Gregmal

OK so with the election over and focus here moving back to investing shortly, I thought it might be a neat exercise to kick around the above subject matter. At the crux of the Berkshire vs something like a Brookfield, the main difference, IMO is not the contrast in leverage utilization vs cash hoard, but the focus on assets vs businesses. I have long looked at Berkshire and admired their businesses. They are powerful and almost run themselves. Great brand value, which is an asset to a certain degree, but nonetheless the majority of their holdings are "operations". Whereas on the other end, you have Brookfield which buys assets as the primary driver of their strategy. Infrastructure stuff is kind of a hybrid, both an asset but also an operation. Its probably where BRK and BAM have the most in common. Generally speaking though, what are the opinions on preference for the two? An asset, like an office building or a pipeline requires rather minimal attention, is hard to impair or mismanage, and regularly spits off cashflow. A subsurface royalty or a ground lease you are basically just letting somebody else use your space for a recurring, high margin fee. Whereas a Costco, an Apple, a chemical company, or a homebuilder, needs to consistently be on top of their game. They have consistently evolving variables, employees, regulatory expectations....however just anecdotally, I've found that businesses can compound with great velocity and you can much easier hit a real home run getting into a business at the right time, whereas an asset just kind of goes slow and steady. Where do folks stand? Is it different in terms of public vs private? Theres obviously a great advantage to not having to worry about evolving and operating a business if its a privately held asset. Its also much harder to destroy value and make bad decisions with an asset...which is not to say it cant be done, but an asset that simply appreciates due to existing, is much harder to impair than one where you regularly have to make judgment calls or face operational risk. Its funny but folks often associate classic value investor aphorisms like "margin of safety" with Berkshire, but on a fundamental level, that seems more appropriate to ascribe to the Brookfield strategy....of course the debate around the utilization of leverage not withstanding.

Quite happy with the direction they seem to have slowly moved towards.

https://nypost.com/2020/11/06/what-florida-can-teach-new-york-about-handling-covid/ FL vs NY. Sure, bring politics in to it. Because thats the difference.

Everyone answers to their own P&L. With respect to this...muscleman is clearly winning here...Who cares how many cases of the sniffles we had today...

Honestly...I didnt/dont consider it at all. This kind of piqued my interest during the big run up in 2013. I looked into it. Digital money, why not, right? It made sense on a very connect the dots kind of way but I also inherently shared the same views as the Buffetts and Dimons of the world. I decided to chuck a rather irrelevant amount of money at it after the big crash because it shared a lot of the traits that I have seen in very successful investments prior. From there I was a bit of a closet buyer. A thousand here and thousand there, etc. It was hard because this is the type of stuff you look like a fool here, or more importantly to my investors for being an advocate of...but on a certain level it made sense to me. Along the way Ive just made sure to trim the rips and moderately buy the dips. Overall on a cost basis perspective it is maybe 1% of a position. I've recouped my initial investment already and at this point will let about 80% ride regardless and for fucks trade the other 20%.

Ive made a few minor sells(like 1-2%) of my position around $15k. Nothing other than heeding the big move and recalling that when this goes, it rips hard but typically does retreat a little while later on large(20%+) price movements. That said, I really think this is just getting started longer term. I said it years ago but its a very rare instance where retail beat Wall Street to the punch. 2018 is where retail shook out and passed the baton to the institutions. Slowly this is now becoming mainstream. Who knows where it goes anymore than one knows where gold is going. But hey, thats the fun part.

Yee-haw!

Started some BKEPP.

mybookie.ag A few caveats...1) daily wire limit is only $2,500. 2) Its an offshore based operation so you effectively have no recourse should they try to screw you. The limits on $ in a way for me are to remind myself that obviously its still gambling(not best use of money) and also to only screw around with insignificant sums in the event there is an issue with #2. I've looked at some of the legal operations that have sprouted up in past few years but dont think they make a huge difference. I tried FanDuel but kept running into issues where they couldn't verify locations and wouldn't allow bets. I also dont gamble a lot. Maybe a half dozen events in the last 10-15 years.

