Parsad

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!

You are comparing apples to oranges. Lynch ran a fund. Now if you compare apples to apples: The original Buffett Partnership over 12 years compounded at 31.6% annualized with no down year...the S&P500 did only 9.1% annualized during the same period. Buffett handily beat the S&P500 in each of those 12 years. http://warrenbuffettoninvestment.com/buffett-partnership-performance/ Not to discount Lynch's performance, as it was nearly as extraordinary. But he compounded at a lower rate and was outperformed by the S&P500 in 2 of the 13 years he ran the Magellan Fund. Lynch was also extremely stressed out when he left the fund...Buffett is as fresh as a baby 60 years later! Cheers!

Crypto is worse than the internet bubble in 2000. I went to my pharmacy on Tuesday to get a prescription filled...the pharmacist asked me what I do, and then started asking about the stock market. I told her as long as she wasn't into cryptocurrencies it was a good time to buy stocks, and if she had stocks, don't sell...ride through the storm. She then started listing her holdings from her phone, as she didn't know them all and her brother had put her into these "stocks". As soon as I heard them, I said those are all cryptocurrencies or related stocks. "If I was an advisor, your volatility rating would be on the extremely aggressive side...where you could lose all of your money." She was down 60% so far, and I told her don't put any more money into this stuff. She said her brother told her to hold on and in few years it will be worth 10-100 times what it is today. She was confident that she would make a fantastic return on it. I knew I was talking to someone who had no idea what their brother got them into. So unfortunately, my prescription wasn't ready and I said I would come back Saturday. I went in right now and picked up my prescription. The two other people working there started talking to me. They were also invested in crypto and most of their friends. Most of them had put in anywhere from $10K to a couple hundred thousand, and we're talking about people here who are struggling to buy their first home in Vancouver, young single or couples, most with kids. This is far more prevalent than what I remember during the internet bubble...in terms of how many small investors had bought into internet or internet-related stocks. This is comparable to the stupidity of ARM loans during the housing crisis. That type of nuclear bomb! Fortunately, the financial system isn't really correlated to crypto and has little if any exposure. I can't believe how many people I heard from who wanted to know about crypto in the last 18 months to how many people are now asking about should they hold on to their crypto in the last 2 months! I can't see how most of these people don't lose most/all of their money. Crazy! Cheers!

Yeah, but so does any position of power. I know a lot of broke ass politicians who have too much influence on society one way or the other...including some dumbass Supreme Court Judges. The only part I agree with is money or power amplifies impact...good or bad...Buffett or Jeffrey Epstein! Cheers!

Any moron could get ten coin flips correct? Show me people who have gotten the coin flip correct 35 times, let alone nearly 70 times! Geez, I've gotten it right 15 out of 20 years in my personal portfolio, and I should be considered mentally handicapped compared to Buffett. Even show me the people who got ten years of better results than Buffett without using leverage...with no down years...and at least 30% compounded annually. I've looked at this deeply over the years, and the only one that comes anywhere near Buffett is James Simons of Renaissance Technologies and his Medallion Fund...but he used huge amounts of leverage. Here's a good article where the author talks about the greats and then lays out Buffett's case: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2019/08/who-has-the-most-impressive-investment-track-record/ The consistency, the transparency, the results and the sheer amount of capital...no one even close. No quants, no one other than him, not even a calculator! And the use of float rather than other forms of leverage...sheer genius! Cheers!

How the country would have been impacted? Let's try the world: Probably tens of thousands of people who are now financially independent because of him, his examples and teachings...me being one of them! There may not have been a Google as we know it. They modelled the culture of their business on Berkshire. They were heavily influenced by Buffett & Berkshire. There probably would not be a Gates Foundation...$60B donated and $38B in assets with probably 3 times those numbers to come. There probably would not be a Giving Pledge...$600B in committed assets to be given away...so far! Probably no Geico...no one might have heard of Jack Byrne. Probably Salomon brothers would have failed. Without Buffett...no one might know Charlie Munger or Li Lu. Arguably restored credibility to AXP during the salad oil scandal. Saved the Washington Post. Saved GenRe by acquiring it and ending the thousands of derivatives contracts it had...would have been exactly like AIG if he didn't acquire it...the U.S. would not have looked the way it does if it had experienced the implosions of Bear Stearns and Lehman, plus AIG and a possible GenRe. Was lender of last resort to GE, GS, USG and HOG during GFC...all four probably would have gone under. Without Buffett...Bank of America may have failed and caused a run on U.S. banks. Without Buffett...no Lou Simpson, no Ted and Todd, no Wally Weitz, no Markels, no White Mountain, no Mohnish Pabrai, probably not the same Ajit Jain, no Michael Burry, no Prem Watsa, no Francis Chou...you see where I'm going with this...no Sanjeev Parsad, no COBF! There's probably a shitload I'm missing, but hey with no me and COBF, isn't that enough! Cheers!

Not sure that's fair. Vanderbilt didn't create anything original...he owned steamships, railroads, ocean liners, etc. Same with Rockefeller who owned oil fields and companies. Great is great! Cheers!

How about from the horse's mouth: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2014/10/02/we-dont-look-at-macro-factors-buffett.html It's not that they ignore macro outright...but it doesn't play a role in their decision making when they are investing. They pay attention to it to see how their businesses might behave or react with macro changes, but not when it comes to investing. Even Buffett's silver bet was made based on supply/demand and the ratio between gold and silver...it was not a macro bet on inflation or where gold was headed. Cheers!

