aws

19,000,100 is the final total. Looks like it was the same two bidders who chased it all the way up from 3 million to 19. What a great final auction for them. There was a Livestream of an event held for the last hour of the auction if you want to learn more about glide, see some tributes to Warren, and see the final bids come in. https://www.glide.org/celebrating-a-legacy-of-commitment/

People seem to like those incrementing number strings when bidding on this auction. IIRC in the past we've had 2,345,678; 3,456,789; and 4,567,888 so far. And now 12,345,678.

I think the fractional purchases mostly became available in 2020 at a variety of brokers, just in time for the retail mania that started in Jan 2021. Likely many saw the novelty of buying small pieces of such a high value stock and could setup the trades to recur automatically so the high volume would continue over time. That's not to say there wasn't also an increase in full A share trading, but looking at volume alone is meaningless when a $1 fractional trade shows up on the tape exactly like a 400k trade.

This goes back a ways but some may find it interesting. I think I solved the mystery of the A share buyer today. The answer is that fractional share purchases hit the tape as a whole share. So if someone buys $20 worth of fractional A shares (1/20000th of a share) it still hits the tape as a full share purchase. See this explanation on FINRA's website: Share Quantity Q101.14: How should a trade for a fractional number of shares, for example, 100.5 shares, be reported? A101.14: When reporting a trade for a fractional number of shares, firms should delete the fraction and report the whole number, except if the whole number would be 0 (zero). If the whole number would be 0, firms should round up to 1. Thus, for example, for a trade of 100.5 shares, the reported quantity would be 100. Trade reports with a share quantity containing a decimal or a fraction will be rejected. (See also, e.g., OATS FAQ T69.) Q101.15: Must trades for less than one share be reported? A101.15: Yes. As noted in FAQ 101.14, where a trade is executed for less than one share, e.g., 1/3 share, firms should round up and report a share quantity of 1. I tested this, and I bought about $20 worth of A shares on Robinhood and repeated it as quickly as I could, getting about 20 such orders in. I then checked the tape and each one of these came across as a full share order. So really, there likely has been no increase in the volume of A share traded, but rather it just reflects brokers beginning to offer fractional share purchases.

Putin doesn't need to save face. He doesn't care at all what the west things about him, and his propaganda machine in Russia can spin whatever outcome into some heroic victory. Give Ukraine as much as they can use to defend themselves for as long as they have the will to do so.

More Berkshire in the 270s. Feels good to see prices like this again. Also shorting a couple of puts (270 for 7/1 and 265 for 7/15).

He is a clown, but I shorted some MSTR Oct $10 puts today anyway. The margin call risk is overstated as they can just pledge additional bitcoin at the first trigger. They are well underwater with an average cost over 30k, but they issued enough stock in the runups that they don't have negative equity until the 18k range. And then the margin call death spiral is more like at 3k level, which is likely a very low probability in the next 4 months, but in any case it's a tiny cash secured position. Also shorted some CLF puts, and added more to BRK and PSH.AS

I wonder if they had the same attorney as in this case, which the appeals court relied upon when denying Geico's appeal. https://casetext.com/case/knight-v-knight-134 I only skimmed it, but my reading was: Grandson sues grandparents for injury on a jet-ski, saying the grandparents neglected to supervise him State farm denied coverage since it the activity was excluded under the policy The parties agree to arbitration, in which the grandparents will agree not to offer any defense, agree not to challenge any award, and the grandson agrees to seek recovery only from the insurance policy and not from grandparents personally State Farm is not allowed to intervene as they are not a party to the lawsuit (despite being the only one who would ever have to pay out an award) Basically it seems like collusion between the parties which burdens in insurer with an unlimited bill that they cannot challenge. So that once the door has been opened that the insurer acted in bad faith by declining to defend the insured, they are automatically bound to anything that happens after that point, even if the parties conspire to act in such a way to maximize the judgment and minimize any chance of later defense.

It would be great if the workers could bank all their extra income. Take advantage of the labor market to find higher paying jobs and at the same time become more price sensitive even as their income goes up. That way businesses cannot create a wage price spiral as they will be unable to pass the higher labor costs on to consumers, but how can you make that happen? There are incongruous factors in play right now. We have wage growth, but record low consumer confidence. Personal savings rates are plummetting so people are spending more and driving up inflation, but why would they be so scared and spending at such a high rate?

I'm finding this discussion rather confusing. I think we all understand how high inflation can be detrimental to those with a lot of capital. And so the contention is that if it's bad for the wealthy it must automatically be good for the average worker, or just because of the specific aspects of this cycle of inflation? And whether it's true in general or just in this case, what group would want to stop that outcome? I'm sure the democrats are terrified of going into an election with $5+ gas and high inflation, so it obviously wouldn't make sense for them to be spreading fear that will get them kicked out of office. Republicans are running on the platform that this economy is a disaster for the workers. While it does seem like pandering when a multimillionaire congressman complains on social media about the cost of filling up their tank, it still doesn't come across as part of some conspiracy to get in power to crush the workers. Rather it's just keeping what is painful at the front of people's minds for when they go to vote.

