Saluki

After coming back from Denmark, we started watching Borgen on Netflix. Great show.

Bought some FFH and OXY. Small adds to NTDOY and some other names that buy periodically with pocket change, TAYD, AOS, FRPH, NEP. Unfortunately, Merrill sux and unless my account and order are specifically is set up for after hours, it won't execute a buy/sell order even if the price is reached. So it didn't hit the limit order I had for Coupang which dropped after hours when earnings came out, and popped when the market opened

This doesn't seem like an investment book, but if you believe that Charlie Munger was onto something when he told you to "invert, always invert" or "tell me where I'm going to die so I don't go there" then this book will appeal to you. I noticed the connection to investing instantly and I when I googled the author I saw that Bill Miller and Michael Maboussin sought him out and eventually got him working with Miller's people at the Santa Fe Institute. There some writers who have great ideas but are terrible writers (Nassim Taleb) and some people who are great writers but don't have great ideas (Michael Lewis) and some people who have great ideas and are great writers (Malcolm Gladwell). I'll put Gonzales in that third group. Ostensibly it's a book about disasters like plane crashes and 9/11 but he takes a hard look at who lives and who dies and why. If a person gets lost in the wilderness, the lowest survival rate is children 7-12. One of the highest survival groups is children under 6. Why? Older kids make decisions like adults, but they are bad at adulting. Younger kids make decisions like animals, not little adults. If they are tired, they rest. If they are thirsty they drink. If they are cold, they crawl into an empty log and take a nap. They do what adults who end up surviving do. He tells the story of someone on 9/11 who made it to the lobby on the lower level and a guard told him to go back, and he did. And he died. There's a story in there about a 17 year old girl in a plane crash who hiked for 2 weeks through the jungle in her communion dress and lived while the people who stayed by the plane (and had the plane as shelter plus whatever food and water was in the wreckage) died. What about the special forces soldier who died on a rafting trip where civilians take their families and live? It seems like a lot of it comes down to perception of danger and doing the wrong thing. The Army commando didn't think the water was dangerous (he'd done much more dangerous stuff, so he pushed the guide away who tried to rescue him and floated down the river laughing until he died. Like in investing, they didn't know they were doing something risky and disregarded it, they didn't think it was risky. And with regard to doing the wrong thing, this passage reminded me of gambling or day trading" "the word 'experienced' is often used to describe someone who's gotten away with doing the wrong thing for longer than you have. " On Mount Hood several climbers died on what they thought was a "beginners' mountain" because they tied themselves together thinking that if someone fell, the others with their crampons and axes could stop their fall. But "there's no such thing as a beginner's mountain. It's like beginner's sex." And unless that rope is tied to something that is anchored to the mountain, it's the wrong thing to do, even if you've done it before and nothing bad happened. As he explained, without a belay (anchor), "that's not a rope, it's a suicide pact." What about the two guys who went on a 4 day hike and the guy who was upset that his partner was going too slow, decided to go ahead and wait for him? One guy had a map, the other had the compass. Those work great if you have both together, and are practically useless by themselves. If you wonder whether this is useful, it saved Gonzales' life. He wrote articles on airline crashes there was a McDonnell Douglas plane that was the Boeing 767 of its time. He didn't believe the company's excuse that all the crashes were due to human error. "Why aren't all the other planes crashing from human error too?". He was going on a trip and refused to take that plane even though his friends mocked him for it. The plane crashed and his friend died, and he lived to write about it in his book. He also wrote about his father, a WWII bomber pilot, who's 10 person plane was shot down over Germany, and he was the only survivor. There's another related book called "Everyday survival" that I also read at the same time as this, but if you had to pick one of the two, I would say read this one. Highly recommend!

Besides all the great "usual suspects" mentioned above, here are some that are off the beaten path but very good. Street Smarts by Norm Brodsky, if you are actually running a business. Corporate Catalyst by Tony Griffiths (FFH Board member and turnaround specialist). The Aggressive Conservative Investor by Marty Whitman Market Wizards series of books by Jack Schwager, which shows you there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Sold the last of my VTS at ~$23.50. Missed the top at ~$26 a week or two ago and I still think it's a good company, but I wanted to free up some cash to buy some of the other stuff that has gotten killed the past few days. I heard about it on COBF and bought from $14.70 - $19.23 and got a nice return plus a fat dividend while I waited. It's still paying a nice high single digit dividend at these prices, but I'm looking for growth, not income.

Some of my resting limit orders for NTDOY and OXY got exercised when I was on vacation. I bought another 10% to my existing position in OXY this morning (about 4% position size). Still assessing the damage and deciding if anything else looks good here.

