Warren Buffett says bitcoin is 'rat poison'

Warren Buffett says bitcoin is 'rat poison'

Tell us how you really feel, Mr. Buffett.

The price of bitcoin took a dive after Warren Buffett renewed his criticism of the cryptocurrency — even comparing it to rat poison.

Bitcoin had been closing in on $10,000, but it fell nearly 6% Sunday and was down another 2% Monday to just over $9,300.

Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB), has been a bitcoin bear for years. He has often compared the cryptocurrency to gold, saying that both assets are strictly speculative and don't produce earnings and dividends like stocks do.

Before the Berkshire annual meeting on Saturday, Buffett told CNBC that bitcoin was "probably rat poison squared."

During the meeting itself, Buffett joked that "if you had bought gold at the time of Christ and you figure the compound rate on it, it's a couple tenths of a percent." What Buffett was saying about bitcoin was that you can buy it, but it will never produce anything of value.

He also responded to a question from the audience about bitcoin by saying that it and other crytpocurrencies "will come to bad endings."

Berkshire vice chairman and longtime Buffett confidant Charlie Munger was even more blunt.

Related: Here is what happened at this year's Woodstock of capitalism

"I like cryptocurrencies a lot less than you do," Munger said to Buffett. "To me, it's just dementia. It's like somebody else is trading turds and you decide you can't be left out."

Munger has also referred to bitcoin as poison. At the shareholder meeting of The Daily Journal(DJCO), a newspaper publisher in Los Angeles where Munger serves as chairman, he called it "noxious."

Strong words. But to be fair to bitcoin bulls, both Buffett and Munger have been wrong about the cryptocurrency. Buffett in particular.

He first called bitcoin a "mirage" in 2014 — back when it was trading for about $600. So even with the recent pullback, bitcoin has drastically outperformed the broader market, not to mention Berkshire stock and top Berkshire holdings like Apple (AAPL).

That's why some cryptocurrency experts think that investors should ignore Buffett's and Munger's repeated bitcoin bashing.

"What I do find monumentally baffling is that two of the world's most successful investors cannot see the intrinsic value of some form of cryptocurrency," Nigel Green, CEO of financial consulting firm deVere Group, wrote in a report early Monday.

"Do they honestly believe that there is no place for, and no value of, digital, global currencies in an increasingly digitalized and globalized world?" Green added.

Joel Greenblatt: Early life and education

Early life and education[edit]

Greenblatt was born in Great Neck, New York. His family was Jewish.^[2] Greenblatt is a graduate of The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his B.S. in 1979 and M.B.A. in 1980.^[3]

Seth Klarman: Publications and works

Publications and works[edit]

Klarman has written many annual letters to shareholders but has kept a limited role in writing articles, opinion editorials or books. In an interview with Charlie Rose, he discussed the popularity of his shareholder's letters and a request on behalf of HarperCollins to write and publish a book on investing.^[42] He followed up on this request by publishing his first and as of February 2017, his only book, Margin of Safety, Risk Averse Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor, a reflection of value investing found in his hedge fund. In the book he outlines the various issues with retail investing, and critiques small time investors getting into the market purely using metrics such as price momentum and losing money in the long run. He issues that this is speculation and at times gambling, and should be discouraged in the market place. The book asserts that more people should become value investors or people who invest in stocks that trade below their underlying value so as to purchase them at a discount.^[43]

The book had amassed a cult following among retail investors, professional and institutional investors as well as Wall Street as a whole.^[44][40][45] Due to "only 5,000 copies [being sold],"^[42] the book has gone out of print and has become a relic in the finance community. Originally the book was priced at $25 a copy, however, due to it being out of print it has a market price of $700 for used versions with newer copies going for $2,500 to $4,000.^[43][1] University libraries report the book as "one of their most wait-listed titles as well as one most claimed as lost."^[43] He has stated that he would be interested in holding a charity event where he bids his book to Wall Street executives.^[42]

He edited the 6th edition of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd's Security Analysis in 2008.^[46][47]

Klarman's published books and substantial writings are listed below:

• Klarman, Seth. Margin of Safety, Risk Averse Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor. HarperCollins.

