Libs

This week I topped off each member of my "Magnificent Seven." JOE HQI (oops!) FAIRFAX CNSWF LMGIF (Lumine) XPEL SCHW CASH Ok, so "Magnificent Eight." They are equal positions. If as a group, this pile of money doesn't double in 5 years, my confidence will be shattered because I'm in love with every one of these. (One will probably flame out, I have no idea which).

XPEL

https://www.ft.com/content/91b7b634-9f63-4f5b-9cd4-3b838b9b51e7 Yuan hits 16- year low. Good luck with that 'world's currency' thing.

Along those lines- after enduring the Northridge quake ( we were just a few miles from the epicenter, it was pure hell), I was stunned to see Buffett come up with this little nugget. The man is hell of a bookie. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-11-18-mn-386-story.html

That is nutty.

There is zero chance this is true. I'm sorry Luca, but you are delusional about this.

<Focusing on that one theoretical time when there is a snow blizzard and you must haul a grand piano on a dirt road within the next 5 minutes or your family dies > This made me laugh.

Thank you. Very helpful.

I think the $10B /quarter is a reasonable number as a baseline. I use look- through to value Berkshire; does anyone have an estimate of what the undistributed earnings of the stock portfolio is? If it's around $10B, we're looking at look-through of $10B X 4 quarters = $40B + $10B= $50B. $768B market cap / $50B is ~15X. Hoping someone has this handy, so I can be lazy & not calculate it myself!

Bingo. Yet another example of Buffett, just using common sense, saving our bacon. It's pretty jarring to think about highly paid CEO's stretching to ten year treasuries to 'make'.....another 1.5%. I honestly have a hard time wrapping my head around that one.

SPSM works too.

Re BNSF- these are significant revenue declines in consumer products. Anyone know what's going on? Has shipping shifted from the west coast to some other port? Should this be viewed as permanent? <Operating revenues from consumer products were $1.9 billion in the second quarter and $3.8 billion in the first six months of 2023, decreases of 22.7% and 17.0%, respectively, from 2022. The revenue declines were attributable to volume decreases of 16.1% in the second quarter and 16.2% in the first six months of 2023 compared to 2022 and lower average revenue per car/unit. The volume decreases were primarily due to lower intermodal shipments resulting from lower west coast imports, the loss of an intermodal customer and competition from lower spot rates in the trucking market which has impacted our domestic intermodal demand>

Are you guys sure about the market multiples you're throwing out there? I'm seeing RSP, the S & P equal weight, at 16X. Below that, mid and small cap value ETF's are around 12X. These are forward earnings, but I don't think that reflects expectations of a big jump in earnings next year. My point is, there are reasonable multiples available outside tech / the magnificent 7 via ETF's, not to mention many of the individual names discussed on hits board. IMO.

That Bloomberg article is eye-opening. QQQ puts ARE cheap. ATM (385) December 2025's are at $35. So if QQQ drops from 380 to 345 you break even. That's just a 10% drop. And you have ~28 months! If QQQ retraces to where it started 2023- at 260- you make 2.8 to 1 at expiry. Meanwhile the ATM Dec 2025 calls cost twice as much: $70. Yikes! I may dabble in this. Anyone have other hedging ideas? P.S. Not experienced in this. Do your own math https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/calculator/long-call.html

Chomsky (to his credit) was on a conservative talk show years ago, and after a long anti- U.S. rant, the host calmly said: "I'm not here to debate you, I just want clarity. So, would you say the existence of the United States of America has been a net positive or negative for the world?" Chomsky: "Negative." Loony indeed.

