Spekulatius

Actually, it was never that easy to get money out of China even years ago. I know this, the company I worked for years ago had the issue talking to an accountant I knew. You had to apply at some sort of government authority who would be take their sweet time. There was possibly some corruption involved to grease some wheels as well, The Chinese Yuan is not a freely convertible currency either.

I think Germany for once is ramping up ammunition production significantly. Rheinmetal alone builds two new plants - one in Hungary and one in Germany if I recall correctly. I don’t think producing artillery shells is that hard. It’s the more complex stuff like smart ammo (Excalibur) that has complex supply chains and takes longer.

The terminal value question is a good one and I can’t answer either. I think the position that Berkshire has was established by T&T not Buffett.

There is something for everyone, HR, supply chain management, production planning, engineering, general management. Endless possibilities.

This a WW2 manual Joe to do duct sabotage from the CIA. It is free are and can be an obtained at Gutenberg.org. Found this through a tweet from Elon Musk. Part of it read like a corporate training manual for new employees: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26184/pg26184-images.html

LOL, Roach motel: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/mark-mobius-china-investing-capital-restricting-outflows-markets-strategy-jinping-2023-3

You are right. That said, the deal was announced on March 2022 when the market was quite choppy due to the war in Ukraine. So I think Berkshire benefited somewhat from this. On another note, I wonder if LSXMK could be attractive to Berkshire, once they clean up the structure. They own already 20% of it and are the largest shareholder. I think owning Siri would be attractive to Berkshire as it fits right in their wheelhouse in terms of the business they tend to like. This could happen if a Malone decides to call it quits.

The US will be fine, there is competition between states and colleges for once. However some colleges may ruin their reputation over time. I call out Yale as the Ivy league University that is most likely to do so. I think a College like University of Chicago may run circles around them in ten years.

Berkshire’s sweet spot are private business where the owner want to keep everything the same and not necessarily looks for he highest bidder. I think it’s unlikely Berkshire buys public company because the Board needs to shop it around and Berkshire does not participate in auctions. The only way I can see them buying a public company is when the market is in distress and the shareholders or controlling owner want to sell quickly. Otherwise, somebody else is going to bid more.

Furthering diversity and giving every candidate a fair shot are two very different things.The diversity angle will lead to the diversity candidate (per the institutions guidelines) getting preferred over the more capable one. Think Hispanic gay women candidate getting preferred over almost any white straight male candidate because she ticks right diversity boxes. Looks like a total racket to me. Some colleges have jumped the shark here very far, like Yale who decided to drop out of comparison ranking for good reasons most likely.

I doubt any of these lab grown brains/ computers are going anywhere. To imprecise, vulnerable to environmental factors and if you turn them off, they die. These are academic exercises.

I suspect Berkshire may love the business, but not the price. Investor AB also has a significant stake and they are not likely to sell.

Howard marks got rich running a business dealing with distressed credit. But it is a good point that distressed credit can deliver equity like returns so that is one way to get rich as well. The opportunities there are quite infrequent though, so I think it's really hard to get rich on distressed credit alone.

Has anyone ever seen a bond investor getting rich? I haven’t , except money manager like Bill Gross, but of course they owned a business not bonds directly. Bonds are a wealth preservation vehicle (and have their place for this purpose) not a way to build wealth.

Simply, because I studied it more. AJG will be my second choice. I doubt I go beyond that. On AJG specifically, I don’t quite understand the clean energy investment that seem to be carried of the balance sheet. They are probably not material , but I wonder why they are in this business at all.

Yes, I recall that flight with a Cessna, but back then he was supposedly discovered and tracked fairly early, the military bureaucracy just couldn’t decide what to do with him. They could have shot him down, but didn’t. These drones however are slower than WW1 planes, there no stealth whatsoever and they can penetrate Russian air space 500 km deep apparently.

Almost unbelievable , but this simple drone hit a target 50 miles south of Moscow: The Russian air defense is a joke. I think Ukraine should be able to do way more to hit the Russian supply lines pretty much everywhere they want inside Russia.

@dealraker Don’t you own a ton of AJG already? How about a bit of diworsification?

Starters in both $AAP and $BRO. I added to $CNC as well. Edit: starter in $CABO as well.

@cubsfan No I would not take any chance. I am all for giving tanks, fighter planes , drones , long range weapons. Basically, the russian strategy will be to get into close combat range with the Ukrainian army to inflict losses in them. It’s what they are doing in Bahkmut and is essentially the German strategy in WW1 Verdun. The counter should be to give the Ukrainians the tools to keep the Russians arms length with longer range weapons (like HIMARS destroyed the Russian artillery and logistics in summer last year), just more of it - smart ammo, more HIMARS, drones, possibly fighter planes . They need weapons to hit the entire land bridge in depth including all of Crimea ( a staging ground for the Russians)- Then tank and armored divisions to do a Guderian style pincer movement swiftly in a weak spot after their logistic network had been destroyed locally and cut through the land bridge and isolate a huge part of the Russian fighting force and destroy them. This probably not going to happen, but this is a scenario where Putin loses the war.

I have yet to use instacart. For us here, it seems too expensive to use. We also do a trip to Costco every two weeks and grab most of our groceries there. As for eggs, we buy these at Costco too mostly. I checked and we paid $5.99 for two dozen XL eggs there, so it still beats Whole Foods.

In his early days, his fund was small and the environment was opportunity rich. Valuations overall were fairly low back then as well. Now Berkshire is huge and he has a significant operating business with large pot. Liabilities in his insurance business. He is also more in wealth preservation than wealth building , the last letters make this fairly clear. That’s why he holds more cash now than in his early years. Different size, different business (investing vs operating business), different environment, different goals.

We will see but I think the Russian offensive will be a bust. They will likely make their advance in Donbas, because controlling the entire Donbas is Putins scaled back goal. The reason why I think the offensive will be a bust is, because the added manpower from recruits are mostly useless in an offensive. They are mostly just meatshields to plug holes in the front line, but in an offensive, they will mostly just take huge losses with little gain, similar to what happens now in Bakhmut. Mike Clarke said that if an Ukraine has two functional tank brigades and supporting armored infantery support, they likely can do some nice offensive things with it. Think maneuver warfare and a pincer movement, cut the landbridge while the russian are busy elsewhere etc , that sort of thing.

Huh? I can clink on the link above and it's still there.

TSM was not a Buffett buy, imo. It was a trade from one of his Lieutenants T&T most likely. That said, I think TSM fits into WEB investing framework.