Gregmal

Hold $100B in cash? He says bullish stuff all the time. What do folks here say about him? Read into what he does, not what he says. The investments he's made for the most part come off as pressed and for the better part of the last decade have been poor ones. The issue of what to do with the cash isn't new. And his long made comments that beyond a certain point its not productive. And then blows past that and builds up more. We're not asking him to follow the Apple playbook, but it wouldn't hurt either if he cant seem to find worthwhile investments...keep a $100B cushion and then use the excess to grow per share value.

Except the same things were said in 2015 and prior. Its just only after markets peak that people feel comfortable saying I told you so. When in reality markets are still indicative of gains that were made even a couple years ago by those that didn't sit on their hands. Not sloppy speculative gains, but gains even Buffett has admitted to missing. You like AMZN or GOOG but cant get interested after a 20-30% decline? You bought SRG at $35 but cant find a single share of a RE company to buy right now? It doesnt add up. I think they've probably done some buying, but its just a guess and has zero to do with the criticisms that have developed now for nearly a decade. Its also easy to talk about new/old economies...look at what they own? Going into this year, financials, airlines, autos....what is there to even defend? You cant have this extreme bearishness and still hold some of that stuff? Its as laughable as someones who's only mantra has been pumping Tesla and being a shining example of "be more fearful when others are fearful" now lecturing on Buffetism's and value investing...

Replace the big city mayor or governor with "The President of the World's largest economy could have done...(fill a thousand blanks).", maybe the picture will get clearer for you. Ah, not really, Ive already stated, as have others, that theres plenty of blame to go around, including Trump. But nothing is ever enough for you guys because regardless of whats said, it somehow always leads back to nothing but a raging desire to bitch about Trump..... oh well. If you dont understand WHY mayors and governors exist, and WHY they bear certain responsibilities, rather than the Federal government, then theres no point in having a discussion until you revisit 3rd grade social studies.

Perfect cop out. Now shift blame to the states. Totally. And exactly whats deserved. A big city mayor or governor should be aware that the entire state is not simply where the largest congestion of peoples, and that the largest congestion of people is not necessarily indicative of the entire state. FL for instance, has been handled much different than NYC... and is not decimated.

If you can carry it in a margin account at a 1% annual borrow, those return expectations should go up.

