Spekulatius

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.

I believe he is still topping up his allocation to the handful of Japanese trading houses he owns.

@Gamecock-YT Yes, I watched this as well. Michael Clarke has been providing excellent analysis of this conflict and he really knows the details as well as the larger picture.

OT - if you think you know everything about BRK, watch this:

OT - if you think you know everything about BRK, watch this: Better than Bloomstans stuff, Imo.

Yes, the letter are getting shorter. Stuff that he could have written about, but didn’t: 1) His view on inflation and what they are seeing in their business 2) something from or about Ajit and Abel 3) How he views his large new holdings in CVX and OXY (energy bet)

I don’t think if SNAP goes away that this necessarily means less grocery purchases. Remember that money is fungible. The people who get SNAP my still buy the same amount of groceries but have less money left on spent on cigarettes , lottery tickets and booze or other things. I know this is a bit cynical, but look at how poor people spent their money. In any case, I don’t think the impact will be that straightforward and limited to groceries.

Pilot may also have been overearning in 2022 like other gas station operators, given the owners one nice valuation bump for the exit.

Depends. If you are single with $70k income, you pay ~$8.2K in Federal plus state taxes. With one dependent, it’s $6.2k plus state taxes.

If you put a stock in the "too hard pile", you can't trash it. That's what the "trash pile" is for. Bloomstran clearly like spreadsheets. i think others made the point that why invest with him when you can just buy Berkshire or a combo of Berkshire stock and index fund and get the same result minus the fees.

I have small cap, international funds as well as some more tech funds available as well (as have most plans) but most of these seem worse options than a good old Sp500 low cost fund, due to higher cost or worse LT performance. I spread things a bit around but mostly find that going with the index fund is the best risk reward overall and i suspect many do the same.

I think Russia is selling more crude than what they are telling. They were touting cuts in production but likely do just the opposite.

Chances are that if you are working and have a 401k or equivalent, then you also have exposure to index funds. That’s the case for me and my wife and pretty much anyone I know,

QCOM -relatively short and sweet: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/qualcomm-making-smartphones-smart/id1559120677?i=1000597531557

Thx, should have found this one myself. Looks like the debt really hasn't increased since 2017 - it's $21.7B and roughly ~$10B in EBITDA. There is also $1.9B in cash, so leverage is only ~2x EBITDA. WEB isnt milking BNSF for cash right now. UNP has almost 3x EBITDA leverage and is A rated credit.

The last filing from BNSF seems to be from the 2017 10-K. In this one, it seems like they lend out almost $20B (intercompany note) to Berkshire. Are there any later filings? https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/15511/000001551118000005/bnsfrailway-12312017x10xk.htm#s5B4E295B896257D1AFA839516B80DBB9 And yes, it does look like WEB got his invested money back.

I looked at NA Railroad stocks and it’s interesting to see the progression of leverage over time. CSX and BSC always seem to operate at higher leverage -2.5-3x while UNP went from 1x to almost 3x now from 2015 to now. The funds went mostly to dividends and buybacks of course. CNI kept steady around 1.5x leverage. Somewhat surprising, but it looked like UNP stock has underperformed all the other RR stocks the last 5 years, despite all those buybacks. UNP for a long time has performed better than CSX and NSC because they had better growth (less dependency on coal for once). I so t k ow what to make of this, other than it’s not what I have expected. none of these stocks look cheap to me based valuation and near term outlook (which looks very muted).