NoCalledStrikes

Thanks Xerxes. In WW2, my dad was transported to his assignment from San Francisco to New Guinea on the Attu, an escort class carrier. I had never heard of such small aircraft carriers prior to reading his papers. Apparently, they were used primarily for transporting aircraft and supplies as well as sailors. According to Wikipedia, the Attu launched in May 1944, commissioned in June 1944, decommissioned in June 1946, and sold for scrapping in January 1947.

I left a year before an almost certain opportunity to pick up 9 months severance upon departure in a huge downsizing. Not waiting around was one of the best decisions that I ever made. a) My kids were in 5th/7th grade and we got to spend several weeks in Europe with an ex-pat family from Norway with similar age kids that used to live next door to us in Houston. Now that the kids are in college with busy lives, there is no way we could have ever coordinated such an adventure. In fact the whole summer was full of good activities. Live in the now. b) Working around people who have high probabilities of getting laid off and who still need to work to pay current bills is miserable for everyone, especially if they are in a specialized field in a cyclical downturn - (it might be different in today's job market). Had this same opportunity presented itself a few years earlier perhaps the severance would have been the magic windfall that I would have needed to retire, but it wasn't so I left on my schedule. c) Do not take good health for granted. I live an infinitely healthier lifestyle than WEB or CM, but 4 years after I retired, I picked up an unwanted medical condition and while all is fine now, I will not be living into my upper 90's like BRK senior management.

I retired at 52, eight years ago. +1 on Greg's margin call comment. +1 on Stahleyp's cash cushion. You don't ever want to be a forced seller. +1 on CorpRaider's sequence of return risks. The core issue isn't whether to go with a 3% or 4% withdrawal rate, or whether to pick 3% yielding dividend paying stocks rather than just selling 3% of no dividend growth stocks each year, hopefully you have a proven ability to earn way over 3% annually over a cycle (or two) before even considering living off income. The issue is being prepared for the once in a blue moon, massive drawdown like the GFC, a Spanish Flu level pandemic, a decade of high inflation or a decade of negative inflation. Unless you want to be a Walmart greeter when you are 65, you've only got one shot at this, and you must avoid a huge permanent loss of capital at any step in the process. Everything else will take care of itself.

I earned my B.S. Pet. E in 84 from UT Austin. The nice thing about a Petroleum Engineering degree is that when hard times hit, unlike an underwater basket weaving degree, all your core hours transfer to another major like mine did when I came back from underemployment later for a CS degree Lots of PE folks landed in non-energy technical jobs. In the "it's a small world department", one of my sons took calculus in HS from someone who graduated in Pet. E a year after me. She switched from unemployment to teaching HS math. When I entered PE in 1980, we had 350+ freshmen, when I graduated in 1984, the freshman class was about 25. Maybe 10 out of 200 my class of graduates had jobs at graduation. In 1988, all the grads had multiple offers. It will fluctuate.

My guess is the 2022 laterals are at least twice as long as the 2014’s, so we don’t need to get back to the same rig count levels to achieve the same productivity. But many factors at play: decline rates, quality of the reservoir, technology advancements, existing infrastructure, location, gas/oil ratios, etc…

Well she’s about 15 years younger than Warren and it’s a near certainty that her diet is better than his.

WEB may or may not buy out OXY, I don't know. But while guessing his actions is always a fun parlor game, he is certainly not waiting for it to become investment grade first. This Kiplinger's quote is the dumbest thing I've read in a while. "We believe there is a good chance billionaire investor Warren Buffett buys the remaining two-thirds of shares of Occidental that he and Berkshire Hathaway do not own once the company becomes investment grade," writes Dingmann, who rates OXY stock at Buy. "

If you haven’t read Ted Weschler’s response to his large Roth, I highly recommend it. It not only explains how Ted grew his account legally, but also indirectly explains why he is such a good match for Berkshire. As for putting limits on IRA’s, all I ask is that whatever cap is placed on IRA accounts comes with an annual inflation adjustment. Many investors starting their IRA’s in their 20’s with 50 year runways will hit what today would seem like an extremely high should we get a bad decade or two of inflation. The crime shouldn’t be the magic of compounding, but illegally putting mispriced private assets in the accounts in the first place.

Nice year for Francis Chou and Stonetrust! https://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobwolinsky/2021/04/29/francis-chou-wants-to-build-the-next-berkshire-hathaway/?sh=70d7f08a7894

Thank you for the update, I am eager to learn all the new features. Staying too long on old software leads to never ending problems. (Being first to upgrade also creates problems too). So far every time I've played around a little I could figure out a new option that meets my needs. For example to get more density of information on a page like the old forum, I discovered the condensed view option on the Activity Page to get more idea of where the most new info resides without having to scroll the screen so much.

I opened an account at Merrill edge 6 years ago back when the free trades were uncommon. I like illiquid stocks and getting hit with a full commission charge when your limit order gets hit with a single share bid was aggravating. Unfortunately about three years ago Merrill started making life difficult for purchasing what they call penny stocks (this includes LICT at 17k per share). As a result, I’ve moved a fair bit of money out, but haven’t closed the account as IB wouldn’t accept my OTC stocks. Execution wise, I seem to get the best price improvement from Fidelity, Merrill edge is hit or miss, and TD Ameritrade is the worst. Overall, Fidelity is my recommendation for ease of use and execution, but they don’t like dark stocks. IB is my favorite for international. Ultimately, I suggest keeping multiple accounts because you never know which stocks will be available from which brokers in advance. But yeah, if you just buy large caps, go with Fidelity.

Is it me or is today's press release, the first time Berkshire Hathaway has referred to itself "as the largest company in the U.S. as measured by shareholders’ equity." I get that this PR was written for a Japanese audience who may not know that, but it sounds a bit like a humble brag to me:) https://berkshirehathaway.com/news/aug3020.pdf

But if you give a mouse a cookie, he will ask for a glass of milk...

The only time I am happy using IB is when purchasing non-U.S. stocks where the value of access to those stocks is greater than the pain of their platform. Otherwise, for every potentially great feature in IB like easier tendering there is an offsetting flaw like out of date online help, commissions that add up quickly on low priced stocks ($1 to buy $10,000 of a $50 stock, but $25 to buy $10,000 of a $2 stock), features that vary across platforms, and a general attitude of "we think you need us more than we need you." Basically the only trades I do at IB are those that I can't do elsewhere.

Both are on the board, so I assume they are dialing in for the director's meeting, just not the public Q&A.