I found Warren Buffett’s letter on the resignation of his lieutenant David Sokol interesting in what it didn’t say. Buffett didn’t ascribe to Sokol any of the qualities that he and his partner Charlie Munger value so much. There was no mention of integrity, honesty or morals. The letter addressed the letter of law, “Neither Dave nor I feel his Lubrizol purchases were in any way unlawful.”
I find whether Sokol acted lawfully or not of little interest and if Buffett and Munger are men of their word, which they most surely are, then I …

So you want to be an investing superstar. Or at least retire comfortably with control over your own finances. Here’s a simple starting point for Buffett like returns.

Buy stock in the highest book to market decile, rinse and repeat.
Hold more cash when the market is above long term trend lines, deploy that cash when it is below.

“The main struggle I’ve had my entire investment life is with the preposterous belief that all information is embedded so quickly and efficiently into stock prices that asset class bubbles cannot possibly occur. But to be honest, I’ve also been pretty irritated by Graham-and-Doddites because they have managed to deduce from a great book of 75 years ago, Security Analysis, that somehow bubbles and busts can be ignored.” Grantham

Buffett says be careful with commodities, hedge the USD via buying companies in strong economies and beware private equity partners.

I got up very early today so I could shuffle some deck chairs around on the Titanic, otherwise known as my portfolio. FWIW which is zero, I sold half of my largest position

Can you get a deal like Warren? Yes, but be prepared to take more time and capital risk.

The Microsoft board has been accused in some quarters of poor capital allocation. There is plenty of evidence to support this, not least the recent Yahoo bid, the $6B cash purchase of aQuantive and the Gucci loafer in the door at Facebook. When Microsoft paid $240M for a 1.6% stake in Facebook it was valuing a company with $140M in revenues and $30M in profits at over $15B. Some may excuse that sort of stupidity as strategic, to me it’s just plain stupid. All three deals have one thing in …