tilson is crap, pabrai I think actually has game.

Yeah he effed up in 2008 and but I think he learned a lot form it and came out a better investor. too bad he had to learn with other peoples money

the fee is the premium you pay over the mark to market value. Mutual funds trade at NAV. Berkshire trades above it. Doesnt mean don't buy, just giving you a different way to think about it.

I would not. We're at the top of this bull market, last thing I'd want to be invested in.

Very interesting, I'll read their books anyway. I'll probably do some background reading about them beforehand however.

Sorry!! You are completely right, I was thinking of actively managed funds for some reason, these tend to be 1-2% PA.

You don't want to incur the charges of selling your stocks to rebalance your portfolio, (especially stocks making a profit - you'll get taxed on your profits.) So IMO the best way to balance your portfolio is by gradually scaling your investment in each stock ~ depending on performance & your personal judgement. Just want to reiterate, I don't consider myself an expert by any means, I have a long way to go. I just wanted to lay out some basics I've learnt from reading investment books.

I appreciate all your constructive criticism and opinions.

Is it bad I don't agree with basically anything in the original post? Looks like I don't have to spend $ buying investment books at least.

I don't think this is a good way of thinking about Berkshire - it hasn't been a quasi mutual fund for a long time. Take a look at the most recent annual report:
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2014ar/2014ar.pdf

The four major operating segments are insurance, regulated, capital-intensive businesses (railroads and utilities), manufacturing/service/retailing, finance and financial products. In total, that's a pretty diverse set of businesses - that part is true. But you still have a substantial amount of single-company risk that you don't have in a true index fund.

I also disagree with ahnuld's point, at least as I interpret it. Berkshire does trade above its book value, the same way that the vast majority of public firms trade above book value. But this isn't a premium above NAV in the sense of closed-end fund premiums, where you can compare the market value of the fund holdings to the market value of the fund itself. That's because so much of Berkshire's assets are not marked to market. At the end of 2014, they had $117.5 billion of common stocks carried at market value. But they had a total of $526.2 billion in total assets. So in no way should anyone be thinking that the difference between book value and market value is any kind of premium/discount to NAV.

And this is something that Buffett says explicitly in the annual report:

I would not recommend putting more than 5-10% of your portfolio in Berkshire, the same way that I wouldn't recommend putting more than 5-10% of any individual stock in your portfolio. And I say that as one of the world's biggest Buffett fanboys - I've got a picture of me and him sitting on my desk looking at me as I type this.

So you've read some books and got an understanding of the market.
Now you can read every investment book there is and you will then have infinite opinions on every topic. Books are good but books are books.
If you want to learn how to manage money you should also manage (fake) money. Get a demo-portfolio somewhere and see how you fare, then you can read more books and see where you failed.
Not saying you shouldn't read now, it's damn important. But reading about something and actually doing something are two different things.

I have a real portfolio of approx 8k - I know that's not a lot, I'm fairly young (20). I hope to build it to 11k by the end of this year.

I can mutual fund each category, right?

+1 to this, re: just buying BRK. (I do have some BRK)

Yep, or ETF's, either way. Either gives way better diversification than the average investor can ever replicate buying individually or just buying BRK.

the thing with Pabrai & Guy Spier is that they've made themselves out to be Buffett acolytes, and they're also both very big into Tony Robbins type stuff. I always feel like the relentless Buffett references are a gimmick to attract investors (they famously paid like hundreds of thousands of dollars for a lunch with Warren).

The Intelligent Investor if you haven't already read it

Didnt pabrai beat the market by at least 20% since he started?

I more or less agree with everyone's thoughts on BRK. It's a good company and it's diversified, but not in the same league as an index fund. I own a lot of BRK (about 10% of my portfolio), but I don't think it would be a great idea to throw everything in there.

My favorite thing about BRK is that there are no dividends that I'll have to pay tax on every year. My gains will only be realized when I sell, which I'll likely do when I'm retired and presumably in a lower tax bracket.

I've read The Dhando Investor. It has a lot of good principles and concepts that should be related to value investing. The problem is actually putting them into practice.

I've read quite a bit of investing/trading books in the last 12 years. I actually love reading and educating myself -- although the past year or so I've been busy with other things that I haven't had the mental capacity to read anymore. The point I'm getting at is that while reading can be informative, exciting, and enlightening, the problem is that it doesn't actually get you to where you want to be if all you do is read and don't put anything into practice.

I used to read, read, and read looking for that "a ha" moment. Then I realized I was reading for entertainment and not really doing much actual investing. The best thing to do is to put down the books and start focusing on the actual activities that will bring you closer to buying companies. Reading annual reports, quarterly reports, transcripts of real companies.

Wat?? Of course you do. Would you still want to be holding PALM that you might have bought 15 years ago? Are you buying stuff and riding it right into the ground if it tanks?

Choose better books. What 10 are they?

Why would you only want to match "the market"? Why not beat it? There are plenty of non-discretionary strategies that beat "the market".