Spekulatius

Is anyone here qualified to do so? The presenter certainly isn’t. He has Nobel price in physics based on work done in the 60’s and knows very little about Meteorology, nor is he expert in statistics. To debunk climate change , he would need to go into much more detail than he did in this talk, publish some peer review work in this field etc. To my knowledge, he hasn’t done this. FWIW, i have a PhD in physics but that doesn’t make me an expert in other fields.

A part of GE for sale would have been my guess as well. WEB knows GE well and has lent them money before. We also know that GE just announced the sale of their biopharm business to DHR for $21.4B, which is the size of a whale for BRK. I suspect though that GE may have tried to sell other assets to BRK than to DHR (DHR has Medical tech focus) but than settled with DHR instead. All the above is pure speculation of course.

I never saw the material, it remained at school. I have no clue what they actually wrote, although I can suspect. My lesson to my son was simply to understand the motivation of the author and who pays for the material, which is easy nowadays with a simple search using Google. Incentives matter, as we all know. What surprises me is that this institution actually have the funds to sent unsolicited material to schools free of charge. MAGA $ at work.

Yes, most companies have better things to do, but over time, companies do change their systems. Then there is also natural attrition from mergers etc. , where the merged companies typically pick the cheaper system/application/SAAS system and the dinosaur application will get sunsetted.

Heartland Institute rings a bell. They unsolicited sent “study material” to my sons middle school science teacher study material that was refuting climate change. The teacher forwarded some of the material to the students to discuss. My son ask me about this and I told him to follow the $ trail and find out who funds and pays these guys. Yeah, the same Heartland institute refuted health issues with second hand smoking, funded by Phillip Morris...

Yes, the CoBF lynch mob can put the pitch fork back into the shed. It’s too bad that he couldn’t fire off the elephant gun and he missed the opportunity to add to equities, but things can happen. Warren will now more likely return money to shareholders via buybacks unless he has another elephant in his crosshairs, which seems unlikely in the near term.

It’s harder to go from 100k income to $20M in assets than from $10M in income to $2B in, because with $100k, you living expenses will eat up most income and your investible free cash flow will be a much smaller part of your gross than with $10M in income. Well for some people, the expenses just rise with income admittedly, but for most of us, it would be easier to save $5M out of $10M income than $50k out of $100k. I agree that Wertheim’s track record is quite extraordinary, as he has probably beaten 99%+ of his peer group in wealth creation, even from his $10M income point in the early 80’s. Weather he beat the index or not doesn’t really matter - he kept compounding his wealth at a pretty good clip, while most investors either underperform or blow up (when concentrated) over the course of 40 years.

Sun Hing vision 125.HK looks good to me. I haven’t bought it yet, though.

AR or VR has been suffering from hardware deficiencies. The high end optics are very hard integrate into wearable elements like glasses. GOOG, FB and Apple all are hiring optical engineers to work on this and other problems but some fundamentel breakthroughs may be needed, to build the devices that will truly enable the technology.

The left coast would do well as one state. I think Texas would want to do go it alone too.the North Eastern New England state fit together well and I would include NH :-). The Rocky Mountain states have a lot in common. The south would probably come together under a confederate flag. The rest - who cares :o.

Germany also has a balanced fiscal budget. Same idea.

The article is more about the wonders of compounding than anything.

Currently watching: “The Expanse”, Season 3 “Perfume” Germain Film noire series (loved the book from Süsskind too) “Russian Doll” - I agree it’s a great script “ Babylon Berlin” - very athmosperical Film Noir/ crime (of course I am biased towards German TV series)

So what’s the safest long here - UNIT common?

I didn’t feel that INDUS situation is dire, it‘s just that the stock was too expensive at 20x earnings and now is around fair value, but still not cheap. A shallow revision in Germany is possible. It might bring better buy opportunities. A lot of stocks in Germany were quite overvalued and have now come down to fair value and might become good values going forward. There are a lot mid cap companies in Germany that are world leaders in their niches and could be great investments in a recovery.

In my opinion, Windows 7 is vastly preferable and more reliable than Windows 10.I dont care for the new Post Windows 8 GUI either.

Oh, that is such a brilliant comment, and hits at the crux of the problem in America. So many people, (gov workers, etc) - want something for NOTHING. Where did the idea of sacrifice and work ethic go? With government - cutting spending has to happen - I live in Illinois - and there is going to be a tax revolt here one of this days. Real estate taxes are out of control, Chicago city taxes are out of control and city workers don't actually work. Pensions, etc - they all want to retire at 50 with full pension/benefits and get a second job. It's a ticking time bomb - raising taxes will be the route they take, until the public revolts and forces spending down. I hope I am out of here by then...Florida, here I come! You can buy a really nice waterfront home in NWFL for around $500K - 700K. The higher end gets you a property with more elevation & lower flood premiums. Cost of living is low. No state income tax. Beautiful beaches. Tolerable winters. Summers are less tolerable. There are also no well paid jobs in North West Florida, which is the issue with most nice low tax states. Of course for retirement , it doesn’t matter and that why the folks from the NE like to move there. Schools are also rumoured to be terrible. I have lived in 3 states so far and at least in NY and MA, the high taxes paid for a relatively safe environment and good schools. Illinois and particular Chicago seems to be basket case to me, because it appears to have neither of the above and high taxes.

My own opinion is that they did very little regarding buybacks, as they were napping the entire time. We will find out soon enough.

FWIW, I agree on Indus AG, it’s nothing special. They do add a layer of holding company debt on top of the operating company debt, so they seem to be more leveraged than I’d like. I have owned some in the 90’s last time. At times, the stock is cheap, but it’s not particularly well managed. I do like the concept of rolling up Mittelstand companies, but haven’t seen a vehicle that does this consistently well. There are some that do seem to do it Ok with a concept of owning several independently operated companies in the same industrial sector. Dürr AG and ISRA AG come to my mind. I particularly like Dürr, but I don‘t think we are at the right time of the cycle to buy this yet. France and Scandinavia the richest hunting ground for holding companies.

Excel is my daily bread and butter. I can’t do without it.

I like it. A basic EPS of ~$23/sh under the assumption of zero realized gains, zero increase in net earned, and zero increase in interest rates. It's certainly not hard to imagine an actual figure of double that amount.... No it’s not hard to imagine, but even if this comes to pass, FFH just looks like an OK value.

The insurance business has done quite well with a combined ratio of 98.3%. The investment side continues to suck wind. I have reduced my exposure to FFH after some considerations. I would be quite happy to hold FFH, if they would just stick with bond investments like other plain vanilla insurance corporations. I am sure the book value has recovered some since 12/31 due to equities bouncing back, but so has the PPS. I don’t feel like their equity investment are set to perform well going forward though.

I haven’t seen this stock being mentioned for a long time. They go whacked very badly during the financial crisis (down more than 80% if I remember correctly) being in cyclical names back then and due to holding company leverage , but seem to have made it back. Discount to NAV north of 20%. I will take a further look, but I think I like EXor and some others better.

Interesting, they he now owns almost exactly 8.75% of both WFC and BAC. He is not really limited with WFC any more - has sold quite a few shares and is quite far below the 10% limit.

I believe that LT home values will move with income/salaries in the given area, not so much inflation. People tend to spent as much on housing than they can afford.