alpha

I was wondering if Suncor was one Berkshire would consider acquiring (in its entirety, they already own a small position). I had noticed a bunch of private jet traffic between Omaha and Kelowna, but since Suncor is not located there I suppose it is unrelated... Only other frequent/recent NetJets trips to Omaha were from Van Nuys. Berkshire always seems to be poking around the oil sands but never makes big direct investments, they seem more interested in selling the shovels. Kelowna is pretty popular with Albertans it could just be Abel visiting family etc...

SU.TO

Sold my DF position for a nice return. I was planning to go long but recent run up isn't based on any fundamentals and tomorrows earnings report is likely to be more bad news.

Have you ever been to Silicon Valley? It is an economic power house but the high real estate prices are driven by nutty local politics restricting housing supply. Lots of people got burned buying at the height of the last RE bubble.

Anyone know what Li Lu's investment strategy was while he was attending University? Were his returns during that time just the result of the hot Asian markets or did he have a unique strategy?

Anyone catch when Munger commented about interest rates at this years AGM? He basically said they were abnormally low and would soon normalize.

Short Bloomberg article about Indias Chemical Industry: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-26/china-s-pain-is-india-s-gain-as-chemical-stocks-surge-to-record

Started small position in DF @ 1.01 ... looks like someone else had the same idea ;D

Using leverage during a period of low rates to buy basic infrastructure plays in a growing country with good demographics seems reasonable to me. If they were purchasing speculative tech companies your argument would make more sense.

I bet in 6 years we will look back at this thread as either a wise question or a good example of the psychology during the peak of the last bull run.

+1 Thanks for the followups gfp

FT Behind the Money released an episode about Berkshire, it is actually pretty bad but there are a few bits I found interesting when they discussed the tour of Berkshire offices. https://www.ft.com/content/ed0b5303-17c5-466f-9cfc-4a84f3c23985

Gates and Buffett working at DQ :P :

Druckenmiller spoke on Monday, mentioned he piled into treasuries, thinks risk of rates going to zero, and commented on US political scene: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-03/druckenmiller-piles-into-treasuries-on-possible-fed-rate-drop

Wow Clayton is building enough housing for an entire town in 1 year!

Poloz is now asking the banks to come up with more creative ways to allow people to take on more housing debt, which he justified s by warning them not to repeat the cdo/mbs mess in the 2008 US market. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/poloz-issues-call-to-arms-for-mortgage-market-innovations-1.1254406

Anyone know the status of the IIFL split and when they are planning to list the split companies? Is it expected to be a strong IPO?

Lots of interesting information in there, thanks. Anyone know which brand of batteries Invenergy uses in their storage systems for Midamerican ?

Came across a walk through video of a modern McLane distribution center, thought others might find it interesting:

I don't know anything about the shipping industry but purchasing a tanker company in a country dependent on oil imports seems like a smart move. Hopefully it can expand like Saurashtra.

Logged in users can ignore the politics section easily however potential future members visiting the site still see the recent posts list containing all the political junk. Some days it is hard to tell it is an investing forum by looking at that list, I hope it does not scare away potential new members.

Buffett did an interview with Becky Quick today discussed a number of topics including: Delta: went above 10% threshold by accident after Delta did a buy back. Apple: can't predict if new services will work but Apple can afford a few mistakes. Lyft: recommends average investors do not buy IPO's in hot markets Economy: still growing but not quite as fast. Real estate lawsuit: shrugs off concerns Video: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/watch-warren-buffetts-full-interview-193606897.html

Today the Federal Government announced it is going to loan up to 10% of the home value to first time buyers, and raise the cap on the amount a person can borrow from their RRSP to purchase a home. These policies seem insane with the current household debt levels, but it's an election year. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/federal-budget-2019-offers-first-time-home-buyers-a-break-with-1-25-billion-in-mortgage-relief

I think there is probably more behind the Oracle purchase then he is mentioning publicly. Anyone in the tech industry can tell you Oracle is going no where in the cloud business and Buffett is best friends with Bill Gates, he can get first hand knowledge from the leaders of tech any time he wants. Around the time of the stock purchase Larry Ellison was doing an abnormal amount of media appearances, and Amazon announced they were dropping Oracle internally. Maybe there was speculation of a buyout or deal that fell through.

The housing market in Canada is becoming really bizarre, there is such a housing shortage now in West Vancouver they are renting out multi million dollar mansions to groups of students. My friends daughter just rented a 12 million dollar home on the west coast from a Chinese investor, when he told me about it I thought he was joking but apparently there is hundreds of these homes now listed on the market because of the new vacancy tax. https://bc.ctvnews.ca/is-this-real-hundreds-of-vancouver-mansions-for-rent-for-cheap-1.4329826