zippy1

Just to give a glimpse of what it looks like from East Asia(Taiwan), 1. International travels for tourism are down. Airports are rather empty. Many flights are cancelled 2. Companies restrict overseas travels. 3. Employees are asked to taken body temperature daily when report to work. Anyone with a fever is asked to stay home. 4. Riders of subway/Metro are having their body temperature taken before being admitted. 5. Companies are planning a "Blue-team and Red-team system." Some sorts of system to either separate these teams by time or by space are being worked out. For critical infrastructure companies, I have heard that half of employees are asked to go to another site that is 30 miles away as the back up. 6. There are daily broadcast on TV to ask everyone to wash hands often, avoid talking in elevator and avoid large crowds. 7. The government invested funds to ramp up medical mask production. It was 1.8 million per week in January. The projection is by end of the March, it will become 9.2 million per week. Additional funds are being provided to reach 13.5 million per week. 8. School opening for the spring semester was postponed by 2 weeks. masks are being provided to kids and teachers focus on teaching "washing hands and not touching faces and so and so forth." 9. My wife is a professor. All courses are asked to have a contingency plan to "go online." She has been busy taping her classes. 10. Large scale religious activities are curtailed voluntarily. I am a church deacon. We continuously discuss whether to go online or not. The catholic church in my city stopped weekly Mass last week. 11. Most of my physician friends are very concerned/worried about the overwhelming number of patients this virus can bring and the resulting breakdown of the medical system. This has not yet materialized yet. However, the feeling is the worst is yet to come. Anyway, hopefully, we will get out of this ok.

It is a bit funny that the so called "fact checker" does not know the last name (Surname) of this Chinese billionaire is Guo instead of Wengui, which is his given name. ::)

China’s Coronavirus Numbers Don’t Add Up. Here’s How We Know. https://www.barrons.com/articles/chinas-economic-data-have-always-raised-questions-its-coronavirus-numbers-do-too-51581622840

my understanding is that there are 7 plus another one for muslims. http://mzj.wuhan.gov.cn/bmcx/166448.jhtml

I was told that one thing that is different from the 2003 SARS outbreak is that now Chinese employers have to pay their workers wages even though the factories remain shut. During 2003 SARS, I was told that the workers were not paid. This difference can create issues for the Chinese companies that have higher personnel cost component, I was told. The change is prompted by labor law reformed enacted over the past 15 years. Not sure whether this is true. I am wondering whether our Chinese friends here can confirm or reject this?

The R0 for this thing is estimated to be 2.6 and some reported higher numbers such as 3.8. 60% of population and even at 1% case fatality rate is really bad. I can see why Chinese government would shutdown Hubei province and locked down a population of 60 million. The question seems to be "would this be enough?"

You may also find Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding's findings interesting. His recent twits are quite alarming and got me worried: His professional profile can be found here: https://scholar.harvard.edu/ericding/home

There is an article from Science about this: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally?fbclid=IwAR3DGPoNSLRJ6l3c1Zhpw5sBRhaDHdtnND8guR2t_Ut2cFcVK7ICnItM1jM The Lancet paper in question can be found at: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext?fbclid=IwAR186GhA9ZBSRGn0Chp-FjzPuUdNEyinsDvwyY4iAkui8wiEX-yMKAdimfk

I think you will see Electronics manufacturers moving out out of China, at least partly. Many of these are Taiwanese companies doing their assembly work in China. They are moving some of their capacity back to Taiwan and moving some of the capacity to Vietnam and Indonesia. Below is a list of top 20 exporters of China to US for 2016. The number 1-7, 9, 12,14-16 and 18-20 are from Taiwan. They will see very different tax rate depending on whether they do manufacturing in China or not.

Boilermaker, why you don’t short longer term put, say 1 year? The put premium will be taxed at long term capital gain and there is a higher chance it will expire worthless. The premium is higher if the date is very short? Also, if you are doing this in an IRA or 401K account, then the tax is not so much of a consideration?

;) ;) ;) ;) Well Done!

Charlie Munger is on our group. Welcome! This is amazing and impressive. I guess he finally got himself a Thinkpad, or maybe he purchased and Iphone. :P :P And the divestment of daily journal!

My understanding is that many traditional Asian department stores are dying and new malls are built as places for having fun/spending time/hanging out with friends instead of just purely "shopping." These malls seem to do rather well....

Book value now $449 up 24.7% in 2017. http://www.fairfax.ca/news/press-releases/press-release-details/2018/Financial-Results-for-the-Year-Ended-December-31-2017/default.aspx

Is it ok to ask for Charlie’s perspectives on WFC’s recent development?

Is not the new tax benefiting BRK and taking away the tax advantages from Bermuda base insurance companies ? I wonder whether the market has factored this in?

I believe that they had used 10+inflation from around ~2000 when they were ahead of indexes. Of course, their recent performance is nothing to write home about. But I think at least they have been consistent.

I kind of doubt that a regular mutual fund can buy CDS... I know for a fact that Longleaf funds, being invested in Fairfax, were aware of the CDS trade, but they could not buy any CDS due to their charter.

It is & you should own it in a tax advantaged account. many thanks! :)

So in the earlier discussion, there were concerns that Fairfax India may be a PFIC. I am wondering whether this turned out to be true or false? Does one (a US citizen) need to file any special tax document or put it inside an IRA? I assume if there is an issue people may have to deal with it during the tax season earlier this year? Will appreciate any insight and suggestions!

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/fairfax-financial-holdings-posts-3q-090344501.html

Didn't Marty Whitman "defacto" retired in March 1st 2012? So if one calculate his performance since he started managing TAVFX to his retirement, how would he fare? http://www.valuewalk.com/2012/02/breaking-marty-whitman-announces-defacto-retirement/

Jim Gibson and team from Pacific Financial Research, who used to run Clipper fund.

second that! Ben Graham ruined the relationship with his sister I think during the great depression....

It sounds like you are in a group that collectively does not get a big pot of bonus. In some companies, the bonus are not evenly distributed across different groups. The groups that make most money will get lion share of bonus. Now the ranking is typically done within each group. And the "pot" of the bonus aloocated to this particular group is then divided by people in the group. The real problem seems to me is that you are not in the top 10% or top 20% people in your group. Typically, these are the people that will get good bonus. The middle 50%-60% people typically are considered highly replaceable if they choose to resign. So I think you want to make sure you become a member of top 10%-20% group. It seems to me that there are 2 things that you can do. You can improve your ranking within your present group. Or you can try to transfer to a more profitable group within the same company and try your luck there. Of course, in the new group, where you do rank is a different question.