Valuation still looks convincing, page-4

Hi @convexity

As you are no doubt aware, some posters here look 3 weeks ahead or at most 3 months and form an opinion that will never allow longer term facts to get in the way.

Your posts indicate you are a reasoned, long term investor. When it comes to MFG, you (and a couple of others including myself) are in the overwhelming minority.

We each do what we each do, according to our personal capacity and conviction. My suggestion is to go about your strategy and ignore the short term noise of those who have investment experience well below the last 20 years of manipulated markets.

Stock pickers are on the nose because they dare to charge a fee for stock analysis. Indeed, most are useless, but some are skillful.

When Druckenmiller, Munger and Buffett are the scorn of the world, you know the world has lost its head. I cannot know the new leadership at MFG or PTM can reproduce the performance they accrued prior to 5 years ago, but I will back them in.

I prefer to invest in their funds rather than the manager, but at the prices on offer over the last year, I have gone aggressively the other way on the back of a fundamental premise that index funds will lose their favour over the next 3-5 years.

In the end, investors want to make money (net of fees), lower relative net returns for lower relative fees, soon loses its shine. Thus has been the world for the 30 years or more since John Bogle founded his Vanguard model. Yes, the world is different and information has ben commoditised to be worth less. But a rules based model is "brainless" and quickly consumed by distorted markets and over earned fund flows.

We will know in a few years who was right, but for now this post, like yours may be ridiculed for lack of data/analytical context because the indices have outperformed over the last 10 years. As a 45 year holder of precious metals, my view is that 10 years is not forever. Hot or cold, the next cycle will come irrespective of whether are prepared for it or acknowledge it.

Being a successful investor is very often a lonely business as you have to buy against the crowd and sell against the crowd with the absolute knowledge one will never get the timing right.

GLTASH