Please specifically state what would cause you to change your mind I dont know. If things turned out anywhere remotely near all the doom and gloom projections(projections of course that now are denied or revised/edited/deleted and were never committed to with hard numbers anywhere) posted here 4-6 weeks ago? We all love our elders, but Im sorry...shutting down the entire country because the 60+ population with underlying symptoms carries greater risk is doing significantly more damage than just proposing stay at home orders for those most at risk. As some have pointed out, it didn't need to cost $2T a month to approach this rationally. Tell me why we're shutting down business in Oneonta, NY and telling 25 year olds they cant work? Because someone from NYC goes to Oneonta to avoid lockdown conditions because they felt healthy and were in the epicenter. Because the large majority of 60+ year olds have a pre-existing condition. Letting millions of them die (ignoring the obvious issues with that) will destroy the life insurance industry and cause a domino effect. There's no pain-free option and there never was. It's not going to cost $2T every month because we have loans and grants of that amount one month. We have enough fear mongering and unnecessary panic as is. It's pointless to have rolling shutdowns if you allow travel. If you don't allow travel then the economy is already taking a big hit everywhere. The resistance to the lockdowns doesn't have much common sense support. Over the last month, major trade countries and manufacturing countries were shutdown, travel was heavily restricted ex-US, and people were self-quarantining in greater numbers. There was (and still is) no government response to improve testing capacity to renew confidence. The lockdown didn't cause the economic response, the lack of confidence and foreign lockdowns did. The closing of service businesses was just visible icing on the cake. Opening service businesses doesn't fix the underlying problem. I don't get how people don't see that. Without testing, air travel and large events are not coming back any time soon. If federal leadership defiantly threatens states, it will lead to exceedingly risky behavior by 50% of the population and overly cautious behavior by the rest due to a lack of trust. It will exasterbate our economic problems. It's frustrating those that complain about the economic pain don't see that no one is happy about it. Shutdowns shouldn't be indefinite if it's not clear. It's frustrating we shut down for a month and accomplished nothing during that time because of federal resistance. For $25b/mth, we could've sparked US manufacturing and conducted 100's of millions of tests a month. Instead we are fighting again. Fighting still. It's such a waste. I posted earlier. But if you go to worldometer and check tests/million population vs deaths/million population, there is no correlation. You can check that. I requested in this group before to show evidence that higher testing leads to lower deaths and I am always given an opinion but no evidence. Germany supposedly tested a lot. But they tested 20629/million (Worldometer), or 2% of their population till date and got 61 deaths/million. You are talking about testing atleast 30% of population a week or something. And Japan with only 985 tests/million (0.1% of their population) or about 100K tests in total till date got very low 2 deaths per million . Japan did not have lockdown. They are cold, crowded and old people. No one wants to talk about Japan. Infact its a taboo to talk about Japan. Can you please talk about evidence that tests relate to less deaths? It's a trivial amount of money, experts are saying it will help with health outcomes, and it seems like it would help with consumer confidence in the US since there's infighting. Who cares if it's testing per se. Make enough masks to send every household several a month. Maybe some idea I can't imagine. You seem focused on a specific solution that will definitely work. I obviously do not know that solution. Experts suggest testing/masks will help so I support it. I know they don't actually know for sure. Similar to Fed injections, efficiency/best solution is not necessarily important. It's about reversing the decline in confidence. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/493722-us-needs-to-conduct-20-million-coronavirus-tests-per-day-to-fully-open 20m tests/day is not possible in the near-term. Current capacity is something like low-to-mid millions/month right now (manufacturing/procuring, testing, and processing). I'm trying to be realistic with a ballpark number. I don't know exact capacity. I don't know what's possible. I'm just trying to be realistic with my guesses. Someone from NYC can go upstate but the living dynamics alone, make it much harder to spread. Thats largely the problem with places like NY. Every decision is made selfishly considering only the people who live in the 5 boroughs, whereas 95% of the state is much more comparable to Nebraska than NYC. You can make the case cases for California and even Texas to a degree. Most folks I know who are in the city take the subways. Everyone outside the city drives their cars. That right there, outside of hanging out in a hospital, eliminates possibly the biggest spread risk. City restaurants are significantly more prone to being capacity packed. Outside of there city, even the best ones, typically dont have the same type of traffic. I am not saying shutdowns weren't necessary in some places, but Trump put the responsibility to states, state governors largely overreacted and the ones who didn't the media did their best to shame into submission.

The only thing I am confused about is the absolute certainty and conviction that was put behind the idea that this was massively mismanaged and that deaths would be hundreds of thousands and probably even millions and yet, a few weeks of shutdown and all of a sudden we're talking about 40,000 deaths(forget that the bulk are because of NY, a city thats been begging for a health/sanitation related crisis for ages) almost entirely consistent of elderly and at risk? Obviously we would like to be safe than sorry, but you have to be completely ignorant to just assume collapsing the economy and destroying jobs EVERYWHERE, with no respect for circumstance, has no consequence? Certainly not one equivalent to a few percent of a few percent of the population(that isn't part of the contributing economy btw) being affected. The net consequence, longer term, is that more lives are ruined via crushing the economy than it will be from the virus. Some of you seem to think there is zero consequence because for whatever reason you cant equate economic duress, job loss, wealth destruction, etc, with death and despair.

Please specifically state what would cause you to change your mind I dont know. If things turned out anywhere remotely near all the doom and gloom projections(projections of course that now are denied or revised/edited/deleted and were never committed to with hard numbers anywhere) posted here 4-6 weeks ago? We all love our elders, but Im sorry...shutting down the entire country because the 60+ population with underlying symptoms carries greater risk is doing significantly more damage than just proposing stay at home orders for those most at risk. As some have pointed out, it didn't need to cost $2T a month to approach this rationally. Tell me why we're shutting down business in Oneonta, NY and telling 25 year olds they cant work?

For the 320 million who don’t have it, well, most, might as well. The panic and fear is far greater and crippling short term in economic respects than the toll on the 1m who tested positive and 40k or whatever who died. If you're old this is bad. The rest? All evidence seems to indicate its a glorified nothing burger. I thought the Bill Maher rant nailed it. The media is obsessed with finding young people who died from this. The real numbers? like 800. Compared with the flu, which we have a vaccine for, at 3,000 annually. Not long ago we were talking about the dire consequences of kids going wild on spring break and how Florida was the next Italy... yea..about that.

