DooDiligence

I stand corrected. Can I at least get a rerating by the market on the separate entities? I mean seriously, you couldn’t build either BNSF or BHE for barely over book.

I guess no one here remembers the late 60‘s Hippie generation. The Hippies were far more radical and socialist than the Millenials are now and look at where we are. Someones always trying to take my stuff.

That's not what I meant because it doesn't raise the issue that I mentioned of the shareholder not knowing how to allocate the cash. I had my head stuck in the past when I remember he had addressed the topic back when dividends were asked for. But yes, beginning the sentence the way I did was prone to confusion. My point is that the shareholders similarly wouldn't know what to do with the shares distributed. Acknowledging that WEB will never break up his life's work (and he's earned that right, imo), shareholders wouldn't have to do anything if they didn't want to. Exactly like now. I look at it more like a garden that gets harvested, rather than broken up. I think shareholders would do much better & like you said, we wouldn’t have to do anything. How much extra capital would BHE & BNSF have to work with (and could they use it) if they didn’t send it to Omaha to be stuffed into a mattress? Could Omaha really put up better numbers from a smaller base with insurance as the core operation? I’d love to own a piece of all 3 entities separately & to get the option of a cash kicker or ownership stake in the other spincos (jewelry / retail, building materials, etc.)

WEB has said if he were working with a smaller capital base, he could provide better returns. Seems like carving out divisions would give him a chance to prove it. Spins could easily get rerated by markets. —- Edit: just my unsophisticated, heretical, 2 cents.

This was a good enough joke on its own :D Yeah, but did you see it. I think it was a Lampert selfie.

Go to sears.com and type "medicine ball" into the search bar. You're welcome.

Make sense though. Large city with many renters, large population of young and single people and high cost. But I bet Seattle suburbs are white hot. I'm throwing 700k cash offers at 3bed/1bath 1,000 sq ft houses in the east bay of San Francisco. I'm not even competitive apparently... Right. Seattle Suburbs are white hot not only because of the virus but also because of the socialism movement in Seattle, with BLM protesters matching into communities and yelling door to door "Move your white ass out of the house and give your stocks to us, because it belongs to us" Meanwhile in the real world. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-30/brookfield-pays-365-million-for-facebook-office-outside-seattle

And correct. Disqualified. All posts must rhyme from now on.

pedantic semantic vedantic

Hasn't the stock market predicted like 100 of the last 5 recessions?

He also invented science fiction (kind of). --- Speaking of depression, I invented this. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-hugh-hefner/gold-viagra-ring-and-first-playboy-issue-sold-in-hefner-auction-idUSKCN1O103Z I sent this ring to Hefner after the product was discussed on Playboy radio. I have a few more of these & would love to get the same $22,400 that this one fetched at auction. Howard Stern goofed on it & Jay Leno touted it on his show as "one of the stupidest ideas I've ever seen". He was not wrong & the project was a huge flop (pun intended).

I doubt the president has anything to do with this at all. Reminds me of this: https://tylervigen.com/old-version.html Obama took office in 2008 gave him a great starting point for increases and the fact that GW took office in 2000 was pretty bad luck. Reagan and Clinton got lucky with their timing as well, Reagan right after a decade of stagnation and Clinton right at the start of the internet boom. None of these things have anything to do with the men elected president though (algore's claims of inventing the internet aside, of course). Fact checking. www.businessinsider.com/al-gore-invent-internet-misunderstanding-2015-11 www.wired.com/2000/10/the-mother-of-gores-invention/ LOL, ok so he didn't "invent" it, he "created" it. Mankind owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude regardless, for that and for saving New York from being underwater by 2014. How many times can one man save the world? IDK, ask the Donald.

I doubt the president has anything to do with this at all. Reminds me of this: https://tylervigen.com/old-version.html Obama took office in 2008 gave him a great starting point for increases and the fact that GW took office in 2000 was pretty bad luck. Reagan and Clinton got lucky with their timing as well, Reagan right after a decade of stagnation and Clinton right at the start of the internet boom. None of these things have anything to do with the men elected president though (algore's claims of inventing the internet aside, of course). Fact checking. www.businessinsider.com/al-gore-invent-internet-misunderstanding-2015-11 www.wired.com/2000/10/the-mother-of-gores-invention/

Sorry for derailing. Now back to BRK.

