Yeske Buie Weekend Digest 5/8/2009

Mother’s Day arrives this Sunday, so I hope you’ve prepared for the big day. If you’re looking for a no-cost gift, consider making “Mom Checks” that you can fill out with chores you’d be willing to perform. Mom can then cash them in whenever the spirit moves her (and be sure to leave some lying around for your kids to find). Have a great weekend!

Media Matters

The Live Big List just keeps getting bigger! In fact, one of the reporters we work with at Businessweek, Lauren Young, wrote about it on the BusinessWeek website a few weeks ago, offering a few suggestions of her own. Dozens more were posted by her readers. Check out Lauren’s blog on BusinessWeek.com.

Lauren also quoted Dave in the latest issue of BusinessWeek. She was writing about unique benefits you can sometimes get by working with a financial advisor. Among other things, she notes the fact that we’re able to get access for our clients to the institutional portfolios of Dimensional Fund Advisors. These funds normally have a minimum initial investment of $5 million each, but our relationship with DFA allows us to access them on behalf of clients in any increment, no matter how small.

How to Get Help

And don’t forget that our updated client page (https://clients.yebu.com/) offers a full list of who does what and who you should contact for help with various issues. Contact numbers and email links are available from that page as well.

Buffet-Mania

And no, I’m not talking about Jimmy Buffet but the Oracle of Omaha himself. The annual shareholder meeting for Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet’s main holding company, was held last weekend and it led to the usual Buffet-mania:

A Back to Basics Weekend With Warren Buffet. Opening quote: “If you have a 150 I.Q., sell 30 points to someone else. You need to be smart, but not a genius.”

Is Warren Buffet Brilliant or Lucky? Answer: A little bit of both.

Here’s the Story on Berkshire’s Munger. Learn all about Warren’s 85-year-old partner, Charlie Munger.

While we’re not stock pickers like Buffet, we do have at least one thing in common: an abiding faith in the virtues of value investing.

Quote of the Week

“Wall Street needs to recognize that its proper role is, as it has been in the past, to follow the real economy, rather than trying to drive it. During the housing bubble, the financial sector essentially tried to create reality. Now’s the time for it to respond to reality instead.”

James Surowiecki writing in the New Yorker