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COBF etf is raging today

I enjoyed the economist musk interview a lot. Economist is probably my favourite news publication, read it cover to cover each week, and Musk is the business leader I respect the most so go figure. I think the economist is quite middle of the road and not some leftie rag as portrayed by Elon, I’d say he’d probably have similar viewpoints to the Economist on many topics. It’s quite interesting to read the analysis of these interviews after watching them, and how different the content is portrayed. I thought it was a very normal discussion where they built a good repoire, lots of interesting back and forths, a few heated moments like any long interview but nothing out of the ordinary. Then I see the news articles after “deranged Elon musk melts down in interview”. And yes as a fellow European I also think Europe has a bit of an immigration problem. In Ireland there has been a noticeable uptick in women violently murdered over the last few years, and a high proportion of these have been carried out by immigrant/asylum seeker. My wife is Canadian and non-white so I am sensitive to both sides, but I do agree with Elon that having immigrant men from cultures with beliefs massively in conflict to western values is causing big problems. And the trend of politicians of avoiding any reasonable discussion around this by just labelling anybody ‘far right’ is problematic. There are likely lots of sensible people who behind closed doors think this, but the public face of this ends up being people like Conor McGregor and Tommy Robinson.

Glad to have you on this forum - you don't seem like the typical CoBF Value guy - I think the diversity is good, so not too echo-chamber-y. Congrats on the Semi Shorts!

I think you have the right way of looking at it. Viking is right that carrying value (CV) does make some adjustment for retained earnings. But given the fact that the value of an associate or consolidated holding will typically go up as a multiple of those earnings, you have 2 choices that I think are mutually exclusive: count Fairfax's portion of those earnings (and eventually assign a multiple of those earnings in the valuation) OR count the added value of that associate, obviously with no multiple; that would be an increase in the value of the holding, not earnings per se. If you count the portion of earnings AND the added value of the associate, you are making 2 mistakes in my view: you are double counting the earnings, and you are counting all the increase in value of the holding as earnings. Of course, if the associate is sold, the increase in value really is earnings, but it is one-time earnings, as that earning stream will then be over. The associate is valued as a multiple of its earnings because there is a presumption that those earnings will be ongoing. And obviously, in the year when the associate is sold, it would also be a mistake to count its value both as a multiple of its earnings AND as a capital gain, which would also be double counting in the same way.

Ah well I'll always be a coward Covered all MU and SKHY Went long NQ futures

The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell (also a famous philosopher) is very good for an in-depth overview. But unlike Russell, I agree with Blaise Pascal in believing in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and not of the philosophers and of the learned. Therefore IMO, the best book for studying truth, knowledge, and realty would be the Holy Bible and Jesus would be the best explainer of that truth.

Concur, same thing for pharma. Over the past 5 days the S&P is flat, the Nasdaq is down 1-2%, the SOX is down over 10% while the two pharma companies we have are up 6+% and 9+% over the same time period. It's rotation. I've mentioned to my son that in the short term, market sentiment can make the independent thinker look like an idiot, or a genius. I was an idiot the first 6 months this year but, miraculously, I'm brilliant now. (tongue firmly planted in cheek) -Crip

I really like the two of these. Cost half as much as the Kingfisher because it's import, but tastes the same.

Bought some MU and SKHY to cover 20% of my short positions

Interesting. As an outsider (USA), I'm glad to hear this. This Berlin Pride horror is just the latest preventable incident.

Indeed. And more broadly, our organization is now removing access for a lot of development focused models too (think Opus 4.8, some gemini variants, etc.). The token cost of all these vibe coders got out of hand and is hitting annual budgets and it's only end of July. If you are crafty, you can verify this as some of the people started taking the complains to reddit. LOL

LOL! Expensive experiment.

it’s purely market shifting - on days chips are down money go to fairfax and the likes the opposite happens on days mr market likes chips

I wouldn't be surprised if it happened. My group in a $50B+ revenue organization vibe coded something. Our dear leader who is AI-focused but technology experience-light mandated we switch despite disruptions and continiuty issues. As of last week we are now shutting down the vibe-coded project and going back to the vendor we tried replacing. We ended up spending 4x annual cost of the other vendor in token cost alone.

BRK and other insurers including Fairfax jumped at the open today. This is on top of the jump yesterday with Fairfax. I don’t see any general insurance news that could have caused this.

I don’t know if Visser has a model Portfolio but his long chip/ memory short software trade gets totally obliterated. I guess he is in the finfluencer and newsletter business now, so he will be OK.

Trump., Mao and Hitler, Franco were all autocrats, so they have methods in common and goals that are different. All autocrats have in common that they believe they historic figures and above their peers and just can make up the rules rather then play by them. How far they can push it depends on how the people and institutions respond because they have by their nature very little restraint themselves.

She not a neutral commentator, she is interjecting her opinion into a question. I think Elon is a douche, but nothing hypocritical about calling how he sees it. Europe has a problem, large sections of its population, of which I include myself, want a stop to immigration right now.

Check the GDP growth tables you can find at FRED. There were only 2 years of negative GDP ((-0.5/0.2% in 1974 and 1975) . The other years we had GDP growth of 4-5%. The GDP growth in the 70’s was better then what we have now. The 70’s were bad for equities but not so much for workers or even the general economy and that despite the number the oil price shock did in 1974 on the economy. I feel that the 70’s have an unwarranted bad reputation nowadays.

The older I get the more I am convinced that Irony is a constant in the universe.

Equity shrug off the higher interest rates because earnings grow for the SPY is very high. I think it’s north of 20%. The earnings growth is quite concentrated in semis etc but is also broadening. So the fundamentals are negating the higher interest rates for now.

You might also want to look at the current trend in who owns US treasuries, along with the current level of US reserves. It would seem that QE is involuntarily back in a big way, as foreign buyers are walking away from new issues. It's just not clear as to whether existing debt is also not being rolled in full, or if this is just brand new debt that couldn't find a buyer outside of the Fed Reserve. Increasing fragility ...... looking for an opportunity. SD

Looks like there is double counting when you try to include the excess of FV over CV as equivalent to increase in economic earnings because the part of Associate profit is already included in the reported accounting earnings. Please correct if wrong because you include Either the part of earnings Or the increase in market value Not both. For portfolio/m2m holdings we include their mark to market increase instead of their proportional part of earnings while for Associate holdings we do opposite. Take an example of a simple company worth 100 that earns 10 in a year. Next year, the company earns 30. As a result the market value of doubles to 200. We still count only the 30 as the earnings instead is counting +100 as additional economic gain. We understand this for this example of an individual company. An associate company is also like the part of company itself in this way. More like consolidated than mark to market. Professional accountants may comment if this is right or wrong way of thinking that we include (part of) earnings and ignore market value for the following: 1. the company itself (100%) 2. consolidated subsidiaries (>50%) 3. associates (20 to 50%) While we include only the increase (or decrease) in market value of those holdings of which less than 20% is owned and ignore their earnings. The point is to include one or the other.

In that respect, Elon Musk is just another snow flake, for sure, taking his own record of insults etc. into consideration.