bizaro86

He wouldn't bother wasting time with something that had zero chance of approval. No way they could own two Class 1 railroads.

I generally buy the foreign stock on the local exchange on margin, then convert exactly the amount of currency that I need, that way I don't end up with any extra.

Homebuilders did so well out of 2020 because everyone was replaying 2008 in their minds and thought RE would get killed. When it didn't, they soared. I think it's unlikely the market will make the same mistake twice in a row. You need to be prepared to look for the next mistake, not get tee'd up to take advantage of the last mistake.

IMO, in a big crash you don't want quality businesses now trading at reasonable prices, you want junky businesses trading like they're going bankrupt in 5 minutes that will survive. Eg. In March 2020 I bought ROST, IBKR, and GOOG. All are great businesses and were trading cheaply. But I did way better buying TZOO (low quality travel business trading like it was going broke) and CVE 30 year debt trading at $0.50, taking a quick double, and then rolling the profits into COST to get quality. Anyway, next time that happens I'm more likely to try to find super-cheap stuff than buy quality on sale. I think screens like "P/S down more than 50% from 5 year average" would be the way to go.

Tech layoffs seem like a huge reason why people would do this. Having 2 jobs means if you lost one you'd get a package and still have a job.

I think it's quite possible that the economics of an annuity in this situation end up very closely approximating the following: She gets the principal back, while the seller of the annuity gets 100% of the returns. The OP should definitely price it out, but I'd be surprised if it's a no-brainer given the low life expectancy here.

I'd leave it in cash equivalents

Clients reducing headcounts isn't good for you when your product is priced as $-per-seat

Haircuts are getting more expensive because wages are going up. Wages are going up because otherwise employees can't afford their rent, so they're pushing harder for increases.

I think it's unlikely that they will need to be directly registered. They estimated they'll buy back 31% of outstanding, and there's no way that % of stock is held directly.

You might have bought my shares! I bought this in the fall, mostly of the VIC thesis which I liked. But I think lower natural gas prices put a bit of a cap on the upside here so I took the profits. The federal minimum price of nuclear really limits the downside, so I think it's probably fine here, but if nat gas stays low I think that will limit upside. Uplisting and index add catalysts still to come though, so I certainly could have sold too early.

I think MLB needs gambling money more than they need Shohei Ohtani. MLB is probably the sport that has the most to lose from the bundle/RSN model breaking. I think ultimately MLB needs gambling and wants Ohtani. I think even if it was him it gets swept under the rug. May be he takes a year off as a soft suspension - this year is good as he can't pitch anyway.

I'm not an American and have no political affiliation in that country. I avoid their politics whenever anyone talks about them. But as a shareholder, my strong preference is that Berkshire not consider politics when writing insurance contracts, only premium and risk. I think that's reasonable and relevant to the conversation here. If you've been appointed moderator of the board without me being aware of it then I apologize.

Republicans buy insurance to. Charging high fees for bespoke insurance that no one else can write is what I want Berkshire to do. If they didn't feel his collateral was good then fine, but I hope they aren't giving up lucrative opportunities for political/optics reasons.

I think this is likely to end up happening at some point, especially if buyers commission is removed. On a $1MM house $500 + 15% over 900k provides more incentive to get a good price than 1.5% of total, even though the expected commission is the same.

Yeah. Buyers will be way more price sensitive than sellers, imo, on offering their agents commissions. Sellers feel they need to offer the full amount to attract buyers, while buyers paying their own way will want a deal. Sellers also have a big influx of funds at closing so never really see the commission, while buyers will have to either add to their mortgage or pay cash.

Airlines are often not great for float, because their credit card processors often either keep the money, or require large amounts of restricted cash. AirBNB has tons of float along those lines. For your example, if they have $20 MM of cash from some sort of licensing deal (no ongoing costs) I'd value it at $20 MM. That's exactly like having $20 MM in cash from some other source, except the GAAP shows over many years which doesn't matter, imo. What they do with it is a capital allocation question, but it isn't different than what would they do with $20MM of cash balances.

This. I didn't start investing until late 2008. My results have been better than if I bought and held BRK at that time. That would have probably been lower risk though (and a lot less work).

Since he complained about railroad wages in the letter, I think he wanted to make it clear that while he respects the front line workers he has issues with the politicians. Otherwise "billionaire rail baron complains about front line worker wages in letter to millionaire investors" is a bad look.

I think SIRI will get added to a variety of smaller indices once the Liberty shares are spun off into the float.

I only owned it as a trade. I bought the dip on the short report last week and am taking my profits now. I will never own it as a long term hold, because I don't trust management. I get that's not the consensus opinion on this board (and the last couple of years have been good). But after they had Fairfax India effectively borrow money from Omers at a high rate along with giving them a free upside option on their best asset (the airport) in exchange for getting a mark to charge fees with I'll never trust them. All that said, the short report was obviously opportunistic so it was some easy short term money to pick up. Was able to get a nice round-trip on nearly a 10% position.

Sold out of FFH today.

FFH

I think in a situation like that predicting thr future is less important than controlling the spread of your own outcomes. You can size it like an option and sleep well knowing it's probably a good risk-reward but is a bit binary. If you want to size it larger you need a good hedge. So something that will benefit from gas prices staying the same or dropping, and ideally you want that to have a bunch of leverage. Something like a fertilizer company, or maybe puts on a nat gas producer or nuclear power generator (both of which benefit from high gas prices).

I think reducing the size of the investment portfolio would be a good choice for a post-WEB world. I'm not sure about the "paying capital gains" taxes part of it, that doesn't seem like a great plan to me. If their insurance subs are overcapitalized, couldn't they move a chunk of Apple to the holdco, and then do a swap with shareholders for their BRK shares on a tax free basis? That seems like it would function as a buyback, reduce concentration in Apple (which is no longer cheap, imo), and reduce the size of the securities portfolio which helps the successor be successful.