DooDiligence

BRK, EW, NVO

This new platform seems similar to the Joomla CMS. There should be lots of plugins, coms and mods which allow extended functionality and I'm guessing the design can be rapidly re-slicked using different templates. The site is out of the sandbox now & I imagine Sanjeev & the devs will be tinkering to get things just right. I like it when things change. It forces me to work differently.

Anyone else get the bitKoyfin email?

I just started reading "Berkshire Beyond Buffett" by Lawrence Cunningham, last night. Tom Murphy says in the introduction that BRKs' moat is due to culture.

It sounds like Texas prefers to pay $5-10B every decade or so, while also sitting in the cold for a week or so, rather than investing $8B once and be done with it. Rugged individualists? ∩ 　　　　　　　＼＼ 　　　　　　　／　 ） ⊂＼＿／￣￣￣　 ／ 　＼＿／ ° ͜ʖ ° （ 　　　）　　 　／⌒＼ 　　／　 ＿＿＿／⌒＼⊃ 　（　 ／ 　　＼＼ U

The picture you attached to your post made my laugh like hell. Nice lid :-) If you think that's funny, you should see what it looks like now. :P I been loving the memes/tweets from @ParikPatelCFA on Twitter. He's hilarious!

Spek you and Doo basically called me an idiot and "obtuse" because I said you can still potentially spread the virus after getting the vaccine. So my conclusion was that it doesn't serve much benefit to me because I'm young and healthy (plus my work/social situation) and that other high risk individuals could take it first. I'll gladly wait a year or two for more trials and information on the risks. I don't want to have to look for one of those 1-800 Mesothelioma type commercials when I'm in my 50s ;D But then just last week Fauci is saying even after being vaccinated you need to wear "two masks" ? I believe it was Rand Paul who was questioning this line of thinking. Anyways....I think the risk reward makes sense for individuals 50+ Relatives, friends, and family members who have gotten it seem to have had luck by calling their local grocery retailers and asking if they could get it. Wegmans was a recent example of this. My Dad who does not quite qualify age wise was able to get his first dose (+ 2nd) due to oversupply and risk of expiration. Apparently they were reserved for individuals in Pittsburg (roughly 3 hours away) and upon realizing how far they had to go to get it....many chose not to. :o I offered you donuts.

I really like koyfin. One small, but possibly overlooked feature is the news feed. I frequently see fintwit posts that lead to useful discussions. Lots of bot tweets show up but they're easy to spot & ignore.

Just to add to this; shot cards are not something new. I've had to maintain one for decades, in order to travel to areas where cholera, yellow fever, etc., are still present.

Donuts, not Dunkin donuts, but the gold standard of donuts, Krispy Kreme. Now, someone give me shit over the way I spell donuts. :)

The picture you attached to your post made my laugh like hell. Nice lid :-) If you think that's funny, you should see what it looks like now. :P

Donuts are what convinced me to sign up. ;D

One or 2 tugs on the stern & maybe another to wheel wash the bank, would likely pull it off. I suspect that payola will hold this up significantly longer than necessary.

What Bitcoin People Do During Happy Hour - Warren Buffet & Charlie Munger

Eeek, that's going to cost somebody a lot of Marlboros. The 1st boat I ever ran was a Tidewater anchor vessel (the Gulf Fleet 46) working for Gupco out of Ras Shukheir, south of the Gulf of Suez. Made a few passages through the canal and it was always a significant hassle in comparison to the Panama Canal. If Suez had locks, I doubt any traffic would get ever through. There was a constant parade of port officials looking for "gifts", and anything that wasn't stowed away in deck lockers was fair game for line handlers. The winds, south of the canal, blow like hell predominantly from the NNW all summer long due to funneling through the terrain from high pressure in the Mediterranean to a semi permanent low in the Red Sea. The direction rarely varied and if the winds ever swapped from the south, get ready for a blow. Winters were completely calm. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.