Hey, only in America can you shit in your bed and then just pickup and sleep in someone else's. Overall though, I think the underlying messages of this election were very positive. One, you have indisputably destroyed anything that was left(to me, not much, but I'm not gullible) of the media and pollsters credibility. Two, you saw very clear messages in places like Kenosha; a blatant reverse course from 2016 directly tied to the anarchy and chaos position of the left. Three, Hispanics, particularly in Florida and Texas, roundly rejecting Democrats as the party of socialism. While matching Trump's voter enthusiasm with another candidate will be hard for the GOP, you'd think they pretty handily take much more of the popular vote and votes in swing states with a less divisive candidate. And at the same time, the Democrats should proceed with caution and who knows, maybe realize some of the ways of their errors with regard to policies and if they come back to the middle, its all good for everyone anyway. Best line I saw last night was on Twitter. Some stupid liberal chick was spewing nonsense about "it's not a red state blue state issue at this point, its a white issue"...to which someone methodically blew her peanut sized brain out of its shell by tweeting exit polls showing that Trump actually improved DRASTICALLY amongst ALL demographics...except white males!

Eh even if Michigan and Nevada turn they'll "find" some mail ins over in Georgia or NC or something. Its funny, but there's two take aways from this. 1) Trumps mini obsession with hating John McCain may have been the one thing that ultimately cost him...paying a price for one of his(many) character defects. The 2nd) it really will be the lazy bums who cant get off their asses even to vote, likely also seeking handouts, that determine the election.

Flipped this again, 85-93 in two days. Nothing special, its just what these stocks do.

Election? And here I thought it was just because we are in a massive bubble! I do think overall its quite bullish and a major relief to pretty much everyone who has been deranged(on both sides) to ultimately see a Biden presidency with a Republican Senate, if thats how it shakes out.

After a little debating also took Trump to win NH at +275. Anecdotally Ive found NH be unique and the folks there less stupid and liberal than those in MA and CT. Matched it on a payout basis to more or less wash my Biden -170 bet. If Joe wins I win money and if Trump wins NH(regardless) I come out slightly ahead as well. Hedge trade!

+1 I think your best values exist somewhere in between. Where is that place that's been low-priced for a while but maybe new infrastructure or new investment is driving green shoots of development? Maybe you'll be able to buy at a price where there is little to no upside built into the price but there is a reasonable argument that additional redevelopment hits your neighborhood in the next 5 years. I would also make another comparison to the stock market in that its not a housing market as much as it is a market of houses. Everyone has different motivations for selling their home/property so if you can identify a seller who prizes liquidity over the best price, you can get a deal. Maybe not at this exact moment in time with the way the market is, but in general things don't move so fast that you can't find people who need liquidity. I recently advised my friends to buy a house in a certain part of Charlotte where 2,000+ sq ft homes were selling for less than $250,000. The area recently had some new infrastructure (a transit rail) put in, there has been some early momentum in prices in the area, and you can see some evidence of people renovating or flipping homes. It also is an area that has historically been considered a bad part of town, and I wouldn't be surprised if you see suspicious characters walking the main roads sometimes and maybe the shopping in that immediate area isn't that great but you're 15 minutes from downtown Charlotte. My buddy instead chose to buy a $400,000 home that had been renovated somewhat in a part of town that is not that great in my opinion, is farther from downtown, but is closer to other areas that have recently developed. It's too early to tell who is "right" but I think many people are uncomfortable being uncomfortable. In real estate, your friends might joke around and call you a slumlord, and no one is going to look at the homes you buy and say "Wow" but these areas that are on the fringe of development have been very successful for me. What part of town are you talking about? Where the gold line extension is going in? What you are talking about might be sitting in St. Joe territory! Ive long owned shares, but no more. Ive flirted with buying some land out there, but haven't. That said, if you're looking for an inflection story, the Panhandle in FL is probably one of your best bets.

Yield or growth? Not much different than the stock market. Like the stock market, there are in betweens as well.

