Xerxes

Greg, I believe that Bloomberg Front Row interview was done few weeks ago, tidbit of which was released only. And this week additional tidbits are released. I still cannot find his full interview. He did one last year which I thought was pretty good (but early).

I sent this picture to a few friends, telling them that this is Berkshire Hathaway holding the line in a blinding blizzard of a bear market. (not exactly bearish with 10% down but still cool picture)

Cheers! By the way, the movie "Dark Waters" that you recommended last year is finally on Crave TV. Dont know if you remember, finally i will be watching it.

Technically speaking, this is not their mandate. Their mandate is inflation and unemployment (I believe). I think that asset inflation is just a by-product of Greenspanism and his successors.

Maybe that was not the biggest mistake and perhaps it was the biggest pillar of your success. Depending on the way you are/were wired, paying attention too much on the Fed would have had you hedge your entire portfolio. Perma-bears and perma-bulls are eventually both right in the fullness of time. I personally think, unless if you are close to retirement, paying too much attention to the Fed can be a net costly mistake. Six months now, a portion of inflation which was more supply chain driven and not monetary related could be sorting itself out, in which case, it would help Fed, and the picture would change again, ... now with that new data point.

Most people run out of dry powder by the time it gets to 40%, depending how fast is descent. A rapid flash crash of 45% (March 2020) can be timed to a certain degree and deploy capital efficiently. A grueling 45% descent over 2 years with multiple bear traps will sap the investor's spirit dry. Someone with a $1 million portfolio may not have $200,000 cash on standby to deploy, and would feel throwing money into a firepit over the two years period, before his wife leaves him.

I think if everyone would be patient, you get the additional Q4 data point as earning kick-in. Don't think prices is going to run away to the upside, but at least you have more data points to make a better decision, especially for companies who growth trajectories had a Covid-induced step change, so you are lapping Q4 2021, with Q4 2020 and pre-Covid Q4 2019. I own Mercadolibre and saw the lapping take hold in Q3 of last year as % growth in topline just trailed off. Some of these growthier names (SQ, etc.) have crashed through their 200-day-moving-average. If only Prem Watsa was shorting these names at the right time. Poor Prem. He cannot win. Xerxes will always complain.

You guys all miss the dip on Resolute Forest, it is now 7% higher from its lows. Lost your chance.

i am looking at RTX, it barely budged lower. Maybe it will budge when the earning come out (i.e. Aftermarket impact from Omicron etc.) but not much affected in the broad sell off.

just raising cash or fundamental with the company ? LMT at this point is an income play until the top line moves and defense cycle are less sync with the economy. So better no ?

Gregmal, The fear is that Fed cannot raise rate too much every time the economy is coming out of a downturn, before that rate increase engineers the next recession (leaving yet less ammunition to fight the next downturn). There clearly is a trend. The Bitcoin and the Katie Wood crowd are not having a great day these days, but they believe this (above) (and so do I to a certain extent). Who knows how much of todays inflation is monetary related and how much is supply chain. If there are over 100 ships at the Port of Los Angeles jammed waiting to be unloaded, that is not going to get solved by Fed raising rate, but rather will need time. Once that unravels itself slowly, what is left is monetary inflation. And the view is that technology-driven deflationary forces in the medium/long term will overwhelm the inflationary forces, as they did in the 2010s. Case in point, late 2018 and the pivot that Fed did on Christmas Eve (or around there) with markets were buckling up. Yet there is another macro point of view (that is counter to what i said above) that I find interesting as to why the long term interest rate will permanently live on a higher plateau for many decades: - The duplication of supply chain, un-doing of Just in Time, building up buffer inventories, will all take time & capital. This is happening at a global scale. - Electrification and the green tidal wave will take time and capital that was not there 20 years ago. - Contrast these two points with how little capital/Capex technology companies needed in the past 20 years, which contributed to the glut of capital and low interest rate. - A steady supply of capital has been the baby boomers that have had their peak salary in the past decades, that will continue to wane, as they become a taker of capital rather than a source of capital.

