LC

5-10 big positions. the most important thing is depth of understanding, not breadth. you can make berkshire your entire portfolio and make more money trading the stock. look at boilermaker. dude earns the ROI of the stock and juices it with options trades. then i have a bunch of little things to keep my trigger fingers at bay. just as fun to trade around ATCO's merger arb. or buy a lot or two of some rinky-dink stock that looks interesting. but i don't do a deep dive on them. and they are all for sale, any day. there's a lot of good businesses out there and it's a fools errand to try to find them all. ash the pokemon trainer didn't catch em all but still became a pokemon master.

probably makes sense given a lot of anti-western themes have emerged from China in the last few years, versus negligible of the same from India. How are folks looking to profit from it? I don’t know anything about the Indian corporate market, Fairfax India is the only thing I have followed.

It is bipartisan. Elected officials from both parties want to trade on inside info.

Easy to say the Fed will keep raising by looking at the headlines. And I don't think the Fed cares about credibility (do they really care what the peons think?). In fact I think they're actually reasonable at their jobs, or at least at what they think their jobs are. IMO they will raise until inflation recedes and then stop and reassess. It's working to an extent. A friendly low-income housing developer here in Colorado is planning to halt all new projects citing rising rates. They can't make it work. They are also a bit unsophisticated and don't bother hedging rates but that's another story. So rising rates are definitely going to slow economic activity, but they may be counterproductive to other societal goals (affordable housing).

Not sure yet. The namesakes (BRK & FFH) both look cheap. But I have hedges and some aggressive names already so I may hold cash or play some merger arb (ATCO, looking at you) until the next rate hike or two and see if Powell conquers his inflation nemesis. Also looking at property on vacation areas - stuff that I want to use myself and that is easy to Airbnb or rent weekly/monthly for when I am not there.

About two years ago I found out I have an old fixed annuity that's been earning 3% since the early 90s. Parents stuck 55k in a 3% fixed annuity back in 93. Worth about 100k now. If they bought SPY it would be 3.5M, Berkshire even more. Well I've been meaning to figure out the best way to move those funds into a market product, today is the day I'll be redeeming it. I'd rather pay the taxes & early surrender charges than keep earning a measly 3% for another 20 years, and it's a real PITA to transfer to a market product within an annuity contract.

What the Fed is doing will need more time to work. Prices do not equal affordability. Rates are down but actual affordability isn’t: I have a condo that I bought a year or so ago- 2.75% rate. An identical condo across the building from me (and it’s a 6 unit luxury condo building so very comparable) sold this month at almost the exact same price (new owner paid 1% more), but with rates at 5.8%, the new owner is paying quite a bit more per month than I am.

Just pull your funds. What is the point of the headache when alternatives easily exist?

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/smith-maneuver.asp#:~:text=Key Takeaways-,The Smith Maneuver is a legal tax strategy that effectively,tax-deductible investment loan interest.

I'm with you there Greg but I haven't seen much pricing power being exercised from the cable/telcos. If anything there's still downward pressure, which I think is why VZ etc are all nuked.

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Fairfax on the TSE

I think it's a likelihood that areas that you describe simply die out. Home prices remain elevated, families mature, the kids leave because they can't afford to stay, and nobody else can afford to move in. So you get a dying neighborhood of middle aged folks.

Billions has a special place in my heart because the first season or two features the empire racetrack in Yonkers (used to be called Yonkers raceway iirc). I grew up right around there and love that Woodlawn/south Yonkers area - tons of irish and Italian first gen immigrants having nothing but a good time. In fact all the young irish kids working the few pubs left in NYC all come over from Ireland and live in Woodlawn.

I joke with my girlfriend that we are going on costco dates where we buy $1.50 hot dogs/pizzas, get some ice cream, $5 rotisserie chickens, 1.5L of french vodka for <$20, etc. etc. She laughs but secretly I can't wait to do it.

Grantham is tough to like...I mean, the gall to post an article a week after a bear rally deflates and says, Only a few market events in an investor’s career really matter, and among the most important of all are superbubbles. 1 These superbubbles are events unlike any others: while there are only a few in history for investors to study, they have clear features in common. One of those features is the bear market rally after the initial derating stage of the decline but before the economy has clearly begun to deteriorate, as it always has when superbubbles burst." I too can write about last week's news and call it prescient...

Yeah, I agree. It's a little ridiculous. "We won't stop raising rates until some of you bastards are unemployed!" "Just stop eating and you won't get heartburn!"

Same. How far out with the calls are you going? I usually stick with about 6 mo and slightly OOM.

Could you share that? Would be interesting to hear Malone talk about AT&T...

Colorado is down too. Everything is dropping prices. Frankly, everyone who could afford to move or buy a first/second home already has.

I still work and I really enjoy my profession. I've been working with the same rotating cast of math nerds and general lunatics for over a decade, so it's always entertaining. A colleague is a 70+ year old greek woman who builds models by day and goes to Astoria and dances in these greek festivals and dance nights. And she's a genius. Another guy is an ex-cosmonaut/russian propulsion scientist...he says to me, "If you're ever in a field with an enemy sniper, don't run. You'll just be dead AND tired". So just a wacky crew, the work is rewarding and not stressful, the pay/benefits are good...I'll keep doing it for another 10 years I think.

My approach to Fairfax and Berkshire are slight different. Berkshire I generally only accumulate when it gets cheap, but I rarely sell. I should've sold at 360 but I'm OK not selling and holding that for a while, probably because I'm an idiot. Fairfax on the other hand I will trade in and out of.

Yeah I bought some oom 2 mo puts. wouldn’t have thought to but with Vix at 20 it’s relatively cheap for something asymmetric.

I think part of the problem is psychology - these guys get real rich, real famous...and what occupies their mind is losing it. Which is totally understandable. But I'd imagine the real smart move would be to just admit that and own a bunch of ultra conservative, pensioner/retiree type stocks.