LC

Follow up. Half a bottle was fine. After 2 glasses I remember why I do not really enjoy bubbles.

Man, I hear ya.

Splitting a bottle of Gussbourne as we speak. Surprisingly good!

Excess mortality usually exhibits lag in recent periods due to reporting and processing delays. European monitors statistically adjust for this delay. CDC does not (AFAIK): In general this is best viewed by state not at the national level, as each state exhibits different inherent characteristics (geography, density, etc.) and is responding with different policies to the virus.

Bought some livenation and wells.

I have never found play accounts useful, except to learn the mechanics of a particular platform or trading a particular product. Better advice would be learning to manage your emotions and tame this "itch". Otherwise just buy SPY.

Welcome back! I look forward to reading stories of your adventure. ;D

Hear hear!

Pre-civilized humanity was pretty interesting in terms of life expectancy. It was essentially a tri-modal distribution: lots of deaths around birth/infancy, around 25-30 (usually dying of tooth infections), and the remainder actually living into their late years (50s, 60s, 70s).

Some interesting news: Women Now Hold More Jobs Than Men In The U.S. Workforce https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2020/01/13/women-now-hold-more-jobs-than-men/#7220fd2c8f8a

Amen!

Right. And I think you can get there looking at the cash + earnings/valuations of the wholly owned subs + the equity portfolio.

Kindness does not pay the bills. Neither does being an asshole - the point is to distinguish between personality and value.

In that case, a CPA is probably not ideal at least in my opinion. Accounting rules can be learned independently as you mention.

Do you want to pursue a career in audit/accounting?

SSD

Yes, obviously. And if Brk-A trades at $1/share you should also purchase it. In reality it trades at a 6% yield which is why I said, "if your hurdle rate is 25% then you should be looking elsewhere."

Right- and this is one of the big benefits of pricing power. Cigarettes are a prime example of this but there are certainly others. In fact this is where Thrifty is actually somewhat on point - not many companies have tons of opportunities to re-invest lots of capital for growth. The utilities, the railroad, even the insurance ops provide built-in reinvestment opportunities. And (at least for the first two) the return is relatively stable. Actually it provides WB with an option: If he can't find super attractive uses for $$, he can always dump some into the heavy businesses. What is the value of a perpetuity-like reinvestment option? To the other point, I don't think Berkshire is investing below its cost of capital i.e. engaging in value destruction. If your personal hurdle rate is 25% for example then BRK is probably not where you want to put your money. ;D

You can play with the #s however you like, the point is that companies which can grow earnings without reinvesting capital (and therefore can distribute it to owners) are much more valuable.

Put it this way. CashCo dividends out $50 this year and $50 next year, then immediately goes BK. InvestCo retains $50 this year and dividends out $100 next year, then also goes BK. What is each worth.

Bought a little BRK and cloudflare

I agree it looks enticing but it has done so for months now. WB missed an opportunity back in Mar/Apr. I have added at points under 180 over the last 1-2 months, but for those reasons I am hesitant to commit a lot of capital. Although I do own some LEAPs, but BRK is about a 10-12% position.

https://apnews.com/144ec47b53e8637a8b7c232e64a44e01?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter The World Health Organization on Sunday reported the largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases by its count, at more than 183,000 new cases in the latest 24 hours. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-deaths-covid-19

What I'm reading here seems to engage in some superficial understanding of how statistics is used to draw conclusions. In principal, to draw effective conclusions you need a theoretical and statistical link between cause and effect. But the absence of one does not necessarily preclude a causal relationship, for various reasons including lack of scientific (theoretical) understanding of the underlying mechanisms and/or poor measurement/collection of data. For example: To the first point: lack of observed correlation does not necessarily rule out a causal relationship. It could indicate we have an incomplete understanding of how the virus operates, or how our bodies are responding to the virus. Or it could be that our measurement system is flawed. To the second point: From what we do know, the virus is a respiratory virus which is primarily transmitted via water droplets from person to person. So it stands to reason (and prior experience concerning respiratory viruses) that limiting contact and thereby limiting exposure to water droplets from an infected person, would limit transmission and thereby infection & mortality. Statistics and empiricism in general is an attempt to approximate the underlying scientific mechanisms at work in the absence of scientific understanding. In fact, when previously validated scientific laws are empirically violated, it is more prudent to first question the measurement methodology rather than the underlying science.

To the man with a hammer...