Luke

Completely exited Amazon and moved proceeds into Exor, Brookfield and Texas Instruments. All IMO at more attractive valuations with increased upside

I regularly watch the Eiger 2008 record of ueli steck, especially the part from 1:07 gives me goose bumps, when the music slowly starts and he just races the mountain. Climbing in the himalayas is just something for itself i think, some sort of primitive experience, the community, the friendships made, the trust needed for the climbing. Goes a long way back into our DNA Of course dont push your luck too much and maybe stay below 7000 meters :D! Which other mountains did you climb already? Thank you so much for sharing the pics @nwoodman

Wow man, just wow. I am impressed and so happy for you, i mean those are the most giant peaks on earth and with so many legends and stories. The legends messner and habeler without oxygen Did you know that shortly before the peak at their attempt, habeler because of severe weakness, just made a snow sign he wants to turn down because he was afraid for his life and his wife and kids? But messner knew he could do it and they succeeded...i cant imagine being at base camp and being there. So happy for your success. Also at 52 its a very very good job and also without taking any meds. 3 Persons helicoptered out wow, yeah this is really not an easy trip...!! And interesting to hear with the bugs, i never experienced that anywhere in the world, must be annoying. and you even made the peak wow. I have no one to share the fascination for these mountains, great stuff man! 6200meters is already so high...What difficulties did you experience due to the cold? I can imagine that breathing is difficult, on the videos i always here the coughing, the cold air literally goes through my monitor. Primal! 1am start of climb and summiting after 7.5 hours, what a ride :D! And another trip planned, dont get addicted :D! Yeah, after watching the 14x 8000er in one season by Nirmal Purja i couldnt even imagine what a machine he is. The nepalese are really one of a kind, heard so many great stories and they go to great lenghts to enable climbs. They are built different...

@OliverSung Thank you a lot for sharing, great read and good write up of the fairfax thesis we share here

Wow man absolutely stunning, i have been a silent observer of 8000er expeditions and consumer of hours over hours and books over books of content about this stuff. I dont think i am that good with heights unfortunately (going above 3200m at Skiing already gives me Stress even after few days of acclimatization) but i am happy for you to have been at these amazing mountains How did you cope with the heights? How was the cold? Are you planning to do one of the smaller peaks at some time there?

Her credentials: https://www.isabellaweber.com/about Two PHDs, one in economics one in development studies, she is also fluent in mandarin/chinese.

I sold some Amazon (current average USD 87) to add to Exor.

Always enjoy the discussions with you guys here!

I watched an interview today of an economist who wrote a Book about China and their System+why there is little inflation compared to the west, i will link the book she wrote and then tell you what her points where. I think @Gregmal will like it. Sorry but its only in german but just to understand it: Titel is: ,,The ghost of inflation and how china escaped shock therapy,,. Her theory of why we have inflation: 1. Covid and the pandemic caused supply chain shocks which let prices in some areas spike. 2. War in Russia caused price shocks in multiple sectors energy etc which also lead to higher prices. 3. Businesses immediately increased prices to cover margins. This lead to an interesting effect, since lots of businesses had these higher prices there was a price increase across multiple companies that would not have been possible without the initial price shock because customers would just change supermarkets or specific food brand. This only worked because across industries prices were raised (not possible in a normal market environment). Thats the inflation we see now. 4. Price shocks decreased, costs are lower again now (alternative energy solutions in place, restructuring of supply chain) but prices are still high and no business is decreasing (nvidia decreasing their GPU prices slowly, gotta face reality that nobody is willing to pay 1500€ for a GPU anymore). 5. China never faced this problem because they have systems that prevent price shocks (energy supplies that can be activated by state if there is a price shock, to prevent inflation) (food supplies (pork meat) that can prevent food inflation when there is a supply chain shock etc). Their economy is also very diversified and more autonomous than a germany as an example-->less inflationary economy. (chinese leadership very aware that inflation could kill their power, the revolution that lead to the downfall of the nationalists which then fled to taiwan was due to hyperinflation and bad economic situation in china, therefore they have all sorts of systems in place that try to prevent inflationary triggers) 6. She also thinks raising rates is not the right tool@Gregmal because the problem were price shocks that slowly go away now and raising rates wont really solve the initial problem. 7. Thinks that states and governments in the west should prepare for further inflationary triggers and build up some supplies to prevent further price shocks. 8. Stimulus money had a weak effect. 9. Off shoaring foreign industry (taking semiconductor production to US) is highly inflationairy due to higher costs-->higher prices for devices-->general higher inflation and could be a massive problem.

