Links

Warren Buffett on CNBC.... Links to videos:

Warren Buffett: When stocks go down it's good news

Warren Buffett: Negative effects of low oil

Warren Buffett: Expected rails to do better

Warren Buffett: Earning power our annual goal

Distracted driver deaths will likely increase insurance rates: Warren Buffett

Buffett: Never sold a share of IBM

Buffett: Our job is to educate 'Watson'

Berkshire to webcast annual meeting

Buffett's 'ultimate' $1M bracket

Negative rates 'distorts' everything: Warren Buffett

Economist don't make money buying and selling stocks: Buffett

Trump's popularity surprises me: Warren Buffett

How Berkshire differs from 3G: Buffett

We like Dow Chemical preferred: Buffett

THIS was Coca Cola's dumbest deal ever: Buffett

Buffett on Apple's DOJ battle

Buffett: Don't penalize non-solar customers

Buffett: Robot - wouldn't it be wonderful if...

Buffett: Clayton Homes does not discriminate

Buffett: Hope Britain stays in EU

Don't sleepwalk through life: Warren Buffett

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Bill Gates cautions on unicorn valuations over short term (LINK)

Max Levchin on Charlie Rose discussing the Apple encryption debate (video) (LINK)

Morrisons signs deal to sell food to Amazon customers (LINK)

This is from a couple of weeks ago, but I just got to it over the weekend and it was pretty interesting.... Walter O’Brien (AKA “Scorpion”) on Tim Ferriss' podcast (LINK)

Book of the day (which I've mentioned before and which is currently near the top of my to-read pile, but Mr. Buffett's comments about Keynes' change in investment style reminded me that I should get to it soon): Keynes and the Market: How the World's Greatest Economist Overturned Conventional Wisdom and Made a Fortune on the Stock Market

Links

As a reminder, Warren Buffett will be on CNBC tomorrow (Monday, February 29th) from 6am-9am ET.

Warren Buffett's Shareholder Letter, Annotated (LINK)

A Dozen Things Learned from Richard Thaler about Investing (LINK)

A review of the book Quality Investing: Owning the best companies for the long term (LINK)

No Pain No Gain (LINK)

Bankers have not learnt the lessons of the Great Crash (LINK)

Related book: The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy - by Mervyn King

Warren Buffett's 2015 Letter to Shareholders

Link to: Warren Buffett's 2015 Letter to Shareholders

Five Good Questions for Gene Hoots

This week, Jake Taylor talked to my friend Gene Hoots about his book Pay Attention to the Thin Cow. Gene is not only a great person with an incredible career, but also one of the most interesting people you could ever meet. So make the video below your must-read watch of the day or weekend. 

Link to video

Links

Seth Godin had a short blog post on intuition that is worth thinking about. For a while I've been thinking about how to apply the 'Intuition = Pattern Recognition' equation to the process of continuing to develop one's skill in investing. And I think a lot of how to do that is to put in the work to really understand one's investments at a fundamental level, and to spend time studying the great business and investment successes and failures throughout history to recognize when a pattern may be repeating itself. It is also good to study all mistakes (one's own and those of others) to recognize when a potential negative pattern of any size may be repeating. And I think a thorough understanding of psychology, and a continuous process trying to improve upon one's own psychology, also goes a long way.

Berkshire Hathaway: The Next Ten Years (LINK)

The Last Days of Target Canada [H/T Phil] (LINK)

Ranking Global Stock Markets On Valuation - by Meb Faber (LINK)

FT Alphachat (podcast): Boardroom battles and the rise of Xiaomi (LINK)

Related book: Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism

Links

Eddie Lampert's 2015 letter to Sears shareholders (LINK)

Banks Brace for Potential Energy Losses (LINK)

Farnam Street: James Cash Penney and the Golden Rule (LINK)

Did the Universe Have a Beginning? (LINK)

Book of the day [H/T Derek Sivers]: Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture

Links

Here's What Buffett Wouldn't Do, and Maybe You Shouldn't Either (LINK)

Sanjay Bakshi: The Eventual Consequences of Risk Seeking or Risk Blind Behavior (LINK)

Bruce Berkowitz's 2016 investor call from yesterday (audio) [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK)

Managing Risk vs. Managing Returns (LINK)

Latticework of Mental Models: Permutation and Combination (LINK)

Links

Bill and Melinda Gates' 2016 Annual Letter (LINK)

Bill Gates on Charlie Rose (video) (LINK)

There are also news reports all over the place this morning that Bill Gates supports the FBI in the case with Apple. But that isn't exactly correct, which Gates discusses in THIS Bloomberg video from this morning. 

