Banter and General Comments .. BRK, page-7709

I bought a bunch for $0.011 the other day to lower my average too. I couldn't resist after the acquisition of the Bradbury AOI.

The fundamentals look good. Sadly it can take an eternity for stocks prices to adjust if they ever do. Hopefully the market realizes this in the near future.

Warren Buffet put it succinctly: “In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”. Likewise, Peter Lynch also has a great story in this vein from his youth:

"I did the same thing in my first or second year in Fidelity. Kaiser Industries had gone from $26 a share to $16. I said, “How much lower can it go at $16?” So I think we bought one of the biggest blocks ever probably on the American stock exchange of Kaiser Industries at $14. I said, “It’s gone from $26 to $16. How much lower can it go?”

At $10, I called my mother and said, “Mom, you got to look at this Kaiser Industries. How much lower can it go? It’s gone from $26 to $10.” (Laughter) It went to $6. It went to $5. It went to $4, and it went to $3. And I am fortunate this happened rapidly, or I would probably still be caddying or working at the Stop and Shop. But it happened fast. It was compressed.At $3, I figured out there’s something wrong here because Kaiser Industries owns 40% of Kaiser Steel, they own 40% of Kaiser Aluminum, they own 32% of Kaiser Cement, they own Kaiser Broadcasting, Kaiser Sand and Gravel, and Kaiser Engineers. They own Jeep. They own business after business, and they had no debt.I learned this very early.

This might be a breakthrough for some of you people. It’s very hard to go bankrupt if you don’t have any debt. It's tricky some people got [Inaudible] at it. So – (Laughter) So no achievement but they had no debt and the whole company at $3, was selling it about $75 million. At that point, it was equal to buying one Boeing 747. I said there’s something wrong with this company selling for $75 million. I was a little premature at $16, but I said everything’s fine, and eventually this will work out.And what they do is they gave away all their shares to their shareholders.

"They passed out shares at Kaiser Cement, they passed out shares in Kaiser Aluminum, they passed out the public shares in Kaiser Steel. They sold all the other businesses, and you got about $50 a share."

Anywho, GLTAH, Happy Trails and DYOR. I look forward to being flamed for not downramping.