The damage is psychological much like a shark attack at the beach. The day after, only a couple people there. A week later, a few more. A month later, back to normal assuming there are no new attacks. Same thing will happen here. At this point the damage is done and it doesnt matter that there was a total overreaction and coordinated media effort to make this the scariest thing in the history of the world. And yea, De Blasio wants a parade! Go figure. NY, NY!

That was the argument he gave for buying IBM. Exactly. Someone who's a real value investor, like Buffett at one point undoubtedly was, takes value where ever it is. $50B, $5B, $500M... he s still pulling the trigger because thats the game. So, "I cant find size" is BS. "I cant find value" is BS too. For better or worse, I think he's either disinterested at this point in his career, or knows he's lost his touch as the businesses and markets he knew, arent the ones we see today. Which all things considered, might not be the worst thing. Look at his track record the past decade...outside of Apple, its quite poor. Heck he even bought SRG at $35 or whatever in his personal account years ago. Now look at all the other "value investors" and how they've struggled. As a shareholder, I just want him to buyback stock in reasonable % and if he's comfortable, pull the trigger on one of these index type big tech names. I mean the BRK portfolio even has VOO for gods sake. Dragging "that" much cash is a waste($100B+), especially when Berkshire could probably borrow infinity dollars at pretty much zero rates. Keep the company in tip top shape, and then let the new guard take over and make BAM and BX look like minor leaguers.

They must have gotten Elon's ventilators.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3562741-publicly-traded-companies-raided-ppp-pantry The majority of these companies are garbage serial equity issuers and stock promotions. Great oversight.

Trimmed a tiny bit more GOOG, shorted some YETI

LOL yea. Marks has changed his mind now probably 4-5 times in the past 3 weeks. I agree the indexes look a little odd at these levels but stranger things have happened. Everyone is currently a short term trader and market timer. The overwhelming fixation? What is the market goes down, OMG?! Well isn't that part of investing in the stock market?

MSGE

We have never had a situation where NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, PGA, NCAA, World Soccer etc were all shuttered at the same time for an indefinite period of time: minimum 6 months and more likely 12 months or longer. This is just one of many industries facing the exact same reality. My basic point is all of these closures have to add up to some meaningful economic contraction that will likely last a year (until a vaccine is ready). Financial markets are off to the races higher and likely pricing in a V shape recovery. We will see :-) I agree. I dont care for the enthusiastic degree to which we've already recovered. I just have a hard time seeing basic fundamental human behavior being broken so easily. Look at the near riots going on in some places because folks want to go out. Granted, sports are different. People will definitely still go, but do owners take on the liability of opening too soon?

On the flip side, we ve had plenty of lengthy lockouts where full or partial seasons were lost. It always comes back.

I think people are wishing it is Trump's fault because that means there actually is an obvious solution that will come out. I don't think anybody could have done much better or worse. I don't think anything could have been done at cities like New York that has large international travel and relies heavily on the subway system. The virus was likely seeded already before anybody knew about it and the large cities were screwed without draconian Wuhan style quarantines and nobody could have done that. The only obvious mistake I see is the absolute fiery conviction that western doctors had that civilians should not be masked. Even now, I think there is a lot of blind faith that testing and contact tracing will work. I think it is actually getting more and more likely that we will be forced into the herd immunity route whether we like it or not. I think this is a great way of rationally describing much of this. The idiocy of lockdowns isn't in locking down areas where its needed, its doing so to areas that arent. Sure, NYC was obvious...but the knee jerk to just declare a statewide shut down? WTF do the economies or landscape of Manhattan and say, Oneonta, NY have in common other than, NY, on the postal address? Small businesses in areas like Oneonta are significantly more fragile and will take longer to recover from this(if they recover at all) than "supposed" small businesses who can afford to pay $6,000 a month to rent an 850 sq ft cockroach infested shitbox in the 100xx zip area. The lockdown was done in a very lazy and sloppy manner.

"Then he turned his attention specifically to the media. “So look. If this insanity happens, again, news sources have to rein it in. Everyone knows corona is no walk in the park because you literally can’t walk in the park. But at some point the daily drumbeat of depression and terror veers into panic porn,” Maher continued. “Enough with the ‘life will never be the same’ headlines and stop showing us this,” at which point the screen displayed a common graphical rendering of coronavirus. Maher then said that anything “you magnify a thousand times” looks scary, and to illustrate that point he showed an extreme close-up of a pubic hair. Then he noted a recent Washington Post headline, ‘It Feels Like a War Zone,’ which included a photograph of a supermarket stocker unloading boxes in a store’s eggs and deli meats section. “This is not a war zone. This is a man with a box of eggs. And I’ve never seen a war zone with this much bacon,” Maher joked." “Two weeks ago, ‘Inside Edition’ said 76,000 in the world had died so some are making comparisons to the apocalypse. The apocalypse? Really? Because most of us are sitting at home smoking delivery weed and binge-watching a show about a gay zookeeper,” https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/bill-maher-media-calm-down-032951586.html Hilarious and true.