Apple, the FBI, and Security - by Ben Thompson (LINK)

The Knowledge Project podcast: Julia Galef on Becoming More Rational, Changing Minds, and Filtering Information (LINK)

Nate Silver in conversation with Tyler Cowen (LINK)

Exclusive Insights from Jeff Gramm (videos) (LINK)

Related book (released today): Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism

The video of the 60 Minutes Australia segment on Australian house prices (LINK)

An Accident Waiting to Happen (LINK)

I don’t waste tons of time on macro analysis, but I think it’s folly to ignore macroeconomic data as well. As the most junior component in a corporation’s capital structure, equity has to be paranoid. Every level of a corporation’s capital structure is a derivative of the fundamentals of the corporation and a corporation’s fundamentals are to some degree a derivative of macroeconomic conditions. Therefore, I think it’s just doctrinaire and received wisdom to ignore macro factors. 

There is a massive accumulation of inventory in the economy that has been underway for a few years. That’s fine coming out of recession, once the liquidation event has passed, but we’re seven years removed from entering the crisis and inventories are at their highest level since 2000, according to the inventory / sales ratio on Census Bureau[i] data.

Books of the day:

Innovation and Entrepreneurship - By Peter F. Drucker

The Story of Earth: The First 4.5 Billion Years, from Stardust to Living Planet

Science Matters: Achieving Scientific Literacy

Links

What to expect when Warren Buffett releases his annual letter to shareholders [H/T Linc] (LINK)

Jonathan Tepper appeared on 60 Minutes Australia, predicting Australian property values to fall by 30 to 50 percent (LINK)

Matt Ridley on EconTalk discussing The Evolution of Everything (LINK)

Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Big Bet That Facebook Can Make VR Social (LINK)

Meb Faber's Portfolio Allocation for 2016 (LINK)

Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Speculative Half-Cycles Tend To Be Completed Badly (LINK)

In any event, there are currently a number of problems with the cries of an addicted Wall Street for negative interest rates from the Fed. The first, as Janet Yellen acknowledged to Congress in recent weeks, is that the Fed has “not fully investigated” the question of whether it actually has the legal authority to charge interest on reserves held by the banking system. Second, the monetary base can take two forms: currency and bank reserves, and as long as individuals can deposit and withdraw cash from banks, those two forms are freely convertible. As a result, we now observe increasing calls from monetary interventionists to eliminate currency (or at least high-denomination bills that represent the bulk of currency outstanding). This is presumably on the argument that currency is used for “crime,” but the main goal is so negative interest rates can be imposed without cash withdrawals by depositors hoping to avoid them. 

Also, while depressed food and energy prices have held year-over-year CPI inflation to 1.34%, year-over-year core inflation increased to 2.22% in January. That, combined with evidence of rising wages and a relatively low unemployment rate, is likely to be enough to dissuade any shift to ZIRP in the near future. 

Edge #459: The Genomic Ancient DNA Revolution - A Conversation With David Reich (LINK)

What is CRISPR? (video) (LINK)

Book of the day: The Power of Story

Links

Your must-read of the day.... A review, and some great personal reflections, after reading the book Not Fade Away (LINK)

Umberto Eco Dies at 84; Leaves Behind Advice to Aspiring Writers (LINK)

A good 5-minute Howard Marks interview from a couple of weeks ago (video) (LINK)

Aswath Damodaran - Management Matters: Facebook and Twitter! (LINK)

a16z Podcast: Open vs. Closed, Alpha Cities, and the Industries of the Future (LINK)

Related book: The Industries of the Future

My time at Nest - by Vibhu Norby (LINK) [This quote from the article is something to think about: "To me, doing great work is a habit, not an occasional outcome."]