LiquidRetro.Net’s Blog

Our Italian holiday continues. On Tuesday, an Italian National holiday, as we were coming down the curvy mountain road we had a tire go flat. Luckily we had a spare donut and in no time were on the road. The journey took a little longer because we drove on slower B roads but we made it to Montepulciano, a hill town.

In Montepulciano we stumbled into an old copper craftsman. He made everything out of copper and was so charming. We bought a heavy beautiful copper frying pan and are very excited to try it out. The town is very, very hilly which made it good exercise but the climbs were worth it for the amazing views of the Tuscan countryside.

The churches, basilicas, and duomos in the country are very impressive. We have seen many treasured relics as well as burial sites of many famous Italians such as Dante, Marconi, Galileo, Michelangelo, assorted popes, and others.

Although we weren’t in Siena for long, we still saw a lot of beautiful things! We stayed in a hotel connected to a sanctuary and run by nuns. The view was amazing. We spent some time at the Piazza del Campo, where the famous Palio horse race takes place. We went to the Duomo here as well which was beautiful and unique.

In Florence, or Firenze as the locals call it, Jon climbed about 450 steps up to take photos at the top of the Duomo. It was a tough climb but worth it. In the Accademia museum we saw the famous David sculpture by Michelangelo as well as many other famous unfinished works by Michelangelo.

For the past 3 days we have been in the Umbria region. We are staying at an Agritourismo which is a working farm. Its location is very remote. It 14km up a small mountain with 78 turns to reach the agritourismo. This has been a big change from the heat and hustle and bustle of Rome. Here we figure it takes us 5 hours to eat our meals which are eaten with everyone on the farm. Below is a photos of some of the pasta we had as one of the 3 courses for lunch one day. It has been a neat experience. However the past few days it has rained constantly. This has put a damper on some of our plans but today we went to the towns of Montefalco, Assisi, Deruta, and Spoleto. While in Assisi we had a good pizza in a small typical Italian café, see the photo below of the half eaten pizza.

Our car (pictured below) is an Alfa Romeo 159 Estate with a 1.9L turbo diesel. While we are not very impressed with the low clearance of the alfa or the stereotypical Italian electrics the engine is great and the highway driving has been fine. Without the Garmin GPS it would be near impossible.

Here are a few photos from some of the sights that we have seen while in Rome. They are rough photos and so far I have taken about 800 photos just in Rome. The photos below are from the Vatican, Spanish Steps, and the Coliseum. Rome was very hot but here in Umbria it is much cooler, windy and a bit of rain. We are also loving the plentiful wine and fantastic food in the country. Keep checking the blog here and as we have time and internet access I will try and make a few blog posts with photos.

This weekend I attended the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha, NE. This was the largest Berkshire Hathaway meeting ever with over 35,000 people attending. This was a surprise to me because of the recession and the stock has posted its worst year ever. Despite this it was a big and busy meeting. The company movie this year was better than previous years even though it was scaled back. The company movie contains many commercials from the many companies the Berkshire owns of owns controlling stakes in. It also contained funny things about the general economic situation as well as guest appearances by celebrities. This year it was Tiger Woods with Warren Buffet as his caddie.

The format of the Q&A section after the company movie changed and was much improved. In the past all of the questions came from the audiences and many of the topics stayed away from the business of Berkshire and instead moved to other topics, it also included protesters which was quite annoying from a shareholder perspective. This year however shareholders were asked to submit questions to 3 preselected journalists who then choose the best questions to ask. This was augmented with live questions from the shareholders in attendance. This format worked much better and kept the meeting mostly on the topic of Berkshire and the general economy.

It was this Q&A section that I found the most interesting. Being a college student in the business school and being interested in Finance, and the markets I found one question more interesting than others. That question I found most interesting were the questions about the use of higher mathematics and modern portfolio theory. Both Buffet and Munger were in agreement that students and investors should stay away from theories requiring computers and calculators. The Wall Street Journal had an excellent article on this and the following quotes below are from this article http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2009/05/02/buffett-and-munger-stay-away-from-complex-math-theories/

Mr. Buffett: “There is so much that’s false and nutty in modern investing practice and modern investment banking, that if you just reduced the nonsense, that’s a goal you should reasonably hope for.”

