rolling

I am not invested in BRK and do not think of investing soon (I do not like the big Apple position), but I might be interested co investing with them.

Only certainty is that it is a financial stock (1,2B increase in cost basis for financial stocks but no financial stockes added on the 13-F). Schwab? Fairfax has been mentioned but seems unlikely (canadian stock and a big position could attract regulatory attention) Other? (I must admit financial stocks are not my beach)

Both me and my wife are doctors. When we need someone, we ask a colleague from the area who he recommends. It is what we all do. We usually know who are the best in our own area. And usually you do not need the best: you just need someone who is good and humble enough to know where he needs help. note: we are in europe. Things there might be different, even if I doubt they are that different

Ah… so I am not the only one thinking Lindt chocolates are not all the same… I love Lindt chocolate in Portugal, there is no close rival. BUT I do NOT appreciate the same Lindt chocolate bought in Switzerland (yes, it probably should be the opposite)

My guess is Buffett probably would pay a premium to stock market if the oil was low but will not if it is high.

Sorry. 7M in B shares seemed ridiculous só I misread to 7B.

My numbers say 1B in June, and zero in april and may. Did not find july data, though. edit: my mistake,sorry

Recently returned to US market: CRM LSXMA BRK-B GOOGL Initially I had also chosen META but today realized that I would rather have more GOOGL and traded one for the other. edit: A shares, not C shares.

Sexual transmission has been heralded as very likely. If so, pandemic potential is irrelevant.

This article from 24/08/2018 caught my eye at the time, unfortunately did not act upon it https://seekingalpha.com/article/4201845-fang-dominated-this-decade-panda-will-dominate-2020s nvidia is the winner

Parsad version of the story is exactly what schroeder reported on the book. My understanding from Buffett's cut was that he thought Susie was too exposed on the book and simultaneously there was an assumption that Buffett was never her choice and that at first opportunity she left (while retaining the tittle and position of wife for VIP events). Also, buffett probably thought that part of his personal life did not matter much.

I can not lose the opportunity to thank you for the work. I am still getting aquainted with the new site. Hopefully it will be a great experience.

