changegonnacome

@TwoCitiesCapital And sorry before you come back and say - well they used email to send the ransom note........you going to blame the invention of email??? mobile phones? text messages? THE VERY INTERNET itself? I see how these conversations go in the past........ No I'm not - none of those things are motivations - they are different.........the crime is perpetrated to extract value itself......bitcoin sits at the very heart of the crime.....it is the vehicle that contains the reward for the crime.....it is not email, it is not the internet......its value (and enhanced probability of evasion) sits at the heart of the crime itself

The standard Bitcoin has nothing to do with these crimes arguments......guns dont kill people, people kill people argument....I got it. Heard it before. Bitcoin definitely solved one use case the 'oh shit how am I gonna get paid a ransom anonymously, remotely and not get caught' problem....and I expected laser beamed eyed mofos to say "what about cash" its the same...dont blame the mechanism of exchange for criminals, blame the criminals....only problem is some laser beamed eyed mofo needs to pick cash up from somewhere physically and then carry it, hide it, launder it & hope nobody sees or finds the cash while its being washed/carried around. Hope nobody rats them out. The risk/reward for criminals is completely skewed by the invention/propagation of bitcoin. It is not as you claim it to be simply a mechanism/inanimate object misused inside of a crime.....it is rather an enhancer/enabler of crime - a superior technology for the carrying out of crime. No? My one question to you TwoCitiesCapital - your wife/child/partner is kidnapped....you pay a ransom.....but they murder the them anyway to protect their own identify.......you desperately hope to bring the killers to justice.......in order of ranking which transaction method (cash, bitcoin, wire/ach) provides the greatest probability that that will NEVER happen? I'll take the test for you the highest probability of complete escape for criminals from prosecution is as follows: (1) Bitcoin (2) Cash (3) Bank Wire Bitcoin clearly has a causation effect on increasing fraud, kidnapping, extortion, ransomware.......how could it not........it increases the probability criminals will get away with it.....it removes a deterrent, reduces barriers to entry. To argue this isnt true in a week the southeastern United States was nearly brought to a standstill and a whole countries medical system was taken offline in the middle of pandemic......with bitcoin as one of the key enabling technologies at the heart of the scheme is some feet of mental gymnastics. Who's bread I eat, his song I sing.....i guess.....presume you've made some money on BTC/cypto recently @TwoCitiesCapital?

Great fun riding shitcoins up and down all the day - but literally the COUNTRY of Ireland's national health IT system has been taken offline with a bitcoin denominated ransomware attack today in the middle of a vaccine rollout.....~5 million people in the middle of global pandemic held hostage!!! Here's the vaccine registration portal in Ireland right now: https://vaccine.hse.ie/ Thanks Bitcoin - and all you laser beam eyed morons - Colonial pipeline and the south eastern United States says thanks too Charlie M nailed it on May 3rd on Bitcoin "disgusting and contrary to the interests of civilization. I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth"

Never knowable unless Epstein's computers have some dirt on Bill + others and this is backed up by Feds........we'll see in time........for now I'd like to hope for the best.......what Gates achieved with Microsoft followed by the work the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has done and is/was likely to do in the coming decades was/is shaping up to be one of the great double achievements of any humans lifetime.......to find smut at the centre of that type of life thats to be admired would be very disappointing

Got ya makes sense - I've read a couple of articles, one recently with Pete Townsend from the Who and he was talking about touring artists fighting over venue availability.......bodes well for MSG, Radio City, Beacon, Chicago Theatre etc.

Why S over E.....seeing as Dolan & E are effectively stealing S ......you anticipating alternative bidders coming in?

Excellent summary - watched his interview and am struck by his mental model of macro which is internally consistent the question is whether Ray's model of "How the Economy Works" (& its YouTube video cousin) is in itself correct. Seems to be me that the Fed has to let rates rise such that demand from buyers (especially overseas buyers) equals supply......the problem is the avalanche of bonds hitting the market and what level rates need to rise to bring equilibrium and will that equilibrium level be so high that its hurting the real economy forcing the Fed to get into monetizing treasury debt to keep yields down and beginning monetary inflation. Which will ultimately not be transitory. My only hope is that given rates in Europe / Japan.......US bonds with any positive carry (minus currency hedge costs) will be attractive instruments to hold and thus will catch a bid. Think you saw David Tepper recently highlight that Japan became a net buyer of US bonds in the last couple of months for that very reason.

