Castanza

I've been to too many whiskey nights with the boys where they pull up in their 60k Jeep Rubicon, talk about their 5 bedroom home (mind you no kids), bitch and complain about cost of living and salaries; but can't even answer what their 401k allocation percentage is lol.....it's mind numbing after a bit (and the whiskey doesn't help). Most bitching is self induced these days. We're all homeless, but some of us drive nice cars.

Definitely true as well. No shortage of people out there who were sucking their thumbs during the 2020 crash that are “waiting for the next dip.” I just think for the average Joe this mentality comes from using non-expendable cash for investing. If you “might need it soon” you’re going to miss dips or engage in fomo as you try to play catch-up. I was definitely emotion driven when I started investing for some of the above reasons. We live in a culture of max efficiency now. So as a young investor you want to feel like you’re getting max return on your small capital outlay. r/wsb is a great example of this. But it’s a nasty feedback loop of poor decision making. I still struggle with emotional decisions from time to time, but it really wasn’t until I felt my investment money was “just numbers that didn’t matter in my day to day” that I could better engage with investments and timeframe for expected returns. The more valuable your money is to you for investing the more you nitpick on things that are really noise. Investing is used car shopping. If you’re more worried about every little scratch or ding than how it runs you’re too emotionally involved in the decision. For me it’s now more learning what type of investments I want to avoid and how to better handicap situations. This last year has been a good lesson for me. I will likely underperform the market by a few points for 2024, because of situational investing and sizing mistakes. Not the end of the world, and I feel the lesson at the cost of a few percentage points is well worth it.

People miss the forest for the trees with these headlines. If you're selling in a major drawdown what's the likely cause? Debt, expenses too high, cashflow too low. If you are seriously concerned about market conditions moving forward maybe you should leave that 401k and brokerage account alone, divert some funds and reduce your debt and bump up your emergency fund. Lot of people out there with 50k Robinhood brokerage accounts, underfunded Roths, 401ks, HSAs sitting on $1k a month auto loans, 2k a month mortgage loans, 10k +CC debt and a stack of Amazon boxes on their porch every time they open the door; all being nursed by their talentless middle management job that could be replaced with a snap of the finger. Either make yourself more valuable, or your personal finances unbreachable by emergency situations.

"I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will." One would hope Berkshire has taken a similar approach to their own business. With the companies they own/have stakes in, and the amount of cash on hand, I don't think there will be any reason to run for the door when Buffett passes. Money buys time and gives options. Ted, Todd, Greg, and Jain (although not young themselves) have plenty of time to figure things out and communicate with their shareholder base. I highly doubt it will be a silent in the dark transition, I would imagine first order would be to assure the unique shareholder base that they plan to continue the legacy of Buffett and Munger.

I always prefer to stay local with my charitable donations (personal pref). Could always stop by a local church (big or small) and talk to their leadership to see what their needs are to better serve their local community. Example: there are a lot of local churches that would have food pantries, but cannot due to increased regs like “having a walk-in freezer/fridge for proper food storage.” A lot of food banks end up having food go to waste because there aren’t enough places to distribute the food too. Those things aren’t cheap and simply out of the budget for a lot of places. This was exacerbated during covid when demand surged well past supply. Having the facilities goes a long way. Might be below the scale you’re after though.

$SNCAF experienced with nuclear buildout.

Fairfax, GOOGL, and BRK have been my largest adds to existing positions

Good stuff thanks for sharing Charlie! Can't argue with an average 15% return, great results and great patience.

How has everyone structured their position sizing relative to overall capital throughout your investment “career”? Example: when I was younger and crossed the 100k brokerage account I was much more likely to do a minimum of 10% for a position if not 20% all the way up to 40%. Now that my portfolio has grown these percentages come down some but not in all cases. Just seems like at those low levels of capital a 2% position in a 100k portfolio is almost meaningless when it comes to moving the needle. Curious how everyone else got started and progressed. @dealraker if I remember correctly you had the majority of your wealth in BRK and AJG?

Some variation of these things will almost always exist. https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market-timer/

Picked up a bottle of Michter’s Sour Mash. It’s okay, not bad by any stretch, but not my favorite. I prefer the Rye; but will revisit it when it’s fall and I have a bonfire to sit by.

Yeah that's correct but I was under the impression secondary offerings can still show up in trading volume? If not my mistake.

10-Day AV has been about ~3.5m higher than the 90-day AV and now is trending lower; but as you said without an announcement your guess is as good as mine.

OXY

The Mongols for the most part allowed religious freedom and autonomy within nations the conquered. I'd argue they were downright progressive for their time (not ignoring their brutality). Where rulers like Hitler wanted to kills Jews simply because they were Jews. Mmm idk man I think for the most part you would know. But it's besides the point. @Xerxes What is your solution to the situation? Do you think a two State solution would work?

