BroKon

Genuine question, why do you say they are on the sidelines? Doesn't your example show they are involved, or is this only the first time you have heard they have been involved, and on most other deals they have been absent? Also to be fair, when was the last time anyone made money in Florida, so you can understand everyone's desire to wait until the last minute to sign deals.

From their 10-K: "Certain catastrophe, individual risk and aviation excess-of-loss contracts tend to generate low frequency/high severity losses" Only 2/3 insurers big enough to take this quantum of excess of loss risk on, so you have to assume they are on the hook for their fare share.

Is there any reason to suggest that the new foreign security isn't 9988.hk, and all he has done is reinvest his HKDs? It isn't like he is a big fan of diversification.

Not that I have any insight but I have always assumed that Munger and Buffett have an agreement to provide a floor in the market, in the event that one of them passes. As long as the market is trading below their intrinsic estimate of value. Just seems to fit with their view of looking after their partners. And in answer to the question, its hard to see past Disney at the moment.

@Cigarbutt, part of the reason why with 10yr going down insurers couldn't achieve better underwriting profitability was surely all the new capital coming in chasing yield because the 10y was going down. So is it possible if the 10y reverses the vicious circle turns into a virtuous circle? It would probably need a 10y at 4% for this to really take effect so maybe unlikely. BRK's non-insurance aspect is too big these days to treat is as an insurer, and while I haven't looked at FFH for a while (last time I looked they were flattering their CoR by taking out their workout book), maybe I should again given how popular it is on this site. The London insurers look like a better bet to play this theme.

When I said shorter duration book I was talking about investment book, not the type of insurance they write. I don't have a view on whether life insurance vs P&C insurance is better. I take your point on why long tail might be better but as you imply it depends on the rate cycle, and whether the yield curve inverts etc. I could also make a case that for P&C as the market hardens, any pickup in their investment return will juice the ROE.

Depends on the type of Insurance company, but for a P&C insurer 4-5 years would be considered long, where as obviously for a life insurer that would be short. You can view the duration as a proxy for the amount of time it will take the insurer to start benefitting from the new rate environment (which was the initial question) Not a great proxy admittedly as it also depends on the initial steepness of the yield curve etc, but its clear that in a rate rising environment you prefer shorter duration books.

But wouldn't the earnings multiple of that particular insurance company have to re-rerate lower @gfp? Just even on the basis of some of its equity holdings. A better pond to fish in might be insurance companies with super conservative investment guidelines, especially those that haven't been reaching for yield by extending the duration of their portfolios the last few years (RE for example extended their portfolio to 3.6 years, so will miss out on some of gains).

Yeah fair enough Gregmal, just avoiding those threads is probably sound advice.

Is there any chance we can bring the Politics section back, I personally never read or participated in it, but at least it was a vehicle for those that wanted to debate the intersection of politics and investing, or just debate politics itself. I am sure it got pretty toxic at times, but the benefit was that the politics was kept out of the investment ideas forum. Now we have a situation where for example the BABA thread has effectively been hijacked to cover a myriad of political issues. I am not claiming these issues are not relevant to the investment case, of course they are, but they are are not solely relavant to Alibaba, and it would be much more useful if the bulls and bears could discuss the fundamentals of Alibaba and its valuation in the investment ideas forum, and the CCP and VIE structure were discussed and debated in another forum.

I use it but haven't been offered any notes. But if they are offering you 50bp I assume the cash is locked up, unless you have the ability to sell the note, in which case you won't be guaranteed par. Probably offering the notes as part of a regulatory requirement to show term funds in case of future (30-45 day) outflows.

In most markets there is a closing auction, so by definition there is exactly the same amount of buying volume as selling volume, as that is how the clearing price is decided. Theoretically, you would not have avoided the market maker spread, as your "extra volume" would have to be "matched", which would be by a market-maker taking the other side of the trade and extracting the spread that way. In practice you may save a little of the spread in the more liquid stocks but at the price of not buying or selling at your desired level.

@FoxCastleHold @ReturnsJourney @_inpractise are all decent follows if you want some colour on European stocks

Agreed, about 43bn of the float was effectively written by BHRG based on higher interest rates, that profit has been locked in on the asset side, so there will be a continued drag on the combined CoR going forward. For comparison purposes the 94.5% CoR for the P&C business should be used.

Thanks Cigarbutt

This may not be the right thread to post this question, but bar starting a new thread it seemed the most likely candidate. If Biden raises taxes say to 28% does the deferred tax net liability of Berkshire take at 14bn or so hit, bearing in mind the 28.2bn gain Berkshire took in 2017 on the back of the TCJA, or are those gains locked in?

This link (https://the-international-investor.com/investment-faq/reclaiming-withholding-tax-foreign-dividends) is a decent place to start

Is the plan still to have a free tier, if so the functionality that would convince me to be a paying subscriber (assuming the price is not off) is: - ability to populate and update excel with the fundamental data (as opposed to just a copy function) - ability to create, save and chart bespoke combinations of fundamental data - flexible screener that also could screen on bespoke combinations of the fundamental data with nice to haves being: - word search all the call transcripts at once - etf holdings and data. Just my input to the conversation

I have been looking at the below for the last few days (I added their 5y average CoR for ease - although some are more volatile): Beazley 94.6% Lancashire Holdings 89.7% Arch Capital (more of a mortgage insurer) 87.3% Hiscox 93.9% Markel 96.2% Berkshire (for comparisons purposes - not a great combined ratio as increasing float is primary goal, but that's not news) They all have issues in this environment, so I haven't come to any definitive conclusions on which one to invest in yet.

Overcast as well, and I thought I was doing well at 77 hours saved.

Thanks for the replies, I have a preference for cash generators (mainly due to my inability to pay the current multiples required to buy good compounders - maybe something I need to work on). I could live with 15%, which is what I have to pay for most stocks (if I do the paperwork) outside UK, Singapore, HK and a few others, but US is taxed at 30% where I am based, which I can't quite get my head around.

Hi, I was just interested in seeing what other investors did in terms of dividend withholding tax, especially when there is no DTA in place. In general, do you still invest and just pay the tax (and view it as cost of doing business), only invest in very low to zero yielding shares (my solution to date - but pretty limiting - although as yields keep coming down less so), sell and buy around the ex-div date, or the nuclear option avoid totally.

Non-fiction: Einstein - Walter Isaacson Fiction: The Three-Body Problem - Liu Cixin - I don't normally read science-fiction but this trilogy was very good

You can obviously apportion the equities to where you want in the balance sheet, but given the regulatory oversight, the fixed income and cash holdings should go to the float first. On that basis, according to my calcs their latest ratio is 33% equities and 67% cash/fixed income, whereas say Markel's float is 100% cash/fixed income. Both though would have 100% of their tangible book in equities (which is a type of float which has the advantage of being guaranteed to be free).

That's not actually such a bad idea. Bloomberg fits all Buffett's criteria around moat and pricing power, and it must throw off enormous amounts of cash. He would pay a fair price for it, and Bloomberg might need a quick sale (although probably not).