Seth Klarman: Investment philosophy

Investment philosophy[edit]

Klarman is a known value investor, and has stated that he has known he was one since junior year of college at age 25. During an interview at Harvard Business School, he stated: "It turns out that value investing is something that is in your blood. There are people who just don’t have the patience and discipline to do it, and there are people who do. So it leads me to think it’s genetic."^[15]

When asked what drives his fund's overall investment strategy and how value investing fits into the hedge fund market he replied:

Firstly, Value investing is intellectually elegant. You’re basically buying bargains. It also appeals because all the studies demonstrate that it works. People who chase growth, who chase high fliers, inevitably lose because they paid a premium price. They lose to the people who have more patience and more discipline. Third, it’s easy to talk in the abstract, but in real life you see situations that are just plain mispriced, where an ignored, neglected, or abhorred company may be just as attractive as others in the same industry. In time, the discount will be corrected, and you will have the wind at your back as a holder of the stock.^[15]

Klarman has been an avid supporter of the teachings of Benjamin Graham, and during the 2008 financial crisis criticized the short-term thinking of other fund managers, he believes that the "this-time-is-different" mindset will give a false sense of security to investors and they ought to look at the bigger picture. He stresses the utility in the economy's business cycles and their predestined and perpetual self-corrective tendency.^[15] Klarman is known to sit on 30% to 50% of his funds in cash as to avoid unfavorable market conditions and only buys stocks he thinks have a suitable mispricing.^[7]

He makes unusual investments, buying unpopular assets while they are undervalued, using complex derivatives, and buying put options. During his first years running Baupost he made it a point to only invest in companies that were not widely accepted by the Wall Street community; he stressed managing risk and using the margin of safety.^[7] He is a very conservative investor, and often holds a significant amount of cash in his investment portfolios, sometimes in excess of 50% of the total.^[18]Despite his unconventional strategies, he has consistently achieved high returns.^[19] Klarman looks for companies that are traded at a discount (so he can assume shares with a margin of safety). Klarman and his fund usually go "bargain hunting," when companies are distressed or face low growth or declining years. It was reported by The Boston Globe in 2015 that when energy stocks were declining, his firm "started looking for deals."^[20] According to Institutional Investor, "[Klarman] has succeeded by deftly exploiting under-valued markets whether they are in equities, junk bonds, bankruptcies, foreign bonds or real estate."

Seth Klarman: Investment career

Investment career[edit]

Further information on Seth Klarman's leadership of the Baupost Group: Baupost Group

After graduating from business school in 1982, he founded the Baupost Group with Harvard Professor William Poorvu and partners Howard Stevenson, Jordan Baruch and Isaac Auerbach. The name is an acronym based on the founders' names (the name was decided on before Klarman joined the project).^[7] Poorvu asked Klarman and his associates to manage some money he had raised from the selling of his share in a local television station and the fund was started with US$27 million in start up capital.^[7] His starting salary was $35,000 a year, considered low to alternative job offers,^[15] and he later recalled that the other founders "were taking a big risk on a relatively inexperienced person."^[7] Early on in his investment career, he used to badger Goldman Sachs salesmen with questions regarding their options and thoughts on the markets that they were afraid to pick up the phone if they saw that Baupost was calling.^[7]

