In Search of the Perfect Investment

I confess. I have violated every one of Warren Buffett rules of investing. (See below.) When I sold the business in September of 1997, I should have invested every nickel I got — in three areas:

1. Stock in Berkshire Hathaway, for the appreciation.

2. Municipal bonds, for the tax-free income.

3. Real estate for appreciation and income.

Then I should have formed my own charity and devoted myself to it.

Instead I chased fantasies. I believed. I believed so hard I even convinced myself that the crazy ideas would work.

Most didn’t. Here I am today. Poorer and wiser. But still alive and healthy, A slightly improved tennis game and a handful of good charities I’ve helped.

Today — the first day of the rest of my life — I start afresh. I now have a big position in Berkshire Hathaway. I still have muni bonds (though they’re being called, to be refinanced by cheaper debt). I have some real estate. But, gambling in biotech, raw land, barely-competent CEOs with great ideas… that’s for someone else. Is there somewhere in the land a CEO who listens?

Here’s Berkshire’s long-term chart. No wonder there were so many happy people in Omaha over the weekend.

Here’s where you can learn more about the meeting and Buffett’s philosophy:

+ Today’s Wall Street Journal: Lesson From Buffett: Doubt Yourself. Click here.

+ Notes from Berkshire Hathaway’s 2013 Shareholder Meeting. The New York Times. Click here.

+ Warren Buffett’s 23 Best Quotes About Investing. From Business Insider. They’re really good. Click here.

A favorite West Coast real estate syndicator is visiting. His idea is to “host informal presentations to investors and friends/contacts of existing investors.  Our goal is to update existing and prospective investors on our strategies, our implementation, our view towards trends in the market, our most recent results, while also to find out what investor appetites are and what they hope to see from us going forward. We are going to do May 15 in Long Island,  May 16 in NYC and May 17 in CT.”

I am in four of their commercial properties. I had been in a fifth which had been sold — at a nice profit about three years ago. If you’d like an invitation to attend one of the meetings, send me an email — or use the contact form above. I’m not making anything on this. My motivation is to turn a few friends onto something I consider compelling. Also, it’s very unusual for a real estate syndicator to hold such meetings. I’d like to hear some questions from intelligent investors. (A Buffett idea.)

The only free lunch any investor has is diversification — hence my obsession with having a little money in commercial real estate.

One good thing about the syndicator, called Felton Properties, is they don’t do funds. They offer investors participation  in individual properties.

This weekend, I thought about my dislike of funds. I sat down wrote my Four Reasons Not to Buy A Fund:

1. The fund managers are often compelled to buy garbage. Item: They raise $500 million. But they can only find $400 million of great properties to buy. They don’t give $100 million back because they make fees, perhaps 2%. So they buy $100 million of garbage, overpriced properties.

2. Of their $500 million fund, they only raise $400 million, but they commit to buying $500 million of great properties. Now they have to raise $100 million in a short-term mezz loan. The loan is secured, comes due in three years. But the market has (temporarily?) fallen apart. Bingo, they lose their best property. This happened to many funds in the last few years, including a couple I was stupidly in.

3. With a fund, the manager has a fixed time horizon to invest the funds. This time frame does not correlate to opportunity. If the market changes in the middle of the fund’s origination, the manager will never stop buying deals because he is inventivized to place the money.

4. When you invest in a property by property, you can choose which to invest in. Also the syndicator / general partner has a greater incentive to find good property – i.e. property that impresses, not just any old property to fill the fund. Many deal-by-deal syndicators (including Felton) stopped buying during the big bubble runup to 2007. Prices became too frothy. The economics didn’t justify owning. Pay too much, your rents most likely won’t cover your operating costs and you’ll be forced to assume that somebody down the road will pay even more for your property. “The Greater Fool Theory.”

Obviously, I feel strongly about funds. I don’t like them.

If you’d like a invitation to attend one of the meetings — I’ll be at the New York one — send me a note. I also have a 15-page doc which sums up their results, along with pretty pictures of commercial office buildings on the west coast.

Older and more obsessed. A relative is dieing because he never had a colonoscopy. He didn’t believe in them. And his cancer spread. A friend died because he relied on his family doctor to diagnose the mole on his back. Had he visited a a dermatologist, he would have learned that mole was an aggressive melanoma. My other friend is complaining of shortness of breath. His brother, a doctor, told him “to get some rest and ignore it.” My friend is overweight, has high blood pressure and couldn’t chase all my tennis balls on Saturday. Usually he beats me.  He promised me that he would get a stress test today at a local hospital. I bet they won’t let him out without fixing some of his blocked arteries. All this stuff is all preventable with an ounce of checking. You’re not getting any younger.

Favorite New Yorker cartoon. The magazine has significantly improved its online viewing software. If you subscribe to the paper edition, you get access to the electronic version, which is seriously worthwhile. Here’s this week’s favorite cartoon:

To continue the ghoulishness.

Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked, ‘How old was your husband?
’98, ‘ she replied. ‘Two years older than me ‘
‘So you ‘re 96, ‘ the undertaker commented..
She responded, ‘Hardly worth going home, is it?

Reporters interviewing a 104-year-old woman:
‘And what do you think is the best thing about being 104? ‘ the reporter asked..
She replied, ‘No peer pressure. ‘

The nice thing about being senile is you can hide your own Easter egg
… and have fun finding them.

Harry Newton who loves Charlie Munger’s quote on high frequency trading. He calls it “legalized front running.” Boy, is he right.

What a glorious weekend.