UK

https://www.barrons.com/articles/berkshire-is-ready-for-hurricane-season-the-stakes-are-high-for-insurers-c6c1e06b

Interesting. May I ask what have you bought instead of these:)?

Yes, I think moving to something more reasonably priced or even what could still be considered cheap (or even some cash) is a logical thing to do, especially if market keeps doing in 2H, what it did in the 1H. I already moved maybe about halfway this direction Vs start of the year, by reducing leverage and adding somewhat to non big tech (mostly FFH and also some JOE). But timing this right is very difficult and tiring and I still own 2 of these 8 darlings.

Despite being very exited about some of these enormous eight just 6-8 month ago, I in no way expected that situation with long duration assets in general and big tech in particular will reverse so quickly and to a such extreme. I think I still can live with a multiples of 20x or even 25x for a really good companies with an improving results (as most of these probably are), but now some of them are getting into 30+ territory, which is maybe already disturbing for a such large and in some cases slowing businesses? But Apple is one of these and BRK continues to hold like half portfolio in it and I am also not sure what to think about it. So...more questions than answers and no predictions from me:)

Thanks very much for your answer!

Viking, thank you for sharing you analysis and thinking on FFH! Given you extensive knowledge and conviction on possible opportunity with FFH still present, may I ask you, what are your thoughts on position sizing with FFH? Given that FFH is still an insurance and somewhat levered company, what would be max position size in FFH you could still sleep well with?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/30/wagner-syria-russia-battle-united-states/ And the incident also offered an early indication of the tensions to come between Prigozhin and Russia’s military leadership. The apparent loss of dozens of Wagner fighters in a single night in Syria allegedly infuriated Prigozhin, who earlier this month put out his account of the 2018 events on the social media platform Telegram. In his telling, the Wagner expedition was supposed to be the advance force of an “anti-ISIS” operation that would secure control over the plant and its environs with air support from the Russian military. But that support never came, and Prigozhin was left fuming at Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov for allowing his fighters to become U.S. cannon fodder. According to U.S. officials in 2018, their Russian counterparts denied involvement in the battle and, during emergency discussions as the fighting raged, assented to the use of American air power on the scene. A U.S. official told my colleagues five years ago that it was “striking how the Russians themselves have been quick to distance themselves” from what he described as an operation “under Syrian command and in response to Syrian directive.” “The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told senators in testimony in April 2018. He said he directed Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “for the [attacking] force, then, to be annihilated.”

From the same article: Grantham, the co-founder of the Boston-based money manager Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo, has been warning of signs of froth in the stock market since at least 2015. GMO’s flagship Benchmark-Free Allocation Fund is up 4.5% this year, trailing the broader market. Since its 2003 inception, the fund’s annualized total return is 6.3%, compared with 9.9% for the S&P 500, according to FactSet data going back to Aug. 25, 2003.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/30/valery-zaluzhny-ukraine-general-interview/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/grantham-warns-ai-boom-wont-prevent-market-bubble-from-bursting-fd7f5a98 That enthusiasm is strong enough to propel the broader stock market over the next couple of quarters, Grantham says, but ultimately it won’t prevent the bubble from bursting. GMO predicts that, after that happens, value will eventually set the market’s trajectory again.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-06-29/china-economic-rebound-falters-weighed-by-debt-property-slump-little-stimulus?srnd=premium-europe#xj4y7vzkg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-29/inventor-of-balance-sheet-recession-says-china-is-now-in-one

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-06-18/canada-s-immigration-policies-may-boost-its-labor-market-economy?srnd=premium-europe#xj4y7vzkg

Technically, we should wait until +20 from the bottom before moving, but maybe it would be more convenient to just merge both threads into one "Have We Reached The Top/Bottom":)))

From: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-05-30/wework-s-woes-show-return-to-office-is-no-party

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-22/hedge-funds-rush-to-buy-stocks-with-s-p-500-on-brink-of-market-breakout?srnd=premium-europe&leadSource=uverify wall “Risk managers at big institutional firms are saying, ‘Look, the markets are going up, and you can’t sit around and do nothing, you have to participate,’” said Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist at LPL Financial. “The cost of missing out may be just too high. There’s this optimism that the Fed is either finished or almost done with its rate-hiking cycle, then there’s the notion that the recession could be pushed out.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-crackdown-foreign-companies-chen-yixin-9b403893

Nothing really specific re UMG (or GOOGL), just wanted to derisk portfolio (went into some leverage last year) and choose these two and some META to sell. Recently I also saw some discusion of the posible negative impact by AI on UMG, but I have no opinion myself on this.

BRKB, META, FFH, AMZN, JOE. Since year end exited GOOGL and UMG and reduced some META to derisk portfolio vs 2022 end.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/wagners-prigozhin-accuses-russian-top-brass-treason-2023-02-21/ Apparently angry, and speaking at times with a raised voice, Prigozhin blamed Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the country's most senior soldier, of deliberately causing the arms shortages, which he said were causing heightened losses among Wagner troops fighting around Bakhmut. "The chief of the general staff and the defence minister are giving orders right and left not just not to give Wagner PMC ammunition, but not to help it with air transport," Prigozhin said. Prigozhin has for months criticised senior commanders for what he has called their incompetence. Prigozhin has said that the defence ministry is trying to take credit for Wagner successes around the Donetsk region town of Bakhmut.

https://stratechery.com/2023/from-bing-to-sydney-search-as-distraction-sentient-ai/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jobs-hiring-boom-layoffs-employment-11675947399?mod=hp_lead_pos7

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-08/ex-goldman-exec-s-top-housing-market-predictions-for-2023?srnd=premium-europe#xj4y7vzkg

More TSM?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jobs-market-parties-like-its-1969-11675443737 Second, the annual revisions included in Friday’s report suggest the economy has more capacity to add workers. December’s count of the noninstitutionalized population aged 16 and higher was revised up by 954,000, and the labor force—people who are either working or looking for work—was revised up by 871,000. Last year the Labor Department revised up its December 2021 population estimate by 973,000 and its labor-force estimate by about 1.5 million. These upward revisions are likely largely the result of increases in immigration, which plummeted in the first year of the pandemic and then came back—the Census Bureau in December reported that net immigration to the U.S. rebounded over the 12 months ended July 1, 2022, to the highest level since 2017. One thing the population gains might mean is that employment can grow more quickly without exhausting the supply of available workers. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/12/net-international-migration-returns-to-pre-pandemic-levels.html#:~:text=Net Migration Between the United,Reaches Highest Level Since 2017&text=The U.S. Census Bureau projects,its lowest levels in decades.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-aids-russias-war-in-ukraine-trade-data-shows-11675466360?mod=hp_lead_pos1