LC

Who would've thought mimicking petabytes of 4chan, reddit, and yahoo comments could only take you so far? I think this is an expectation problem, rather than an execution problem. Current iterations of generative AI can provide a ton of time saved when applied to bullshit bureaucracy. We see 20-25% time savings with reasonably high accuracy. Apply that to the red-tape layers of industries like government, healthcare, finance? That is a meaningful amount. I think one of the challenges is implementation. How does a 50+ year old company still using Cobol, jump into using Claude or Gemini? It is a big step for them.

Do you mind sharing the names?

And POOL. @Saluki, maybe they are reading your posts? Warren is lounging by the in-ground, stuffing himself with pepperoni slices and cinnamon twists. Good on him!

Freaking hell, I really timed my exit of PCYO poorly. And well done on the FNMA (Trump) trades. That was a solid trade going into the election. What am I learning here? I am a big ole dummy. Bought MSGE yesterday and today, I have a decent STNE position but might add to it as well.

Fair enough, I thought you may have worked in the industry and were seeing some early indicators.

What makes you think the market is finally softening?

Let's invert - if BTC collapses in 10 years, what would be the reason? Would you still want to own it?

Well let me first say I am extremely jealous of all the Bitcoin bulls. You have made lots of USD and so congrats. I wish I would have just gotten out of my own way and bought some like my buddy Nate told me back in 2012. That said, I still don’t see the use. Ease of transfer? It’s very easy to send USD. I don’t think that alone is really a valuable feature. Venmo, Zelle, etc… ”Hard money”? Gold has existed for a millennia. There’s a reason we don’t peg our currency to a fixed asset. The fixed nature is a bug, not a feature.

it does scream classic Buffett to strike some deal where OXY pays him a percentage to accumulate enough stock to block any takeovers.

The comments on reddit about Combs as Geico CEO are pretty brutal - even for disgruntled employees.

Same. I sold some calls that will get exercised, also took the opportunity to trim further.

How do you find that algorithm functions? I see it all the time but I have no idea how it works, so I just put limit orders in at the bid (if it's a 1-cent bid/ask difference) or just calculate the midpoint myself.

Adding back the 87$ in fair value increase, we still trade at about 1.2x BV.

Honestly I think it's one of Buffett's tells that he too is simply human. He's contradicted himself many times over the years ("we don't trim!")...I think he means well, but really it's one of the hardest things to do in investing, much less communicate accurately. The best I can figure: He sells before he thinks the stock is going to go down significantly.

Three words: Brett Horn, CFA In all seriousness, it may help break thru into the industry at the early stage of your career. That’s about all its useful for.

@cwericb I'm in a similar boat: Today, Fairfax and Aecon respectively made up 40% and 25% of my investable portfolio (there are some 401k stuff with limited options, and private RE/businesses I exclude from this). Friday was a pretty solid day. Even after Friday's spike, neither Fairfax nor Aecon look particularly expensive: Fairfax trades now at like 1.3x book, for a company with guaranteed earnings for the next few years and management with a real plan to leverage that. Aecon is trading still in the mid single digit PE-range given their run-rate adjusted earnings, with industry tailwinds behind them. My goal thru end of year is the remaining call it 35% of my portfolio needs a harder look. JOE, Citi, the MSG complex, FRPH, O&G, etc...this stuff has value but unsure timelines.

Figured I'd post this here versus a DR Horton thread

No it is not - frankly I am just estimating a BV (1000-1050 USD) at end of quarter. On earnings: need to have a sense of where earnings will go from here. Where growth will come from, where (perhaps) there will be some hit to earnings. I am certainly no expert like Viking - but I just think it was easier buying in the 4-5-6-700s looking out to 2022-23-24, than in the 1200s looking out into 2025-26-27.

My stance is similar to @MMM20 Fairfax has been on a 2-3 year tear, and trades at 1.2-1.3x BV. Could it go to 1.5x, 1.7x, 2x book? Sure - and probably deservedly. But to push back: Do we also think many of the easy hurdles have already been cleared?

Sold OOM calls on Citi Sold OOM puts on St. Joe Sold out of OWL (thank you, RedLion - I really enjoy reading your posts/insights on the alt managers)

Today kind of illustrates what I (poorly) was trying to communicate here. Something like Berkshire- management (Buffett) does a good job of providing consistency. Dependable businesses and cashflows, and he buys back stock when below IV. Clipper- shortly put, there is a lot of instability. Management sort of turns a blind eye to it. For a company like Berkshire I might be buying back some of the shares I sold in the $7 range. But Clipper I will wait to see if this sinks back into the $5/sh range. Bit of a trading sardine despite NYC real estate assets.

Mainly a trading decision - I see value in CLPR assets but the stock does not trade very well and I don't think management works to maximize the share price. I'd rather reduce exposure and take what the market gives me. Probably it shoots back up to 8/9, but this is finally a sub 3% position for me and I am a lot more comfortable with that. Opportunity cost over the past 2 years sucks, unfortunately.

sold a little more CLPR. took about 20% off the position in the past few days ranging from 6.70-7.05 or so

Innovation and industry are two different things and take different skills to succeed. The term I would use is industrialist. Elon Musk is a great industrialist. But his success is not due to innovation or genius - I would say circumstance and his own cunning play a larger role. I mean - removing middle management? Providing strong leadership to an organization? This is not innovation, but it is certainly very difficult to succeed in doing (look to Citi for how difficult it is). My only point is that labelling Musk brilliant or genius I think is off-base. Strong willed? Cunning? Ruthless? Absolutely. Coincidentally these are skills he has in common with Trump - not shocking they are in bed together.

The majority of progress is a brutal push forward from thousands of people who I would gather most on this forum would argue are overpaid, worthless degree, career academics, blah blah blah. Martin Eberhard was the brains behind Tesla and the EV market in general. And of course his work was on the backs of hundreds, thousands of scientists and engineers before him. Elon Musk is a great salesman and industrialist - he took a proved technology and market - and married the two (and edged out the true founders as well - how shrewd). A true cynic would say he was simply in the right place at the right time. The story of Gates and Microsoft has similar themes. Not that these people were not smart - but let's not pretend Elon went from tinkering around with a soldering iron to inventing lithium batteries. I guess my point is - it's easy to fall in love with personalities, less easy to attribute credit to the thousands of careers needed to develop and bring a revolutionary technology to market. People I think are real heroes? A good start are the scientists who discovered/invented human insulin, and then sold the patent for a dollar. Or Jonas Salk's famous "you cannot patent the sun".