Blakehampton, You are wise to ask this question at such a young age. When I was 30, just starting out, I was naively running my thumb down a list of P/E's and declaring Washington Mutual a great bet because it was only 8X earnings. I thought that was all that mattered. My point is, you're going to learn a lot about how to value stocks; it's not going to be just cash flow or just the balance sheet. It truly depends on the company and industry. I'm 61, and have been doing this for 31 years. Lots of lessons learned along the way, tons of mistakes, but it's worked out very well (unless I blow it in the home stretch). Here are some specific things I've experienced. 1) I lost 25% of my net worth in one day in a single stock. Turned out instead of selling used cars in to Africa, it was a an arms-smuggling operation. The whole thing was too good to be true, of course.....the numbers were made up. I still feel like an idiot admitting to it today. I had gotten caught up in group-think and wishful thinking. 2) Many years later a company called Valeant had, in their reports, a table showing the growth of some of their divisions, or possibly their recent roll-ups. It doesn't matter. What matters is how they presented it. It went like this: division / growth A 20% B 30% C 15% D 1% E 22% ------ Avg = 18%. Sounds great, right? Except Division D was huge and dwarfed the others in size. The weighted average, which is what matters, was really like 3%! Had I owned that stock I would have sold it right there, based just on that piece of chicanery. And it did collapse from fraud. I guess I had learned something... 3) I was poking around XPEL and found a post where someone described their moat. It all suddenly made sense to me. I did some modest industry checks that confirmed it, and voila, a few years later it was a 70- bagger. You never know, if you read enough, where you will find that nugget of info that clinches the idea for you. It might even be Jim Cramer ( I know, I know). General lessons, mostly learned the hard way: 1) There are some people on this board who can make you rich if you learn from them. The posted stock ideas are a great place to see how ideas are vetted. 2) Never buy a stock based on a guru. Always do your own DD, or you will have weak hands and sell at the first sign of trouble. 3) Hold on to your best ideas like grim death. The coffee can approach works. See Dealraker's posts on this. 4) When your thesis is broken, sell. Avoid style drift. 5) You're young enough to test out different strategies. Do it, with money. You need to have skin in the game to learn anything. 6) Post ideas. Be grateful if someone tears apart your thesis. They did you a favor. 7) There is always someone smarter than you in this game. Try to identify them and learn from them. 8 Unethical management - avoid no matter how cheap the stock looks. 9) Melting ice cubes- same 10) It hurts to spend days / weeks on an idea, fall in love with it- then the last thing on your check list is a deal-breaker. Just move on anyway. 11) As Gregmal says, the spreadsheet people will miss out. Getting the core idea right is always more important. 12) Don't let macro fears stop you from buying something good. 13) Be open-minded. Principles are forever but landscapes change. 14) Accept that great investors can have polar opposite opinions on the same stock. That's ok. 15) Know the bear case. Why is it wrong? 16) Read Buffett and Munger, then read them again. The best posters here have adopted their foundation and built on top of it. 17) Temperament > brains in the long run. If you have both- look out! 18) Review your winners and ask if you were just lucky. Review your losers and take full accountability. I wish I'd started at 21. Good luck to you!

Bingo. This is timely because I suddenly find myself 95% invested in 'really good companies.' I'm incapable, somehow, of holding back when these opportunities present themselves. Even though I'm also 95% sure we're gonna have a recession! This sounds like it's in conflict, but if I'm honest with myself, I've been a lot more accurate with the first prediction ('really good company') than the second ( fill in the blank, any macro call).

Stahleyp - taking on the atheist mob. Props for the effort (a lonely one for sure).....even though no one's gonna change their mind.

I am fortunate to enjoy gambling without having any addictive issues with it. It truly adds spice to life if done in small doses. That said, I'm deeply skeptical of beating the horse races. Overcoming the 20% take seems impossible, frankly, unless you are an insider like a trainer, and bet large amounts on the rare occasion you have a big edge.

The problem is Baffert's horses get massively overbet. He wins a lot, but not enough to justify getting 3/5 odds all the time.

Some PBR

SCHW

If I may add a word about Wabuffo. On the old yahoo finance BRK site (Chuck's Angels?) we'd have an annual stock-picking contest. Of course he came up with the most eclectic, interesting stuff. I recall a tiny BK liquidation play where he calculated the inventory, concluded it was legit, and basically bought like $2.50 in distributions for $1. It was kind of jaw-dropping to a newb like me. Of course he killed it in that contest, and he's just kept dropping gems ( macro and stocks ) on us ever since. I think he's a little uncomfortable with accolades, so I'll stop there. GFP was there too. Another tireless contributor for a very long time. I also thank the prominent posters named above. This site is pure gold.

ILPT April calls. Piggy-backing on Pupil's work.

Her best role was in Seinfeld, as a fire - breathing prima donna. Classic.