In February 2008, Klarman was alerted that a London-based hedge fund, Peloton Partners, were forced to liquidate more than a billion dollars worth of their assets, he decided to open up his fund to new investors subsequently raising $4 billion in capital, mainly from large foundations and Ivy League endowments. He believed that there was serious market opportunity for value investors in the coming months and after the collapse of AIG and Lehman Brothers, he invested heavily in the equity markets, sometimes throwing $100 million into stocks a day. While the market was down due to the aftermath of the crisis he purchased many distressed securities and bonds. By early 2009, after J.P. Morgan Chase acquired Washington Mutual as a part of their deal with the U.S. Treasury, and SallieMae's bonds were returning double digit figures he would see serious returns. Overall, Klarman's bond position appreciated 25%, however, during the financial crisis, his fund returned -7% to -13%. Although many hedge funds faced negative returns and low performance during the crisis and its aftermath, Klarman saw increased equity positions and described it as a "fortuitous time" for the fund's capital gains.^[7] The same year he would go on to buy a minority share in the Boston Red Sox, via a stake in Ed Eskandarian.^[7]

In 2009, Klarman began buying distressed credits in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008. He purchased the bonds of CIT Group, a financial holding company based in New York City at 65 cents on the dollar with a yield rate of 15%. After the company went into prepared bankruptcy, as Baupost began lending it money via a loan, Carl Icahn gave a loan of $6 billion to the CIT Group but backed out of the deal a week later. This caused the bonds to speed into prepared bankruptcy and gave the Baupost group securities valued at 80 cents to the dollar for their debt in CIT Group.^[7] Shortly after the CIT deal was finalized, Klarman amassed a stake in a new bio-tech company called FacetBiotech, at an average cost of $9 a share. At the time, FacetBiotech had $17 a share in net cash. Klarman noted that when stocks are spun off of their larger parent companies they become "cheap and ignored."^[7] When Biogen eventually tried a hostile takeover of the company bidding up the price to $14 a share, Abbott Laboratories asked for a $27 per share settlement for acquisition. Klarman's fund finished that year up +27%.^[7]

As of fiscal year 2016, the fund has US$31 billion in assets under management.^[

Seth Klarman: Early life and education

Early life and education[edit]

Seth Andrew Klarman was born on May 21, 1957 in New York City.^[6][2] When he was six he moved to the Mt. Washington area of Baltimore, Maryland near the Pimlico Race Track,^[7] and grew up in a traditional Jewish family.^[8][9][10] His father was a public health economist at Johns Hopkins University and his mother taught high school English.^[11][12] His parents divorced shortly after their moving to Baltimore.^[7]

When he was four years old he redecorated his room to match a retail store putting price tags on all of his belongings and gave an oral presentation to his fifth grade class about the logistics of buying a stock. As he grew older had a variety of small time business ventures including a paper route, a snow cone stand, a snow shoveling business, and sold stamp-coin collections on the weekends.^[6] When he was 10 years old he purchased his first stock, one share of Johnson & Johnson (the stock splitthree-for-one and over time tripled his initial investment). At age 12 he was regularly calling his broker to get stock quotes, his reasoning behind buying a share of Johnson & Johnson was the fact that he has used a lot of band-aids (a product of the company) during his earlier years.^[6]

Klarman attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and was interested in majoring in mathematics but instead chose to pursue economics.^[7] He graduated magna cum laude in economics with a minor in history in 1979.^[13] In the summer of his junior year he interned at the Mutual Shares fund and was introduced to Max Heine and Michael Price. After graduating from college he went back to the company to work for 18 months before deciding to go to business school.^[7] He went on to attend Harvard Business School where he was a Baker Scholar and was classmates with Jeffrey Immelt, Steve Burke, Stephen Mandel, James Long and Jamie Dimon.

Seth Klarman

Seth Andrew Klarman (born May 21, 1957)^[2][3] is an American investor and hedge fund manager. He is known as a value investor and is currently the chief executive and portfolio manager of the Baupost Group, a Boston-based private investment partnership he founded in 1982.

He closely follows the investment philosophy of Benjamin Graham and is known for buying unpopular assets while they are undervalued, seeking a margin of safety and profiting off of their rise in price. Since his fund's $27 million-dollar inception to 2008 he has realized a 20 percent compound return-on-investment and as of 2016 manages $31 billion in assets.