It just depends on your risk/speculation tolerance but when I started it I had the basket a hair below 10%. I reduced along the way as I always try to recoup my original investment as fast as possible(at least when I am pretty blatantly speculating) while maintaining a respectable exposure for myself. I cut the basket down to about 2% towards end of 2019 and early 2020. Kicked it back up to about 5% during the Gift of Covid Firesale and have basically just been trading around a core since. The thing I'd focus on is really just staying up to date with the people involved and the progress being made to market as well as the institutional partners. CRSP is a clear leader. But the science/application end is evolving so something like RPTX could be interesting. If you are a normal dude and not filthy rich I think I'd probably just say chuck $5-$10k per name at a select few and let it ride while peeling off your original capital hoping to eventually trade your way into some free shares or maybe check out some ARKG although with that its got the exposure but I hate their concentration and conviction in NVTA, despite having made a lot of money both long and short in that name, I think fundamentally it's a Ponzi scheme and its one of ARKs largest holdings. EDIT: I'd clarify on the allocation amount, depending on where you are in your earnings life cycle, maybe take a couple months worth of salary as your benchmark. Its different for everyone so 2% of portfolio if you're 60 is different than if you're 40 or 20. So is 5-10K per name. So I'd say the lesser of 2% as a basket or a few months of salary...although just be warned I hate giving uniform investment advice and its really just individual preference to which my preference can and sometimes are very different than that of others....

Would love to hear your thesis on CRSP? I wrote up the theme a few years ago, I believe it was here. But basically you've got a massive TAM, very long duration runway before anything(positive or negative) will come to fruition, and just continuous positive news flow. CRSP has the best combination of reputable partners and respected scientists on board and is way ahead of the pack in terms of advancing a product(CTX001) to market. Dig around a little in the field(I have a lot of family and friends who work in the space) and you'll repeatedly hear about how CRISPR is basically a once in a generation breakthrough and that the majority of future work being done in a lot of areas utilizes a CRISPR platform. There's non guarantee which company holds the monetization key to all of this, or even if the existing court rulings stand; you've also got an evolving platform as the targeting techniques evolve...but again, your runway is long and there should be quite a bit of money to be made trading these things along the way. I think when I first wrote up as few of these CRSP was around $30 or something. EDIT 20s and NTLA lows teens. Since then you've gotten BEAM and also RPTX come public. Ive got a few shares in nonpublic companies as well. If there was ever a sector/theme where you just want to sprinkle money and then wait for the 10+ bagger, its here IMO.

Glutton for punishment, eh? Welcome to the club.

Added back a smidge of CRSP. Guessing its down because Biden again vowed to cure cancer....

Sold my small over the weekend OTM call position on SPY. Added a bit of the proceeds into Nov 20 puts, paid down some margin, and wired out a small amount to buy some Biden -170 at the sports book.

Perhaps Im just being obtuse again, but despite the fanfare for these I think its a do you like cheeseburgers, filet mignon or otoro sushi type of question. These each have vastly different profiles. Berkshire is clearly the filet. Its good, everyone likes it, and you cant really go wrong. I think it will perform accordingly. BAM is much more exotic and probably not for everyone, but IMO would do best of the bunch. Fairfax I think is the cheeseburger; likable and affordable, but the verdict is out on whether its from the dollar menu or Bobby Flay's...

I think something in the entertainment area works. LiveNation is probably the closest pure play in an absolute sense. Probably a little too scary for many at this point, but Ive always done ok in my career/investments seeking out the best of breed in a space that is hated but carrying a flawed narrative. Many LiveNation events are also outdoor, so that should occur regardless next spring. If you write-off this fall/winter and assume its priced in, I would think you are good to go by next season. Young people arent scared of the virus the way old people and science nerds are. If you let them do concerts they'd be back tomorrow. So demand is definitely there.

Speaking of hoarding....my neighborhood has toilet paper everywhere. Looks like the kids were active last night. Or maybe just lazy benevolence....putting a few rolls up in the trees for everyone just in case there are shortages later.

If I got your take wrong, I apologize. At least you didnt counter with "bbbut 225k deaths!". However my recollection is that you've been ultra critical of the US specifically(without calling out the worst offenders like NY/NJ/MA), and spent time justifying lockdowns and draconian government power grabs. Which under no circumstance, given the data we have now, are warranted.