dealraker

Transportation cost US vs Europe.

Agree.

I guess my best wording is that it continually jolts me given how much all benefit from a successfully run insurance broker that things like this LP structure slide in to the model. "I'm bored...let's cheat" seems appropriate.

Clarification in writing, concisely style, is your talent longterminvestor! I have 62,500 shares of AIG with a basis of $500k from 1994. My dividends are about $140k a year I think. I only invested $8,000 originally in BRO and MMC, but the original BRO is worth right at 1 mil - and I have added now several times. I've owned AON for about 30 years, again a small outlay with a big outcome, but of course nothing like BRO. In 1996 or so my brother-in-law and cousin (there was an adoption so...) asked me to manage part of his retirement account, he isn't poor, it was $800,000. I told him, not being very serious, to put it all in Poe and Brown (which he did) and not to mention me charging him fees ever again. Of course he loves me dearly today. He is one of the main owners of the builders supply and millwork business that I am a a partial owner of and we invest in commercial land together. I invested HEAVILY in Hub, Prem Watsa's broker (Fairfax's partially owned broker)...within 2 years I was forced out with a 5 bagger. "Heavily" back then was about $70k but all the stocks and profits I have today stemming from that opportunity is many-many multiples of the sell proceeds less taxes. It was literally a life changing event to buy into an insurance broker at 10x earnings growing at over 15% a year. In one of John Train's early books he quotes Buffett: "We should have gone into the insurance broker business as it is better than underwriting." I vote "HOLD em and buy more." Look out below! LOL. Now own WTW for about 2 years with a 60% profit and I've got some RYAN and it is good to read your view of RYAN. Have a good day.

Correct.

Sounds good to me Ralf!

This thread began with my "OR ain't gunna cut the mustard no more." Slowly but surely the RR investing world is awakening. https://www.trains.com/pro/freight/class-i/union-pacific-norfolk-southern-big-merger-same-old-problem-analysis/

Yes, they are likely setting up as target practice if you are spilling an intense us vs them rhetoric with less than sound security. Remember though, you might read Cialdini's book INFLUENCE to gain a view, the more you bring in the police the greater you'll motivate those against. So if you want to be "safe" then you gotta one hell-of-a-challenge.

Cubs is the 80% in my "most Trump area of the US" community. I get along with this crowd very well, in general I like them overall as well as my Trump opposition bunch. He has literally drowned himself in the Koolaid, gone verbatim with the chant. Generally when people do this they spin on a dime and go a different direction with equal force. But not always! I'd probably have a blast in person discussing politics with Cubs!

Yea nobody seems to have a clue, its just the thought that something ought to be in the works but never seems to be.

I don't know what that argument is and it was not specified in the analyst reports I read. It was simply brought up that this would probably come for "yet again" and whatnot. So maybe this story has been around? I'm not aware of it.

I bought WTW again just under $300; AON in the $330 range; RYAN at $51 or so; and BRO at $91-ish. We will see, I'd expect to see those prices return a few times. I'd bought AJG for a family member's trust a couple years ago. Paid $185 and was thinking, "That's too much." The way of the world. I've owned AJG, BRO, and MMC since 1994. AON shortly thereafter and WTW for a few years now. RYAN is a new one.

Sorry whisky but it really...and I know this is hard for you...isn't just right zingers who get axed. A "different" perspective was one programmed to sell extremely well. And it was extreme, and it gets extreme response. Hire security. You've pissed off someone, count on it. 4? That ain't proper security for national attraction.

I do believe we had quite the effort here to properly categorize the shooter, its is surely them that did it. To me that effort failed, but we tried hard. I'll simply say that if you are putting on a good selling show, and nearly all shows are geared towards raising people's emotions, you'd better make enough money to get protected because you've really pissed off someone somewhere who is lusting for the glory of being an assassin.

