Li Lu's Value Investment lecture at Columbia

Streetcapitalist has a few posts which showed Li Lu's approach to investment.

If you have gone through the transcript, and understand how well Li Lu has grasped Buffett's approach, it would not surprise you that he emerged as one of the top candidates as Buffett's protege.

No, it is not about China play. China does provide Li Lu an opportunity to showcase Buffett with he BYD case study. But it is what he said in the lecture that Buffett liked.

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Now, regarding BYD, perhaps people are more interested in whether it is a BUY now.

Here is the Question raised to Li in the lecture

• So when Buffett looked at the stock maybe it was a better deal but today it is this dream of vehicles that is really priced in. It does not feel like a good value investor stock. So why would you own it today?

Li sort of dodged the question. But I can try to answer for him. One of the key Buffett principles he mentioned was "You need a margin of safety so if you are wrong you don’t lose much." When Li and Buffet got into BYD, there were significant margin of safety (translation: price was cheap). Now that price has been 8-10x, the margin is clearly much smaller. But is there still a conformtable margin? That will be your own judgment. However, if you look at Buffet's past investment, or that of MSFT (about 250x since IPO), 10x is not that big a multiple for a "margin of safety".

“为了中国的未来”,必须扼杀一切未来的唐骏于襁褓中

本来关于唐骏的事情我没什么好说的。大概四五年前第一次听说这人就觉得他的加州理工博士有问题(后记:还出了不少丑)。因为我也直接和间接认识不少同期在加州理工的研究生。那种漏洞百出的履历,行内的人一看就知道了，只有对国外不了解的盛大和新华都才会被忽悠(微软开始只要一个不需博士学位的程序员)。加州理工只有约800-1000本科生，2000研究生。唐骏造假选错了学校。因为加州理工里几乎谁都知道谁，这就是为什么早晚会有一位Albert向方舟子举报了。

之所以有标题里的话不说不快，是因为看了凤凰卫视一虎节目里有人责备方舟子打假 “扼杀了许多'未来的唐骏'们",更有的说是"扼杀了'中国未来的希望' "。

国内目前最常听到的辩论是道德与功利的辩论。改革开放30年的纯功利资本主义挂帅使得功利派得到了不少的支持，不管白猫黑猫。可惜这些功利主义的支持者的本身思维并不清晰。个人认为，功利主义没什么错的，道德也不是绝对的。其实功利和道德（或比较确切的说，是诚信）不一定是对立的。恰恰是为了"功利主义"的原因，非扼杀所有未来的“唐骏”不可。

唐骏的丑闻不是一个道德问题。假如不扼杀“未来的唐骏”，中国的企业的平均竞争力将永远无法达到国际水平，中国的企业也永远无法走出国际市场。因为，假如我们的企业界因为有一个人歪打正着的在职场成功了（注：关于唐骏对他服务的公司是否有那么大的贡献暂还存疑，这里先假设他是有贡献的），而从此去让弄虚作假的人来获得不该获得的机会，那就意味着同时有一个更有资格（虽然不一定更有能力，可是我们在做这样一个决定的时候无从知道）的人因为唐骏的作假失去了这个机会。这一个不公平的环境，长期来说（也就是统计上的平均值来说），会使得能力较低的人获得领导的机会，而抹杀了能力更强（以为无需作假或不屑作假）的人成为领导的机会，因而降低中国企业管理人员的平均能力，也因此降低这个社会（或市场）的平均竞争力。

反对贪污和反对作假的原因和意义是一样的。因为贪污和作假都会剥夺更有竞争力的人或企业该有的机会。这对于这个社会的成本是极其高昂的。这不是一种理论，而是有统计数据支持的，比如一个国家的廉洁指数和人均GDP的相关性数据。

大家可能听过关于进化论一个有名的黑蛾白蛾的故事。假如工业污染只是人类工业化过程一个短暂的过渡期，在这过渡期之前和之后由于空气没有煤灰所以都是白蛾更有竞争力。那为什么我们国家非要培养只靠煤灰掩护来逃过鸟类猎食的黑蛾呢？

诚信和功利在这个命题里的要求是一致的。鼓励诚信是为了制造一个公平的人才竞争环境。假如认为文凭不重要（需要指出的是，高盛和麦肯锡可都是只聘名牌毕业生，文凭崇拜不是中国特色的东东），可以去更改企业聘任的标准，而不是去做假。作为一个猫论的忠诚支持者，窃以为，“为了中国的未来”，必须扼杀一切“未来的唐骏”于襁褓中。

Red Army "Beat It" as an example of how RIAA is destroying its revenue opportunities

This video is a "hybrid" MTV with MJ's original sountrack on an edited video of PLA Orchestra performing something else (most likely the Long March Suite) in the People's Great Hall in Beijing.

Unfortunately, the audio is disabled on youtube due to "copyright issue". They basically used software to screen all audios uploaded on youtube and disable any music that they think belongs to their copyright.
There are many problems with this. This example shows how an opportunity to promote the music (hence creating more publicity and hype, and that in turn converts into Sales) is denied by this process. Apparently some artists such as Lady Gaga knows a lot better than the RIAA executives. Lady Gaga spent a great deal in creating her Music Videos on songs over a year old to renew hype, meanwhile allowing almost all user-generated videos (e.g. on youtube) to use her musics.

(another example I encountered a while ago is that some obscure company seems to be claiming copyrights of many unclaimed non-English ("foreiegn") music, which I doubt they really own)

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More are listed in Tudou.