In February 2018, Forbes Magazine listed his personal fortune at US$1.50 billion. In 2015, Klarman was listed as the 15th highest earning hedge fund manager in the world.^[1] In 2008, he was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame.^[4] He has drawn numerous comparisons to fellow value investor Warren Buffett, and akin to Buffett's notation as the "Oracle of Omaha," he is known as the "Oracle of Boston."^[5

Philip Arthur Fisher

Philip Arthur Fisher (September 8, 1907 – March 11, 2004) was an American stock investor best known as the author of Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, a guide to investing that has remained in print ever since it was first published in 1958.

Career[edit]

Philip Fisher's career began in 1928 when he dropped out of the newly created Stanford Graduate School of Business(later he would return to be one of only three people ever to teach the investment course)^[1] to work as a securities analyst with the Anglo-London Bank in San Francisco. He switched to a stock exchange firm for a short time before starting his own money management company, Fisher & Co., founded in 1931.^[2][3] He managed the company's affairs until his retirement in 1999 at the age of 91, and is reported to have made his clients extraordinary investment gains.^[4]

Although he began some fifty years before the name Silicon Valley became known, he specialized in innovative companies driven by research and development. He practiced long-term investing, and strove to buy great companies at reasonable prices. He was a very private person, giving few interviews, and was very selective about the clients he took on. He was not well-known to the public until he published his first book in 1958.^[5] At this point Fisher's popularity rose dramatically and propelled him to his now legendary status as a pioneer in the field of growth investing.^[6] Morningstar has called him "one of the great investors of all time".^[3] In Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, Fisher said that the best time to sell a stock was "almost never". His most famous investment was his purchase of Motorola, a company he bought in 1955 when it was a radio manufacturer, and held it until his death.^[7] Phillip is remembered for using and proliferating the "scuttlebutt" or "grape vine" tool, in which he searched fastidiously for information about a company.^[8] When you scuttlebutt, you make more informed decisions due a better basis for analysis and valuation.

In the 2018 Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting, Warren Buffett called Fisher's "Common stocks and uncommon profits" a "very very good book".^[9] He further described how using Fisher's "scuttlebutt" technique continues to be a good way to investing, which is still used by Ted and Todd at Berkshire Hathaway. John Train described Warren Buffett as 85% influenced by Benjamin Graham and 15% by Philip Fisher.^[10][11]

His son Kenneth L. Fisher also founded an investment firm.

Charlie Munger: Wealth and philanthropy

Wealth and philanthropy[edit]

As of February 2018, Munger has an estimated net worth of $1.74 billion according to Forbes Magazine.^[25]

Munger is a major benefactor of the University of Michigan. In 2007, Munger made a $3 million gift to the University of Michigan Law School for lighting improvements in Hutchins Hall and the William W. Cook Legal Research Building, including the noted Reading Room. In 2011, Munger made another gift to the Law School, contributing $20 million for renovations to the Lawyers Club housing complex, which will cover the majority of the $39 million cost. The renovated portion of the Lawyers Club will be renamed the Charles T. Munger Residences in the Lawyers Club in his honor.^{[26][27][28][29]}

On December 28, 2011, Munger donated 10 shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock (currently valued at $288,200 per share, or $2.88 million total) to the University of Michigan.^[30]

On April 18, 2013, the University of Michigan announced the single largest gift in its history: a US$110 million gift from Munger to fund a new "state of the art" residence designed to foster a community of scholars, where graduate students from multiple disciplines can live and exchange ideas.^[31] The gift includes US$10 million for graduate student fellowships.^[32]

In addition to the University of Michigan, Munger and his late wife Nancy B. Munger have been major benefactors of Stanford University. Nancy Munger was an alumna of Stanford, and Wendy Munger, Charlie Munger's daughter from a previous marriage, was also an alumna (A.B. 1972). Both Nancy and Wendy Munger served as members of the Stanford board of trustees. In 2004, the Mungers donated 500 shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock, then valued at $43.5 million, to Stanford to build a graduate student housing complex.^[33][34]