Ramble here somewhat... So I read the insurance broker analysts discourse from both Wells Fargo and Merrill Lynch as both in my view are are actually quite astute, particularly Wells where in my view years of "nailing it" has ensued. Contrast that with some of the weakest understanding you can imagine, read Morningstar. You might say, "Charlie, with your exprience...why would you do this?" I do it because while I am constantly in and out of discussions of those in the business I am long out of the game and the age thing is also not an advantage point. So I'd sold my decades long Progressive holdings at a good price to make sure I could participate at whatever level I wanted with a multi-family member commercial real estate venture. Taxes payable sell, but for me the participation/relationship thing is reminiscent of why I post and participate here on COBF, the wife sums it up by saying, "Dear, please live in the present...old men taking past are not attractive and you know us younger types (Angela is younger than me) tend to...you know...walk the other way." B of A or Merrill did this very long report on the brokers vs PGR, they've done a bunch lately, where they decided that hanging with Progressive would be somewhat better than hanging with the brokers, although staying with the brokers would yield quite fine outcomes. In this report they basically said also, "Now that rates are weakening isn't it sure to come that a discussion of AI interruption something in their game will come to life?" I pretty much thought this was a logical topic to discuss. But to get to the point, Wells also had a very upbeat view - still - of Progressive. But Wells has bailed on that positive (on price, they are fine with the business) PGR stock view, lowering their stock price view by about 20%. The question I ask myself is simply "Do these analysts from both firms soon bail on the broker (stock prices) firms? Do they lower their so-called "target" prices? Again, you guys say, "What the hell Charlie, that's their bullshit of gotta do something at all times isn't it?" In other words I'm sort of guessing we may get some really good prices on the brokers in the next year or so. Of course this is if, and I do always wonder, if the businesses stay as robust as they now are. Those good prices may be because the analysts do the waffle dance, that they lower their views. The brokers are nothing but a grand operation perpetually undervalued because of their endless earnings gains. I've been amazed that it hasn't been more successfully attacked! Not proof reading this, just conversation. Life is great...if you can stand it.

Yea, I gotcha Sweet. Some police should have been charged. I guess that's why they committed suicide.

I do believe it was a bipartisan Senate wording that 7 died because of the Jan 6th event. Are you saying that the pres should be executed? Is it you Sweet who can't reason?

It always comes home to the unfairness and "lib" violence against the white man and whatnot. Evidently Taylor Swift has 83 close protection officers that she pays to be with her at all times often with as many as 140 paid others on the site who coordinate to protect her. I guess that means since she's a "lib" that she's completely wasting her money since all killers are (again) of course "lib." Charlie Kirk was likely winging it as to security, maybe his $100k or so fee per event couldn't even come close to providing reasonable protection. But my guess, contrary to the 90 degrees/east (that's right) thinking, is that all people, even the lilly whites, who get out and about with intense topics that segregate people into us vs them have a slew of scheming shooters - and thus need massive protection.

Of course I'm mostly being silly. I took a look at the Fox News site this morning and there's not one article that could possibly engage anyone with an IQ over 60. And I'm not talking political sides here, just nothing but lower-than-tabloid crap.

Lachlan by now surely has had the corp meeting where he states blatantly, "We've got the standard white man spending half his life death gripping the arm chair. He's the guy with the money, he's our ad target, do whatever it takes to get him glued to the set with rage." He continues with, "We are the main stream news and majority now and we have all the assets and power, but you must continue to state that we are the victims, we are the ones who must aggressively regain our status." And there's more, "Remember that for now it is ALWAYS the liberal left to blame no matter what...and again at least for now Trump's now 6,000 lawsuits are ALL justified...the poor man is picked on endlessly...it is so unfair how he's being treated...you MUST sell this grievance shit all day... every single moment of every day or your ass is grass here...got it?!" And finally, "But always be aware people that things can change, things do change, particularly should the economy tank. We need to be on edge watching, what we sell is always subject to the pivot...yes even the Trump parade can go down. But for now surely the economy great, the market is gonna double from Trump's genius, and the civil war is coming so by God ram it down the lemmings throats." And Lachlan sends out a post meeting note: "Kirk's a short termer, gotta remember this people no matter how taken you are about it; its Trump's reaction that sells. Limit the Miller stuff guys...and the VP too...they just don't work for us. Trump, it's Trump, and more Trump."

go Buckeyes!

Not a big deal, just want to clarify. That FCF above is equally off too. AJG free cash flow generally greatly exceeds earnings.

Not criticizing you Buckeye! The model of baseless but endless attacks and grievance is one his followers mimic and is the dominant force in both old and new media today. It works terrifically for controlling things and unfortunately puts all who choose not to board that bullshit boat into a response of "look what you do all the time" - which is of course a weak hand. So when those seeking accuracy call out "look what you did based on lies" the accusers/grievance bunch don't even care because new and almost always fake accusations or grievances have already leapfrogged the old one. Offense if fun, defense not so much. I can play the stupid-ass psycho-tennis game as well as anyone, but I try my best to honor Parsad's wishes and certainly don't want him to have to spend time censoring or expelling me.

AJG at $290 will earn about $14 per share in 2026 and around $15.90 in 2027 is my best guess. BRO at $92 will earn about $4.65 in 2026 and $5.10 in 2017 is also my wild ass guess. They are actually priced almost identically in my view.

I wasn't aware of this but bought some RYAN today just a bit earlier.