That makes sense. So you have to choose between a potentially outrageous settlement offer or risk unlimited liability in a trial or arbitration, and you have to defend every lawsuit against an insured no matter how frivolous to avoid risking a default judgment. No wonder insurance is a tough business.

Leaving aside the bizarre interpretation of what can be considered a covered loss, shouldn't the liability of the insurer be capped at the policy limit, which would surely be less than $5 million?

A little more Berkshire now that we have a 2 handle again. Also some more PSH.AS.

I still have some covid era short BRK puts in my accounts that will expire soon, including some $110 puts where I got 8.50 premium. Those were the days.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/26/putin-george-soros-says-russia-is-blackmailing-europe-with-gas.html?&qsearchterm=russia This article is much in line with how I think a good endgame could be reached. Russia does not want to be turning off any taps, and all of its threats on the subject are bluffs. They want to project the image that Europe needs the gas more than they need to sell it. They hope by cutting off a few small countries it will scare the rest into making deals, and in the meantime the loss of volume is made up for by higher prices, but a complete termination of gas exports to Europe hurts Russia massively more than Europe. Revenue drops to zero, and the gas production can actually become a burden if their storage is full and they need to shut in wells which can't be started again easily if tensions cool soon after. And how much of Russia's NG production is associated gas, which cannot be turned off without losing oil output as well? Operators in the permian in recent years had to flare or accept negative prices for their gas as there was no way to get it to market. And they couldn't shut in the gas as it was just a byproduct of their oil production. Russia has no other customers and cannot afford to stop production. But while Europe holds all the cards, they are playing it in a way that so far has been a net positive for Russia's O&G revenue. The fears of shortages has driven up prices and any actions that may have a real impact on the dependence on Russian energy are months or years away. If they took drastic action and called Russia's bluff two months ago, the war might have been over already.

Picked up some BGFV

It is interesting how much Putin has toned down the escalation, with no May 9th announcement, and a relatively muted reaction to the NATO news. And now with the presumable prisoner exchange in Azovstal it does look like Putin is looking for an offramp, but I just don't see how he gets it. Ukraine isn't just going to give Russia the territory it is currently holding, and with the success in pushing Russia back plus more aid incoming they are likely to want at the very least pre-2022 borders.

And they seem to have unlimited backlogs of business at whatever price they want to charge. I have been trying to get contractors for some repairs on a building I own, a roughly 50k job. Most are too busy that it's not even worth their time to come out and take a look at the job. Four came and looked at it, but of those three didn't even bother writing up an estimate and won't return my calls or make excuses. I started looking in January and still haven't been able to get a contract signed for work. I have to imagine business has never been better for these types of contractors to be able to turn down this kind of work so easily.

Added to PSH closed end fund. ~33% discount to NAV and now another buyback.

One of the highest traded stocks today is Redbox (RDBX) on news that it is being acquired for approximately 65 cents per share in an all stock deal. The share stock was halted on upside volatility multiple times, hitting over $6 per share, or roughly 10x the merger price. Toppy behavior still abounds.

Saw this 'feel good' story in the Times today: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/realestate/tenants-eviction-port-morris-bronx.html Just imagine the nightmare of being this landlord. You buy a building with negative cash flows, aren't allowed to raise the rents, can't evict anyone, and get bullied into selling the property to a nonprofit for a massive loss after 5 years of hassle. In the end, it will end up in the hands of the tenants for basically free... tenants who couldn't pay the below market rent or even afford to pay to split some appetizers at a tenant meeting. Imagine when there are costly repairs that will be due. Not sure if you can pull up the link, but here are some snippets from the article:

That's a pretty nice potential return if he bought the shares in the mid 70s. ~75 million shares at about $20 per share spread.

I decided to get a new quote from Geico during the break. I'm surprised that my rate dropped by over 50% since the last time I had a quote with them. That's a pretty huge change and now they are much cheaper than Progressive. Maybe I'll switch back to the family.

I just did the math on Apple. The value on previously known shares would have been 158.47 billion, whereas the 10-Q shows 159.1 billion. So it was probably about a $600 million purchase.

I was involved with the stock and its bonds before the bankruptcy and have followed the process. The shares were listed last January but the warrants kept getting delayed. The warrants would have been nearly worthless if they came public at the same time as the shares because the strike price so high. The shares traded around $7 when they went public, about 90% haircut for the bondholders, and the warrants were structured that they wouldn't be in the money until the bondholders were made whole. But a lot has changed for energy stocks in the past 15 months, and now the stock was trading at nearly the same strike price as the warrants. I was quite interested to see what the warrants would trade at under the circumstances, thinking they might trade a few dollars under fair value. And to my surprise they came public at 1 penny per warrant. So it didn't matter what fair value was, I just stuck bids out there and some people sold to me at pennies on the dollar. It took a couple of days before price discovery took place, and I was able to vacuum up a big chunk of the warrants.