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WOW! Is ORLY really down 19% today or do I have a data problem? This is insane. In all fairness these stocks have a really good run. All of them except AZO are ahead of S&P on a 5 yr basis.I think they got a little ahead of themselves. But down 20% in a day on a SSS miss is some really quick correcting.

HaHa! Actually Vancouver is pretty warm (though it rains quite a bit) in the winter and pleasant in the summer, and Boston is colder than Toronto. The real estate is crazy though.

The thing with mattresses is that stores collude with manufacturers to obfuscate and screw the consumer. One point the same mattress has different model names at different stores which makes price comparison very difficult and those price match policies are useless. We have actually found a local independent store that also manufactures their own. We bought a few from there. They're very decently priced (about $700 for a top end model) and we can get them custom made. You want it a bit firmer than the standard model, no problem. Given all these things I haven't felt the need to haggle with them.

Basically cash in a portfolio just gives you optionality and sooner or later a crash will come. As for paying down mortgage it's basically the same as buying a AAA bond. Whether the do it or not it depends on where you are and your equity/fixed income allocation. Regarding location basically in the US is not that good because mortgage interest is tax deductible and refinancing is costlier and cumbersome. For people in Canada where I am however paydown is a better deal. Because mortgege interest is not deductible the coupon on my AAA paydown bond is r=i/(1-t) where i is mortgage interest and t is the marginal tax rate making it a much better deal than a gov't bond. Also refinancing is really easy (takes about 2 days) and very cheap compared to the US. So if I need the cash back I refinance and get it back pretty quick.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/berkshire-dealerships-and-rv-maker-broke-texas-law-regulator-says-1497379828?mod=nwsrl_heard_on_the_street There is no way in hell this will happen but the hole fiasco around it is kind of insane. nobody wants them to stop selling cars in Texas so why even bother with all the legal stuff ? just mail them "Hi, you broke the law but it ok, here is your permit to do so, have a good day Warren" and finish with it. I really hope Warren will not accept the stupid penalty and tell them he will close those dealerships and layoff 4,200 workers and that Texas will lose 220m a year of taxes. We will see how firm are they on those penalties. If it comes to that extreme eventually, Berkshire will just sell those Texas dealerships again, like what happened with about 2 km railroad at BNSF a few years ago. John, I know you've expressed some dismay and confusion at the Taxas law a while back. I didn't have time to respond at that point so I will now and maybe you get a better flavour of what's going on. Basically these laws are all over America. They are very old. They date to a time when there were hundreds of car manufacturers. The reason they were enacted was for warranty. Basically there was a much greater change for the auto retailer to be in business than the auto manufacturer 3-5 years from purchase. Of course that is not the case anymore and everyone mostly forgot that these laws exists. However these laws came back to front recently because of Tesla and their direct to consumer model. Auto dealers started putting pressure on governments to enforce the laws against Tesla. A number of states rightly pulled back on those laws but some other notably Texas and New Jersey are holding very firm on those laws in order to bar Tesla. There is poetic justice in the fact that a law that dealership special interests pushed governments to enforce against Tesla ends up biting dealerships.

Because that's how bullshit works. Don't you know?

Enjoy! I got it in September 2008. At that time I was working in banking in London. Despite being in the middle of the shit storm I couldn't put it down.

Except for Venezuala, Argentina and Zimbabwe, and now with cryptocurrencies probably Italy, Greece and Portugal forcing the EU federal union. Isn't that the purpose of the Anglo alliance for allowing cryptos? Yea none of those countries you listed borrow/borrowed in their own currency.

