GMO's 1Q 2015 Letter includes Ben Inker's discussion on long-term government bonds in "Breaking Out of Bondage" and Jeremy Grantham's "Are We the Stranded Asset? (and other updates)," a discussion of long-term growth prospects in the U.S. as well as an update to "The Race of Our Lives" (1Q 2013).A few sets of notes from the Markel Meeting in Omaha, HERE, HERE and HERE.
The WSJ Recap of the The 2015 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting (LINK)
50 Years of Warren Buffett in The Wall Street Journal [H/T @jasonzweigwsj] (LINK)
Jason Zweig: What You Should — and Shouldn’t — Learn from Warren Buffett (LINK)
Jeff Bezos' 2014 Shareholder Letter (LINK)
My friend Shane over at Farnam Street has started a podcast that I'm really excited about, and the first episode is his interview with Michael Mauboussin (LINK)
Value Investing Podcast: Pat Dorsey on Investing in Companies with Economic Moats (LINK)
Related book: The Little Book That Builds WealthSpring 2015 Issue of Graham & Doddsville (LINK)
Sohn Investment Conference Notes 2015 (LINK)
Bill Ackman's Sohn Conference Presentation on Platform Value Companies (LINK)
FPA Crescent Fund Q1 Letter To Investors [H/T ValueWalk] (LINK)
Mutual Fund Observer, May 2015 (LINK)
The Absolute Return Letter - May 2015: How to dress for a rainy day (LINK)
Oaktree set for lucrative return from sale of OBOs ($ - from March) (LINK)
The US private-equity investor could be in line for a $40m profit from the sale of two ships it acquired in a court-forced sale last summerThe strange case of Oaktree and Iran’s revolutionary guards (LINK)
Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Two Point Three Sigmas Above the Norm (LINK)
At present, the most reliable measures we identify indicate that the S&P 500 is about 128% above the levels that would be historically associated with 10% long-term returns, and imply a net loss, including dividends, for the S&P 500 over the coming decade. Including a broader range of alternate (if slightly less reliable) measures brings that overvaluation to about 114% above historical norms, and results in our expectation of S&P 500 nominal total returns averaging just 1.5% annually over the coming decade.
I should emphasize that our total return projections embed the assumption of future growth in nominal GDP and S&P 500 revenues of 6% annually, despite the fact that these measures have grown at a rate of only 3.4% annually over the past 10-15 years. The reason we haven’t slashed our assumed growth rates is that historically, nominal growth and interest rate effects tend to cancel out in these projections. Specifically, if we get continued slow growth over the coming decade, we’re also likely to see depressed interest rates go hand-in-hand with that. The slower growth would negatively affect returns, but the lower interest rates could positively affect returns by encouraging somewhat higher terminal valuations. Historically, the 10-year Treasury yield has a positive correlation with nominal GDP and S&P revenue growth over the preceding decade, while stock valuations based on market cap/GDP or price/revenue have a negative correlation with nominal growth rates over the preceding decade. What we observe across a century of history is that those two effects repeatedly cancel out.
It's in Spanish with English subtitles, but ValueWalk posted a documentary on Argentina's financial collapse that could be interesting, especially in light of the brief Munger comment at the Berkshire Annual Meeting. For a book on the subject which might be easier to read than the video's subtitles, see: And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out) Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina
Grandson Li Shengwu's touching tribute to Lee Kuan Yew [H/T James] (LINK)