Buffett: The Master of Simplicity

From http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=5816

Buffett’s answers were like always, straight to the point, simple and stunningly brilliant.

In business schools, students are taught complicated is smart and simple is not. Students adept at solving equations with Greek letters are more highly sought after. As Buffet says:“If calculus or algebra were required to be a great investor, I’d have to go back to delivering newspapers.”
Buffett is successful by being simple.

Munger reportedly wears mostly Brooks Brothers clothing, a line known for its proper and classic look, for a fair price. Likewise, up until recently, Buffett wore whatever he could find. He still buys his Zegna suits off the rack. They'd be less successful if :

1) They both sat at computers all day, they would stop thinking nearly as much as they do now. A computer would give them a temptation to listen to others and they would lose logic and rational thought.

2) They lived in New York and worked on Wall Street. The “buzz” would likely interfere with their thoughts. Both men have said again and again that isolated rational thought is the key to successful investing.

3) They spent time shopping for the newest fashionable clothing, they would lose focus on what they are doing. When asked in a recent CNBC interview what one word would describe his success, Buffett answered, “focus”. Spending time on frivolous accessories would make his extreme focus much harder.

The annual meeting made me wonder: why does our society appear to be increasingly embracing the complex way of life, when “the simple life” clearly can lead to happiness?

"If you can keep your head when all around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, then the world is yours and all that's in it." -- Rudyard Kipling

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise - Franklin

• Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. -Mahatma Gandhi
• A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. -Henry David Thoreau
• Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. -Eleanor Roosevelt
• Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.
  -Socrates from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
• To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to do. -Kahlil Gibran

In my financial counseling practice, I use the rule of thumb that a reasonable amount to spend on clothing without overspending is 4% to 6% of your take-home pay per month. Just take the number that your paychecks actually add up to in a month, and multiply that by .06 Just remember that this amount is for the entire family, not just one person unless you are single and no one else is depending upon your income.


To start with I don't think $500 is enough for what you listed but, at the same time, I think you're spending too much at once. I believe that clothes shopping should be a regular experience and not a once a year experience.

I would plan to make one purchase at a time. Once or twice a month, depending on what you can afford and your pay schedule, you should go clothes shopping. Each time you shop you should buy one outfit.

Then, I would go for the jeans and the black sweater. Jeans can cost between $25 for basic Levis to $200 for designer jeans. Try to stick to the $60 range. Take your time and search for jeans that really fit you. It's not as easy as it sounds. For the sweater I would buy cashmere. No other sweaters wear better and look great for a longer time than cashmere. If you're thrifty you can find one for under $100 but it will take some shopping. Winter is the time to buy cashmere so don't wait too long because spring clothes will be coming soon. I make a point of buying at least one, if not two, cashmere sweaters each Christmas season.

I always maintain 5 pairs of jeans and just buy a new pair when one of the 5 becomes unwearable for some reason. I always have no more than 5 pair and no less than 5 pair.

Spring - This is a big time to shop. Spring is when fashion colors change again and it's time to buy dress pants with matching or complimentary blouses. It's also time to buy a new purse in a lighter color that compliments your spring clothes.

Summer - It's time to buy play clothes for outdoor activities and be sure to buy a light summer dress. They are a must for light wearability and going out.

every woman needs 10 basic wardrobe pieces as the basis for style. They are:
1. A good fitting pair of jeans
2. A white shirt
3. A blazer
4. A trench coat
5. Dress pants
6. A skirt
7. A basic black cocktail dress
8. A sweatsuit alternative - clothes to be active in that don't look sloppy.
9. A cashmere sweater
10. A dress (I can't remember how he described this dress but it's not too formal, maybe a business dress)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jul/05/frankoconnoraward

The judges for the Frank O'Connor award have dispensed with the ritual of issuing a shortlist, announcing today that Jhumpa Lahiri has won the world's richest honour for a short story collection. The jurors decided that Unaccustomed Earth was so plainly the best book that they would jump straight from longlist to winner, and have awarded Lahiri the €35,000 (£27,000) prize.

