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.

Well, he’s going to be pretty quiet at the modified AGM too if there is only 45 minutes for questions. I can understand his not wanting to do a full day of video questions, but 45 minutes is not much especially if it includes some formalities. I can only assume that is by his design. My conclusion is that he doesn’t want to talk. For someone as long term optimistic as WEB, this is not a cheery data point.

I think there are multiple reasons: 1. He owns too many companies that are bailout candidates or TBTF and thinks keeping his mouth shut is the best way for those companies to get the best deal from the government. He doesn't want to get politicized. 2. His large ownership in certain industries is preventing him from making deals (financials, airlines). 3. He was too early in the GFC. 4. He has access to great economic data and doesn't want to give others ideas with it, until he has acted on it first. 5. The government is making better offers to help than he is, so he has nothing to report. 6. He may have higher than expected claims or more money losing businesses in this environment than the conventional wisdom expects, so needs to hold back more capital. 7. He doesn't think the market is cheap, similarly, he doesn't think BRK is particularly cheap in this environment either. 8. His outlook is negative and he doesn't want to scare anyone. He would rather tell common investors good news rather than bad news, so he is waiting until he is more optimistic. 9. He is saving his insights for the video AGM in May. This one is not inconsequential. He loves the AGM and doesn't want to diminish its value. Overall though, I consider his silence a negative. If he was bubbling with optimism, he'd already have been on TV.

Preferred Units issue K-1s. The boxes are filled out a little different than regular MLP units as all the income effectively gets reported as interest and there is no depreciation, but its still a K-1. But the killer for me is that you still have multi-state tax filings to deal with depending on how much you invest in the preferred and how much you worry about getting a letter from out of state 5 years from now asking about a filing penalty.

I use overcast as well. I originally selected it for its listening enhancements such as shortening pauses between words as well as straightforward speed controls that can be modified per podcaster if desired. I now take that for granted but still prefer it for its easy to use interface and continual addition of useful features. Like the post by Liberty, the last thing I want is Spotify managing my podcasts and up-selling me features. At the big players like Spotify and iTune, innovation is more often than not just another word for monetization of me.

I'm waiting for the unabridged version.

TD Ameritrade charges for OTC stocks, but at least lets you buy most of them. MerrillEdge doesn't charge for OTC, but is finicky over which ones it lets you buy or even sell. Fidelity doesn't charge, but is highly restrictive to which OTC you can buy IB charges, and used to be friendly with OTC, but is now getting hostile. Vanguard just switched to no charge, and seems more friendly with most OTC purchases than Fidelity, buy orders below 1 cent are not accepted (which generally isn't an issue for me). I am considering Schwab, because I hear they are OTC friendly, but I am worried about being shafted on their money market rates on free cash balances. At Merrill, I can shift excess funds out of the default fund into a T+1 money market fund that pays 1.45% (it was paying almost 2% before the last round of rate cuts). The default funds pays like .05%. Can someone with an account at Schwab verify if alternative money market funds are available as my understanding is that their default pays close to zero. In my taxable account I can always move my money out to a better online money fund, but in my IRA I need to use the options at the brokerage and it just pains me to only earn 0% on cash.

Thanks for the post Longhaul. I can't agree more that the decline of meaningful limit orders is to the detriment of us all. Of course, when I place a limit order for 500 shares on a 23 bid, only to see it filled by a HFT at 23.0001, it just makes me pull my offer and use more judicous market orders instead. Until 5 years ago, I never used market orders but now they are the only way to get a fill between the bid/ask as placing a limit order between the spread just moves the HFT's bid/ask for most of the stocks I like (If only I stuck with FANG stocks, high frequency trading would be my friend). On the plus side, the trend to zero commission rates, lets me break my trades into smaller pieces, and best of all free commissions means someone can't screw me over by selling me a single share on a limit trade and sticking me with the commission charge and try to nudge me off the NBBO. Of course, there is no "free" in free commissions, now I have to spend my time moving available cash around to avoid leaving cash in crappy sweep vehicles (I'm looking at you TDA!). Fidelity seems to treat me best there, but they don't let me buy low priced stocks even if the low priced stock has a share price over $1000, but that's another rant. I'm starting to getting worked up so time for me to take a chill pill...

It’s probably good for a bounce. It looked at the Q3 earnings and what really surprised me is that they can sell thermal coal for $60/ ton. Isn’t that more than 6x what the operators in Powder River get? I think Met coal may go down to $100/Ton - a lot of operators have a cost of $90/ ton so further drops will lead to idling of capacity. I do like ARCH here (don’t own it, but out it on my watch list) as they seem to execute well and seem to have low production cost assets. Powder River Coal has is 1/3 less energy content than Appalachian thermal coal and sells for $12-13/ton. The only reason people buy PRB coal is that it is low sulfur. Its low energy density and remote location also increases rail shipping costs. Contura price realizations Nov 2019 CAPP - Met (includes T&L) $108.35 CAPP – Thermal $61.46 (Central Appalachian) NAPP - Thermal $41.33 (Northern Appalachian)

Contura, CTRA, is a good candidate. It’s down from the high $60’s since January to $20 in November to $5.90 today. It had insider buying last week. It’s probably due for a tax sale bounce. The biggest risk is that you forget to sell after the bounce.

I won't stay at an airBnB or VRBO rental where the owner has ever cancelled a reservation in the past. Who knows, maybe the cancellation was legitimate and I am overreacting, but you are playing such a weak hand when a host cancels and you're stuck. I've seen rentals offered with 10 reviews and 2 mentions of host cancellations - ain't no way I'm signing up, you know they will sell you out for a better private offer in a heartbeat.