The Munger Graduate Residence opened in late 2009 and now houses 600 law and graduate students.^[35] The Mungers gave a major gift to Stanford's Green Libraryto fund the restoration of the Bing Wing as well as the construction of a rotunda on the library's second floor, and endowed the Munger Chair in Nancy and Charles Munger Professorship of Business at Stanford Law School.^[3][36]

In 1997, the Mungers donated $1.8 million to the Marlborough School in Los Angeles, of which Nancy Munger was an alumna.^[3] The couple also donated to the Polytechnic School in Pasadena and the Los Angeles YMCA.^[37]

Munger has been a trustee of the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles for more than 40 years, and previously served as chair of the board of trustees. His five sons and stepsons as well as at least one grandson graduated from the prep school. In 2009, Munger donated eight shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock, worth nearly $800,000, to Harvard-Westlake.^[3][38] In 2006, Munger donated 100 shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock, then valued at $9.2 million, to the school toward a building campaign at Harvard-Westlake's middle school campus. The Mungers had previously made a gift to build the $13 million Munger Science Center at the high school campus, a two-story classroom and laboratory building which opened in 1995 and has been described as "a science teacher's dream".^[39][40] The design of the Science Center was substantially influenced by Munger.^[3]

In October 2014, Munger announced that he would donate $65 million to the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This is the largest gift in the history of the school. The donation will go toward the construction of a residence building for visitors of the Kavli Institute in an effort to bring together physicists to exchange ideas as Munger stated,"to talk to one another, create new stuff, cross-fertilize ideas".^[41]

In March 2016, Munger announced a further $200 million gift to UC Santa Barbara for state of the art student housing, tripling the record gift he gave for the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics.^[42][43]

Munger has not signed The Giving Pledge that was started by his partner Warren Buffett and Co-Director, Bill Gates.

Charlie Munger: Early life and education

Early life and education[edit]

Munger was born in Omaha, Nebraska. As a teenager he worked at Buffett & Son, a grocery store owned by Warren Buffett's grandfather.^[2]

After enrolling in the University of Michigan, where he studied mathematics, he never returned to Omaha except to visit.^[3]In early 1943, a few days after his 19th birthday, he dropped out of college to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps, where he became Second Lieutenant. He continued his studies in meteorology^[4] at Caltech in Pasadena, California, the town he was to make his home.^[3]

Through the GI Bill he took a number of advanced courses through several universities; without an undergraduate degree, he entered Harvard Law School and graduated magna cum laude with a J.D. in 1948. At Harvard he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.^[4][5]

In college and the Army he developed "an important skill": card playing. “What you have to learn is to fold early when the odds are against you, or if you have a big edge, back it heavily because you don't get a big edge often. Opportunity comes, but it doesn't come often, so seize it when it does come.”

Benjamin Graham: Legacy

Legacy[edit]

Graham is considered the "father of value investing,"^[1] and his two books, Security Analysis (1934) with David Dodd, and The Intelligent Investor (1949) defined his investment philosophy, and especially what it means to be a value investor. His ideals regarding investor psychology, minimal debt, buy-and-hold investing, fundamental analysis, concentrated diversification, buying within the margin of safety, activist investing, and contrarian mindsets went on to be utilized by those influenced by him. Arguably, his most famous student was Warren Buffett, who as of January 2018, was the third wealthiest person in the world.^[19] According to Buffett, Graham used to say that he wished every day to do something foolish, something creative, and something generous.^[20] And Buffett noted, Graham excelled most at the last.^[21]

While many value investors have been influenced by Graham, his most notable investing disciples include Charles Brandes, as well as those noted above: Schloss, Kahn, Klarman, and Ackman.^[22][23]

Alongside his revolutionary work in investment finance, Graham also made significant contributions to economic theory. Most notably, he devised a new basis for both U.S. and global currency.^[24]