Last weekend was the Berkshire Hathaway circus annual meeting. I spent most of that time reading through the notes and watching the media interviews from different sites (links are below). I won’t highlight anything specific, you can dig into it if you want. I will make two observations – on the enormity of Berkshire and learning from Buffett.

First, Berkshire is huge. It’s a ridiculous number of companies now (I don’t have the exact number, Google says more than 80?). The companies stretch into so many areas of the economy that Buffett knows how well the economy is doing, and can see major business/industry changes, before the Fed and anyone else. The information he gets from daily business updates gives him a huge advantage when buying new companies/stocks. Continue Reading…

Back at the beginning of the year I finally took the time to get a library card. As a Chicago resident, it was easier than I expected. I did it all online, at home, in about five minutes. Half of that time was checking out how the online service worked. Since then, I’ve spent a few random hours just digging through the library.

The online library gives me access to a huge resource that I previously wrote off. That means all the books, magazines, journals, and newspapers I’d get at the library, but also at home too, plus back issues. There’s also access to premium subscriptions that I wouldn’t normally pay for or don’t have to pay for anymore like Morningstar, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. Continue Reading…

The idea of being a landlord doesn’t appeal to me. That’s not to say real estate can’t be a good investment. It can. Like every other type of investing, it takes time to learn which investments work – be it a multi-unit building, condos, commercial property, land, or stocks, bonds, funds, etc. – so you actually make a decent profit over time.

I bring this up because a recent Gallop poll came out showing real estate, of all things, is seen as the best long term investment…again. I guess it’s easier to get over a housing market crash than a stock market crash. Continue Reading…