LC

Interestingly, on a prior year earnings basis, UNP trades at 18x and the utilities sector is trading at 20x. A 10x multiple for BNSF & MidAmerican would be quite a bargain in that context.

The best part is watching them squirm when their lack of knowledge is exposed. It's pretty hilarious, in a "laugh so you don't cry" sort of way.

An attractive young woman on a flight from Ireland asked the priest beside her, "Father, may I ask a favor?" "Of course child. What may I do for you?" "Well, I bought my mother an expensive hair dryer for her birthday. It is unopened but well over the customs limits and I'm afraid they'll confiscate it. Is there any way you could carry it through Customs for me? Hide it under your robes perhaps?" "I would love to help you, dear, but I must warn you, I will not lie." "With your honest face, Father, no one will question you," she replied. When they got to Customs, she let the priest go first. The official asked, "Father, do you have anything to declare?" "From the top of my head down to my waist I have nothing to declare." The official thought this answer strange, so asked, "And what do you have to declare from your waist to the floor?" Father replied, "I have a marvelous instrument designed to be used on a woman, which is, to date, unused." Roaring with laughter, the official said, "Go ahead, Father. Next please!"

I'm with you and I own LEAPs

FYI this lends more color here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-21/negative-oil-prices-are-literally-breaking-traders-risk-models CME Group Inc. said late Tuesday that the clearing house will switch the options pricing and valuation model to Bachelier -- a model named after the famous French mathematician -- to accommodate negative prices in the underlying futures and allow for listing of options contracts with negative strikes for a certain set of crude oil and energy products. The change is effective Wednesday and will remain in place until further notice. Holy cow--negative strikes. Bloomberg did some lazy reporting to only focus on BS/options pricing. The real problem is use of Gabillon model which is used as a commodities pricer, mainly for collateral purposes. It will throw collateral requirements out of whack.

It's really incredible how federally coordinated testing could have addressed these issues and still is not being done.

Few things: The question is buying when the market was down 25% from its high. I.e. SP500 at 2500 not 3300. And you have to go back pre-2003 for Berkshire to outperform Nasdaq. For any investments made 2003-date, your money would have been better in Nasdaq. That's 17 years of relative underperformance. And I say that with Brk as my #1 position. But criticism is necessary.

FYI this lends more color here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-21/negative-oil-prices-are-literally-breaking-traders-risk-models CME Group Inc. said late Tuesday that the clearing house will switch the options pricing and valuation model to Bachelier -- a model named after the famous French mathematician -- to accommodate negative prices in the underlying futures and allow for listing of options contracts with negative strikes for a certain set of crude oil and energy products. The change is effective Wednesday and will remain in place until further notice.

No need to be ignorant at all. Perform enough tests and you can make an educated decision. Tests cost $50/ea at the high end: https://www.cms.gov/files/document/mac-covid-19-test-pricing.pdf Let's call it another $20 for distribution. For $2.5B you can test 35 million people, which is frankly way more than enough from a statistical perspective. Obviously I am ignoring problems of lab capacity and getting 35 million people to take the test (if the gov't was smart they would use existing supply chains i.e. food delivery, USPS/Fedex/UPS, etc.), but I would think over 1 month they could make this happen. For a fraction of the stimulus packages already approved. And for even more billions in opportunity costs avoided by being able to re-open. Trump is an idiot for not doing so frankly as it is in his best interest to open the economy (unless you think he wants society closed to just pay poor people to vote for him). If the second quoted opinion turns out to be correct, a federally-coordinated national testing effort would cost a few billion and provide justification to re-open the economy and ultimately would have saved hundreds of billions. Why isn't Trump doing this right now and/or why didn't he do this 1-2 months ago?

To reopen you need representative sampling of the asymptomatic population to understand existing prevalence of the virus. If it’s highly prevalent I would then look at daily death rates to see if it has peaked and YOY all factor death rates to determine the marginal contribution of the coronavirus. If the first is trending flat or down and the second is “low” (insert your threshold here), you can make the argument for reopening. These steps do not cost 2trillion to implement, every day this doesn’t happen is a failure of the federal government to protect the people’s jobs and livelihoods, by gathering the relevant information needed to potentially reopen safely.

That's par for the course of what you get out of doctor Trump. How many doctors prescribed hydroxychloroquine just cause they were afraid they would get sued by trumpers if they didn't because the dude shot his mouth? Without control for who was prescribed which drug, the study is meaningless.

The real unknown here is how various desks will price these assets going forward and the various implications of that (i.e. reduced volumes or higher collateral reqs). Many existing models (e.g. gabillon) do not allow for negative prices. Similarly to negative interest rates a few years back.

Will be interesting to see how commodity desks react in the coming weeks/months.

Let's make this happen: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/212-214-W-Oak-St-Cushing-OK-74023/2084509578_zpid/ Why buy? You can get an AirBnB on the cheap. Large pool - required amenity. Damn right! These 170 IQ ideas are why I frequent this forum ;D ;D ;D

Let's make this happen: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/212-214-W-Oak-St-Cushing-OK-74023/2084509578_zpid/

For context, the 2017-18 flu deaths in US were aprox 61,000 (worst year of the past decade). Current COVID deaths are 41,000.

I changed my vote from (Yes - LC) to (No-LC) The reason being is deaths have not continued to exponentially skyrocket. I think the market participants are intelligent enough to understand there will be financial consequences over the next 1-3 Qs and this has been 'baked in', along with global financial stimulus.

The president should fire himself.

To be fair Spek, I took some profits today. My two big concerns are the high capex and potential dividend cut (they have not earned the dividend and doubt they will this year with prices the way they are). Also to add onto this: energy is far, far out of my circle of competence. This is purely a trading bet and maybe describing it as a 5% position is too generous. More like a 2% position that I would hope grows into 5% position? I'm somewhat flying blind here if that wasn't apparent already :D

You're a NYC landlord and don't know any slumlord tactics? C'mon :D

Not directed at you, but the general question you raise: Well, then what is a good buy? A month ago the entire market tanked. OK - let's say BRK has totally sour views on banking, energy, and anything travel-related. What about the rest of the economy? Surely there were some bargains in unrelated industries? I think if they are holding their breath for desperate business owners to call them up, begging to sell out, then they will go blue in the face before that phone rings. If they can't find bargains as investors in public markets during a viral market rout, then go run a PE shop.

What happens when all the banks go full WFH and have to start paying/reimbursing employee internet access? Will they attempt to cut costs by taking on the Telcos?

This is the small bet I've made with XOM. <5% position but I would like to build to a 5% position in the next month or so.

There are other factors: population density and volume of international travel being two that come to mind. Realistically my guess is a combination of all these factors.

It means that COVID attempts to infect all age groups, not just one particular demographic group. Obviously different groups are more or less susceptible to infection, but the virus is not specifically targeting one group vs. another.