So wait a minute....accredited "skools" are letting in people that they almost know are NOT going to be able to pass the bar/practice? That is in violation of what the ABA says... Sure, a person's life is ruined...no big deal there... The skool got paid up front. The taxpayer (you, me and every other employed person) is left holding the bag. I, as a taxpayer, don't want my money going to enrich these deans & professors. It is same thing with the "for profit" skools. Southwestern Law Skool has 964 students enrolled! I am going to presume that the VAST majority of their students are borrowing to fund their edukation. That is close to $50MM a year in tuition. Southwestern is not the only skool with this problem. You've got 10 skools in California with a HUGE bar passage problem. Could that be $500MM a year? That figure is probably a bit high...but even so... Then, the problem is certainly NOT limited to California. Here in Michigan we've got the "Cooley Skool of Law" and all their campuses...We've also got a problem with University of Detroit/Mercy and their passage rates. I also know there are problems in North Carolina and Florida. I am going to guess that there are other states with this problem.... So $500MM here, $100MM there, $120MM over yonder and so on and so forth...and now you've got a real problem. The AMA seems to kind of be doing their job...the ABA is asleep at the switch. Well I don't think it's against the ABA because I don't think any of these people were dumb enough to write down anywhere that this is what they're doing. It's all wink wink nudge nudge stuff. I would posit that it's a lot worse that you think and the number are way way bigger. You're just talking about law. But this sort of thing happens across all subjects. So take your numbers and multiply by 100. You can see it in the law stuff cause you look at bar numbers. It's less obvious in other areas where they're no professional exams. But the result is the same, the school let it students that it know would not be able to succeed, took the money, and at the end the student can't get a job or the salary is way lower than expected. It's basically a predatory business practice. As a tax payer I guess you can rest easy because I don't think you'll need to cover much since the loans aren't dischargeable even in bankruptcy. Actually the gov't i think is making good money on these. So you're good. The deans are good. It's just the student that end up with crushed dreams, mountains of debt and lost years/youth. Of course the problem is fixable. Pick a hard nosed asshole, put him (or her) in charge and stay out of his way. But of course it would involve government intervention or regulation. So no can do. I'd say you should calm down a bit and save some of your outrage. I think things are going to get worse from here, not better.

This may sound more harsh then I intend it to be so don't take it the wrong way. But this sort of thinking is a big part of the problem along with "market prices" for tuition thinking. I'd say that the people going into these schools cannot make informed decisions. Part of the problem is the everyone is special and you can be what you want to be bullshit. But also that these students are pretty young and not all have the ability to make the right decision because of youth/inexperience/etc. Furthermore, the biggest part of the problem is that they don't have the information to make an informed decision. For example they think they're gonna make 80-90k 3 years out of school. As DTEJD said here often that's wrong they'll make 40. But they don't know that. Also since the schools became de facto business they market to these kids pretty aggressively and throw a lot of bullshit their way. The employment and salary stats they publish are also cooked which contributes the misinformation. I know a couple of very reputable business schools that flat out lie in their stats. If the reputable schools do it you can bet your ass the lower ones are doing it "bigly". But sure it's the kids' fault they don't know any of this. Why should the schools bear any responsibility. If we follow this path then why do the schools even need admission departments?

Government's borrowing in own currency are not subject to Minsky moments.

Yea, I don't think that anyone cares. Least of all the current Department of Education. Also I don't think that what you're describing is limited to only the legal profession but it is a wide spread problem. As you've pointed out in your original post a big cause are the exorbitant tuition costs. There is no reason why university should cost this much. But in the past if anyone raised the issue they were slammed down with free market arguments i.e. if the students are willing to pay these exorbitant costs, who are we to intervene. I don't know how you can put the genie back in the bottle now. At this point the "skools" are business selling degrees and the students are no longer students but customers. If you don't let someone in you miss on customers/revenue. If you fail someone you loose revenue. It's ridiculous and it's completely self-inflicted.

Except that people don't really like to live in trailer parks.

The next generation of aircraft are already being developed for mid-2020s and the design requires 2 pilots. It will take 7+ years even after regulation changes for manufacturers to produce a single pilot airliner. Could you fly an airliner single pilot in an emergency? Absolutely. But the current design won't fly (haaah!) for everyday single pilot operations. Labor unions will fight tooth and nail to prevent this (because 50% less safe) and the traveling public will be on their side. I can't see this happening for 15-20yrs+, and even at that point it will be cargo carriers like FedEx/UPS first. Fly, by your handle you may know more about this than me. But as I understand it, a plane can basically already fly itself today including ILS landings etc. Pilots are there more as fail safe devices if something bad happens i.e. you need a brain in an emergency. Given the cost/reward situation this is worth it since the cost of the pilots is quite small compared to the cost of the overall flight. Also in an emergency it appears that you need two people - one to fly the plane and one to handle comms and checklists. So I don't see that one going away anytime soon. I think that we may be getting a bit over-exited and extrapolating a curve much into the future. In the case of what DTEJD said it all makes sense because lawyers are expensive. However, take another example of the list - lawn mowing. There's been a robot for this for a long time. It's called the kid down the street. It'll cost you maybe something like $10 a pop once a week. But most people still mostly mow their own lawns. For a robot to take over that it'll have to cost way less than that. Maybe $3 once a week. There will not be a robot that will be able to maw your lawn and cost $90 a year for a long time. Lawn mowing simply isn't a high enough value activity. On forklifts it's a lot more interesting because there you pay $15-$20 per hour for 8-24 hours per day. Though the reason why forklift drivers make decent money is safety so these robots better be really really good. I would look at the jobs where labour costs a lot and isn't that specialized. Probably real estate agent would be a the top of my list.