If he's buying a basket of pharma stocks, then I wonder has he bought more than the ones listed in this 13F? I would not be at all surprised if he's bought Glaxo (London listed) and Sanofi (Paris listed). Both are good companies and would fit into his basket approach. He has also owned both before, and both are arguably cheaper than when he owned previously. He could have bypassed the 13F listing requirement by buying both stocks on the local exchanges, something he has done before (Tesco). Didn't he own Sanofi before? Yes, he sold out after some time because Sanofi didn't go anywhere in terms of making money for shareholders. Putting politics aside, I think Trump's attempt at taking away pricing power of drug companies is a big negative for drug stocks: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/20/trump-drug-prices-overseas-438819. I'm surprised market didn't react as strongly as I thought it would on MRK, ABBV, BMY and PFE today. Yes, it will get challenged in court, but it does bring the issue to limelight. So, it will be harder for next administration to escape it. If politicians start discussing it, it might eventually lead to the crux of the issue about changing the law to give Medicare power to negotiate prices, which currently it is not allowed to do so by law. Wonder who helped draft that law :-): https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20160919.056632/full/ Canada negotiates and is able to get better prices. This has been bandied about before & I believe it will eventually get traction (if politicians can put politics aside). www.policymed.com/2015/09/hillary-clinton-unveils-new-plan-for-lowering-drug-cost.html

For those that think that cloths masks may be or may not be effective think about whether or not you can smell your own fart or someone else fart when they pass gas. I know it stinks but here you go. https://medium.com/geek-physics/if-masks-work-why-can-i-smell-farts-c0b8e10323c6

This is the emotional side of CoBF I've always loved. Riffing on what's good in the world...

I disagree if you are talking about value investing theories and practices. Change is required periodically maybe, but not always. If it were always required the framework would be useless since you would be reevaluating it everyday, instead of using it for evaluating companies. I was referring to change from a continuous improvement stand point. Not changing the current framework but constantly trying to develop other frameworks. Adding arrows to your quiver so to speak. The business world is continuously changing as investors we have to adapt. Change frequently makes us uncomfortable, but it's happening to everything, every single moment. That's the only thing that will never change.

I’m sold.

One persons propaganda is another persons ideology. Tomāto tomăto, ketchup catsup, right? Words can be weaponized.

While I agree with most of you just said. I think you picked the wrong example at the end with communism. While communism is certainly an ideology, there were very few communist ideologues during communism. I am not sure of the percentage of people in favor of communism prior to countries becoming communists. But I suspect it was quite high as it was sold and seemed to offer the masses something and that is why so many fought for it. I think it is a great example of the danger of an extreme ideology. I think it was a disaster for a host of reasons resulting in millions of deaths, poverty, loss of freedom, etc. I agree it was a bad system but you suspicion is incorrect. Communism's spread in Europe for example was done through military conquest. The United States gave (gifted?) half of Europe to the USSR. At that point the countries had two choices: they could become communist or Russian tanks would roll into their countries and become communists. The second choice is actually a bit dramatic as at the point these countries became communist the USSR actually had armies stationed in these countries and the controlled the governments. They merely appointed the communist party as the ruling party. It's pretty obvious that when you have to use a gun to get people to do something it is because they're not convinced by your ideas. True, however, ideas can be effective bullets and when the gun is social media, there's no shortage of targets that will jump in front of the shots. I recently watched a few different documentaries on the rise of the nazi party in Germany. Disconcerting idealism to say the least. Have we simply had too much peace in the developed world & are just itching for a fight? I just want truth and it shouldn't take this much effort to get it.

Truth

If he's buying a basket of pharma stocks, then I wonder has he bought more than the ones listed in this 13F? I would not be at all surprised if he's bought Glaxo (London listed) and Sanofi (Paris listed). Both are good companies and would fit into his basket approach. He has also owned both before, and both are arguably cheaper than when he owned previously. He could have bypassed the 13F listing requirement by buying both stocks on the local exchanges, something he has done before (Tesco). Didn't he own Sanofi before?

Day trading is the new value investing?

www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/06/28/a-brief-history-of-bank-of-america-in-crisis.aspx I'll take my chances with BOA through BRK & WFC directly.