In what will be a shock to writers and publishers, Lahiri's collection of eight stories examining different aspects of the Bengali migrant experience has seen off authors including Booker winners Anne Enright and Roddy Doyle. But the book is already a publishing sensation: published this spring, it went straight into the New York Times's fiction charts at number one. It is an unprecedented feat for a short story writer which the paper compared to "a comet landing", so rarely does a serious writer make this kind of commercial impact. Indeed, unusual success has been the hallmark of her career since she published her first book of stories, Interpreter of Maladies, in 1999, winning the Pulitzer prize and selling 600,000 copies - another very rare feat.

The judges - Granta fiction editor Rosalind Porter, Cork City chief librarian Liam Ronayne and Irish Times Literary correspondent Eileen Battersby - were immediately and unanimously convinced the book should win.

"With a unanimous winner at this early stage we decided it would be a sham to compose a shortlist and put five other writers through unnecessary stress and suspense," explained the award's director, Pat Cotter. "Not only were the jury unanimous in their choice of Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth as the winner, they were unanimous in their belief that so outstanding was Lahiri's achievement in this book that no other title was a serious contender."

Lahiri will now travel to Cork to be presented with the award at the end of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story festival on September 21 - the day when the prize was originally scheduled to be revealed.

Buffett quotes from 1974

"you never have to swing. You stand at the plate,
the pitcher throws you GM at 47 ! X at 39 ! and nobody calls
a strike on you. There's no penalty except opportunity lost.
All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the
Fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it."

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better. Jim Rohn

Amid economic catastrophe — Oregon has the country’s second-highest unemployment rate — there was a general indifference to wealth. In its place was a dedication to the things that really matter: hearty food and drink, cultural pursuits both high and low, days in the outdoors and evenings out with friends. It’s the good life, and in Portland it still comes cheap.

Buffett interview prefer newspaper delivery

Notes from Buffett visit with Emory Students held on February 6, 2009
----

Buffett:
No sector is a good buy unless you understand the business. However, I do believe that there is good value and great opportunity now in the financial sector because it is extremely unpopular. Sector’s themselves don’t make good buys, companies that are undervalued make good buys. You know how to value a business, you project the future cash flows discounted to present and buy with a margin of safety. The earnings prospects need to be greater than the current value. Anything that is unpopular is always great to look at. If I was getting out of school right now, I would take a look.

Buffett:
Risk does not equal beta. Risk comes around because you don’t understand things, not because of beta. There are normally 10 filters or so that I go through when I hear an idea. The first is can I understand the business and understand the downside not just today but five to ten years from now. There have been very few times that I’ve lost 1% of my net worth. I might be risk averse but I am not action adverse. I just stay within my circle of confidence.I  need only need to be right a few times and can let thousands of ideas go by.

You have to know your sweet spot. The beautiful thing about investing is that it’s a “No called strike game” where unlike baseball the only strikes in investing are when you swing. I don’t have to swing.

When I do invest, I don’t care if the stock price goes from $10 to $2 but I do care about if the value went from $10 to $2. Avoid debt. I decided early on that I never wanted to owe more than 25% of my net worth, and I haven’t… exept for in the very beginning. I like to play from a position of strength. I always try to have the odds in my favor.

Think about what the asset will produce. Look at the asset, not the beta. Stock price is not that important to me, it just gives you the opportunity to buy at a great price. I care more about the business than I do about events. I care about if there’s price flexibility and whether the company can gain more market share.

If I were running a business school I would only have 2 courses. The first would obviously be an investing class about how to value a business. The second would be how to think about the stock market and how to deal with the volatility.

Q: Why did you invest in Harley-Davidson?

Buffett: I like the 15%. I measured that 15% against other credits and it looked attractive on both a relative basis and an absolute basis. Also, we have to have a certain amount of the portfolio go to debt. Any company where you can get your customers to tattoo your name on their body has quite a strong brand. For this investment I had to think what is the probability that they will not pay me back and would I want to own the company if they did not, basically that the equity isn’t worth zero.


I bought See’s in 1972 and I think understanding the value of brand helped drive the decision to buy Coca-Cola in 1988.

