost certainly
done some rounding in the posted numbers - with long-term
compounding, as you see above, very very small differences
along the way, can make gigantic differences in the end]

<http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2007ltr.pdf
This isn't meant to discourage folks. But they should
be aware of how mind-blowingly far out of the norm Buffett's
results were.

--
Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.
No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow?
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting

------ Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive
to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting
guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to
which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE
MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the
Newsgroup.

dapperdobbs wrote:
- quote -

There's something a bit sacrilegious about such titled articles. It's
one thing to interview a just-retired Peter Lynch (for example) but a
completely different story to suggest that one can mimic another
investor's style and somehow match his performance. If anyone could do
this, there'd be many (100s??) of such investors. There are not. The
title is meant to attract attention, and it seems it succeeded.
Why not go back to his teacher and read Graham's "Security Analysis"?

Joe

www.blog.joetaxpayer.com

------ Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive
to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting
guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to
which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE
MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the
Newsgroup.

The article below suggests some stocks Buffett might select, if he
were starting over. The impressive statistics behind Berkshire -
$1,000 invested in 1965 would be worth $7,000,000 today - would seem
to suggest that even doing half as well would be worth some
investigation - even hours of work.

The article, "What would a young Buffett do now?" by Harry Domash

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...fettDoNow.aspx

offers 14 stocks to look at. In the opinions of subscribers to this
erudite forum, are these "Buffett stocks?" Do these companies offer
superior returns over the next 40 - or the next 100 - years?

------ Misc.invest.financial-plan is a moderated newsgroup where Moderators strive
to keep the conversations on-topic for financial planning. Other posting
guidelines include a request for brevity and another for trimming posts to
which we respond. For all of the other tips and suggestions, see "FROM THE
MODERATORS: Posting to misc.invest.financial-plan", a weekly post now on the
Newsgroup.