“Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree!” — Senator Russell B. Long “No one should see how laws or sausages are made. To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the
Golden Exit Packages for Government Service
Executive compensation has always been a highly controversial topic. Shareholders of public companies have often been critical of pay packages that appear to have little connection to underlying business performance while politicians and activists have criticized high executive pay in the
Berkshire’s Post-Election Record High
In general, investors are best served by ignoring most headlines, tuning out the daily market chatter, and focusing on in-depth fundamental research into the factors that influence the long-term intrinsic value of a business. If that actually comes anywhere close
How Should Investors Assess Worst Case Scenarios in Japan?
“At Oaktree, we believe that because there’s so much we can’t know about the future, we should invest only where our analysis tells us the worst case is tolerable.” — Howard Marks, memo to clients (pdf) dated March 11, 2003.
Implications of Cheap Natural Gas on Public Policy and Investing
Investors like to examine pricing anomalies, particularly related to commodities that could be viewed as substitutes but trade at radically different prices. One barrel of crude oil has approximately six times the energy content of one thousand cubic feet (mcf) of natural gas. One mcf of natural gas is approximately equivalent to one million BTUs (MBTU). Despite the energy equivalence, for a variety of reasons, the pricing relationship between oil and natural gas is almost never exactly six to one. Read this article for our analysis.