Buffett: [Showed his blank schedule book]. Bill Gates is overscheduled. I am extremely lucky and I can say no to anything because there isn’t an entity that can use economic pressure to make me do something. A lot of CEOs get into a lot of the rituals that are part of the job. I would rather deliver papers than be the CEO of GE. The 76 or so CEOs that run companies at Berkshire don’t have to deal with bankers or lawyers. At Berkshire, we’ve never had a meeting for all of them anywhere. There are no presentations and no committees. They can be more productive, and it makes it attractive when they can do what they like to do best.

When I took over Solomon I had to pick the best person to run it. I asked myself, “Who would I go into a foxhole with?” I never look at grades or where you went to school. When I picked Deryck Maughan, he never asked me about pay or options or indemnity. He went to work.

To be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight--and never stop fighting.

-E.E. Cummings

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts,
nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live
according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence,
magnanimity, and trust.
from the chapter "Economy" in Walden

Victor Frankl Quotes : (Just reading Man's search for the meaning of life. Also found Snowball and Friedman's new book in the library today. Almost made up for day at work)

Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run - in the long run, I say! - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation - just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer - we are challenged to change ourselves

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

-I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. 'Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.'" pp. 56-58.

"As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances. If someone had seen our faces on the journey from Auschwitz to a Bavarian camp as we beheld the mountains of Salzburg with their summits glowing in the sunset, through the little barred windows of the prison carriage, he would never have believed that those were the faces of men who had given up all hope of life and liberty. Despite that factor--or maybe because of it--we were carried away by nature's beauty, which we had missed for so long.

"In camp too, a man might draw the attention of a comrade working next to him to a nice view of the setting sun shining through the tall trees of the Bavarian woods (as in the famous water color by Dürer), the same woods in which we had built an enormous, hidden munitions plant. One evening, when we were already resting on the floor of our hut, dead tired, soup bowls in hand, a fellow prisoner rushed in and asked us to run out to the assembly grounds and see the wonderful sunset. Standing outside we saw sinister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky alive with clouds of ever-changing shapes and colors, from steel blue to blood red. The desolate grey mud huts provided a sharp contrast, while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected the glowing sky. Then, after minutes of moving silence, one prisoner said to another, 'How beautiful the world could be!'

"Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious 'Yes' in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. 'Et lux in tenebris lucent'--and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present; that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me." pp. 58-60.

" . . . it is not for me to pass judgment on those prisoners who put their own people above everyone else. Who can throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under circumstances when, sooner or later, it is a question of life or death? No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same." p. 68.

"On my fourth day in the sick quarters I had just been detailed to the night shift when the chief doctor rushed in and asked me to volunteer for medical duties in another camp containing typhus patients. Against the urgent advice of my friends (and despite the fact that almost none of my colleagues offered their services), I decided to volunteer. I knew that in a working party I would die in a short time. But if I had to die there might at least be some sense in my death. I thought that it would doubtless be more to the purpose to try and help my comrades as a doctor than to vegetate or finally lose my life as the unproductive laborer that I was then." p. 69.

"I made a quick last round of my patients [just before I intended to escape], who were lying huddled on the rotten planks of wood on either side of the huts. I came to my only countryman, who was almost dying, and whose life it had been my ambition to save in spite of his condition. I had to keep my intention to escape to myself, but my comrade seemed to guess that something was wrong (perhaps I showed a little nervousness). In a tired voice he asked me, 'You, too, are getting out?' I denied it, but I found it difficult to avoid his sad look. After my round I returned to him. Again a hopeless look greeted me and somehow I felt it to be an accusation. The unpleasant feeling that had gripped me as soon as I had told my friend I would escape with him became more intense. Suddenly I decided to take fate into my own hands for once. I ran out of the hut and told my friend that I could not go with him. As soon as I had told him with finality that I had made up my mind to stay with my patients, the unhappy feeling left me. I did not know what the following days would bring, but I had gained an inward peace that I had never experienced before. I returned to the hut, sat down on the boards at my countryman's feet and tried to comfort him; then I chatted with the others, trying to quiet them in their delirium." p. 79.

