Libs

I bought a handful for $200 each way back in the day (2015?); then bought two more for $50,000 each a little while ago. Talk about averaging up! Anyway that last buy was to get me to to a 3% position, where it will remain untouched. I guess it's 4% now.

Here is a list of U.S. Sanctions, from the Treasury Department. https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-information Luca- I like your posts on other topics, I think you have a lot to add, but I think you are way off on China. Just look at the drop in foreign investments in China; down 90% since 2021. That's not just because of sanctions or human rights abuses. Investing in a communist country is dangerous as hell.

Sold most of my Tesla puts that exploded this week. I'm finally in the black betting against Tesla (my white whale!).

The comments about railroad and energy are quite jarring, and a complete departure from the past. Kudos to Warren for facing these issues head-first. As a shareholder it's forcing me to re-examine some of my assumptions, though. I had thought these two pillars were iron-clad.

Classic. The property bubble was driven by central planning mistakes - 1) they incentivized local governments to raise revenue by selling land to developers; 2) They made sure Chinese had no other good investment options. And of course, the bubble finally blew up. And the solution? More central planning! I see China as basically a battle between their hard-working, resourceful people and the CCP, which is constantly doing stupid things to hold them back ( one child policy, Covid, etc.) It's the same race we have here in the U.S., but here the people still have a shot to overcome the idiots we elect. I think.....

<A great example as I've mentioned so many times is the insurance broker contingency commissions, something that I considered quite accurate as to Spitzer's complaint> Sorry for a quick derail here, but I remember this well. I was in the thick of it as a branch (So Cal.) marketing manager for one of the major insurers. This was the mid 90's. We came up with the genius idea of offering bonuses to the brokers (Marsh Mac, Gallagher, etc.) if they put X amount of business with us for the year. It never occurred to us how unseemly it was! But of course, in keeping with Munger's teachings about incentives, brokers would, especially at year-end, put clients with the wrong carrier, to hit the goal. Not very ethical. To go on a further tangent- at this same time (actually 2000) Buffett thought it was OK to 'rent out' Berkshire's balance sheet. As I recall AIG took him up on that. Most of us thought Brandon ( Gen Re head) took the fall for him on that one. A very rare lapse of judgement on Buffett's part IMO. End of tangent. I think Dealraker has made me nostalgic for my old P & C days.

Thank you. Not very persuasive though. My small caps move pretty violently to quarterly results, so someone is noticing.

Would you mind summarizing this hypothesis?

Fair enough about the Fins. But there must be other places they could try this approach.

So there's been talk of Russia taking on NATO, which on the surface sounds preposterous, just given the overwhelming power of NATO forces relative to Russia. But what if, instead of taking on all of NATO, they nibbled at the corners, so to speak, in a such a way that the NATO members say to themselves: "I'm not risking our soldiers / WW3 breaking out by fighting for X." In other words, the plan is to destroy NATO by exposing it as toothless. Then, over time, Russia starts to take the smaller / weaker countries. This guy explains it. The example he gives is a remote outpost in Finland with little strategic value to anyone. Technically, it's a violation of Article 5 if Russia takes a small slice. Will that be worth a full-scale war with a nuclear power? What do you guys think?

Shameless brag, I bought some BTC years ago for $200...22 bags later, it's grown to a 2% position. Had I not stupidly sold half of them when it went to $400, it would be a 4% position. So to answer OP's question, I am making it a 4% position today via the Fidelity ETF. Ran it by the wife and she agreed.

Ex the MAG-7, the other 493 stocks have a P/E under 15. The market is not overvalued. If you don't want to pay 31X for Apple, you can easily work around that. Also U.S small and mid caps are even cheaper.

<I’ve never understood the institutionally inspired obsession with fretting or fearing volatility. You should only be investing money you don’t need. And if you don’t need it who cares about what’s literally just one of the features of the stock market? I can’t think of anything that probably costs investors more money over the course of a lifetime than trying to avoid volatility. > Very true, Greg, and this point isn't made enough. I have a real-life example. I manage some 'scraps' for a few members of a family, each worth $100MM+. They have the vast majority of their money with a fund-of-funds guy charging 1% and putting them in a bunch of 2 + 20 type stuff. He's successfully smoothed out their returns; in the big down years they see only minor impairment. But over 20+ years, they've made their smooth 5% while I've made them 12% just opportunistically buying individual stocks like Berkshire and COST and the other stuff we talk about here. Common sense, coffee-can stocks. It's funny how they see it...... every once in a while - after a good year like 2023- they'll say, geez 'libs' is doing so great, why are we putting so much with funds-of-funds guy instead of him?" And the answer is "because in 2008 'libs' was down 35% and FOF guy was down 4%." And they say, "oh yeah, that's right." I'm not saying they're being stupid- some people just can't handle the swings. I'm not even criticizing the approach; the FOF guy is very smart and a friend of mine now. It's just the way people are, especially if they are already rich. But if you add up the numbers, after 20 years the difference is staggering. In essence they are paying me 60BP's, with no underlying costs, to make 12%; and they are paying FOF guy untold multiples of that to make 5%. Maybe we should just consider ourselves lucky we're wired differently than most, and let it go at that.

Thanks for the heads-up on SSD; an amazing company. Kicking myself for missing this one ( so far). ADSK also great but the SBC is a deal-breaker for me. I can live with some of this, but yikes...they've been spending a billion a year to buy back stock, to make up for the SBC. Am I missing something here?

Wow, some great results, and I'm glad the heavy lifters here like Greg and Parsad went huge. They deserve it. As for myself, up 28%, without holding any of the MAG 7. No mishaps to speak of. Notables: GLASF + 128% LUMINE + 85% (seemingly all in the last 10 weeks) JOE + 59% CNSWF +59% PATHWARD +24%

Which company?

CASH SCHW XPEL JOE HQI Fairfax I would add Lumine and Constellation, but they are due for a breather next year.

Thanks Spec.

I did this too, and it was uncomfortable. But it's a skill that needs to be developed.

On February 4, 2014, Educatedidiot made this brilliant post. I got me interested in XPEL, which became a mega-bagger (I think 15X.) A 7- figure score. If he is still around- thank you!

All are 6% positions, with the exception of CASH, which I built to 10% when it hit the low 40's this year. But I will pare it back to 6% (cost basis) if /when it hits $55. I've experimented over the years with much higher weightings, (I'd have gladly gone to 12% each in my younger days!) but I'm older now, and have more to lose; I've also finally absorbed the truth of the coffee-can approach and will just let these ride unless something fundamental gets broken.

He said that after losing his 9 year-old son. I've never forgotten it, and it has helped me enormously also. You simply have no choice other than to carry on. Thank you for everything, Charlie.

Thank you, and thanks for COBF.

You're confusing intelligence with wisdom. They are very distinct things. My friends who are engineers and doctors are very bright, but lack any common 'investing' sense. Buffett (and Munger) are right - once you hit a certain minimum level of intelligence, temperament drives your investment returns. God knows I'm proof of that.

You gave me a heart attack, I thought he'd died....