Those are too hard to predict because there are so many companies out there and even if there was industry that was consolidating, I wouldn't invest based solely on that. However, putting on my thinking cap: Curiosity Stream, which someone posted about is a tiny, subscale content platform that could be absorbed by Discovery or someone very easily. It's not big enough to survive on it's own. Intrepid Potash is a minnow compared to the multibillion dollar whales in the oligopoly Potash industry and now that the founder CEO had to step down for health reasons, that might make them a target. I own a small position in Taylor Devices and Kraken Robotics. Both are tiny compared to other defense companies and look like good targets to get acquired. Taylor has a poison bill in place, so it would have to a friendly takeover and Kraken seems to like being on their own, so I wouldn't bet on those happening. Seaport Entertainment, which was just spun off of Howard Hughes is tiny and Ackman already owns a bunch of it, so maybe it can be his Berkshire. Fairfax India. It seems to perpetually trade at a discount to NAV. Maybe at some point Prem will buy it and it will give the holders a one time boost and be accretive to FFH. However, it seems to benefit from being small and nimble, so who knows?

Trimmed more VTS before I went on vacation. Now it's a little over 1% position.

Trimmed a little ENPH on the pop, bought a little OXY.

Besides the name being spelled differently, they are different ages and one is North Carolina and the other is in Utah. Embarrassing for a law firm to put out this press release without fact checking and confirming it. The good Mecham "retired" and stopped managing money for other people, but he can still sue for injuring his reputation, even if there are no monetary damages. It's been a while since I took Torts in law school, but "slandering a professional in relation to his profession" is one of the only times that you are entitled to sue someone for liber/slander without having to prove monetary damages like loss of business. So if I said "Dr X went to med school? I thought he learned at the butcher shop" I can be sued even if Dr X doesn't lose any clients. Fun fact, because US law evolved out of British Common Law, one of the other per se slander/libel torts is accusing someone of having a "loathesome disease" (i.e. syphillis )

Picked up a little AOS on the dip, and some OXY.

I'm not so sure about that. Ships have been around and involved in transporting goods since Ancient Greece. Ships get better, but shipping doesn't, it's a terrible business. Airplanes are like ships, but Railroads aren't. If your airline, or ships are making a lot of money, it invites competition, but how would you build another railroad? The country is no longer empty and the government isn't giving you free land anymore. And a lot of new tech has come around in the last 200 years, but there is still no cheaper way to send goods over land than a railroad. People have been eating wheat since the Mesopotamians were in charge. That's not going to change, but it's not a great business either without government subsidies. The list of good businesses that don't change isn't very long, but it requires some thought and a lot of vetting of good management in some cases. Real estate comes to mind, for instance. Tech is very profitable, but Google wasn't the first search engine, and Facebook wasn't the first internet site. The winners seem obvious in the rear view mirror but are hard to predict. With the slow changing industries (Vulcan has quarries in profitable prices, I'm sure some rich people in Ancient Rome were just as fortunate), it requires a lot more patience and sifting through fools gold to find the real gold, but unlike tech companies like Netscape, once you found one, you can ride that pony for the next 100 years.

Sold off the rest of the VTS in my retirement account. I bought it cheap and don't pay tax on the sale, but 8% dividend is not enough reason to hold it in my non taxable account, which is valuable real estate. Still have a small position in my taxable account though.

This is relevant to the discussion. It happened a couple of days ago. People are supposed to be able to evacuate a plane in 90 seconds with half of the exits blocked. All the exits besides the one in the back by the smoking laptop were available but it still took two and half minutes because people were doing exactly the wrong thing getting their bags. That blocks the aisle and makes it slower to go down the ramp. Most people freeze, follow their routine (I'm deplaning so I take my belongings just like every other time I've gotten off a plane), panic, or do what someone in authority tells them. This clip doesn't show it but the back was filling up with smoke and someone opened the back door (even though the stewardess told him not to) and threw the burning bag outside of the airplane (even though she ordered him to drop the bag ). He probably saved a lot of peoples lives, not because he had special equipment or training, but because he was able to think calmly and assess the situation and his options, then act decisively.

It's fascinating that none of the Trillion-dollar companies are on there. Besides the fact that they are the slow changing, predictable businesses that Uncle Warren loves, it's fascinating that they are all between 70 and 100 years old, so the length of runway is vital. Besides the names I expected like Coke and John Deere, I almost fell out of my chair when I saw Tootsie Roll.

Yes, there's some famous fire at a catering hall that she discusses which is similar. Most people did nothing until it was too late, then all crammed the exit and couldn't get out. One person on their way out stopped at the bar and wanted them to make him a drink to go It reminded me of something that Nassim Taleb said: "If you're going to overreact, do it early, because that's the only time it works. If you wait until everyone does it, it's too late." Which in hindsight was great advice in the great financial crisis or the pandemic.

I haven't heard of it, but I'll add it to the list. I'm currently reading a couple of similar books "Everyday Survival" and "Deep Survival" by Laurence Gonzales. Very good at explaining things and has a great way with words.