Why get inoculated for polio or hepatitis? Because the cost/benefit ratio is extraordinary. Cause Polio is actually dangerous and the available vaccines are well tested and in use for a long time (making the chance of unknown long term side effects negligable). I'm innocolated for a number of other dangerous deseases (the ones that I'm likely enough to run into) with tried and true vaccines available. I don't take vaccines for non-dangerous deseases, it' much wiser to let your own imune system handle it. It's not like I get the yearly flu shot (do you?) and influenza viruses are generally much more dangerous than Corona viruses. Furthermore the available deseases are not even out of stage 2 testing.And we didn't even start talking about possible unknown long term side effects. In fact, I would call taking this vaccine reckless if you fall outside the primary risk groups (and unwise otherwise). I consider injecting your children with this failing at your parental duty of care. The politicians are also highly reckless in my opinion. Vaccination 101 is that you don't start vaccinating during an active outbreak as that risks strengthening the virus. Aren't we in one right now? Dangerous game they are playing with all of our futures ... I don't take issue with you being concerned about taking a new and unproven vaccine. I do take issue with underselling the dangers of Covid though. With 550k dead in the US in just a year, and near 3 million worldwide, I would think this has proven far deadlier than polio ever was. And while polio paralyzed just 0.5% of people who caught it (see attached), Covid is estimated to cause long term cardiovascular and/or respiratory issues for up to 1/3 of people who have had it regardless if the severity of symptoms (source is CDC). And we still really don't know how severe that impact will be or HOW long it lasts. So we can stop pretending like Polio was this big bad thing and Covid isn't. Covid, by the numbers, is way worse The problem is that there is an inherent skepticism for science and statistics. Masks, vaccines, etc seem no different among the skeptics than when they first heard about smoking being dangerous to your health. It took decades to convince the skeptics. We're expecting Fauci and others to convince these similarly-minded people that Covid is bad in less than two years. It just won't take with them. Even though today, smokers are about as rare as a poodle with a mohawk, some continue smoking decades after the statistics were more than proven and they are treated as pariahs in society. There will always be the diehards...but if you can get the bulk of the population to change behavior, get inocculated, etc...it still ends up benefitting society overall. Cheers! Dude now I am taking offense. I am a scientist by education and trade. The scientific method is the best method of truthfinding. Trying to paint me (and all others with a similar opinion) as science sketics (I am sceptic of people not science) is intelectual laziness at best and blatant manipulation at worst. It's literally using ad hominems to "win" your argument (meanwhile use ad auctoritatems to make your own point). Please don't believe scientists blindly. Not everything they say is an outcome of the scientific method. They will also state things that are simply their opinion or make mistakes in study or analysis (papers on global warming tend to have large statistical mistakes mainly to do with statistical significance). Besides that, scientists are people with motivations: e.g. of selfish or political nature or coming out of fear. Stop worshipping people, that's an obvious mistake (look at history). Academia (not science!) is starting to take the position of organized religion in society based on how its used to contral people (not content wise of course). Trust the scientific method, not a group of people society declared defacto experts that can only speak truth. That is an extremely naive notion. (for a historic example look at the communistic revolution in Russia). Otherwise wouldnt all I say be true as well? ;) Finally @TwocitiesCapital I am most definitely NOT underselling Corona (Covid-19). First it is less lethal than many flu outbreaks that occured over recent decades (and before you say: of course individual flu outbreaks tend to be more local, but there's a lot more of them). Second: really, for people outside the risk groups you consider Corona dangerous based on the statistics? Now you are just being dishonest in an attempt to convince others (or you actually haven't analyzed the data in the proper context). You lethality argument only has one little flaw: since nobody had any kind of immunity there was, and still is, the possibility of a system overwhelm. Over here (even with masks, movement restrictions, healthcare professionals in vaccination process and commerce restrictions) we had it last january. It is ugly, lethality rose and in the absence of measures things would only have been worse. Get a truly overwhelmed system and the 0,6 or lower mortality will easily rise over 3% or even more (people waiting for death outside emergency rooms due to lack of space, people inside being chosen to live or let die, hospital oxygen systems collapsing (!!!)). Yes this is not the US, but the healthcare system is probably the best thing in this country, and still collapsed. And then you have people dying from other diseases because of coronavirus overwhelm (these don't show up n the statistics). And people who decide the will rather die at home than waiting outside an emergency room... in a system overwhelm even low risk groups are at risk Nobody has (any) immunity? Against a Corona virus? Really? Are you serious right now or taking the piss? :/ Edit: For people reading actually wondering: With no immunity there'd be extinction rate death rates just like when the conquistadors introduced the flue and common cold (Corona) to the new world. Why do people THIS unknowledgable are unaware they are unkowledgable AND like to spread their distorted views for absolute truths. It'd be hilarious if it wasnt so sad and scary. Ok, re phrasing. That was not the point of the post and so I took zero care with the phrasing. If you prefere: the adressable population for the virus was very high (some assymptomatic for Sure). The point was rather: if you let things roll, you get a system overwhelm and lethality rises from well below 1% to numbers well above. With vacines and over 1 year of the virus around, it is now much harder to get a system overwhelm, but in many places still very possible (in most european union countries, for example)

