Munger_Disciple

Yes I was happy to read his discussion on treasury shares. Super helpful.

BRK director Witmer's husband sold two A shares in his IRA on March 3rd: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000091957425001778/xslF345X05/ownership.xml And Meryl Witmer, BRK director, donated 1,000 B shares to a charitable foundation on 2/24/25: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000091957425001652/xslF345X05/ownership.xml

Sorry to hear the sad news. May he rest in peace!

Honorable mention (& thanks) should also go the covered call boys for the ripping of BRK

I don't know if Chris is a good investor or not, but I give him credit for putting his very detailed work (at least on BRK) out to the public supporting his large holding of the stock. No doubt he is also using it as a marketing tool but I respect him for his in-depth work that he shares publicly. I have never seen Mohnish do an in-depth analysis of anything (I find most of his reasoning very superficial on equities) in his hundreds of marketing events/ talks. I don't think Chris seeks publicity like Mohnish either. So for me Bloomstran is a good resource even when I disagree with his valuation work which tends to be a bit too optimistic on BRK's intrinsic value. I greatly admire Mohnish's charity work in India but I can't say I learned anything about investing from him. I (prefer&) enjoy learning directly from Warren & Charlie instead of listening to Mohnish repeat a thousand times what they said without adding much.

Barron's article on Berkshire valuation quoting Bloomstran and others: https://www.barrons.com/articles/berkshire-intrinsic-value-stock-buffett-69d5ac61

Interview with C&F CEO: https://www.insuranceinsider.com/article/2eh1w9cjvqzlvuewo2upt/insider-on-air/crum-forster-a-cautionary-tale-and-a-redemption-story-adee?zephr_sso_ott=5JWMyr Imagine living thru' a period of 200CR!

Good find!

Mohnish is a billionaire according to this headline. I suspect it is incorrect but who knows?

I would second this; excellent explanation & overview of options @Martian! I especially liked this part: That said, with all the above monkey business, in all of the back testing, buy and hold beats selling CCs long term. All the studies I have seen confirm this plus intuitively it makes a great deal of sense.

Thanks for the explanation. Clearly it's a levered bet on Berkshire, so your later comment in quotes is quite relevant. He is only generating income because of margin leverage so the fair comparison in this case has to be to a levered version (time weighted perhaps to account for the duration of the leverage) of the underlying. My 2c

The ! There will never be another Warren or Charlie.

Excellent point. As I was mentioning in my previous post, some people miss that there is an opportunity cost and think that the option (writing) is "free". In general, I found that short term options (a few months or less) are mostly efficiently priced. I am sure there are a few exceptions but I think that's generally the case.

Glad it worked out for you. Not trying to offend you or anything but when someone makes a comment that they "out-performed" something, it is only fair to ask for evidence. But have it your way.

You may or may not get it at a lower price. In other words, there is an opportunity cost for the (put) writer's funds being reserved for potential exercise by the counter-party.

Yes, similar to KO puts. He was just trying to acquire the stock at a slightly lower price. Similar to writing cash secured puts. As I am sure you know, it is quite different from trying to outperform the underlying.

It's commonly known as put-call parity.

I understand. But w/o supporting data any sort of assertions/conclusions on the topic at hand are almost meaningless.

@boilermaker75 Can you share the BRK return if you did nothing with options vs. the return with your option writing, both cumulatively and annualized?

Yes I remember this now. But it has nothing to do with the original discussion of beating the index with buy/write.

You aren't overdoing it obviously. Given that you aren't doing it often, I doubt it made that much of a difference to your overall BRK return. I would be interested in your return on BRK if did nothing with options vs. BRK return with your option writing, both cumulatively and annualized. In any case, it doesn't say anything about an index buy/write strategy's merits or lack there of. I know Buffett wrote some puts on KO way back when he wanted to increase his position. Other than that I am not aware of any Buffett option strategy you are referring to. Please provide a reference.

Yeah many insurers had got into deep trouble or gone kaput over the years too. I think you missed this part of my previous post: Many went bankrupt overdoing it. If you have any proof that you had beaten the S&P 500 index enhanced by an option writing strategy consistently for a very long time, I am all ears! That was the original premise of a poster on this thread.

Done, thanks!!