Regarding Li Lu id love to hear more from him, his View on China etc. Id pay quite some money to see his holdings haha. So sad he is under the radar. I once contacted their fund and asked if they take money and what kind of rules they have etc, its hard to get in. Rarely open.

I do own megacaps and I think the same phenomenon applies to amazon too. I think regarding amazon or tencent, the runway is still big enough for shareholders to profit but the bigger the marketcap and the more expensive, the more risk and less upside (quite the nobrainer ok) Just as a general mental model i think its good to consider marketcap in that way.

That megacaps have a way harder time moving the needle than smaller companies. Imagine what Apple has to Spawn to increase their Marketcap by 10%, a 200b Valued Business. Sure they can do it and they have a massive audience but the returns are just way harder to achieve on that Level. Too much focus is on the big names and i worry there is not as much growth left as the market thinks

Yeah pretty crazy wow, would have liked to see it haha...good that they managed him though.

Curious what exactly did he throw at Gates? At the AGM we also had the question at Charly about the MRNA vaccines..:D

Absolutely embarrassed for the girl that couldnt even spell out the names of the guys sitting there...common...besides that i am very happy to see both of them sharp and cheerful

Munger just sits here as a tourist attraction with people trying to get funny pics with him lol, we can see the tired look on his face...:D

Exited Meta and will add proceeds to current holdings or maybe a new position into Texas Instruments i am researching ATM

Trimmed more Meta for BN

Thanks for sharing!

I agree mostly, i doubt though the stimulus played a bigger role here but could have strenghtened the covid supply chain issue effect, imagine also how many people pushed that money into the stock market and how much of the stimulus money was lost to the funds that sold the tech stocks at all these high valuations to the massive bag holders everywhere now. The crypto market alone lost a trillion in value, lots of money redistributed. With all these geopolitical tension, capex boom to diversify the supply chain, i think the easy stability and relative peace we had the last 20 years are not for granted anymore. So yeah, ups and downs makes sense to me too

So if wages rise for a few precent for the american working class, this wont lead to a horrible wage-price spiral that will destroy the economy and blow us all up. It would actually be beneficial for the system. The inflation came from the disruption in the supply chain and then partly from the ukraine war, these supply chains are reorganizing themselves right now, as does the EU sort out their energy problem (i hope).

My point why this is bad for our economy is described in this study: https://www.oecd.org/newsroom/inequality-hurts-economic-growth.htm As the Time put it: "The iron rule of market economies is that we all do better when we all do better: when workers have more money, businesses have more customers, and hire more workers. Seventy percent of our economy is dependent on consumer spending; the faster and broader real incomes grow, the stronger the demand for the products and services American businesses produce. This is the virtuous cycle through which workers and businesses prospered together in the decades immediately following World War II. But as wages stagnated after 1975, so too did consumer demand; and as demand slowed, so did the economy. A 2014 report from the OECD estimated that rising income inequality knocked as much 9 points off U.S. GDP growth over the previous two decades—a deficit that has surely grown over the past six years as inequality continued to climb. That’s about $2 trillion worth of GDP that’s being frittered away, year after year, through policy choices that intentionally constrain the earning power of American workers"

"“The average income growth for the top one percent was substantially higher,” write Price and Edwards, “at more than 300 percent of the real per capita GDP rate.” The higher your income, the larger your percentage gains. As a result, the top 1 percent’s share of total taxable income has more than doubled, from 9 percent in 1975, to 22 percent in 2018, while the bottom 90 percent have seen their income share fall, from 67 percent to 50 percent. This represents a direct transfer of income—and over time, wealth—from the vast majority of working Americans to a handful at the very top"

I should have specified, of course we have millionaires that live paycheck to paycheck. What i am talking about is that 1. 15% of the US population lives in poverty, this number didnt change since 1960 (bottom should see rising of living standards in a working capitalistic system) 2. Capital flows have been hugely distributed upwards since 1975 (https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-1.html) Same counts for my homecountry germany btw, end of the 1980s the average DAX-30 Manager made 14x of the average worker, today it is 50x. These people are not as poor as someone in a Kenia Kibera Slum but the numbers do show that the average workers has been hugely disadvantaged compared to the capital the US generated over the last 50 years.

When in 2020/2021 the economy was shut down, a lot of money that was not spend went into the stock market combined with a bubble/euphoria because too many sat at home and saw crypto and tech stocks multiply. Supply chain issues and the ukraine war/energy prices pushed prices high, we see a profit price spiral now and the fed raising to slow the system down. For now i think this thing will slow down and as @gregmal said, the inflation will calm. What has to be done about the huge financial disadvantages is another story.