Should the President replace Fauci/Birx? I was clear all along I am not a believer that Trump deserves much credit or blame for most of this. However others disagreed. Despite really refusing to give numbers, and declaring a disaster was a certainty, and that it was all Trumps fault, surely you'd think they'd be heaping praise on him now that the totals they were either projecting or implying were giant fairytales, no? Nah...Of course they dont. They just change the story. Again.

Yea pretty much. Either that, or he simply lost interest, which would be more than understandable at this point. He's waiting for an elephant, and otherwise, probably considers other things more pressing. But to defend his investments the last decade is pretty stupid. I mean even just standing pat, are we really heralding someone who's sitting on a huge concentrated portfolio of financials and companies that got hit hardest by this? Many, which are clearly stagnant if not deteriorating businesses, that he likely refuses to liquidate for no other reason than not wanted to pay taxes? (after, not to mention, being one of the loudest advocates of "paying your fair share" nonetheless). I hope he bought some of the names he long said he wished he had bought earlier but missed. But I'll settle for slow and steady buybacks because it increases the value of what I own when the guys underneath him finally get in the batters box. I'm significantly more excited about post Buffett/Munger BRK than I am about its current form. Likely won't have too long to wait.

On the index vs active discussion, I think an interesting aspect that many flip into a conventional wisdom but ultimately detrimental narrative is that an index is an unguided ship and with active management you have someone captaining that ship for you to navigate tough times. However, this assumption I often faulty. Index funds dont make decisions, which, bringing this back full circle to Buffett and Munger; sometimes, in fact a lot of the time, the less decisions you have to make, the better. And more often than not, sitting on your hands and doing nothing, is the best move. Sounds obvious but on a deeper level, its actually quite contrarian.

Gregmal can, of course, speak for himself, but I think he's suggesting that that's not the real world alternative for many people, who would actually be choosing between Miller and something like a CD. I don't know if he's right about how many people see their real world alternatives, but you seem to be talking past each other with your question. Yea I'd probably just take the index. But I'd also probably watch Millers portfolio and occasionally margin up to steal a few of his ideas!

I'm actually surprised you're supporting Miller here. I've seen plenty of times that you've talked poorly about how fund managers are paid for their underperformance. What if we didn't get the TARP bailouts? Miller probably wouldn't have even lasted to 2012. His drawdown was almost 70%! You can't just compare Miller against his peers and determine whether he was "elite" or not. Those peers didn't start at the same time, they could have different mandates, less clout within the organization, etc. Like I said, discount his first couple months and he trailed the market. Look at a different fund (with few assets and no fees) trailed the market. Look at the amount of risk he took and he still trailed the market. It was fairly well known that index funds beat active managers even in 1982. I'm not comparing him to a market time strategy, different allocations or what people stick to or not. We're comparing US long only stocks vs US (mostly) long only stocks. If you can't beat a simple index, with vast resources, why are you elite? Because you might have beat some guys that didn't have the same slack from their employers? If you had to take Miller vs an S&P 500 index fund over say, the next 10 years, which would you choose? The reason I feel different here is because Miller isn't Einhorn or Paulson. He has a much more challenging vehicle to operate than just a standard run of the mill hedge fund. He also doesnt consistently make the same mistakes. I think guys who are flexible and adapt deserve credit. Right? Lee Cooperman, great track record, how many times Lee are you going to buy some pos energy company and watch it go bankrupt? Icahn too? Einhorn; how long are you going to short Amazon because its PE does make sense, to YOU! John Paulson, awesome you did 1000% annualized for a few years starting out and nailed the big short trade, but -30% a year for the bulk of the recovery while popping up new funds every other year banking on marketing your trades from yesteryears? Get the fuck out. Miller is IMO of course, higher quality than those guys who rightfully deserve lots of criticism. Your point on the bailouts? Well, part of the game was predicting that would happen. Again, case in point, David Tepper. No bailout, Tepper is just another guy with a fund and sneaky good returns rather than the guy holding the current heavy championship belt.