Mr. Buffett on the efficient market hypothesis, the idea that all information is instantly priced into the market: “There’s this holy writ, the efficient market theory. How do you teach your students everything is priced properly? What do you do for the rest of the hour?”

Mr. Buffett on the use of higher-order math in finance: “The more symbols they could work into their writing the more they were revered.”

Mr. Munger on the same theme: “Some of the worst business decisions I’ve ever seen are those with future projections and discounts back. It seems like the higher mathematics with more false precision should help you but it doesn’t. They teach that in business schools because, well, they’ve got to do something. ”

Mr. Buffett adds: “If you stand up in front of a business class and say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, you won’t get tenure…. Higher mathematics my be dangerous and lead you down pathways that are better left untrod.”

Mr. Buffett on the persistence of bad ideas in finance: “The famous physicist Max Planck was talking about the resistance of the human mind, even the bright human mind, to new ideas…. And he said science advances one funeral at a time, and I think there’s a lot of truth to that and it’s certainly been true in finance.”

To me this is all very interesting because much of this efficient market hypothesis and how to build a portfolio is what I have been learning this semester in my finance classes. It contains a lot of math (Which I don’t like, or understand many times) the formulas are complicated and most of all many of them rely on discounting and future projections. Mr Munger’s quote here I think is right on and seems right to me. I just wish that the end of the semester was in a few weeks. I think we could have a great time discussing a lot of these ideas in my financial investment class.

It seems as though the hedge funds that have tried this “fancy math” theory have failed time and time again. One that we just learned about in class was LTCM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management) which worked good when the market was “normal” but failed hugely when the market was not normal. If history and the past few months show us anything is that the market is not normal and these practices cannot be relied upon 100%. Instead Buffets practice of buying undervalued businesses that are well run and managed.

In the end I think its interesting that the Oracle of Omaha basically thinks that a majority of what I have been learning in Business School is crap, and just time filler. The entire thing just makes me really take a step back and look at what I have “learned” this semester and wonder about graduation next year and what I will be doing after.

1935 Dusenberg SJ553 Beautiful Car

1935 Dusenberg SJ553 Amazing Car

The Husker Nation sure is a dedicated crew. When you can get over 77,000 people to attend what can only be described as a glorified practice its a good day for a great game. All week the weather was forecast to be rainy for the game. Well the weather men were wrong! It rained before the game but cleared up perfectly for the game its self. The entire game was sunny and warm. You could not have asked for better weather.

I decided to bring my camera to the game because I had great seats (Thanks mom and dad). It has been a while since I had shot sports but considering I was in the sands I think I got some decent results.

Yesterday I got a CT Scan of my sinuses and I asked the doctor for the images and then I made a video of it. The video is made up of 381 slices through my head. The slices start at the tip of my nose and then go through the head to the back. The results were that everything is normal and the way it is suppose to be. No infections or blockages. The reason why the left side looks large is because I was not sitting perfectly straight in the machine and was at a slight angle.

UNL Photo club has an exhibition up at Jones Coffee (11th and G st) till March 31, 2009. I should have posted this a few weeks ago but got busy with school and things. Go see the show if you have the chance and grab a nice cup of tea (or coffee if you prefer) while your at it. Below are a few of my photos in the show.

My photo is the toaster in the top right corner

A close up of my photo (Toaster)

My second photo second from the left.

A closeup of my second Photo.

Yeserday I was driving back to campus from Jones Coffee house where I helped photo club hang our exhibition (Photos coming soon). I noticed that the state capitol building had blue light shining on it from all 4 sides. I though this was cool so I stopped and snapped a few photos. These were taken hand held with my Fuji F30 P&S while leaning against as lamp post. Does anyone know why it was blue last night?

The pictures below are of the capitol during a evening when it is normally lit. I took these in the summer of 2007 I believe. They may have already been posted here but they are worthy of being posted again.