"Many weeks later we found out that even in those last hours fate had toyed with us few remaining prisoners. We found out just how uncertain human decisions are, especially in matters of life and death. I was confronted with photographs which had been taken in a small camp not far from ours. Our friends who had thought they were traveling to freedom that night had been taken in the trucks to this camp, and there they were locked in the huts and burned to death. Their partially charred bodies were recognizable on the photograph. . . ." pp. 80-83.

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

"And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

"Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him--mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, 'There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.' These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom--which cannot be taken away--that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

"An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

"The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity--even under the most difficult circumstances--to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

"This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. 'I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,' she told me. 'In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.' Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, 'This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.' Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. 'I often talk to this tree,' she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. 'Yes.' What did it say to her? She answered, 'It said to me, "I am here--I am here--I am life, eternal life."'" pp. 89-90

Part II - Logotherapy in a Nutshell

" The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

"Is this to say that suffering is indispensable to the discovery of meaning? In no way. I only insist meaning is available in spite of--nay, even through suffering, provided . . . that the suffering is unavoidable. If it is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove its cause, for unnecessary suffering is masochistic rather than heroic. If, on the other hand, one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude.Long had not . . . chosen to break his neck, but he did decide not to let himself be broken by what had happened to him.

"As we see, the priority stays with creatively changing the situation that causes us to suffer. But the superiority goes to the 'know-how to suffer,' if need be. . . ." pp. 171-172

• "What I Believe," - E.M. Forster "I believe in aristocracy; not an aristocracy of power based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Its members represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. They are sensitive for others as well as themselves; they are considerate without being fussy; their pluck is not swankiness, but the power to endure, and they can take a joke."
• "He who loves best his fellow-man, is loving God the holiest way he can" - Alice Cary
• The greatest carver does the least cutting. - Tao Te Ching
• The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. -Lilly Tomlin
• Growth in wisdom may be exactly measured by decrease in bitterness. -Nietzsche
• You are my friend when you can guard my failure, challenge my thought and celebrate my success.
• "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." -Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
• The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.-Bertrand Russell
• The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. -Bertrand Russell
• The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. -Bertrand Russell
• The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. -Linus Pauling
• The marksman hitteth the mark partly by pulling, partly by letting go. -Egyptian proverb
• Angels fly because they take themselves lightly. - Jean Cocteau
• He that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast.
• Never "for the sake of peace and quiet" deny your own experience or convictions.
• You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don?t try.
• "Why not" is a slogan for an interesting life.
• When you follow your bliss, doors will open where you would not have thought there would be doors; and where there wouldn't be a door for anyone else. -Joseph Campbell
• Grief can take care of itself: but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with. - Mark Twain
• Don?t compromise yourself. You are all you?ve got. - Janis Joplin
• To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.
• We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. - Anais Nin
• One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are. - Gail Godwin
• A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. - William Shedd
• Learn to pause ... or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you. - Doug King
• Everything works out in the end. If it hasn't worked out, it's not the end. - Unknown
• It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are. - e.e. cummings
• The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. The wise, ever satisfied, have abandoned external supports. -Bhagavad Gita
• If I had my life to live over... I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. - Nadine Stair
• Tell me who you love and I will tell you who you are -Houssaye
• The secret to getting ahead is getting started. -Sally Berger
• The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. - Lady Bird Johnson
• Conscience is God’s presence in man. - Emanuel Swedenborg
• Look within. Be still. Free from fear and attachment,Know the sweet joy of living -Dhammapada
• A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. - General George S. Patton
• The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise. -Aiden Nowlan
• The sacred is discovered in what moves and touches us, in what makes us tremble. -Sam Keen
• Don't sacrifice your own welfare for that of another, no matter how great. Realizing your own true welfare, be intent on just that. -Dhammapada
• If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fear.Forget mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day. -Will Durant
• The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. -Dag Hammarskjold
• For fast acting relief, try slowing down. -Lily Tomlin
• The more a man knows, the more he forgives. -Confucius
• "I am not, I will not be. I have not, I will not have." That frightens all the childish And extinguishes fear in the wise. -Nagarjuna, "Precious Garland"
• Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. -Philo
• Before you speak, ask yourself, is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence? -Sai Baba
• Love wholeheartedly, be surprised, give thanks and praise--then you will discover the fullness of your life. -Brother David Steindl-Rast
• I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think. -Rumi

>'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
>This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of
>Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12,
>2005.
I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college
graduation. I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and
begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it.

