Eldad

Chris is great. He says completely ignore the financial press. I love when Buffett starts going crazy on stats at the meetings. 30% of all liquid consumption in this country is soft drinks. Milk and coffee have been going down for decades. When he reads, it’s statistical facts. Trade journals, government reports on train loads, Annual Reports, etc. Skip what the idiot financial journalist thinks and go to the source.

I always thought about Berkshire’s never sell a wholly owned subsidiary promise as a way to get better, family owned businesses to sell to them. But it also makes you act with extreme buy discipline.

Yes thank you. I have found that to be true. Getting too excited about tariffageddon has definitely been counterproductive this year.

That is awesome. If you buy it, it should be with an extremely long time horizon. Even if the investment doesn’t pan out, it may be better to just hold and let its percentage slowly sink, because it will further engrain the discipline of Munger.

The art of doing less. The accounts of my wife and children handily beat my main account every year. They basically own the same stocks. The difference is they only hold the 10 best stocks and I don’t even log into those accounts unless there is a major bargain to be had. I tried to limit myself to 15 buys or sales of any kind last year and failed miserably. I am trying to start again today with 10 for the remainder of 2025. I invite you all to join me in doing less. Like any other addiction, one day at a time.

“You see, everything moves in cycles” Congrats on retiring Ray and getting time to read a couple history books. Now please stop talking to everyone like they are an idiot.

I have heard people say that because of its use in EVs and solar panels, it trades more like an industrial metal now. Copper was slightly down but the other industrial metals were up.

OTIS, my man

Read IRS Pub 550. That is correct. Thanks

YTM is over 6. Not aware of any treasury with a 5%+ cash yield. If you are playing the rate cut, it offers a bigger discount to close with a higher coupon if you are wrong.

Is there anything more hated currently than a long bond? Usually that’s a great place to at least start sniffing around.

Yes. It’s not the smartest admittedly, but it’s keeping me busy and away from looking at what I believe are overvalued stocks. And I am looking to potentially make something like a half a percent of net worth investment, and I am something like 92% invested in stocks. I don’t think the de minimus rule applies to corporate bonds unless they are purchased with an original issue discount when originally issued. Not on the secondary market.

Yeah you are right. There are not many and things would need to get worse, but I’m having fun looking. UNP 2071s trading at 0.66 cents on the dollar. Current cash yield of 5.75%. That one could get interesting with another drop.

That is what I’m looking at right now. Some like 50/60 year corporate trading at a large discount. Lots of countries with higher debt to gdp and lower growth than the US have much lower interest rates. Recessions, technological innovation, and declining populations are all very deflationary. I am reminded of the study I think in Security Analysis where Graham shows the same bond going back and forth between a huge discount to a premium and back again over a very long period of time. Even if you are wrong, if you reinvest the 6% for 50 years or whatever, you should be fine. And maybe you get a big pop with big time government bond buying again or naturally declining rates. I think this is a fairly asymmetric trade weighted heavily to the upside.

Or because the return is more back loaded towards 2045. Current cash yield would be way below a newer issue with a higher coupon even with the discount. Cash yield is almost 100 bps lower. 3.7ish vs 4.7ish.

Yeah, maybe so. I like that the general consensus is for lower growth on new elevators going forward. Clearly that will be false if India, Africa, etc. have China like development in the future. But the prices don’t reflect that lower growth because they are crushing it on maintenance margins currently.

The airplane play seems to be very popular. Just in general everyone seems to like HEI, RTX, etc. for like the past three years. India, Africa, Developing world middle class rising works for almost every international business. What is currently in a temporary decline like Air was 4-5 years ago? I can still see TDG on my screen for $300-$400~ in 2020 and me thinking it had too much debt. Uggggh. Otis, Kone is similar but not at all cheap. Maybe someday.

Haha. He needs some lubrizol grease on that bad boy. Imagining a castle siege sounding like a loud flock of geese for months on end. “Ok ok we surrender stop the noise!!!”

I’m worried that when the bull market resumes, he may become a communist.

Thanks. The crowd seems to be turning into Peter Schiff. That scenario seems very unlikely. Threw a couple bucks at some Treasury 20s and 6% 20 year A Corporates.

Gfp what is the idea? Rates will definitely be cut and long bonds bought by Feds when SHTF?

I doubt that will ever move the needle but any new manufacturing would likely be built in the South. Most pro business. So CSX, NS, UNP. I like UNP and CP because they haul the most bulk cargos over vast empty spaces. Bulk is the most profitable. UNP and CP can run longer trains (more profitable) in the vast open areas in which they operate. Also, bulk will keep its moat for rails when driverless trucks come. Intermodal will get hurt. After visiting PHX for spring break and seeing Waymo, driverless trucks are probably here very soon.

He became President twice with the entire established world order trying to prevent it. He may not be a high IQ individual, but he is cunning as hell and history shows he usually has a pretty good and pretty unorthodox plan.

Maybe but the list of countries that have contacted the US hoping to make a deal by lowering their own tariffs are mostly the SE Asian countries you have named. These countries have more to fear from China than the US and they know it. China is a borderline rogue state that is closely allied with Russia and Iran let’s not forget. It is ironic that a lot of what we may be trying to do here could have already been accomplished by TPP which Trump axed because Hillary liked it.

Yes good point. I am talking out of both sides of my mouth I guess. I think trailing PE in December for SPY was like 30+. I’m always going to at least save my new cash at that point. Also, it’s a great time to question, why do I own this? and cut if it doesn’t make sense. Then my understanding of the history of down markets shows if you concentrate your buying between 10-30% down you will not usually miss much more on the downside. We only got to 20% so far on this one.