It matters to the survivors because it tells you a lot about the future. Do they just want my gold, or do they want to exterminate me? Are you going to get Genghis Khan or Nebuchadnezzar II?

Dual State agreement of some sort. But there would still be violence for sure. Probably would look much like it did pre Oct 7th attack. Islamic country (x) takes the Palestinians in as refugees Negotiations/agreement with a third party serving as proxy. US would likely be this party and would likely require security forces or occupation by US troops of some sort. Think Roman 63BCE but with US Marines instead of Roman Legionnaires. Which one is most favorable?

@Xerxes Who has claim to the land of Israel and why? Nationalism exists everywhere. Some nationalism in some places has much closer ties to religion than others. In Islamic nations the religion IS the culture and it drives the nationalism. In Western nations religion exists under a culture secondary to nationalism. I think Dinar is trying to highlight the concern with Islam nations. They have a religion that drives culture, policy, and nationalism which if followed does not allow for mutual existence with non Islamic nations long term. Perhaps not a conversation for this forum. You could probably make this same argument for the Judaism as well but I’m less certain on their cohabitation approach. I don’t think the Torah (Old Testament) calls for destruction of everyone else.

Oh I'm not missing it, I agree and understand completely. I would ague the crusades never truly ended (European cities aren't doing great if you ask me). *A better substitution for negotiate would be interact on an economic level. Interact economically, Ignore culturally/economically, War <--- really there are no other options historically and none of them are perfect. The longer you go, the more likely you are to experience them all, especially the greater the cultural difference. Selfishly, I (like most) prefer to live in a country that can swing the biggest stick, has the highest standard of living, and allows me to raise my family in a safe and prosperous environment. The question is, which of the "three traits" do you need to pick in order to achieve that with some consistency over your life?

Sorry, comment was more on Middle East as a whole (per Speks Osama comment). I think likely what I said is wishful thinking as the ship has probably sailed. Once these terror groups began popping up we figured out pretty quickly in the GWOT that killing one member creates two more. As I said, the cultures are likely too different (US). You're right there isn't much you can do other than try to root them out at this point. But has that ever worked? No, will it ever work? likely no.....it's a catch-22. You have to play the hand you're dealt (or dealt yourself in the case of the US). The Taliban now runs Afghanistan after a 20 year hiatus. If your goal as a nation of influence is to improve living standards what options do you have? Bomb their infrastructure and continue to kill millions of civilians for another 20 years? Glass it? Or find some ways to negotiate? Pull out entirely and leave it alone indefinitely? Maybe looking to South America is a slightly better example? The governments there (although massively corrupt) have ever so slightly more professional relationships between the cartel and government in some aspects. This seems to allow the US more operating room economically. We do a significant amount of manufacturing south of the border. Things change very slowly (living standard/culturally), but if history is indication of the "best" ways to change nations, it's almost always by providing positive economic incentives. And all this is really only if you believe the proper path forward is improved living standards at the cost of culture (which is a very western framed view). Remember, during the GWOT, there were a lot of soldiers who would hand out stacks of cash to village elders saying "build schools, build medical facilities" and would be met with nothing but "how about just leave us alone?" Regarding the Hamas, Israel conflict, I hope Israel destroys Hamas. I think they don't have a choice and are justified in their actions. I think their will be a lot of unintended consequences and civilian casualties. Welcome to war...welcome to history. "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor." William Shakespeare "War is a nations way of eating" - Will Durant

Drunk driving laws have done little to reduce drinking and driving. You cannot just ignore consequences because someone else may take a similar action. At the same time, you cannot expect change from a top down approach. Capital Punishment has pretty much never worked all throughout history. The Middle East is a mess though. The best path forward is probably establishing some type of relations that lift those countries in a positive manner economically and hope they change some of their cultural ways over time organically (if they choose). Straight up conflict certainly doesn't work, nor does forced compliance. Especially between very different cultures. Countries change when the people of those countries have a will to change their ways. Really, it's people in general.

Nord Stream Sabotage is going to be one Hell of a movie that's for sure.

ACE sells BM paint. When we were renovating during Covid it was a pita to get paint from Sherwin Williams. Long wait times on products like their Emerald line and on top of it the local smooth brains messed up the color after we waited 2 months for it to come in! My wife was pissed! Haven't been back since tbh. One thing for sure is paint has gotten pretty damn expensive. ~$70+ a gal is pretty insane if you ask me. Good for business I guess?

Imagine if they just let us opt out of contributions and invest our own money. Social Security is a pretty poor return when looking at how much you contribute vs draw.

Only if we can have a Libertarian (or Independent) audit committee that gets to review all budget changes, administration bloat, department creation, social programs, tax changes, defense spending etc. Let them come in every 5 years, audit everything and determine if said program or tax has been effective and whether or not it should stay. Slash it, slash it, slash it!