What happened at MSFT was some erosion in Windows (which was expected) but also they were very aggressive in moving to cloud delivery from on prem. The thing is that the cloud stuff is less profitable but a hell of a lot more sticky. Maybe the decreased profitability is just the carrot for the switch and pricing will move once they have their clients locked in. Who knows? What's for sure is that Wall St. really likes the model. Moreover, the Valeant comparison doesn't really apply. Yeah, MSFT is like VRX if you ignore their cash position, lack of meaningful debt, river of actual cash flowing in, lack of dependence on bullshit price hikes to stay alive, and the fact that MSFT actually has its own products that people are buying. Otherwise they're the same. Full disclosure, I own MSFT. I loaded up around $23-$24 in 2011-2012 and it became my largest position @20%. Disposed of some along the way up. But I'm generally a happy camper with the company and the stock. I think it's fully valued at these levels.

Correct. It's easy to beat your competitors on price and grow if you don't need to make a profit. For now Amazon is not a business. It's a non-profit. You're looking at it wrong. For sure I am. After all a company is not supposed to make money.

Correct. It's easy to beat your competitors on price and grow if you don't need to make a profit. For now Amazon is not a business. It's a non-profit.

I have RRSPs and TFSAs at IB. You can only do Canada and US stocks and there are a couple of extra fees. Otherwise the same IB goodness. Pretty happy with it.

Sure, building a nuclear power plant may take a while, but how long does it take to build the 12,000 MW of solar which is sort of the equivalent of a 4 reactor plant? Probably a quite a bit of time as well. On top of all this, nuclear is base load power which directly displaces coal.

These are some good interesting points. Regarding point number 1. First let me say that I am a car guy, but also when I lived in London I enjoyed not having a car and being able to take cabs. Right now I live in the suburbs of Toronto so I need a car. No, taking cab/uber places would not be cheaper. I eventually see myself moving downtown but even then I would need to have at least one car in my household. The reason as I see it? What if my kid gets sick or injured and I need to rush to the hospital? Am I going to take a chance that an Uber driver is not going to take me because he doesn't want my kid's gushing blood staining his car? No. Also those trips to parents' and inlaws' houses which cost $150 a pop help diffuse the cost of car ownership a lot. The above is just some things that I think about. I'm sure other people have their own reasons for car ownership in an urban setting. In all those Toronto condo sky scrapers the parking lots are full. There's a reason for that and I doubt that those reasons are going to change much if you lower the cost of transportation by 10-15%. Regarding point 2. When it comes to efficiency between combustion power and EVs even if you make power out of fossil fuels (though it's not all fossil fuels) the thing is that a power plant is much, much more efficient than a car's combustion engine. However on the other side a very good point is made on how you charge these vehicles that are running a lot. Yes you could be using Tesla's with 600km per charge but that's really stupid/inefficient so that's not a very good solution. In my view a lot of this is just Silicon Valley talking it's own book. But furthermore, I think they are truly underestimating how hard all of this is. Up to now they've been writing this piece of code or that piece of code. They've moved from electronic device to that electronic device. This is a whole different can of fish. It has real life, life and death implications and I don't think they fully grasp the enormity of that and what is required.

As far as I can recall there was no crisis whatsoever in 2012 when I was buying buckets of the stuff at 1.15 book. Markets do what markets do. Stocks get expensive and stocks get cheap. No pronouncement from Omaha is going to change that. Btw, I have zero doubts that the stock will go below the 1.2 threshold in the not too distant future. Pro tip: Periodically there are big and easy money making opportunities in the options market if you apply a little valuation and value investing logic.

Care to stretch that chart up a couple of decades and match it up against something like HON, PG, or JNJ?

There will probably be a line on the P&L for gains/losses in securities. So you should be able to easily back those out to get to "normalized earnings". Aside note: Why do you guys have social security offices?

I wouldn't ride in the vehicle if there were other passengers. Your service would have to be a lot cheaper than the car services. Autonomous busses don't seem very attractive to me, I would never give up my car for that. Lol that was snark from CorpRaider

One think I don't get is how is ride sharing supposed to meaningfully increase efficiency/lower cost for people that drive to work. Let's say that you have x people in that bucket. Those x people would require a car at roughly the same car. So for this pool of people you would need something close to x cars in your fleet. Yes a bit less than x because not everyone goes to work at the same time. But if you have an efficiency of 20% then my savings on sharing vs owning a vehicle are 20x(1-profit margin of fleet operator). In my opinion that's not such a meaningful reduction in expense to give up ownership. This also doesn't take into account the other inconveniences of such a fleet such being bombarded by ads on my trip home from work.