LC

Very interesting - thanks for the context and a good lesson that one needs to be very, very wary of mid-cap credit risk. A factor of Turtle creek's strategy is the relative valuation trades/re-balancing within their portfolio. This strategy only works IFF you own very high-quality businesses with zero/near-zero probability of capital destruction. A difficult ask, to be sure. But, it allows you to potentially trade quite profitably within your portfolio, perhaps even ignoring absolute valuation.

On this point, I would suggest reviewing the performance of Eurozone banks in their era of negative rates. The banks simply cannot make money in such an environment.

I think that's exactly what he should be doing. He is already sitting on 100+B of cash to make a deal. Rates are super low to provide the remainder of financing. The reasonable solution is to maintain enough cash to make a big deal (if one ever comes along) and re-allocate any excess cash either internally or back to shareholders.

Pretty wild that Berkshire payed 1.5% of US federal corporate taxes.

Pretty good 30 min presentation about how they think about value investing.

https://mule.substack.com/p/heterogeneous-compute-the-paradigm Interesting article for those interested in semiconductor architecture.

These are developed based on Dr Stuart Mcgill's work, I do them too (in some fashion or another). I also find that leg strength and abdominal strength help in supporting the trunk and keeping the spine stabilized. Stay healthy! ;D

"Constant effort is life's greatest shortcut."

https://www.dlapiper.com/en/us/insights/publications/2020/01/sec-proposes-changes-to-accredited-investor-definition/

My guess: a combination of explanations of the cash balance (including diatribe about high valuations); performance of the stock portfolio (Apple); and a bunch of the regular feel-good history lessons.

Looks interesting thx for the research idea.

What do you mean by "60 day rollover rule"? You can remove funds from your Roth IRA without penalty, if you put them back in after 60 day or less; at least that’s my understanding. Yes that's right but I am not sure whether it is required to be the exact same security which is returned. I.e. if tendering shares worth $100 and replacing with cash of $100 is considered a distribution or not. Also note you can only do this once annually.

If SBAC cannot help directly, I believe Citi operates in Cameroon. https://www.citigroup.com/citi/about/countries-and-jurisdictions/cameroon.html

I wonder if the 60 day rollover rule could apply.

You've always got such creative financing ideas; a real treat to read. Thanks for the food for thought. Cheers.

Either DIY it as Greg said or try to find brokers who WOULD be willing to tender the shares on your behalf. Open an account with them, transfer the shares over and proceed with the tender. How to find such a broker is the difficult part. If you know of other shareholders you can start there; you can also look into Camaroon brokers and try to find one that also operates in your country or is affiliated somehow with a local broker; it may be easier for them to process all the red tape if it's a related/affiliated company. Good luck

Kind of an unrelated question: Have there been any studies or literature on the threshold after which the brain becomes overwhelmed and incorrectly assigns the same or similar items as "random"? I am wording this question poorly; let me give an example: Let's say you put on headphones and listen to brief (3-4 second) jungle sounds, one after the other. A tiger roar, a monkey screech, a bird call, a waterfall, an insect sound, etc. etc etc etc. And maybe some of these are slightly different, e.g. a tiger roaring loudly, a tiger purring softly, and so on. When is the point where we hear the same sound two or three times, but can't distinguish or remember that we've heard it before? Is it after 10 sounds? 20? 50? Just wondering if anyone has seen any type of literature on this or related topics.

Ditto. 1.3x book is not a bad price for Berk esp. as it's a partially "defensive" stock with the cash and traditional businesses, and also exposed to market upside thru Apple

Some up front apologies to my German and Alabaman friends: Those were my two German jokes, please take them seriously as German humor is no laughing matter. On the other hand: Why are murders in Alabama so difficult to solve? All the DNA matches and there's no dental records.

I think the question is, "what is the eventual fallout of suspended low rates?" If there even is such a fallout. In the past it's been inflation, right? Well, we don't really see that. If there is any consequence, I think we'll see it in terms of investment options. Asset prices can only be inflated so much, eventually we hit zero or negative rates. And yields can only be compressed so much, there's already junk out there priced at 3%. So eventually the marginal investment trends to zero. Which if you're not investing that dollar, you will consume it. Perhaps then we may see inflation. Obviously this is macroeconomic musings so take it with a grain of the tea leaves I'm reading.

I looked at a recent zerohedge article about coronavirus. The three sources were: the CDC, some random guy's Tweets, and the NY Times.

Zerohedge almost never provides first-hand source material nor provides any value-addition. They just create a narrative out of pre-existing events. ZH is essentially useless to those who prefer to do their own thinking. In contrast, established journalist outlets perform their own studies, their own information gathering, their own analysis (statistical or judgmental), and present both the methodology and the results. This is useful information because it allows the reader to draw their own conclusions. For example, for years now the Washington Post has maintained its own dataset of police violence. This is a valuable service because it can be used to independently validate statistics which are self-reported by government sources. Both sources disclose the methodology behind their dataset construction, and you can use this to form your own opinion on the extent of police violence. This is the healthy function of a journalistic enterprise.

vinod, on interest rates: Interest rates are not a structural cause of change. Something causes interest rates to have a long-term level shift. The FRB sets the rates, yes. But they do so in response to economic reality. The question is, what is that reality, what are its implications, and how long will it persist. What do you think?

WHO declares global emergency: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51318246

That's a good thematic point as well. Long term impacts are difficult to foresee: Will the majority classes (either of individuals or companies) rally together and change the rules to their benefits? E.g. pro-labor/union policies, monopoly-busting regulations, etc. After all they do have the numbers advantage. Or will the Select Few Companies continue their dominance and go full-on global oligopoly? Perhaps they offer a compelling value proposition to prevent the above scenario from occurring. If we turn to art, dystopian cyber-punk science fiction (which I have a sweet spot for) paints the latter picture :D