Blake Hampton

From the 17th through the 19th, Buffett bought almost 9 million shares of OXY stock. Since the 10-day average volume is about 14.5 million shares, that means Buffett bought approximately 20% of all the shares traded in just those three days. I find it interesting because I can recall him explaining how he bought 20% of the volume the first go-round. Is this a limit for him? Does he start experiencing problems when he tries moving above this figure? Form 4 - Buffett's OXY Purchases

My best ideas are oil and T-bills.

These presidents hold real power, but maybe not as much as people make it out to be.

I agree but I also think Trump has a very different agenda than Harris would've. That said, there's a lot of things currently happening which Trump is not responsible for. Problem is, is that when shit hits the fan, people have the tendency to blame everything on the current man in charge, and I honestly think it's one the dumbest aspects of politics.

One of the best books I've ever read, if not the best, was Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It's truly an incredible book and I read it three times back-to-back when I was going through a tough period, it completely changed my life. One of the things that stuck with me was how Frankl described the cruelty that he would see committed by other Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz, they were called Capos. "As Frankl describes, the worst and most brutal individuals, sometimes former criminals, were assigned to be capos. They could be more cruel and vicious to the prisoners than the SS guards. Any capo who was not sufficiently sadistic and violent would quickly be replaced." The lesson I learned from this, that I will hopefully remember for the rest of my life, is that the morality within specific groups of humans isn't simply black and white. There's always good and evil everywhere.

Fairfax Financial Holdings (FRFHF) Shares outstanding: 22.1 million Share price: $1,397 Market cap: $30.9 billion Tangible equity (as of Q3 2024): $22.6 billion Total tangible assets: $90.4 billion - Bonds: $37.4 billion, 41% of total - Cash and cash equivalents: $8.1 billion, 9% of total - Stocks and investments in associates: $17.5 billion, 19% of total ------------------------------------------------------------------ This is honestly all I need to see. Why would I pay 1.4x tangible book for a company that has nearly half of its total assets in bonds, and I wouldn't touch the entire world of fixed income with a 10-foot pole. I give detailed evidence why I'm cautious right now, and the only response some of you can muster is an insult. We will just have to wait and see I guess.

Charles Akre: The Value of Cash To us, the value of cash has very little, if anything, to do with the return one earns on it directly. Rather, the investment value of cash is fortitude. In a bear market, cash is the “thin green line” that separates crisis from opportunity. This view is expressed well by Morgan Housel in his book The Psychology of Money: In other words, the value of cash is not the return it provides but the behavior it promotes. Because long-term investment success has more to do with behavior than just about anything else, we believe investors that are willing to hold or accumulate cash when valuations are frothy are more likely to behave better during tough times when opportunities abound. By “behave better,” we mean sell less and/or buy more.

When I look at pictures of these massive ghost cities, they also seem like they were built in remote and terrible places. You see these huge skyscrapers that have the capacity for thousands, but yet there is no infrastructure in sight. I'm talking about the basic things like roads, grocery outlets, and the additional items people need to survive. This is especially concerning considering the amount of people they planned on living in these places.

Am I the only one who thinks that the Chinese property bubble is actually worse than it's been portrayed? I haven't looked too hard at the details and it seems difficult to get good numbers, but it simply seems staggering to me. It's incredible that these developers got away with building entire "ghost cities." I mean my god... I was curious if anyone had any special economic insight on this mess.

Inflation exceeding 5% is quite rare and debt to GDP hasn’t been this high since WW2. I wouldn’t say modern, but I do think we have seen something economically similar before. Problem is there wasn’t the technology then as there is now. It’s a completely different game.

I have made made my opinion known and have given my argument. I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

My Trump trade is preparing for inflation and longer term, possibly a fiscal crisis. I personally like oil because it's one of the few parts of the market that doesn't feel valued to the sky, and energy has performed well historically during inflationary periods. I'm also sitting on a large amount of cash (50%) as I think that there's A LOT of risk that people are currently ignoring. If you assume that future imports will approximately equal what they were in 2023, and you also assume that we will see across-the-board tariffs of 10% (which some might deem conservative), that would be a little more than $300 billion that U.S. households will have to absorb in price increases. People who think that these costs will be borne by China or that tariffs will somehow instantly spur U.S. manufacturing are simply not living in reality. While I agree that trade is something that needs to be desperately fixed, and has needed to be fixed for some time, this is not how you do it. This has to be inflationary. I will also add that Jerome Powell is not scared of Trump. If Trump creates inflation, Powell will respond with raising rates. Trump is notoriously flip-floppy on both people and policy. In my mind however, tariffs and tax cuts are almost a certainty with him. I'm assuming that tariffs will be the danger short-term and tax cuts longer-term, as our federal government is in a very poor position financially. This will only be exacerbated by less revenue. Reaganomics, the idea that cutting taxes somehow pays for itself, does not work. Why have we not learned this yet?

I’m currently offering an anger management course where I think you might be a good fit. In all seriousness though, Biden was not a good president. Draining the SPR? Minimum corporate tax rates? Hundreds of billions for education relief? I will admit that a lot of his stuff was really dumb. But I will also die on a cross saying that Trump is dumb on steroids.

I should offer a paid anger management course for all of Trump’s supporters, I would reap a windfall.

How are the GDPs of Western Germany and Eastern Germany relevant in this context whatsoever? Our government has three options to fix the deficit, either cut spending, increase taxes, or do some of both. Trump has said he will not cut spending to any significant degree so there is only one option remaining. Apparently wanting a balanced budget is socialism now.