Parsad

Good for you! Just make sure you put that cash to work when you think the opportunity is there. Otherwise you'll be kicking yourself if you miss the bulk of the rebound of the next bull market. Remember, it could very well be a sideways market where the market has now dropped 20% plus and stays in a range for the next 2-5 years with slight upward and downward movements. Holding cash when there are quality stocks out there paying 3-6% dividends with potential 50% upside on stock price and 10-15% downside, is a hell of a lot better than zero downside risk and near zero interest income in a highly inflationary environment. You could even move to 50% equities and 50% cash and hedge your bets. That would be far better than near 100% cash in this environment. Cheers!

These are all trailing indicators. We were in recession before statistics actually proved we were. We saw inflation before the CPI started indicating it. We knew consumers would get hit as rates started to rise and CPI indicators showed that inflation was present. The market reacts well before the recession is actually proven. The market also rebounds well before the bottom of the economy is proven. Don't get sucked into the hype and miss out on opportunities. Cheers!

Fully agree that Greg has been wrong since the beginning of the year, and I've told him so hundreds of times now! But you're probably going to be equally wrong when the bottom does come, and you end up missing the rebound. And I fully agree with your quote...in theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice they are not. You are being theoretical now after a 20% plus drop...not practical...just like Greg was theoretical at the beginning of the year. Cheers!

I would assume that 90% of people on the message board would state their disdain for McDonald's and its food, yet the company has been a cash cow for nearly 70 years. Billions and billions of hamburgers sold is the tag line now, because they could no longer count them all. Good businesses don't necessarily have to mean best quality...just that they make money hand over fist, and See's has done that. Plus Mary See's was Canadian and does actually make good chocolate! Cheers!

Berkshire's modus operandi is that it will buy your business and never sell it. It's why it never sold Dexter shoes. That gave Berkshire a bit of an advantage when hunting for private, family held businesses to acquire. If Berkshire sold off See's, Dexters, etc it would reduce the opportunities available to it. So yes, theoretically he could have sold See's and compounded that money quicker, but then he might not have been offered or sold Nebraska Furniture Mart, National Indemnity, Borsheims, NetJets, Marmon and a host of other private businesses. Cheers!

There is no way to time it perfectly. That's pure luck. If you find stuff that you think is cheap...buy it. If not, hold the cash. But don't try and time a bottom. I had tons of cash, and I started finding things. Naturally, the markets continued downwards and I continued averaging in, my portfolio value has moved very little from year end 2021, yet I've been averaging into quality stocks at lower and lower prices. Eventually, the market will bottom. I might be down a few percent by then. But will rebound anywhere from 40-80% over the ensuing 18-24 months. Well worth the 5-10% of pain I may suffer averaging in. No one can time the bottom. But I know most people get the rebound wrong too! You don't want to get both wrong, and still be sitting with tons and tons of cash. Otherwise, don't invest in the market. And as the market's rebound, don't sit there and hold stuff that gets expensive either. You can always move some to cash again...especially if you are doing this mostly in non-taxable accounts. Cheers!

There are tons of things the Fed can still do if a crisis happened: - Lower rates again. - Stop unwinding and increase quantitative easing. - Reduce corporate tax rates. - Reduce personal income tax rates. - Suspend payroll taxes. - Suspend sales taxes. - Suspend fuel/environmental taxes. - Force price reductions in certain industries...pharmaceutical, agricultural, wholesale, etc. - Removing bad assets from the books of financial institutions and move them onto the Federal Government's books - Inject capital into industries and issue warrants to themselves...these worked extremely well during the banking/brokerage crisis. - Remember, while the Fed's balance sheet isn't as attractive as it was pre-GFC, company balance sheets are better...so you could force mergers in troubled industries. - Force banks, which are very well capitalized, to hold mortgages and assets instead of letting them default, etc. - An inflationary environment, while painful, is a result of demand, growth and a hot economy...better than a dead or cold economy with high unemployment and decreasing incomes. - Consumers have more money from pandemic stimulus than they did pre-pandemic...so as economy slows from higher rates, they will not do as badly as a normal inflationary/recession environment where their balance sheets may have been over indebted and lacked liquidity. Cheers!

Way to go Daphne! Nice. Cheers!

What do you mean like cocaine??? Cheers!

The equity and bond losses will be more than offset by the gains in the RFP and JAB transactions. Add insurance underwriting and interest income, and Fairfax will be probably the only insurer with positive earnings in the 2nd and 3rd Q of 2022. While sitting on all that cash that they can put to work in equities or bonds that have taken one hell of beating this year so far! Cheers!