Is this OK with you? [i'm cracking up now!] It's from Robert Heinleins' "Stranger in a Strange Land", In Heinlein's invented Martian language "grok" literally means "to drink" and figuratively means "to comprehend", "to love", and "to be one with". The word rapidly became common parlance among science fiction fans, hippies, and later computer programmers and hackers, and has since entered the Oxford English Dictionary. I still cling to the idea of impermanence but grok the present capital structure of BRKs insurance operations, nonetheless. ;)

I never thought that earning in operating compagnies have an effect on underwriting ratio. So they can write coverage at the same price than Markel or Fairfax and have a better underrating ratio. Now i understand even more the huge advantage of buying bond like company in the insurance subsidiary. I always tough that investment revenus wasn't include in the underwriting ratio just in earnings. And I follow Berkshire since 1990 :-\ Every body talking about breaking up Berkshire never mentioned that the insurance operations will be worth less if BRK sell BNSF. I grok it. Won't bring it up again.

Florida made my age group eligible and I got an appointment to get the first shot this Friday. For anyone who’s on the fence about getting stuck, https://fortune.com/2021/03/22/krispy-kreme-free-doughnut-covid-vaccine-card-free-donuts-what-to-know/ ;D

It's proxy vote time again. Could someone tell me what Ken Chenault brings to the board? I'm asking because of the following article excerpt, "When Chenault made the reverse trip to Issaquah, the Costco guys were tickled by how meticulously Amex choreographed his movements. “Ken Chenault would have an advance team come to our office before he visited,” says Paul Latham, Costco’s vice president for membership and marketing. “They planned everything—where he would enter the building, the route to the boardroom, where he’d sit at the table.” After breakfast, Chenault would often give an elaborate presentation about the performance of Amex’s Costco affinity card, using PowerPoint decks that looked like they took weeks, maybe months, to prepare. Costco just jotted down some notes for their CEO, Craig Jelinek, to talk about. The Amex people, most of whom had MBAs, sometimes found it amusing to deal with Costco veterans who spoke about starting out stocking warehouse shelves. Less endearing was the habit Costco executives had of referring to Amex as a “vendor.” That made the Amex people seethe. After all, they represented one of America’s oldest corporations. But they smiled and said nothing, and the corporate marriage endured for 16 years." www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-how-amex-lost-costco/ This kind of makes him look like an ass. Is this characterization even fair?

I’m not interested in moving the world, so don’t need a lever. Right or wrong, I’m very comfortable being debt free. Time will tell.

Quite an impressive inventory of properties. The management internalization expense makes things look horrible until you look at the potential savings going forward. I put green arrows next to the lines that I assume represent the savings (see attachment). I'm also assuming the $180m expense closed the deal. Thanks, I'm in.

i don't have complete access to the link and the official NY Supreme Court judgement doesn't seem to be immediately available. This seems to be a conclusion of an extended process related to aggressive forms of marketing by the previously owned sub about a reinsurance (RPA) product with an embedded profit sharing (EquityComp) scheme that was too complicated for the regulators to endurably maintain but not opaque enough to reach the burden of proof necessary to be condemned in civil courts. The employers who became captive in more ways than one were often left in disbelief when adverse development occurred over the course of many years (these were typical small business owners). The business is fascinating and involves sharing some the costs saved. (From relevant personal experience on a smaller scale), it may work very well but partners need to understand and maintain trust and greed has to be kept under control. If interested, see the following (headlines suffice with no need to go into details): https://www.wcexec.com/investigations/applied/ This shows how Applied interacts with the California regulator and it's not elegant; and so un-Buffettesque. No wonder they're on their own now. Thanks for the link. Browsing through the various investigations outlines pretty well why WEB wanted to be shut of these guys.

NEW YORK — A New York appellate court has upheld dismissal of claims accusing Berkshire Hathaway Inc. of participating in a fraudulent workers’ compensation scheme involving a reinsurance participation agreement (RPA), finding the plaintiffs failed to allege jurisdiction over the holding company. On March 16, the New York Appellate Division, 1st Department, said plaintiffs presented no evidence that BHI collected workers’ compensation premiums from the policyholders or exercised control over its Applied Underwriters subsidiaries. www.harrismartin.com/publications/14/reinsurance/articles/27133/ny-court-upholds-dismissal-of-berkshire-hathaway-from-applied-underwriters-action/

One of our members who does this a lot on Twitter.

Roaring Kitty (turn the sound on before playing)