Thursday, January 7, 2010

links of the day 01-07-10

An interview on investments with Tariq Ali (Simoleon Sense)
-My favorite part is:

Q. Which investors do you admire? Besides these investors who else has influenced you?
I think that when we study investors, we should look for certain unique qualities that they possess and seek to learn whatever we can from them.
The best investor to study is Warren Buffett. Buffett basically has had two careers, his partnership and his time at Berkshire. The ways he invested differed between those two careers and they are appropriate for running different amounts of capital. So if I were to open a $1M partnership today, I would focus on Buffett’s partnership time, when he was running a similar amount of capital and hunting for microcaps and special situations/workouts.
Then, if I am ever fortunate enough to run a multi-billion dollar company I would study the Warren Buffett of today and try to reverse engineer recent purchases, BNI, his preferred deals, and so on.
The problem I see with most people looking at Buffett is that they forget the partnership days and instead try to emulate the Buffett of today. I do not believe that is the right course of action for most investors.
Ten shocking ETF stats (ETF Database)

The George Mason economists have been blogging a lot of advice lately but this one is the best:
Tyler Cowen answers a reader's question on the value of time (MR)

R&D spending on cancer research is money better spent than we previously thought (Freakonomics)