The price was $X.XX/100g, so I had no idea how much the chocolates weighed, as she was holding them and putting them in the bag as I selected. Cheers!

Went to the mall and while there saw a Rocky Mountain Chocolate location. Bought 6 pieces that I planned to devour over the next 24-48 hours. The lady working the counter put them in the bag and rang them up. I figured maybe $15-18 plus tax...which is what it would have been over the last 5 years. $31!!!! 6 small pieces...$31!! If it was Teuscher Chocolate or some place in Zurich, yeah sure. I know the price of Callebaut chocolate prices are up, as is sugar and other commodities, but really? $31...roughly 50% price hike from the last 5 years? They were already in the bag, so I paid for them and begrudgingly ate a couple! They weren't even that good! Cheers!

I've never seen these things. I watched the video and the results were about what I expected too! Cheers!

Highly unlikely we see $200 per barrel. The only oil and gas stock I bought in the last 18 months was XOM around $54 and sold out at $96. Gas prices in Vancouver hit a peak of $2.42 a liter a couple of weeks ago...today down to $2.069 a liter based on recession fears. The recession, or perceived recession, may cool demand enough to keep oil at these levels for a while. Cheers!

Beating the Street by Peter Lynch was the first investing book I read...around late 1994. I went on to lose all of the money I put in the markets between 1995 and 1997! Then in 1998, I read the Annual Letter on Berkshire's site that had just gone live. I went on to meet Buffett, start the original COBF, meet Prem and Francis, start my own fund, take over PDH and become financially independent. Thus I'm extremely partial to one. Neither Beating the Street, nor One Up on Wall Street, sit on my bookshelf! Cheers!

Isn't that the truth! I remember in February 2009, I was fully invested wishing I had more cash, selling 7-8 PE stocks to buy 3-4 PE stocks...winding up the spring for the rebound. Low and behold, the rebound came! It always does at some point. This time I've been more disciplined, so I've still got a modest amount of cash left, when I normally would be completely out. From my intrinsic value calculations, the stuff I own is discounted anywhere from 40% to 200%...so I'm looking forward to the rebound when it eventually does come again. And if it takes longer to show up and prices keep falling, well we'll wind the spring once more! Cheers!

Again, I wouldn't touch the currencies, but certainly would look at the infrastructure companies in blockchain and crypto. Look at Overstock.com, which I own a lot of now and will keep buying if it goes down further. $1.1B market cap, profitable retail business, $450M in cash on the books, $2.5B in revenues, virtually no debt...essentially you are buying the company for $600M...a quarter of revenues...and that doesn't even include their huge blockchain investment in Medici Ventures LP...which could be worth $1B or $20B! If that Medici option ever kicks in, it could be the cheapest stock on the market right now. In the mean time, just the retail business itself is worth 2-3x what it trades for right now. https://pelionvp.com/ Cheers!

Spek, we were at $3T: https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/ $3T that easily could go to zero. In comparison, total subprime exposure during the GFC was only $1.4T. Yes, MBS and the leverage involved exacerbated the situation back then, but if things had gotten further along where crypto became mainstream and adopted by more nation states, it could have been as ugly. Cheers!

I have a feeling it is going to be a sideways market for a few years with upside and downside volatility...so buy them low, sell them high...and keep averaging in new cash. Cheers!

Well let me clarify that...I haven't gambled in 20+ years! Cheers!

What are pull tabs? I don't gamble, so I have no clue. Cheers!

If government regulations had allowed it and financial institutions then allowed investors to margin their brokerage accounts and buy crypto directly, it would have been as bad as GFC. Fortunately that didn't happen! There still could be some impact on margin accounts since some brokerages like Schwab allowed investment in crypto trusts and futures. If there's money to be made, people will do the stupidest things to try and get some! Cheers!

The strategy this lady uses would never have occurred to my tiny brain! She looks at State lottery tickets that have been on sale for a long time, but most of the large cash prizes have not been won. Still extremely hard to win, but I would say it probably improves her chances immensely than the conventional lottery player. Cheers! https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/02/us/maryland-lottery-winner-strategy-trnd/index.html

Great chart! I'm stealing that! Cheers!

Cathy Woods...This era's Abbie Joseph Cohen! How does Woods still get inflows of capital into ARKK? Cheers!