No, there really isn't! He's the best. No one has gone through so many secular bull/bear markets, catastrophes, wars, financial crises (Nifty Fifties, OPEC Oil Embargo, 80's inflation, Black Monday, tech bubble, GFC, Covid, etc) with such a record...20% plus compounded over nearly 70 years...with so few down years. Then to take his hedge fund and turn it into Berkshire Hathaway, acquire a multitude of businesses, teach millions of people, distribute 99% of his wealth to non-profits and still live such a humble life. Nope, no one even close...no one can ever be like him...he's singularly the best and would/should stand next to U.S. giants like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, etc. You might put Gates and Sam Walton in there too at the end of the day...and possibly Elon Musk and Bezos in that category as well, but we'll have to see what else Musk and Bezos do. Cheers!

Regarding Buffett's so-called "freeze" during the pandemic, I don't think he was paralyzed. I think he wanted to keep a significant amount of cash on hand in case the pandemic lasted 5 years instead of 2. What if there was an earthquake in LA and a F5 hurricane in the Gulf Coast. On a $300B loss, Berkshire would probably eat about $30-50B of that. If half his cash is gone and the pandemic lasts 5 years...Berkshire might not be the last one standing as we've always expected! While he has bought into Munger and Phil Fisher's pay more for quality objective, deep down Buffett is still a Ben Graham, margin of safety, investor. That's why he never paid up for Walmart, Amazon or Costco, yet he knew those businesses inside out. And why he worries about the absolute worst case scenario before committing capital. Cheers!

I agree! I don't think Buffett or Munger give two s**ts about macro. They may make certain investments based on the direction that industry is moving (clean energy, oil & gas, electric batteries/cars, etc), but they don't care about macro. Cheers!

To my Canadian boardmember brethren...Happy Canada Day! To our U.S. counterparts...Happy 4th of July on Monday! Cheers!

I like the word "onkly" you've created...a combination of "only" and "frankly"?! Cheers!

F) The Great Unwind (not just government assets but all assets)

Ahhhh! I think we're 2/3rds done already. At -20.6% we're already half way down/up this list: Do we really think things are going to be as bad as the Roosevelt Recession of 1937, the Great Depression or Financial Crisis? We'll probably drop a total of 30-35% (what I said originally) into the 3rd Q as 2nd Q earnings hurt and rates continue to rise, and then rebound through the 4th Q and into the middle of next year as the economy slows somewhat, supply chain issues decrease, inflation stabilizes and the administration starts to pander to voters as they start to make their run to the 2024 elections. Cheers! Cheers!

True! At the same time, did we ever think that certain automotive issues or performance could be simply fixed by a wireless update? There are pros and cons to everything. Sure, we won't have as many people that can simply fix old automobiles, appliances, etc, but at the same time, we carry our phones all over the world with ease, drive vehicles that need very little servicing, have an abundance of food choices and in many cases, can work from home regularly, etc, etc. I always hear from family and friends how things are so much worse...and I'm sure certain things are...but I'm constantly amazed by what science and technology allow us to do as well. Cheers!

I don't think anyone disagrees with what the Fed did, just how long they did it. And then again with the pandemic. They have to step in, there was no one else of size that could inject liquidity during the GFC or support businesses during the pandemic. Just the size and duration of the support is at question...because it kind of effed things up in other ways. Cheers!

Hmmm...savers outside of GIC's did pretty well. So it wasn't just non-savers. Cheers!

Agree! Savers made it up, or should have made it up, on the bond and equity side. If they stayed in GIC's then that's their fault. Cheers!

Yeah, I partly agree with Dinar. The CPI calculation may not have shown inflation, but I've been noticing shrinkage of product volume sizes for a few years. Lower energy, commodity, and labor costs may have offset higher food and manufacturing costs pre-pandemic. Cheers!

One of my cousin's is a heavy duty mechanic, and his wife's 2012 Lexus was having some handling issues. They took it to the dealership where they finally worked their way to determining the entire front end suspension was failing and needed replacing for about $3,500. He said he would fix it himself. They said let us know what he finds. He took it home, took it apart himself, and found out that one of the shocks had failed. He went and picked up the parts from a parts store, and apparently with the Lexus, you can't just replace the shock, but have to replace the struts and coil too, plus do both sides. The total parts were something like $400. He took the failed shock absorber to the dealership and showed them after. Total cost...$400 plus about 3 hours of his time. Cheers!

That will be a great memory! Make sure you guys fix the car properly!!!!! Cheers!

I'm not sure Berkshire should do any acquisitions after Buffett is gone. There is no need to. They have enough organic businesses to power the company...from insurance to energy to retail/manufacturing to distribution/transportation...they are essentially a mini S&P500 already. They should pour enough money to grow those businesses, and then everything else should go to the portfolio managers. That's it. Abel doesn't need to ever acquire another business again, and BRK will continue to make tons of money. Cheers!

On the other end, airline ticket prices can only go up...staffing shortages, 2019 demand, traffic control shortages, fuel costs, food costs, labor costs...I own a bunch of HA Jan 2023 call options, but I may have been early. I imagine airline profits will be close to 2019 in 2022 and exceed 2019 in 2023...investors should consider Jan 2024 call options on many airlines. Cheers! https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/26/business/flight-cancellations-sunday/index.html