UK

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russian-has-lost-almost-90-of-its-prewar-army-u-s-intelligence-says-2e0372ab https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/eu-gas-supply/ So perhaps there are many more other outcomes, but just looking at those two above...and then the answer to your question maybe depends from whose position you are looking at all this situation.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-11/blackberry-won-t-spin-off-iot-unit-names-john-giamatteo-ceo?srnd=premium-europe

From this article: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/11/29/an-unruly-opec-is-causing-problems-for-russia-and-saudi-arabia The last time the group faced a similar state of affairs—decelerating demand, new entrants and co-ordination problems—in 2014, officials chose a different strategy, as Alberto Behar of the imf and Robert Ritz of Cambridge University have written. Back then members increased supply in an attempt to drive down the oil price. The aim, as announced at opec’s meeting in November nine years ago, was to grab market share (and in so doing drive out American competitors). This had the advantage of stimulating demand and not requiring discipline among opec’s members: they were able to produce oil to their heart’s content. Such an approach is no longer feasible. opec’s market-share strategy last time round helped discipline America’s oil producers, pushing them to become more efficient and therefore more resistant to future squeezes. JPMorgan Chase, a bank, reckons that the cost of getting oil out of the American ground has declined by more than one-third since 2014. The country’s oilmen have found methods to fracture rocks that produce more fissures, easing the extraction of oil, and now drill deeper wells that have longer lifespans. Saudi Arabia would very much like opec+’s current strategy to succeed. Its free-spending government has pushed up the price at which the country’s budget balances to $85 a barrel, according to the imf—and that number is higher when outlays from its sovereign wealth fund are included. Russia, meanwhile, needs oil revenues to fund its war in Ukraine. Delaying the meeting to November 30th did not help either country. Doing so wiped another 5% from the price of Brent crude.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-06/can-ozempic-wegovy-treat-alcoholism-for-big-pharma-it-s-not-a-priority?srnd=premium-europe

Thanks for feedback.

Interesting way of doing business: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-03/tsmc-intel-s-key-chip-materials-maker-goes-into-debt-rather-than-raise-prices?srnd=premium-europe One of the chipmaking industry’s small but indispensable suppliers is sinking deeper in debt because it’s refusing to raise prices to cover mounting capex costs. Osaka-based Fuso Chemical Co. is bearing the cost to help churn out bigger volumes of sophisticated chips without asking customers for more. That’s despite holding a more than 90% share of the world’s silica used to polish silicon wafers and counting deep-pocketed heavyweights Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung Electronics Co. and Intel Corp. as customers.

So all the recent underinvestment, ESG, sanctions, strategic reserve drain, two conflicts (one in the Middle East), substiantial infliation...and yet oil is somewhat cheaper even in nominal terms than it was a 10 yers ago? It is kind of a bit perplexing if you look at it this way, isn't it? And I still have no idea even how to explain this ongoing situation, not to speak about trying to predict the future:)

But from the recent release: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/news/nov2123.pdf "The testamentary trust will be self-liquidating after a decade or so and operate with a lean staff." "In the short-term, Berkshire’s distinctive characteristics and behavior will be supported by my large Berkshire holdings. Before long, however, Berkshire will earn whatever reputation it then deserves." So my guess this long horizon he talks about maybe relates only to foundations run by children or a small part of total distributions?

Selecting period right perhaps is always a problem. But you are probably right. But again not sure how practical it would be to include some longer previous periods with a valuations of single digits? Or what is a fair PE for the SNP500 in your opinion? 16x looks quite reasonable for me. Then I subjectively like this period since it basically matches my own participation in the stock market, despite I was mostly busy doing learning from mistakes and other silly things for the first decade of this period:)

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/30/full-transcript-from-cnbcs-charlie-munger-a-life-of-wit-and-wisdom-.html Yeah, but not like Warren. More than half of Munger money has already been passed to the descendants. So I made exactly the opposite, it’s a smaller amount of money, but I made exactly the opposite decision for the majority of our money. The majority of his money he gave away. And now he didn’t exactly give it away. It goes to Buffett Foundations that go on for another 100 years. Perhaps this timeframe he mentioned relates to only part / foundations run by children?