Why get inoculated for polio or hepatitis? Because the cost/benefit ratio is extraordinary. Cause Polio is actually dangerous and the available vaccines are well tested and in use for a long time (making the chance of unknown long term side effects negligable). I'm innocolated for a number of other dangerous deseases (the ones that I'm likely enough to run into) with tried and true vaccines available. I don't take vaccines for non-dangerous deseases, it' much wiser to let your own imune system handle it. It's not like I get the yearly flu shot (do you?) and influenza viruses are generally much more dangerous than Corona viruses. Furthermore the available deseases are not even out of stage 2 testing.And we didn't even start talking about possible unknown long term side effects. In fact, I would call taking this vaccine reckless if you fall outside the primary risk groups (and unwise otherwise). I consider injecting your children with this failing at your parental duty of care. The politicians are also highly reckless in my opinion. Vaccination 101 is that you don't start vaccinating during an active outbreak as that risks strengthening the virus. Aren't we in one right now? Dangerous game they are playing with all of our futures ... I don't take issue with you being concerned about taking a new and unproven vaccine. I do take issue with underselling the dangers of Covid though. With 550k dead in the US in just a year, and near 3 million worldwide, I would think this has proven far deadlier than polio ever was. And while polio paralyzed just 0.5% of people who caught it (see attached), Covid is estimated to cause long term cardiovascular and/or respiratory issues for up to 1/3 of people who have had it regardless if the severity of symptoms (source is CDC). And we still really don't know how severe that impact will be or HOW long it lasts. So we can stop pretending like Polio was this big bad thing and Covid isn't. Covid, by the numbers, is way worse The problem is that there is an inherent skepticism for science and statistics. Masks, vaccines, etc seem no different among the skeptics than when they first heard about smoking being dangerous to your health. It took decades to convince the skeptics. We're expecting Fauci and others to convince these similarly-minded people that Covid is bad in less than two years. It just won't take with them. Even though today, smokers are about as rare as a poodle with a mohawk, some continue smoking decades after the statistics were more than proven and they are treated as pariahs in society. There will always be the diehards...but if you can get the bulk of the population to change behavior, get inocculated, etc...it still ends up benefitting society overall. Cheers! Dude now I am taking offense. I am a scientist by education and trade. The scientific method is the best method of truthfinding. Trying to paint me (and all others with a similar opinion) as science sketics (I am sceptic of people not science) is intelectual laziness at best and blatant manipulation at worst. It's literally using ad hominems to "win" your argument (meanwhile use ad auctoritatems to make your own point). Please don't believe scientists blindly. Not everything they say is an outcome of the scientific method. They will also state things that are simply their opinion or make mistakes in study or analysis (papers on global warming tend to have large statistical mistakes mainly to do with statistical significance). Besides that, scientists are people with motivations: e.g. of selfish or political nature or coming out of fear. Stop worshipping people, that's an obvious mistake (look at history). Academia (not science!) is starting to take the position of organized religion in society based on how its used to contral people (not content wise of course). Trust the scientific method, not a group of people society declared defacto experts that can only speak truth. That is an extremely naive notion. (for a historic example look at the communistic revolution in Russia). Otherwise wouldnt all I say be true as well? ;) Finally @TwocitiesCapital I am most definitely NOT underselling Corona (Covid-19). First it is less lethal than many flu outbreaks that occured over recent decades (and before you say: of course individual flu outbreaks tend to be more local, but there's a lot more of them). Second: really, for people outside the risk groups you consider Corona dangerous based on the statistics? Now you are just being dishonest in an attempt to convince others (or you actually haven't analyzed the data in the proper context). You lethality argument only has one little flaw: since nobody had any kind of immunity there was, and still is, the possibility of a system overwhelm. Over here (even with masks, movement restrictions, healthcare professionals in vaccination process and commerce restrictions) we had it last january. It is ugly, lethality rose and in the absence of measures things would only have been worse. Get a truly overwhelmed system and the 0,6 or lower mortality will easily rise over 3% or even more (people waiting for death outside emergency rooms due to lack of space, people inside being chosen to live or let die, hospital oxygen systems collapsing (!!!)). Yes this is not the US, but the healthcare system is probably the best thing in this country, and still collapsed. And then you have people dying from other diseases because of coronavirus overwhelm (these don't show up n the statistics). And people who decide the will rather die at home than waiting outside an emergency room... in a system overwhelm even low risk groups are at risk

https://www.breakthroughfuel.com/blog/precision-scheduled-railroading/ After reading this, I would be surprised if BNSF addopted the PSR schedule... lowering service quality to improve profitability while simultanously restricting future growth seems agains BRK ethos

And the opposite view of things: https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=de2bc41f8324e6955ef65e0c9&id=bba991dfd7 Note: this is just a post from the blog. There are many more and a few books. I'm currently finishing the latest one.

Dear investor20, While I liked your post about deaths and attribution to covid, I'd like to comment (not evidence based comments) 1- those 3 stages of covid make some sence, but I don't think you should apply rigid criteria over them, and especially, you should not rely on symptoms only to check disease severity in an already dead person. A) In covid you have people with oxygen pressure that usually would put you in a comatous state and are talking on the phone. B) many mildly symptomatic people have horrible looking CT scans (and some of those never get any other symptom). This means that if you get another problem simultaneusly you might die, while that other condition would never have killed you alone (the same could mostly be said on reverse, true) C) covid is a systemic disease, mild lung lesion does not exclude enough systemic disease to send you ever the edge if you are already fragile. With that said, in my country death are not counted as covid if you have another obvious main disease to die from. If however you shouldn't have died from the disease you had, then covid certainly should be the cause of death.

Unfortunately calculating my returns is harder than in previous years. Drawdowns and a broker change being the main reason. Anyway, I will post my estimate for my worst year ever (nominal returns). If I can I will try to post more trustworthy returns 2ndhalf 2011 and 2012: 20% 2013: 30% 2014: 50% 2015: less 5% 2016: 50% 2017: 160-170% 2018: 11% (It seems it was 6% if I exclude an year end wuote manipulation, but I will take the 11% because it is easier to do the math and the 2019 return will adust for that) 2019: 0.6% (I had to use 02/01/2020 quote due to year end portfolio movements, return would have been sligtly lower, probably around zero) 2020: likely about less 35% Results are in euro, before taxes but after all other costs. Notes: - a very big drawdown after a down year will make it harder to recover to previous levels - remaining portfolio is highly concentrated in just 2 very iliquid stocks. Thankfully year end news were good for both companies and one of them is already up quite a bit. I expected even better news by now, but COVID makes everything slower, so I will have to wait. I continue with good expectations for both so I don't mind iliquidity: I probably will want to hold both for years anyway. - being a father at year end 2017 and again in the first half 2019 seems to have impacted returns. I don't think there is a coincidence. For future reference, I suggest everyone to index when they have small kids (especially if you have two in a row).