I see air coming out of the market kind of helping Fed in taking liquidity out and a net positive thing. Would one prefer a market foreplay where it irrationally melts-up in the face of tightening cycle? overall i agree that after 40 years of bull market in bonds, the "breaking point" has always moved lower in time. What is weird is the CAD;USD FX rate. Typically when it hits the fan, US dollar shoots up to 1.35 and as high as 1.4. Today it is sitting at 1.25, might be the petro-dollar aspect of Canadian dollar giving it strength. dont know One thing for sure for the indices to move, Apple needs to be toppled way down from its $3 trillion crown.

Would you recommend that book ? Looks a bit pricy. I like the topic, but not if it is a re-hash of Buffett buying American Express or Coke etc.

Here is Iger full interview with CNBC. It is says "PRO" but the full version is out there.

AGT Food CEO signals openness to returning to capital markets - BNN Bloomberg

Finished this one as well. Great book and really appreciated the behind the scenes of the four major deals that created Walt Disney 3.0. You got to respect Iger and his character. Only the very best of them, is able to manage & navigate a cast of characters, ranging from George Lucas, to Steve Jobs, Rupert Murdoch, the Marvel owner (forget name) etc, and buy out their companies. Relationships matters. If Bob Iger was the Steve Jobs of Walt Disney, let's hope calculator-wielding Bob Chapek would be its Tim Cook.

Finished this book. Fast read and great work by the author. Happy to learn that the author has joined the TIP podcast as a co-host. I also learned about Nick Sleep and his record, which now has me directed to his letters.

Something interesting i observed while watching Shetland. I am used to watch North American police shows etc. so it was kind of odd to watch a police show where the policewomen/men were chasing bad guys without side arms or entering in a house (without guns) where you know there is a bad guy. The audience almost feels naked in those scenes with the cops having nothing to protect themselves. Another observation is that in Shetland, it seems to be ok, apparently to walk into people's house, without them opening the door for you. Don't try that in NorthAmerica or elsewhere.

the first few season of Shetland is there, as i just finished watching them, before going to Britbox (through Prime) for the rest

Thanks. I think some of these European shows are best reached through Amazon Prime's pipeline by getting a 30-day free. For Shetland, i watched the first few seaons on Netflix, but the last two seasons were not on Netflix yet but got it through Prime's distribution.

My simplistic view is that you need to own your own real estate. The equity that you built in it is your "central bank reserve". The price will always look expensive, it certainly did to me when I bought my first in 2011. If Toronto or Vancouver look inflated, then you have Montreal, that will always trade at a discount because of the perception that Quebec is about to separate. Now once the first property is bought, anything additional as investment in real estate can be contrasted with other alternative (stocks etc.) and arrayed against the cost of capital. But you need to get that first real-estate as residence, not only for the passive equity that you built but also the steep learning curve that it will make you go through. How could one seriously consider in building real estate as investment, if one never "went through it" with one' own personal experience. This matter because unlike stocks that you can "average in" over many years thereby taking advantage of different prices, real estate's purchase price is a snapshot that once signed, is seared and set in stone forever. Your own lever after that is your mortgage rate.

If Bill Miller had his personal wealth split between Bitcoin and Amazon, check out this guy, who has his wealth solely in Zara's Indintex and his real estate portfolio, and he is over 70 as well. The article is from 2014. He was on the news this morning, as he bought RBC Plaza for a cool $900 million. How Zara's founder Amancio Ortega has quietly built a US$10-billion 'all cash' real estate empire | Financial Post

it hard to take Saylor seriously when he is wearing a suit and tie I've never seen anything as compelling and unstoppable as bitcoin, says MicroStrategy's Saylor (cnbc.com)

^^ The more it goes down, it only means that if you buy ARK you are getting a higher and higher than 45% compounded growth rate in their 5 year plan. Based on their intrinsic value. It is RRSP season, for 2022, and i need to chose in the next few months between adding to FFH, adding to GOOG, adding to RTX .... and starting a new position in Lockheed Martin. Or a combination of these four.

That was my point, the steam will come off between those data points (ex-dividend and Q4 results), because Q4 will be accretive to BV. There are a lot of folks that are just playing the Christmas jumbo dividend round trip. (i.e. not taking risk to wait to see Q4 results)