Spekulatius

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).

@changegonnacome bet against America to your peril and that included the stock market. It the EM's that I would be worried about when liquidity gets drained. I expect to see more Adanis moments there.

@boilermaker75 I had the same idea. Prince Edward island was on my list of places to visit and my wife (who enjoys the show as well) approved the idea. It's not going to be this summer though.

Dark stocks? You can’t scan for those, because they don’t disclose their financials. You got to know your stuff and/or do some digging.

Anne with an A on Netflix. Just watched the first episode and it’s Delightful Canadian TV series. Witty dialogue and great actor from the girl who plays Anna. I have only watched the first show, but if they can keep this up, it’s the best family TV show that I watched for quite some time https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5421602/ @Xerxes - The English is a slow burner Western, sort of like one of the epic Spagetti westerns of the late 60’s. I actually parked it for a while after watching the first 2 Episodes, because it sort of slow with bursts of action. it really captivated me when I continued watching it and they develop the characters and storyline.

He is digging in for the long haul and so should we. Then he adds a bit nuclear saber rattling because that's really all he has left to threaten the west. Same old really. Bullish for defense stocks, I think.

Never been such a big Metallica fan, but i have seen them once live in Mountain View and the show was great. Master of Puppets is probably their best record:

I think Russia will find a way to refill the prisons and a prison sentence will be just a detour to the frontline for those prisoners.

AI is a gold rush now, but everything will take much longer than we think. Think self driving car longer, which is also partly an AI, but also a sensor system problem. I do think a SI tool paperclip 2.0 that helps me with Excel and write/improve/structure word document or PP presentation will be quite useful. There are probably many other things that AI can be a useful tool, for example programming. I am not sure this is all that much of a life changing tech for the next 10 years so.

I don’t think he sold it in his personal or fund portfolio. He recommends to sell out of BRK and MU in his Ueber Cannibal portfolio which he talks about in his Chai with Pabrai blog.