LongHaul

Thanks for the replies Poor Charlie and everyone else. I remember Conseco well. The CEO married an exotic dancer for his 6th wife. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB107058914336380400

Can anyone recommend an insurance book with with stories about the lack of discipline? I am looking to read one or a few books that show how insurance companies become undisciplined and take on a lot of risk and go into the ditch. Stories about how decisions are made and the psychology around that interest me.

Keynes Chapter 12 of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936) A good read (which Buffett has mentioned) where parts of it show how stock market participants were in his time. Very insightful. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/ch12.htm (The irony of the location is comical)

Snowball does a wonderful job on many qualitative aspects. Many of the quantitative aspects of Berkshire she left out or just got wrong which is in this book.

Has anyone seen any good data on covid transmission reduction with vaccination?

Let me bring my expertise and everything in the world to this topic! haha I just got my 2nd Moderna Vaccine - kicked my ass on the 2nd day, wife had it even worse than me but it was tolerable. 2 reasons why I got it. 1. To protect myself from death and long term complications 2. To protect others. Unknown right now but probably a 60-80% reduction in transmission of Covid if someone is fully vaccinated. This makes sense to me - less viral load in the person results in less likely transmission. Someone coughing away with a big viral load is much more likely to spread it. If the R0 can be at even .8 from vaccines and masks then Covid should be minimal in places with a high vaccination rate. Israel's case numbers have collapsed FYI https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/

I actually meant a paper that was more numbers focused. For instance it might boil down a complex topic into 1 number. For Example: Rather than a long story it would just be: "Pfizer Vaccine effectiveness against South African Variant: 91% against symptomatic cases" Essentially getting to the essence of the issue and skipping much of the filler.

Sometimes when I am reading a newspaper or other online article I really just want the bottom line and not all the personal stories and other context and noise. I was curious if other people would also be interested in a "newspaper" or site that really just offered objective data or facts (primarily numbers). I think the advantages of a well done version would be the following: 1. Shows the most important data straight away 2. Unbiased by political ideology 3. Time savings vs having to read an entire article to get the data (if it is even in there) 4. Graphs and tables of critical data displayed visually Thoughts?

Thanks Sanjeev! Are you getting ready to sell to a Spac and momentum gamblers for a $5 billion valuation? The Gamestop crowd would think it would be a steal! Just kidding. PS Edit function on my PC is on upper right hand corner of post after clicking on 3 dots

It has been awhile since I read it but I thought it had a lot of gems of wisdom (probably from the Buffett household). Everyone is different and he talks about doing what you really enjoy and gives great advice for finding that. He is Buffett's son yet took a very different path in life. Well written also.

I posted Book Notes of Milton Friedman's book - Money Mischief to the book notes section. I wasn't sure now to make the title red. Let me know if this works.

Book Notes: Money Mischief by Milton Friedman Published ~1992 What is money - historically money has been metals - gold, silver, copper, iron, etc. It has also been shells, large stones (Caroline Islands), paper, cigarettes and many other goods. Money can really be almost anything that is commonly accepted by people as a store of value. Fiat money only has value because everyone thinks it does. Very often historical inflation has been caused by wars. WWI, WW2, China when fighting the Japanese ~1940’s. Generally a 2 year lag after money supply growth accelerates before increased inflation shows up. Also a 2 year lag after Money supply growth declines and inflation comes down. Pg 205 Mid 1960’s to late 1970s occurred for 3 reasons: 1. Rapid growth in govt spending, 2. Govt full employment policy and 3. A mistaken policy pursued by the Fed Higher Govt spending will not lead to inflation if financed by Higher taxes or borrowing The other way to finance higher Govt spend is by increasing the quantity of money. Essentially the US Govt can do this by selling Treasury Bonds to the Fed either directly or indirectly and increasing money into the economy. Claims the Fed is clearly a branch of the government because ultimate authority rests with the Govt. Incentives Politicians want full employment Politicians want Govt Spending Politicians/leaders don’t want to raise explicit taxes. (Kings, etc have done the same throughout history). Voters are short term oriented Initially increasing the money supply tricks people and creates higher demand and it can take awhile for inflation to come about. Raising interest rates and slowing Money Supply growth likely to cause a recession and hurt political prospects in the short run. But like an alcoholic, although going great initially eventually ends up with a painful withdrawal before getting much better. Political will comes in time.

Parsad, I think either using the existing section or a new section would work. We could try using the existing section and always switch if that does not work. I don't think it would get cluttered but sometimes it's best to try and see how it works in practice.

