Spekulatius

Moldova leaving the russian lead commonwealth club : https://tass.com/world/1617469 Interesting, they denied leaving just in November last year.

Not that well known in the USA, but they were huge in Europe. The company a shadow of its former self, but spun off or helped to get off the ground NXPI, ASML, TSMC and Signify.

COF looks like another new position, probably from T&T: https://whalewisdom.com/filer/berkshire-hathaway-inc#tabholdings_tab_link

40 years late was still early enough though. If concerned about lack of tech exposure through BRK, I would just add a little QQQ here.

I forgot who said ( it was a German politician) it but rings true: "I don't care about the nonsense I was talking about yesterday." There is another citation that I never forget and it's best said in German: "Ungerechtigkeit muss sein, sonst kommt man zu keinem Ende." Meaning - Injustice is necessary, otherwise nothing gets decided or done / or you can't move on. The translation does not quite capture the ambiguity of the original statement in German. As to the British queen - she sometimes had to represent matters that she did not agree with and you mostly couldn't even tell how she thought about these matters. that's not an easy thing to do for such a long time. I also think that if you study history, you should never judge people from the past based on standards today. Go back far enough, your ancestors were likely murderers, rapists and criminals as well as victims of those crimes.

Added just a few shares to $PAYC last week. Sort of expensive, but very well managed, imo. I also added a bit of $PNC.

I am not sure why Maxfield did not classify the period since 1980 as a new period in banking. the deregulation signed by Carter in 1980 significantly the frameworks for banking since it allowed banks more freedom to expand across state lines and also more flexibility how much they could pay for deposits. This increased competition almost immediately increased competition and lead to an increasing rate of bank failures and mergers as is visible in the chart shown in the background of Maxfields video. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_Institutions_Deregulation_and_Monetary_Control_Act I have not heard about Maxfield before and went down the rabbit hole and watched some other videos of him hosted by 7investing and some of his statement make me question how competent he is. He at some point claims that there is no way to tell what is going on in bank just studying the financial statement . He instead focuses on studying the people running the bank. While I clearly think that people are important, there is a wealth of info from required statements like FDIC reports, that clearly give a lot of insight. This information is also structured the same way for all banks which is very impotent since you can compare banks that way. Maxfield mentioned none of this. Maybe I am just misinterpreting an isolated statement but this and a few other things quickly sour me on this “expert” somewhat.

Pretty good summary how Putin thinks about the end game: The West is portrait as satanists in Russian TV. The war according to Russian propaganda will last a long time ( a change from the special operations mantra early on) Russians is not fighting Ukraine, they are fighting NATO. Putin is afraid for his own life. The opinions on whether Putin nuclear weapons are mixed. Ukraine is not a country, it belongs to Russia.

Who would have thought? Cayman island deposits from US banks - in this case SVB - are not covered by the FDIC. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pain-of-silicon-valley-banks-collapse-is-being-felt-by-these-depositors-f18c0bd4?siteid=yhoof2 I am fairly sure the Cayman Island deposits were not part of the FDIC mutual insurance assessment either.

@Xerxes The situation in Bakhmut reminds me of Stalingrad. The second part about the Russian ship allegedly carrying weapons from South Africa is also interesting. Michael Clarke is well informed and worth listening to. He is der better informed than most mainstream commentators.

Interesting that the Russian lines north and south of Bakhmut seem to crumble. The plan was to encircle Ukraine forces, I think. I do not think that Ukraine really attacks in size at Bakhmut. That location has little strategic value.

@Castanza long list of conflicts prove one thing : no NATO country was ever attacked (exception was the 1974 internal conflict about Cyprus between Greece and Turkey- both NSTO members at that time ). The problem was not that Ukraine wanted to join NATO, the problem was that NATO did not let join Ukraine. Had Ukraine been able to join NATO, this conflict had never happened. I am also convinced that if Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia had not been able to join NATO, they would be either puppet regimes or just be part or Russia by now ( similar to Belarus ). These countries know a thing or two about oppression and we’re happy to join NATP as quickly as they could. It is already telling that even counties like Sweden who were neutral for decades including WW1 and WW2 feel compelled to join NATO. That tells you all you need to know.

Small add to my BTI cig buts.

Maybe 20 years from now. I think the technical hurdles to commercialization are formidable. Just the fact that it’s possible does not mean it will get done. Also, keep in mind that nuclear fusion is also going to cause a lot of radiation and some radioactivity which will probably lead to environmentalist having concerns.

First one of many I think: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-attorney-general-oks-transfer-forfeited-funds-russia-oligarch-use-ukraine-2023-05-10/

For my particular credit union, a bank employee checks the data that I put in online and you need to confirm after a review, so it will take a few hours to a wire done. This is really no different than teller and get everything done offline, imo.

With some banks, you can wire online through their website. My credit union has this functionality for example.

Or imagine the rest of the world is starting to drill for shale oil and gas. It's not like the US is the only country in the world with shale reservoirs. So far it has been only the US and Argentina recently but there are shale oil and gas reservoirs all over the in the world. I would be that there are a bunch of permian quality reservoirs out there like the Beetaloo reservoir in Australia. https://www.industry.gov.au/publications/beetaloo-strategic-basin-plan/beetaloo-strategic-basin-plan

I think the structure may be wrong to have these under an insurance umbrella. MKL needs favorable regulatory treatment for the money invested in this entities otherwise it's just a private equity fund and they can't use float to finance it. Berkshire did this well with regulated business (Railroad, BNSF) and there is a reason that those are held within their insurance co's because they can use float to finance them.

The increased speed in withdrawals in bank run scenarios is absolutely real and represent a real risk for banks and a challenge for risk management. Good management teams take the possibility of a bank run into account and have backup liquidity in terms of FHLB lines or take time deposits etc. I think in aggregate, it makes deposit franchises less valuable.

Victory day parade with T-34:

Oil / energy has been a trade for Buffett. Why should this one be any different, especially when energy prices are weak while the equities remained quite strong? I think he is in Oxy for good, but his CVX stake easily becomes a source of funds especially when risk free short term paper yields more than CVX's dividend. Also looking at it another way, CVX trades at ~10.5x earnings, which isn't cheap historically speaking.

Markel ventures might have hurt them during COVID-19 because it does not get a favorable treatment as far as regulatory capital is concerned. BRK for example does seem to get favroable treatment for the BHE and BNSF equity because they are regulated with stable earnings unlike anything "venture". Markel got caught with their pants down a little during COVID-19 forcing them to sell some equities as I recall. Again a case where the original is better designed and performs better than the imitation, so to speak. Overall I agree with yo, MKL is an unexciting but consistent business that is just marching ahead. The only question to me is why own this rather than an index fund. Even boring TRV ( a sensibly run insurer that has little or no equity exposure) has outperformed MKL over various time periods).

@Viking I looked at KW recently and this looks like an overlevered entity. It wont do well with interest where they are. The bonds are trading around 10% and that was the reason I was looking at this. The equity looks like it's too "hot to touch", imo.

I listened to "Keep your courage" this a couple of times and this record is "gold" can hold it's own compared to Natalie Merchant's best efforts (Tigerlily, The House Carpenter's.. etc). Thanks for recommending @CassiusKing1