If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our
finest creation - the Macintosh, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. I was out. And very publicly out. I was a very public failure, and I thought about running away from the valley.

But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other >people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's
opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much.

Just completed reading Mansfield Park. Loved it absolutely though it is apparently the least liked of all Austen novels. She wrote it when she was 36.

Neff from CNN Money :
In the meantime he expects his down-and-out stocks to benefit from the rebound. First on his list is Seagate Technology (STX), a top hard-disk-drive manufacturer that supplies Dell, Hewlett-Packard and others. It's been a rough ride: Neff thought the stock was cheap at around $20 last January, then watched the shares slide nearly 80% through 2008. He added to his position at $4 in the fall, when the yield had crept up to 12%.

In early December the company lowered its earnings estimates for the current quarter. But Neff thinks revenues will recover in the next fiscal year, which for Seagate begins in June. "It's going to have a pretty testy quarter, but I don't think the dividend is in question, and that provides some support," he says. "It's not going to be a normal year, but I still think next year's EPS could be a buck or better."

He's also bullish on another technology stalwart, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, Fortune 500). "I wouldn't usually own two technology stocks, but at the right price even I can be convinced," he says. And he couldn't pass up HP, a blue chip that now trades in the mid-30s.

"I think for this challenging year, HP will earn $4 a share," he says. "They're leading the pack on PCs, and I think they'll get some economies from the EDS acquisition. If I'm right on $4 for 2009, next year it will be $4.60. That's friendly growth."

“I think retail investors should be availing themselves of the bargains out there.”
He's also looking for growth in energy stocks, since he expects oil prices to rebound from late-2008 lows. "Obviously the price of oil came down sharply, but even at this level refiners and producers are making pretty good money," he says. "If I'm right and oil's coming back up a bit, they'll continue to have good bottom lines."

Neff did get pummeled on one of his energy picks last year: He started buying ConocoPhillips (COP, Fortune 500) when the stock first dipped last January. "I thought I was getting quite a bargain at $70 a share," he says. But after climbing to $96 in July, the stock started sliding. It ended the year in the low 50s - a steal, in Neff's opinion.

"They have great cash flow, and they'll raise the dividend in a couple of months," says Neff. "I think they'll have $12 in earnings per share for 2008, maybe $11.50. So at a little over $50 a share, I think that's a very low multiple."

His other favorite is Swift Energy (SFY), which operates oil and natural gas wells in Louisiana and Texas. In 2008 Swift's shares dropped more than 50%. Even so, it has a high P/E because analysts expect earnings to fall sharply this year. But Neff, in true contrarian style, thinks those estimates are too pessimistic. "It's cheap, it's profitable, and it could be a purchase candidate," he says.

The current stock yield 3.78% is higher than yield on treasuries..

Best buy signal, 1st time in 50 yrs

Try to be punctual in all your dealings. You will find it difficult to get along with some men, deal as little as possible with such… Save your credit, for that is better than money. If you go into business, be content with moderate gains. Don't be too hasty to get too rich…

Thus, Keynes, like most of us, lost big money during the 1929 crash and subsequent bear market.But surprisingly he didn't see this as a weakness.He took a positive attitude about bear markets:

"I feel no shame at being found still owning a share when the bottom of the market comes... I would go much further than that. I should say that it is from time to time the duty of a serious investor to accept the depreciation of his holdings with equanimity and without reproaching himself. Any other policy is anti-social, destructive of confidence and incompatible with the working of the economic system. An investor...should be aiming primarily at long-period results, and should be solely judged by these."