Salient to Investors: David Stockman writes: The ratio of finance to GDP has risen to 540% vs. the historic norm of 200%. Central bank driven bubble finance since the late 1980s has resulted in the GDP deflator-adjusted value of corporate equities and credit market debt outstanding rising 8 times, while real median household
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Warren Buffett said his firms’ pensions funds are all-equities with no bonds. Buffett said he assumes Pimco would have all kinds of professional money managers managing money so would not have changed just because Bill Gross left. Buffett and deputy investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Warren Buffett has said he likes industries that come with barriers to entry. Many publicly traded dealers own 60 to 100 stores, so would be attractive acquisitions to Buffett’s automotive division, with the type of recurring revenue streams from service and parts that Buffett likes. Morningstar said the 10
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Warren Buffett says no business has ever failed with happy customers and said in 2012 that more people will be drinking Coca-Cola 10 years from now, or chewing Wrigley’s gum. Suzie Buffett said her father’s food investments mirror his tastes. Tony Scherrer at Smead Capital Mgmt said Warren
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Few businesses are large enough to merit Warren Buffett’s attention. Berkshire Hathaway spent a third of the total from a year earlier on equities in half1 2014, while sales of stock more than doubled. Buffett dislikes paying a dividend and rarely buys back shares. David Rolfe at Wedgewood Partners said Buffett’s list
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Warren Buffett has been shifting toward capital-intensive businesses like energy and transportation, while reducing reliance on insurance operations and stock-picking. He is planning more investment in energy, in part in renewable power, as far as the eye can see. Buffett sees the steady but far from spectacular gains of
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Investors are getting rich renting the concrete pads and surrounding dirt on which residents park their homes. JLT & Associates say rents nationwide average $390 per pad per month. Many US counties have banned or discouraged construction of new trailer parks because the inhabitants are poor, pay little in
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: John Gilbert at General Re-New England Asset Mgmt, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway, said: Fed policy has lifted stocks but has created systemic risk in the world financial system for which they take little responsibility, because what happens outside the US is not their assignment. A slowdown
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The National Bureau of Economic Research found: A robot could replicate Warren Buffett’s stock-picking performance. The ingredients of that robot are 1.6x leverage, which is what Buffett runs at Berkshire Hathaway, and a statistical factor-weighting investment approach that overweights growing, high-payout, profitable companies with low betas. Read
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Warren Buffett said the US housing market is coming back but housing starts are not at an equilibrium point, where they match household formation. Buffett said housing will rebound because of increasing population and limited supply. Buffett said the US has made significant progress since 2009 after
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