Spekulatius

Bought a few hundred shares of 4624.T too. Looks like you can only get a fill when the mood in the market is a bit shoddy. I also gave back all my gains in 9142.T (GARP railroad stock) after they published a 5 year roadmap plan with more Capex even taking up debt. There was also an activist investor in it to no avail. I guess just scraping the bottom of the barrel avoids much downside. Lately, the Japanese stock market has been a bust for me. Isamu Paint (4624.T) is the only position I’m am holding right now.

I agree they the manufacturing they went to China won’t come back. Vietnam is a joke, because their economy is running hot already and it’s basically a Chinese colony economically. I do think that Mexico could be a major beneficiary, since it is a friendly state. The biggest thing about China is theft of IP, by means of forced Jv’s which are basically forced IP transfer. Just concentrating on the IP issue, getting Europe, Canada and Japan behind it would have been a way smarter way to conduct, with much less risk, imo. Interesting side note - Trump talks about “fair trade” now, not “free trade”. He is a neo mercantilist.

Awesome post. It gives us a great idea what BHE is worth right now. 9-10% return forever is a great deal and I think the longevity is what WEB is after in this case. A lot of business die over time or need to reinvent themselves, which sometimes works and something it does not. BHE probably doesn’t need to reinvent itself for the next 50 years.

Yeah, interesting that the Triffen dilemma is brought up. I heard about it, it never looked up what it means., until now. The US$ can’t be reserve currency with the US running a trade surplus at the same time. The US needs to export US$, or cease to bet the reserve currency of choice , presumable this can be achieved via debasing it. I knew that a reserve currency tends to be overvalued (the GBP in the 19 century had this issue) which is really the same thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma

The secondary market for US debt exists, it’s the Eurodollar market. The US Fed has no control over it. Like it or not, the US is the main reserve currency. That pretty much guarantees a negative trade deficit in my opinion.

Some people like their thuna with a bit dolphin meat mixed in. Jerky chicken is great. I had some persistent coldcaller a while ago who wanted to drum up some funding for animal rights. Nothing really wrong with this, but I hate persistent cold calls. She asked me if I liked animals or not. I told her, it depend on how they taste like. That was the last cold call I got from her.

The valuation is OK, but it doesn’t exactly take an advanced valuation method to determine that BRKB is undervalued. Even just looking at the chart gives you an idea. Traditionally, BRKB stock prices hasn’t always moved its the intrinsic value as ai see it, there wer periods, when the stock price stalled, while the IV increased. Typically, those periods lasted about 2 years. As I see it, they were from 2010-2012 ($70/share), 2014-2016 ($130) and 2018-???? ($200). simply put, since 2018 BRK has been building up “stored energy” in terms of earnings power, float, and cash (which will eventually be deployed) which at some point will lead to a rising stock price. On a side note, Wilson has a funny typo in his slide - “Fort Know”

BRKB, MSG, WMB, FOX ( adds) and a starter in UNVR.

Got to admit that it is fun to watch a “presidential meltdown”. Will pop a beer tonight and turn on Fox News.

^ Texas needs another one or two elections cycles to turn blue. We would be better off, if Trump just goes golfing for the remainder of his presidency.

LOL. Sounds like Trump overdoses his Adderrall ( or whatever he is taking) today. Saw a sign today at a neighbors lawn: “Any functioning grown up 2020”. It’s a tall order though.

Powell hasn’t mastered the art of Greenspan doublespeak to say nothing , but phrase it in a way that everyone can take away whatever they like. However given what we know, why would we even care what he says?

So what does screwing up mean in your opinion? I guess it’s the choice between no cut and a 0.25% cut. My odds would be 50/50. I honestly think it doesn’t matter.

100% I'm concerned with it, but at the same time both Europe and Japan are worse than the U.S. in that regard and nothing bad has happened yet which emboldens policy makers to continue making unsustainable decisions. When will it stop? When it can't continue. Europe are not worse in terms of deficits. Germany actually runs a surplus and even Italy’s deficit is 2.1% if GDP vs US at roughly 4.5%.

Sold PRSP. Seems fully valued.

The real difference between good schools and bad schools aren’t the teachers, it’s the parents of the kids attending the schools. http://freakonomics.com/2007/10/04/more-evidence-on-the-lack-of-impact-of-school-choice/

A 20% FCF yield with a 13.5% decline in operating profit isn’t necessarily a good deal. I have heuristically come to the concluding that most of these type of value situations don’t work, and even if they do, they cause much more grief then they are worth (averaging does trading around ). Others may come to different conclusions and better results, but those are mine. FWIW, I think the whole cable / TV sector is a bit spooked by subscriber losses, but MSGN are definitely the worst I have seen.

^ I passed on this because it is a cigarbutt ( albeit with a lot of life left) in a sense that it will be worth far less once the contract with MSG ( the sister co) is up. It rather deal with the foibles of MSG, as sports team valuations have tail winds.

Mexico has 8% interest rates. Doesn’t count, I guess.

Added some too, but it didn’t sell off on earnings as I first thought. It was the news about the MSG Sphere project cost increase (from $1.2b assumed to $1.7B proposed) and the delayed spinofff do the sports assets that caused the drop, in my opinion. I do agree that earnings shouldn’t matter.

The 80’s were only great in retrospect. I was investing (little money, since I was student) and it wasn’t all peachy and little did we know that valuation multiples would go up as much as they did. Also keep in mind that inflation and real interest rates were much higher - you could still buy 8% treasury bonds in 1990, with corporate bonds yielding much higher. It was a great time, but it did not always seem so. In 2009, you could smell the fear and desperation. I have seen nothing like this before and likely never will. Yes, if there ever was a time for no- brainer buys, it was at about the time when Sanjeev posted it. It literally was the best time to put money to work since I started investing (which was early 1980’s). I would have much rather started in the early 80s. You had S&P 500 returns for over 17% for around 1981-1999/2000 time frame. I don't think the returns from 2009-2029 will earn anywhere close to 17%. I'd also say that there was much, much higher risk in 2009 than in the early 80s. There wasn't much talk about a Great Depression. There was a very real chance we could have gone through a second Grand Depression in 2009.

Yes, if there ever was a time for no- brainer buys, it was at about the time when Sanjeev posted it. It literally was the best time to put money to work since I started investing (which was early 1980’s).

Typically, if someone tells you that an investment is a no-brainer, it means you should forget about it. This reaction is correct probably 90% of the time, because there are no investment no-brainers. The only thing there is are investors not using their brain. #punchlinecompleted

^ I very much agree with SD‘s post above for once. +1. If one had an infinite balance sheet, you could buy up the entire SPY and guarantee a 2% payout increasing with inflation with infinite duration at its current valuation and it should be AAA rated. One could argue that it this securitized bond were default, the US would probably default as well. It’s a Gedankenexperiment, but imo a helpful one.

Same here. Got some GRIF at the close. Also added to FOX, BNTGY, WMB,WAB and a starter in DD (rebought).