I’m not sure I understood your last paragraph. But in that line, does Apple have a 43B subsidiary that would be splitable without value loss? Berkshire has lots if those but Apple does not own berkshire shares (and to put 125B if Apple shares in the transaction it would have to be a huge deal (There aren’t enough brk shares around for such a deal

While I have noticed that for a while, it is fair to say that excess cash also reduces risk. IMO it reduces an equity investment to a bond like risk. This would mean you should use a bond like discount rate also. As such fair value really is not lower due to that. (Un)Fortunately that also means undervaluation is permanent (since bond investors are unlikely to invest in equities (even if risk is lower and return higher).

This is B.S. If this were true, there would not be the second wave phenomenon seen in past pandemics. Very interesting counterpoint. However, influenza immunity lasts a few months typically and in past flu pandemics a lot of second waves were described. Coronavirus immunity has been longer lasting (1 year plus) example for SARS where there was no second wave. Still hard for me to believe at 5-20% of antibody titer positivities we would have herd immunity. IMHO it's partial population immunity but a major impact is from physical distancing and mask wearing. It's good enough to decrease cases so that there is a bed in the hospital if you need it, but not good enough where (near) normal social interaction could resume without inviting another outbreak. Good post I would add that if it is true that assymptomaptic develop less antibodies (or none), then we might be nearer herd immunity for deaths even if still far for a real herd immunity (which would be impossible without a properly functioning vacine). Note: this is based in a chinese antibody study mentioning less or no antibodies for mild or assymptomatic cases

As a Portuguese I can say there was a huge heat wave last month and even though I drank more water than ever I still was dehidrated. Old people tend to dye a lot in this circumpstances. Also the lockdown delayed other diseases management, so we will also have increased mortality for that reason. COVID is under Control except for some places in lisbon and even there it has been falling. We do have mandatory masks in indoor places...until recently there were no covid patients in our local ICU for over 2 months.

It only works when there is a business involved, and the business has to be a substantial part of the total deal (I think at least one third of the total deal value). In the Graham deal Berkshire bought a TV station and obviously they bought Duracell in the P&G deal. It's probably only worth bothering when you have one side with a very low cost basis in the shares so the tax savings are material to the overall deal size. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/deals/cash-rich-split-off/

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office is refusing to enforce California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) order requiring residents to wear face coverings in public as part of an effort to combat the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. The Sheriff’s Office said it would be “inappropriate” to criminally enforce Newsom’s mandate or punish individuals and businesses for not complying. Additionally, the Placer County Sheriff’s Office also said it will not uphold the order, spokeswoman Angela Musallam said. “We do hope (people) will take the rule to heart, but we have no interest in arresting or penalizing people who aren’t wearing masks in any way,” said Musallam. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/19/ssacramento-sheriff-refuses-to-enforce-newsoms-mask-order/ That would be normal and common sense: you can't police everyone in all situations. Over here we had an emergency state (that basically gave the right to the government to suspend all constitutional rights for the duration of the emrgency state) and still there were very few arrests (anyone who broke quarentine would be arrested for sure, but those were only the known covid + and their identified close contacts; besides them only those that blattantly refused to obey to the police, and the police only intervened in obvious situations: everyone could go for a walk, but if hundreds went for a walk to the same place the police would start sending people home).

1) about dexa: corticoid use in severely ill covid patients was very likely already a norm, due to its use in ARDS. As such, unfortunately, I'm not sure it will save that many lives. 2) about other coronavirus, this was already a possibility raised early in the pandemic: " rolling Full Member *** Posts: 135 View Profile Personal Message (Online) Re: Coronavirus « Reply #1380 on: March 13, 2020, 09:28:38 AM » QuoteModifyRemove There are other possible explanations. Children, who are typically bombarded with certain other coronaviruses, such as the ones that cause the common cold, may have antibodies in their bloodstream from exposure to those that offers some cross-protection for this virus, said Dr. Buddy Creech, an associate professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. Why don't authorities throughout the world bomb us with regular coronavirus cold? For sure the US have some inoffensive coronavirus on labs that they could spread, right? "