Libs

Good OP. I've tracked my performance vs the S & P for 25 years. Then it dawned upon me it doesn't matter. If you need 8% returns to make your goals, go for it, and make it as safely as you can. Who cares what every one else is doing?

Messi - 5 ARG goals in two games - all from Messi. At 38! I have fallen in love with soccer in the last few years.

Sorry, not directed at you.

I've long been fascinated by rich people who throw their life away in search of money they don't need. Insider trading, theft, etc. I can somewhat understand holding up a bank if you're broke. But this kind of stuff....?

Great post. I've lived in both worlds- work for Chubb from '85-99, then as an FA from '99- now. There are definitely parallels.

You bottom-ticked a 56% decline. Well played brother

It's already happening. Iran's leverage will not last forever- Gemini: Saudi Arabia and the UAE have aggressively rerouted and expedited alternative pipeline exports to bypass the restricted Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia has maxed out its East-West Pipeline to redirect millions of barrels daily to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, while the UAE is utilizing and accelerating pipelines to the Gulf of Oman port of Fujairah. [1, 2] Details on how the countries are currently shipping their oil include: Saudi Arabia: Rerouted its East-West pipeline to run at full capacity (roughly 7 million barrels a day), shipping crude and aviation fuel out of the Red Sea directly to Europe and the West. [1, 2] The United Arab Emirates: Increased usage of the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (ADCOP) to send crude to Fujairah for export, completely outside the Persian Gulf. Abu Dhabi is fast-tracking a second major pipeline to double this bypass capacity by 2027. [1, 2] Ship-to-Ship (STS) Transfers: State firms like ADNOC and Aramco have utilized transshipment hubs, moving some tankers through or just outside the strait in the dark trade to offload to other vessels. [1, 2, 3] Oman Storage: The UAE has moved and stored crude at alternative facilities like Ras Markaz in Oman, allowing buyers to load oil without traversing the traditional Hormuz route. [1] Despite these workarounds, the global energy map is permanently shifting, as Gulf states increasingly view avoiding the Strait of Hormuz as a permanent necessity for energy security rather than a temporary fix.

You would sign up to fight for this regime? Hopefully I misunderstand.

As if they aren't losing enough money!

gfp, How much would you be willing to pay? I'm trying to figure out if users will ever cough up enough to cover Anthropic's (et al) costs....

Not sure I get the logic. Software co X sells mission-critical, deeply embedded software to company Y. X uses seat - based pricing, totaling say $10,000 a year. Company Y lays off 20% of their employees due to efficiencies gained from AI. But they still need and value X's software. Company X simply switches to a flat $10,000 fee instead of seat-based. Maybe I'm missing something; I don't see the problem.

I found this humorous. Not sure how accurate it is. https://isaiprofitable.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Terravest

Impressive. BRK now the #4 homebuilder in the U.S.

gfp my friend...... It's possible I hate money, because Visser has made some great calls and I've missed every one of them. (BTW he also had a solid insight in last week's clip about using 200-day averages as a buying / selling signal. I'm going to look into that. He basically showed how much of the market collapses you could have avoided simply by using that tool and acting accordingly.) I have a more narrow question for you (or anyone) that pertains to the AI bubble (if it is one). It has been said that AI bears simply don't use LLM models, and thus 'don't get it.' I know you are fully engaged in using LLM's and vouch for them. Ditto Visser. But here's the rub. When I ask enthusiasts of Claude / Gemini Open AI etc. how much they are paying, it's always "zero" or "$20 a month." And when I ask how much more they would pay, I get a blank stare or 'nothing.' So how does this ecosystem continue when the product is being sold at a fraction of the cost? Here's a tl/dr: https://ea.rna.nl/2026/06/07/anthropic-openai-may-be-spending-more-than-1000-for-every-100-you-pay-them/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email And how much would you be willing to pay for Claude or whatever you use (this is an open question to all). I still say this all ends in tears, in terms of AI - related stocks. Just like every technological / industrial revolution (from an investing standpoint).

Another mind-blowing chart. Mind you, it doesn't mean 51% of the stocks, it should say 'of the weighting'. Still...

And this is BEFORE adding the 3 giant IPO's in the pipeline. What will that number be, 50%? We are in a bubble. But so what? Just sidestep the AI crap with the COBF ETF. If it drops, buy more (if you can). But I have a hunch it will be more like 2000 - Nasdaq down massively, while value stocks rallied and crushed the market.

This. Build your investing muscles now. Trading 60 cent dollars for 25 cent dollars is where you crush the indexes. This happens in panics. But you have to put in the work ( and pain) now.

Great read. Thanks.

Love this from BRK's perspective - but still don't understand why they would sell so cheap.

36:30 mark - Jordi Visser with a clip of an analyst endorsing SAAS.

Agreed 100%

Another reason to buy BRK- if you have skin in the game, you're more likely to follow the company closely enough to read the AR's and imbibe investing wisdom.

Here's something less encouraging, from a link in the article: Raj Sharma, a global managing partner for growth and innovation at Ernst & Young, said the audit, consulting and tax firm doesn’t plan to do away with its longstanding ERP software from SAP, but it is vibe-coding and using AI agents to build its own customizations on top of it. EY, which has an annual technology budget of $1 billion, is able to save some of those IT dollars by vibe-coding rather than purchasing upgrades directly from SAP, according to Sharma. “If this AI wasn’t there, vibe-coding wasn’t there, the agentic frameworks weren’t there, it would’ve taken another very costly, expensive upgrade of the SAP software,” he said. Thimaya Subaiya, executive vice president of operations at Cisco Systems, said the networking-equipment maker replaced a presentation software tool with its own AI agent, saving the company nearly $5 million annually in license costs. Cisco is also looking to replace other software vendors—some of which are costing the company $50 million to $200 million each year in subscription fees—with AI-created tools, he said. “You need to look at all the applications that you’re using and say, ‘Which one of these can become automated workflows where we don’t need this application anymore?’” Subaiya said. Replacing a piece of business software involves replacing business processes with AI agents, Subaiya said, and those bots then become the interface by which employees interact with software. “You don’t need an application anymore, because an application just becomes part of the agent database,” he said Seemantini Godbole, chief digital and information officer of Lowe’s, said the home-improvement giant needs to carefully spend its IT budget, and vibe-coding its own content-generation software is one way to do it. Lowe’s distributes a circular to every store, for instance, and it’s a task that regularly requires new image creation. At the same time, some small and midsize companies have successfully vibe-coded their own CRMs. Business technology leaders say smaller firms don’t encounter the same level of human, regulatory and legal complexities as they do, and can more easily vibe-code CRM or ERP software to suit their needs. Amjad Masad, founder and chief executive of Replit, said many of the vibe-coding startup’s customers are small and medium-size businesses that build their own CRMs. But larger enterprises don’t—and shouldn’t—vibe-code their own Salesforce-like software. “What they want to do is create their own processes, their own workflows, their own agents, their own automations on top of it,” he said. Kempe, Grant Thornton’s CIO, sees a similar trend playing out where the role of core business software changes. Rather than functioning as the heart of how businesses operate, it shifts into becoming a source of corporate data. AI agents will lead that charge—becoming the means by which businesses interact with software, he said. Godbole, the tech chief at Lowe’s, said it’s not likely that all employees will need a “full-fledged” CRM in the future, and more likely they’ll need a simpler, AI agent or chat-based interface for the software. While there will be some software vendors who will be “extremely innovative” in that future, there are also others where Lowe’s will say, “Actually, we can do this much better with OpenAI out of the box,” she said.

Does Chegg (CHGG) count?