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.

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

This is a late post coming, I shot these images about 3 months ago now. I have some friends who each have Mazda RX-7s. We had all generations of cars represented that night. Generation 1, light blue, Generation 2 Red and Gray, and Generation 3, Red. We really had a nice time that night. These guys have some great cars.

For more images check out the gallery here

I have needed to update the blog for a long time and just got around to it today. Over the past few months I have taken some photos of a friend’s 1st gen RX-7 and more recently we had a 3rd gen RX-7 join us for some rolling shots. A handful of images really turned out well. Here are some of the results. More can be seen in the gallery.

On a side note I have started programming this year’s animated Christmas Light Show.

I took a multiplicity photo earlier this week of myself being my own pit crew on the Ferrari 308. I think that it turned out well.

I got a chance last week to take the Ferrari out and take some more detailed photos of it. More photos can be found in the 308 Gallery

Last Friday I had an accident. For months, my dad has been researching new grills to buy. He finally decided on one and bought it. It arrived last Friday. This is no ordinary grill that you buy at the Home Depot. It is a DCS and its solid stainless steel. With its cart, it weighs approximately 200 lbs. That evening we were assembling it and needed to move it. I went to get a good position and had to readjust my hands to keep them from slipping. The spot my fingers found when the lifting began somehow inside a louver. It was sharp here and the weigh, lifting and sliding cut my fingers like a knife. Lots of blood began flowing and we made a prompt visit to Urgent Care about 3 blocks from my house. The dogs were happy to clean up the blood that was on the floor.

We arrived at Urgent Care 3 minutes before they closed. For the first time I could see the severity of my injury. I had deeply cut my middle, ring, and pinky fingers on my left hand. They made me was out my cuts and then the worst part of numbing them came next. After that, six stitches went in. I received two stitches in each finger. The entire process took about 15 min. After this, we went to the Culvers car shot right across the street. Below is a picture of what my fingers looked like 24 hours after the stitches when I was changing the dressing. Some people had requested the pictures after hearing about what I did.

It is good to be done with school. Everything ended up great. I was very satisfied with my grades for the semester. Microsoft Office 2007 finally came into the campus bookstore and its great to get the Enterprise edition for only $15.

The first week off from school Aaron, Ryan, and myself finished the ChristmasLux project. More on this later but the project now has its own blog. Look for more soon. http://liquidretro.net/lightshow/

The second week off I detailed the Ferrari extensively. It now looks like a completely different car.

I found this commercial someplace on the web and really liked how it showed the evolution of the Ferrari Formula 1 car through the years and around the world. The best part of this commercial though has to be the the sound of all of these wonderful engines. Make sure you speakers are on for this one.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As Spring Break ends tonight and Classes begin tomorrow morning I think about what I have done the past week. My dad and I drove 2800 miles in 6 days averaging 467 miles a day. This was actually more fun than it sounds. We got as far south and east as Tallahassee Florida. With the exception of adding 1 qt of oil the A8 worked wonderfully. I came to realize that some of the stereo types that are though of about the south sadly still exist today.

It was amazing to me that the speed limits meant nothing to the persons driving on the interstate. A speed limit of 70mph really means 80mph and if your doing 80mph your in the slow lane. Traffic moved between 85-90 and at times faster. This combined with the very fast lane changes leaving little room for error makes me think that everyone thinks they are a driver for NASCAR. Lets just say that the German A8 had no problem keeping up with the NASCAR fans.
Stopping in Memphis on the way home was fun. I took a tour of Gibson Guitars and saw how they were made. I always love to see all that goes into a product or item. I also took a tour of Sun Studios. This is where Elvis, BB King, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee and many other artists recorded at. It was neat to see all of this because I had learned about it in my History of Rock and Roll class this semester.

Here are some photos of the trip. Facebook viewers you must got to my webpage to view the photos. Http://blog.LiquidRetro.Net

Here is the route of where we went.

Miles

The Quitman, GA office.

The Ocean

Gibson Guitars

Gibson Guitars

Gibson Guitars

Sun Studios

The Million Dollar Quartet

The vocal Mic that all of the Sun artists used to record

The Audi A8L in Color

The Audi A8L in B&W