crs223

I believe you are saying "because good drivers are moving to Progressive, therefore GEICO is mis-pricing their product". I could charge $1 for unlimited auto coverage. GEICO would lose all customers to me -- doesn't mean that GEICO is mis-pricing. Q: What evidence do we have that Progressive is right and GEICO is wrong? I'm not saying that GEICO is correct -- I have no idea -- I'm just trying to understand how the forum concluded that GEICO is mis-pricing their product.

You did not say “to the moon”. You said you weren’t sure if it would double or triple. You didn’t say “don’t know what they are doing”, you said that “we don’t know what they will create”. I’m very sorry and I apologize. I am completely in the wrong and i will be more careful not to make such flippant comments in the future.

Im not saying anything about amazon or your investing prowess. Furthermore, I don’t have anything useful whatsoever to add on the subject. I just thought it was amusing the way the sentences were structured. That’s all I meant.

I thought you were describing a fraud — but then I realized you were bullish. I read it as “I have no idea what they do, and they don’t tell us anything in their financials. But they are going to the moon!”.

Sorry but this just made me smile…

That was great, thank you. I loved hearing so much from Greg. Nice to know he's the "enforcer" for WEB. WEB had a great point: where else do you have an officer buying $100M of stock with his own money and no discount/grants/options. I love being a shareholder in BRK. This one surprised me, particularly given the conversation around this site a year ago (which came from BRK letters from the early 80s): inflation is not that bad for auto insurers. BRK is not going to write a 20 year auto policy. They write 6 month policies and they can crank up the price pretty quickly. They'd write 15 day policies if inflation got up high enough! Inflation is not special risk to insurers... they just adjust the price as needed. "I don't wish it on anyone, but you could argue inflation is good for insurance because you get much bigger premiums on much bigger coverages". "over time, autos have gotten safer, accidents per 100 miles driven has gone down, but price for auto insurance has gone up 30-40x".

... you can sign up for a free trial week of YoutubeTV and watch it on the CNBC channel. I assumed we could watch it for free on CNBC but you've got me thinking otherwise now... how frustrating.

How’d you pick 4100?

@Spekulatius your entire post is brilliant, but the best two words are “sound clever”. An inexperienced but moderately smart person will be drawn to a logically consistent “doom porn” article such as “US is printing; countries that print fail; therefore US will fail.” There is an equally clever story that takes far more effort to digest: The Intelligent Investor by Graham. Path of least resistance leads well meaning people to the story that is easy to digest. For me the first dose of “antidote” came from Buffett’s article on gold. Druckenmiller provides a good booster (me summarizing): “I’ve always been naturally bearish… but I can only make money being bullish.” https://fortune.com/2012/02/09/warren-buffett-why-stocks-beat-gold-and-bonds/amp/ ZH is terrible for society — not because of Russia, or politics… but because it’s a doom narrative that “sounds clever”. In a cult like way it teaches that all other media outlets are full of shit and only it can be trusted to deliver the truth. I hope that our educational system can teach kids about bias in the media and understanding the agenda of a source. will be important going forward….

No, this doesn’t work. When an intelligent person is getting started with investing reads ZH… that person “truly knows and is comfortable with” (your words) the system is corrupt and collapse is imminent.

Brilliant. I was personally screwed by this… i became “prudent, conservative, and fearful” in 2007. In 2009 I thought i was the smartest man in the universe and remained fearful until i finally got back in during COVID. Dutifully reading ZH every day. What a waste.

If Fed raises rates, ZH headline says “Fed Hell-Bent on Tanking Market” If Fed lowers rates, ZH says “Fed Money Printing Will Destroy Society” If Fed keeps rates same, ZH headline reads “Fed Refuses to Acknowledge Lurking Danger” ZH is a waste of time.

thank you!

Sorry but I don’t think I understand your point. Are you saying: “People are foolish to move money out of 0.1% bank accounts and into 4% money market funds because risk/reward is bad”?

i emailed the CNBC marketing person and got two indecipherable responses to this question: We know that CNBC “streams” the meeting on their “website”. Q: Does CNBC broadcast the meeting on their TV channel? … I’m preparing a watch party at my house …

I once saw a cheers-less post. Gregmal was being disciplined over in the Disney thread…

I was really just reminding myself that I want to look into PRX and CSU as trustworthy allocators. I’m not interested in paying a high P/E.

I’d prefer to own a less worrisome company than BRK. What do you recommend?

I don’t know what exactly is a cannibal, but BRK is not indiscriminately buying back stock. Only when it’s cheap. And from looking at the month-to-month purchases, “cheap” is not just about the stock price. WEB must be considering the changing intrinsic value and/or opportunity cost of spending that money. Re BRK CAGRs, for me it’s about trust first and CAGR second. Right or wrong, I completely trust BRK to do the right thing for me while I’m at work, sleeping, market crashing, or rallying. My preference would be to find a company/fund just as trustworthy but 1,000 times smaller (more CAGRs). But until that happens I’m with BRK. Based on recommendations here (thank you) I’ll be watching Prosus and Constellation.

50% BRK 30% Privately Held 12% BABA 3% iBonds 3% S&P500 1% SAVE (formerly ATCO) 1% Cash "Private" is the S-corp I work for. No debt, 9% FCF, essentially all of which is paid out as a divi, growing since I started 22 years ago at 10% CAGR. Market downturns bring me joy -- BRK's brains and cash do all the work. I'd love to find a smaller company that give me the same joy. I'm not interested in buying any individual stock that BRK could conceivably buy... rather just put that money into BRK and let them figure it out. I should roll SAVE into BRK. I'm open to a BABA alternative. Ideally something with good FCF, that BRK would never buy, that will profit if US grows dumber than the rest of the world over the next 20 years.

$5M reparation payouts are just a distraction. Focus on the real issues: Stormy Daniels’ hush money and Hunter Biden’s crack addiction.

How good does it feel to own the company that POTUS and the banks are going to for salvation? Bonus: CEO puts his shareholders first and will only swing at fat pitches. Double-bonus: stock is cheap enough that WEB is buying right now. Sold the last of my ATCO yesterday and bought BRK.

You said that GEICO is getting more “bad risk” (your term, not mine). I would like to know how much “bad risk” you think GEICO has now vs 5 or so years ago. a) 10% of GEICO policies are “bad risk” in 2023 compared to 5% five years ago b) 60% of now vs. 0% five years ago c) etc

What percentage of GEICO policyholders would you say were “bad risk” ~years ago? What about today?

Beautiful! Ted is living the dream! What were you doing in Charlottesville? I visited a few years ago on a trip to Monticello.