Just some nice charts from: https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/insights/market-insights/guide-to-the-markets/

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/activist-investor-ubben-shutting-down-inclusive-capital-wsj-2023-11-29/ Despite Ubben's strong reputation, people familiar with InCap's fund raising efforts said it has been tough to raise cash and noted that investor tastes, especially when it came to environmental, social and governance issues (ESG), have shifted. With markets tumbling last year, many investors simply wanted to see returns instead of focusing on ESG issues. What a surprise...

Great news! I liked seasons 1-3 very much!

Thanks! Did not realised this.

https://omny.fm/shows/masters-in-business/masters-in-business-brad-gerstner-podcast

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-01/xi-takes-flurry-of-small-steps-to-open-china-after-biden-thaw?srnd=premium-europe

More recent research, however, has found that most children learn to lie effectively between the ages of 2 and 4. The first successful lie can be pegged as a developmental achievement because it marks the child's discovery that her mind and thinking are separate from her parents'. https://www.scholastic.com/parents/family-life/social-emotional-learning/development-milestones/truth-about-lying.html#:~:text=More recent research%2C however%2C has,are separate from her parents'.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/charlie-munger-life-money-ae3853ad?mod=hp_trending_now_article_pos5 It’s 1931, and a boy and girl, both about seven years old, are playing on a swing set on N. 41st St. in Omaha. A stray dog appears and, without warning, charges. The children try to fight the dog off. Somehow, the boy is unscathed, but the dog bites the girl. She contracts rabies and, not long after, dies. The boy lives. His name? Charles Thomas Munger. Charlie Munger, the brilliant investing billionaire who died on Tuesday in a California hospital 34 days before his 100th birthday, told me that story when I interviewed him last month. I’d asked the vice chairman of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway BRK.B -0.38%decrease; red down pointing triangle: What do you think of people who attribute their success solely to their own brilliance and hard work? “I think that’s nonsense,” Munger snapped, then told his story, which I can’t recall him ever publicly recounting. “That damn dog wasn’t 3 inches from me,” he said. “All my life I’ve wondered: Why did it bite her instead of me? It was sheer luck that I lived and she died.” He added: “The records of people and companies that are outliers are always a mix of a reasonable amount of intelligence, hard work and a lot of luck.”

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/companies/fairfax-to-sell-68-stake-in-thomas-cook-india/article67587453.ece

I think you are right!

Rest in peace. Gone but not forgotten.

I think that, despite of some problems and imperfections, this immigration system and it's ability to atract and melt people quite successfully (contrary to some other situations e.g. in Europe) from all over the world is basically a secret source of US, Canada and maybe a few other, mostly English speaking, countries. And it bodes very well, especially for the future, when most of the world, including China, is starting to deal with huge demographic problems. Couple this with a deteriorating geopolitical situation elsewhere in the world and North America really stands out as a region which can defend itself and be reasonably safe, has abundant energy, water, agricultural resources etc, positive demographic, rule of law etc, and so not only people and ideas, but I think also capital will flock in a major way into this region long into the future. If you where a martian, looking at the earth from the distance, where else would you put majority of your capital:)? So of course it is not a minus for an insurer or a conglomerate with a major focus and exposure to North America:) I was just listening to the somewhat relevant discussion about this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4KR5dBh5OM If not for martians, this whole idea and attractiveness of Canada or US is sure much more understandable and obvious for some Eastern European investor:)

Thanks. Well, if main participants of events do not know what are they even talking about, everything looks even more accidental and confusing to me:) But his is the source of a full version of the story on mobile OS, from which I copied only a few funny lines: https://stratechery.com/2023/attenuating-innovation-ai/ 'This opinion is, to use a technical term favored by analysts, bullshit. Windows Mobile wasn’t three months late relative to Android; Windows Mobile launched as the Pocket PC 2000 operating system in, you guessed it, 2000, a full eight years before the first Android device hit the market.' But my whole point was, that for whatever reasons, Microsoft missed it and it is kind of scary how accidental some important developments in tech are.

Again, my simple understanding: because they already had like half of the portfolio in tech, in Apple, they liked the best.

Thanks. You are right, angst is not necessary and I need to be more patient, because, on the other hand, how could one even complain, with FFH up like 50+ per cent YTD, after a few up years before:)