I was thinking that a lot of us actually read or listen to quality non-fiction books and we could sometimes share our notes in the Books Section of COBF. Nomad has good Book Notes on a book on Japan's Bubble Economy. Essentially over time it would amount to a library of book notes for free with powerful learning consequences. Here is what I would propose: 1. No Mandatory Schedule - even 1 Book Notes writeup would be great per year. 2. Informal. Rough notes are fine - don't go crazy with editing, etc. 3. Book notes that just cover some points you found interesting or important are fine as well as in depth summaries. All comers are welcome. I think just posting the Book Notes and then the Book Title with the author would indicate that book notes included. For Example: Book Notes: The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder Let me know your thoughts or ways to improve this. Thank You.

Genius Brands International (GNUS) -Warren Buffet's Secret Millionaire's Club I would not recommend this company for an investment. I just stumbled on to it and thought people would find it amusing. From Yahoo Finance: Description Genius Brands International, Inc., a content and brand management company, creates and licenses multimedia content for toddlers to tweens worldwide. The company offers Rainbow Rangers, an animated series about the adventures of seven magical girls; Llama Llama, an animated series; SpacePop is a music and fashion driven animated property; Thomas Edison's Secret Lab, a STEM-based comedy adventure series; and Warren Buffet's Secret Millionaire's Club, an animated series for kids. Genius Brands International, Inc. 190 North Canon Drive 4th Floor Beverly Hills, CA 90210 United States 310 273 4222 http://www.gnusbrands.com Key Executives Name Title Pay Exercised Year Born Mr. Andrew A. Heyward Chairman & CEO 411.5k N/A 1949 From 2010 it has been losing money consistently.

Demand for housing can tank quickly if inflation spikes and interest rates spike - In the early 80's builders were sending 2x4's to Volcker because demand for housing was very weak with very high interest rates. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/housing-starts Essentially heavily financed good - housing, cars, etc can see a very big drop in demand if interest rates spike. Great Grant Interview. Thanks for posting.

I think it is in the realm of possibilities. M2 Money growth has been very high with crazy high government spending. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL I actually don't want to debate whether it's likely - just the effects. If inflation goes up significantly I think interest rates go way up and: 1. Housing demand decreases 2. Car demand declines (especially more expensive cars) as people can afford less. 3. More bankruptcies of highly levered companies. 4. Huge long term bond losses of whoever owns them.

What If Inflation goes to 6%? What do you think this does to the economy, interest rates, fed policy, fiscal policy, etc? The chance of inflation going up significantly is far from zero in the future.

Spek, I would taking the banning as a compliment! WSB was almost entirely devoid of intelligent or logical thought.

Lots of gambling going on. I just splurged on a sunshade for my car. Must be a market top!

I appreciate your helpful posts cigarbutt and others. Interesting times. Thank God for science!

Can vaccinated people still spread COVID-19? Here’s what we know https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/01/14/can-vaccinated-people/

Above the protected limited there is always risk with any brokers. Historically, prior to 2008 it was the smaller brokers that would go under. There is credit risk if the brokers fails for large accounts and I think it is prudent to: 1. Be with a broker that is honest. Qualitative signs that they are sleazy are a big risk factor and they are more likely to delude themselves and take a lot of risk and go under. Might even dip into customer assets if times get tough. 2. Does the broker have financial strength? Are they profitable? Here is IB's founder talking. I like him and I detect minimal BS from IB over the years. He was specifically worried about credit risk from certain brokers. IB has $9b in Book value and makes ~$1 billion pretax. I personally would not have a big account with Robinhood. The PFOF seems like legal theft to me. Free commissions sound great but how much cost is the Payment for Order Flow?

Excellent and thoughtful posts Parsad and Read the Footnotes. I think those explanations help clarify things. I don't like some rude comments on here either but I just try not to engage and make it personal. Ray Dalio said that it is best to be reasonable and considerate in relationships. That should apply to the board as well for all participants.

Initially I had respect for Twitter, etc who banned Trump from using their account. Then I was reading about Russia and the Putin protests and Navalny disagreed with Trumps ban because of the censorship and I quickly did a 180 on my views. No president should be censored by a media company because these companies should not be limiting freedom of speech. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russian-opposition-leader-navalny-slams-trump-ban-censorship-n1253679 I liked Gregmal's comments (overall) and Schwab's too. Let me throw out this idea that may be more constructive. Note that I don't like the insults either but perhaps a monetary fine can be instituted. Say $5.00 for a really bad insult or something like that. Incentives work! Edit: I refrain from voting because of a lack of knowledge on the history of what has transpired