I'm listening to an audiobook now, not related to investing, and the author is very good at phrasing things. I've been writing down some quotes because I like them. He was talking about his dad trying to explain entropy to him, and why it was so hard to grasp. He said that "where there is no mental model, there is nothing that the human mind can hold on to. Math is a mental model for abstractions." Which is why you can explain it easier to people who are good at math. I think investing is like that too. It's difficult to come up with a metaphor for the buy and hold forever method, but the coffee can anecdote is a good one. I remember reading about the Busch family and they invested in a lot of things (timber, real estate, amusement parks) but only with the money that was spun off from the beer business. They never wanted to sell the main tree of financial life. I think it's the same with the Walmart heirs, the Johnson family, and some others. And the opposite is true of the Vanderbilt's where there are only a handful left with respectable money, and one of them earned it on his own. The closest metaphor I could come up with is a Banyan Tree. The original tree doesn't grow to the sky forever, but it drops a root from one of its branches and just keeps moving out indefinitely. BRK doesn't pay a dividend, but most of the other large caps do, and I think that even if I don't add to large positions like JOE, they will grow on their own and eventually be joined by other ones that are smaller now and I'm still buying while I have a paycheck, and eventually I'll have a big beautiful banyan tree as far as the eye can see.

So much stuff on sale today ! I bought some META, CPNG, Kraken Robotics. I also added 20% to my Grupo Televisa position, but I intend to sell my higher cost basis shares 31 days from now for the tax loss and repeat again before the year end to offset some gains on winners.

Besides your skill level and risk tolerance, there are a lot of other factors that come into consideration, such as when you bought your shares and if they are in a taxable account. I'm reluctant to trim in my taxable account, but have done so lately. I did sell off all my BRK in my retirement account though, and bought mostly FFH and Fairfax India. I just checked and the FFH shares are up between 40-58% in less than a year, and I think they still have room to run. Fairfax India isn't doing as well in terms of stock price, but it's executing well and had been buying back shares at higher than the current price, so it still looks like a bargain. BRK (or a position in an index fund) is a great ballast for your ship, and you don't have to trade actively, but you should keep looking. Eventually, like with BRK, you may spot something that is really cheap, has great management and a long runway, and like Supreme Court Justice Stewart's definition of pornography you should "know it when you see it" and take action. Good luck.

Right before Carlyle folded, this was $0.55, two months later it's $1.62. Definitely way to speculative for me based on the debt and potential for bankruptcy, but if anyone bought this to bet on the jockey, not the horse, congrats on a nice 2 month return. Looks like they eliminated the debt and are now on the offensive. They just acquired an engineering firm to boost their sales and installation capabilities. Complete Solar Acquires Core Energy (yahoo.com) Still not for me, but I have a 1.5% position in Enphase, TJ's other's company, and a small amount of shares in Enovix as schmuck insurance in his other venture. Peter Lynch said that the problem with most turnarounds is that they never turn around, but for guys who have that turnaround gene, it's like the one eyed man in the land of the blind.

I sold some BRK recently, which was my largest and oldest position, until GOOG became larger due to the recent run up in price. Not a lot, maybe 5% and I may sell another 5% of my higher cost shares depending on their earnings and the stock price. To answer the previous question, the insurance and other subsidiaries still look good bets, but GEICO has been struggling against Progressive, and the energy business suddenly doesn't seem as good as before if regulators or courts can take their pound of flesh at any time. With a recent ridiculous lawsuit payout for a wildfire where BHE didn't cut the power on a windy day, it's going to be put in a position to cut power more proactively in dangerous situations, but they are compensated/penalized for outages. So it will be damned if you do or damned if you don't. Maybe the existing assets are okay, but it's definitely a disincentive to deploy more capital if the powers that be can change the rules of the game as they see fit. So two of the core assets have seen better days, AAPL is a big part of it's net worth and unless people buy into it's AI narrative, maybe that asset has it's incredible growth stalling out. The railroad is a steady performer, but unlike car insurance, freight loadings are affected by the economy, so it's vulnerable to recession, although BRK itself tends to get great deals when Uncle Warren picks up assets that are beaten down, so the company itself is kind of a hedge/ballast in my portfolio. I have sold some VTS, ENPH and TAYD in my retirement account in the past few days when the resting limit orders were hit, which ran up a lot and I don't have to pay taxes on, but I don't have any great ideas on what to replace them with. I don't want to buy GOOD ideas in my retirement account because I can't deduct the losses if I'm wrong, so I like to wait for no brainers there (like something I bought in my taxable account that drops a lot and I think will recover quickly, or something like OXY below $60 which has the Buffett floor).

No, I exported this data from my Merrill account, which won't let me buy Kraken, so I looked at the position size in my other brokerage account and typed it in the excel sheet by hand. In that other account JOE is probably another 1.5% also, but otherwise it's accurate.

Not much change in the larger positions, but new small/mid position in MSCI, FRPH, KRKNF, and ENPH. The right tail is usually things I buy a few shares in while I study them and then add to them or replace them with something else that looks interesting and needs more research.

I was looking at this a few days ago, unfortunately Merrill won't let me trade it The CEO doesn't seem interested in listening to the activist who wants them to sell off the stakes in other companies and do a buyback or increase the dividend to close the gap between book value and market value. Unlocking that value will depend on how serious the Japanese government is about undoing these interlocking ownership structures (You own shares in my company, I own shares in your company and we sit on each other's boards, drink saki and vote against any minority shareholders that try to tell us we should run a company for the owners, not the management).