Any sign out there - usually floating around by now

Digging up the graveyard here - but did anyone ever get full clarity on this - is Fairfax India deemed a FPIC? Built a position over the past few months and came across this wrinkle! If no 100% clarity on & if holding a FPIC in a personal US brokerage account - when selling at a capital gain does the IRS easily flag an instrument as a FPIC......I've a note in with my CPA but suspect there might be knowledge on here

Excellent - hope my little comment helped :)

Not unreasonable take: https://twitter.com/shaidardashti/status/1300267295655120897?s=21

Nice - he's bought a toll road on the Japanese economy.....very Buffett indeed but need to look at the valuations he's paid

Very interesting - thanks

Hi Wabuffo - very interested to see your fair value estimate for BRK under those assumptions.

If not allowed here - my apologies - but makes for interesting reading..... Q2_2020_Letter_Baupost.pdf

Nice - what did you get filled at?

Agree Curious what 13F’s you follow closely?

I’m interested to see how Apple fares....for the rest of 2020......think their Mac laptop business will do well....the Q is if the phone upgrade cycle behaves like in previous years....pre-pandemic I’m sure they were hoping that this would be a super cycle with all new form factor + 5G driving iPhone upgrades. Economic uncertainty may lead to a lot of deferred purchases of $1,000+ phones. The great irony in that scenario where surely Apples SP falls is that Berkshire stock might haven’t gotten no credit as apple rallied but gets punished as it falls......which I’d be very happy to take advantage of

Over, under, kapow Its about being broadly right rather than precisely wrong Its a method used in SAT's - given a problem with limited information/time.........estimate the over, estimate the under......the answer (in multiple choice scenario should now reveal itself). In investing I would argue it's the bull case......the bear case.......with the expected outcome, on average, sitting in the middle of those two. Thoughts?

My understanding from the webinar and previous interviews on Realvision is that he believes that because the hurdle rate for investment has been lowered so much (low interest rates) & so much liquidity added to the system (QE) - that effectively every fixed asset or capacity/growth increasing investment that could or barely could be justified by any CEO/CFO has been done already. Increasing supply, driving down prices in the real economy & causing deflation. Indeed he also argues that a lot of investments that DONT make sense have been done too in the VC space with structurally unprofitable companies funded for years and years beyond what might be considered 'normal' growth capitalism or put another way companies are burning cheap capital and engaging in below cost selling at a scale & for a length of a time that reflects that the price of money has been fixed at an artificially low level. Finally we are all aware of the concept that there exists in this cycle a greater than normal level of 'Zombie' companies who's continued existence is only enabled by cheap and abundant credit. Ordinarily these companies would have ceased to exist in the creative destruction sense of the word removing their supply of services from the economy. They have not ceased to operate in this cycle - increasing supply & causing deflation. For further reading I point folks to this thread and you can see what Druckenmiller is getting at - selling & delivering pizzas for less than they cost sure seems deflationary to me, ditto Uber rides etc. etc.: https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/this-is-your-brain-on-venture-capital/

Think this might be it -Warren was never one to kick the US/Global economy when its down..................and well if you've nothing nice to say, best to say nothing at all (or as little as possible in the AGM case)

Just sold Bank of New York Mellon shareholding to the tune of $30m

Thanks timing & pricing sitting where I was thinking also Q2 has to be melt down for this group - mid-August earnings release/call with corresponding Sept 2020 120 puts could be good bet

Neat idea and hardly(to my knowledge) a crowded institutional idea either. How do look at structuring this in a cost effective manner? I gave it a quick glance and put it on the "take a look at" reminder list for later. But briefly, couldn't you construct a cheaper expression with an outright short and some calls to hedge? Or is this a "big expected downside so go really far out of the money" situation? I just buy long out of the money puts. Very interesting - what dates you buying on the puts?

Axis Capital Holdings with strong cluster of inside buys