WFF

Provided they pay a toll to the US. Trump says blockade still enforced.

Glad to see he is well and doing lunches. Hahaha, yes! Now the speculation is… what’s that tiny purchase

Thanks for this John! Now I hope there is a peaceful and all, but the above isn’t all that good for Europe. Yes they own the ships, but do they control it? Most ships are probably using another country’s flag when going around. Trump is pushing for national shipping building and pushing South Korea to build ships in the US. Trump recognizes gaps and is bridging. You can argue that the EU is plugging the gaps, but the pace at which stuff is happening between the two is not on the same level. Again, I hope for peace, I hope for more predictable outcomes, but like someone said… all we can do is lay back and enjoy the show. Be pragmatic on the outcomes and adjust our allocation accordingly.

Yes, some industries will be hurt. Defense is one of them, autos (Big 3), bourbon, aircraft , etc. But is this enough to deter? And are there really no markets to send the cancel US demand elsewhere (cough… Taiwan, Saudi?) Playing the devils advocate, is EU’s defense industry able to capture these “cancelled” demand? When can they deliver and at what cost? By doing so, EU is potentially hurting themselves in the process (less bang for the buck). Structurally, it’s going to be like China favoring domestic production, but in the short term can’t the gap really be filled? Any actions, the US could take opposite actions to help offset likely (which in some sense is already happening). Longer term, they may wait until the midterms to reassess, and even longer and wait until after Trump’s presidency. So the correct statement is the EU have cards, just don’t seems like any good ones (like China’s rare earth).

Buying some Maotai. Money was in China, and seems like with the chaos, buying national champion that pays around 4% might not be too shabby.

I know it is not politically correct, but pragmatically speaking, EU f’ed themselves for being so reliant on US services. They have “no cards” as Orange Drama Queen will say, are they really going to ban US services? So no AWS, no Google, no AI? If they do invoke the bazooka it will hit their credibility, as they will show they can’t hit back without hurting themselves. What may happen is tarrifs or trying to hurt swings states, and hope that the swing states will vote for someone that will bring senses. The other is reject foreign services in getting govt contracts (small amount relatively speaking and might get worst product) or impose laws or review that will delay American companies in expanding. They can always do the lesser of two evils and try and replace services with Chinese tech, but that would hurt their credibility again as they have been bashing China for the longest time. The US as a reliable partner has already gone down the drain with Orange Drama Queen at helm, so here is to another 3 years of chaos (unless midterms limit his power).

Initiated a position in Kweichou Maotai! I like what they are doing with iMaotai.

Disney’s moat has narrow, the younger folks seems to love Harry Potter, Minions etc more. The teens/college kids I know, when I have them choose going to Disney or Universal most pick Universal. Same for Nintendo, it still has a strong franchise, but the love for Mario, Zelda etc is probably not as strong as it was for people born in the 80s. The younger generations seems to have a bigger love for Pokémon. This doesn’t mean Nintendo wouldn’t pull a Disney and buy IPs from Stan Lee. On to moat, the closest I think to Coca Cola is Maotai (though that would require you to be comfortable with China).

Man Utd was also saddled by a lot of debt due to the Glazers, while Berkshire is a fortress. But yes, the anointed successors aside from Tim Cook hasn’t worked out of the top of my head (Gates to Baller, Iger to well now back to him, Welch to Jeff Immelt). So Greg is a risk, but given he is already running the businesses, Ajit is still there taking care of the bread and butter things should be ok. Hopefully Greg will prove himself before Ajit retires.

https://berkshirehathaway.com/news/dec0825.pdf Marc, is also retiring. Seems like the changing of the guard all around. Guess we may soon see which are Todd’s position by following which positions gets wind down. I was hoping with GEICO, Todd may potentially replace Ajit. Wonder if we will hear about Weschler soon. Hopefully he will stay and help Abel.

Bought some NVO calls, running low on powder. And have some orders open for EWBC calls, they will be fine.

With all the investment in AI, it really brings back memories of the 90s and this article. Warren 1999 Few key points: 1. There were over 2000 auto companies and there are only 3 that survived. 2. Even those that survived, it doesn’t mean that the economics are great. Perhaps we should invert and instead of who will win and who has the better LLM etc we should think of who will lose. This stuck from the article: Sometimes, incidentally, it’s much easier in these transforming events to figure out the losers. You could have grasped the importance of the auto when it came along but still found it hard to pick companies that would make you money. But there was one obvious decision you could have made back then–it’s better sometimes to turn these things upside down–and that was to short horses. Frankly, I’m disappointed that the Buffett family was not short horses through this entire period. And we really had no excuse: Living in Nebraska, we would have found it super-easy to borrow horses and avoid a “short squeeze.”

More NVO today, plan to hold this latest batch for 31 days, and sell the higher costs ones to offset realized capital gains.

More NVO, sold some puts expiring on Friday!

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