Munger_Disciple

+1 Even if someone is very bullish on a name, it's important to hear the downside possibilities, especially from LT suffering shareholders. Otherwise the forum quickly becomes a giant echo chamber to the detriment of all. If I have a beef with the discussion on this forum, it's that some of the big fans of certain stocks seem to "talk down" to folks with even slightly opposing views, even to those whose partially agree with them.

+1 I own FFH but not FIH. I like to align myself with the management & GP entity. The other problem is that the mothership competes with FIH for India investments. And the fees (which IMO are too high) never sleep!

and the fees are lower too!

I would recommend RSP over XMAG. RSP is an equal weighted index of the largest 500 companies in the US whereas XMAG is a cap-weighted index of 493 largest US companies ex-MAG7. While XMAG avoids the largest 7 companies, it still includes a lot of frothy companies with even higher valuation than the MAG7 (think Broadcom or Palantir). In the RSP, each of these overvalued companies have only 1/500 weight.

Merry Christmas to all the board members! I am thankful for the (mostly polite ) & great discussions on this forum and wish everyone a wonderful holiday season!!

+1 It's better to align oneself with the GP rather than the LP. Incentives matter! As you said, Fairfax had done take-unders before.

In good times people forget that leverage cuts both ways. Any idiot can pour on leverage but can get his head handed to him when the winds shift. And it's easy to forget that any long sequence of big numbers multiplied by zero is still a zero (just ask Lehman Brothers shareholders).

Worst case they will put Pacificorp into bankruptcy (if the damage awards exceed equity) & move on with the other assets. That's what I mean by energy business is not bad elsewhere. Buffett repeatedly said they wouldn't throw good money after bad & I trust Greg & Warren.

They are all good/very good businesses even if they aren't #1 in their respective industries in terms of sales volume. I have a friend who owns a small electronics component distribution business and he told me TTI is a great business. I am very happy as a shareholder that BRK owns them. BTW the energy business is not bad either except for Pacificorp huge wild fire related troubles in the Peoples Republics of California & Oregon.

+ Flight Safety, See's, Brooks, TTI, NFM, Home Services, BH Automotive etc. Marmon Group is pretty decent as well.

I agree with this. To state the obvious, own the GP not the LP (duh!)

This is hilarious!

Those numbers are stunning to say the least.

Ted invested in AAPL as well prior to Warren, and was partly responsible for Warren's big successful bet on the company. Greg will most likely make such calls in the future perhaps in consultation with Ted. I am sure Ajit will be heading any M&A deals in insurance in consultation with Greg. We are in good hands with Greg, Ajit & Ted as far as public security investments and/or acquisitions are concerned.

And Ted still does (SIRI, DVA for example), and his holding period is very very long unlike Combs who seems to dart in & out pretty frequently. Regardless of whether SIRI eventually works for Ted or not, I like his style of concentrated bets.

I recall reading that Warren was the one who recommended Combs to Dimon for JPM board seat in 2016, so this part seems weird: "Buffett gave Combs permission to join JPMorgan’s board in 2016." I found this part of the article which implies that Combs is leaving because he didn't get the Berkshire CEO job preposterous to say the least: He oversaw billions of dollars for the industrials-to-insurance conglomerate and grew close to several directors on Berkshire’s board, including Buffett’s daughter Susie, said people familiar with the matter. But the top role at the company ultimately went to Greg Abel, another long-serving executive. (Meaning Combs kissed a lot of a$$ but didn't get the CEO job.) All in all, not a very well researched article IMO.

I agree with you that there are good brokers out there who deserve their fees. It's just that there are many who aren't, and if AI helps the situation for good brokers to do more business while eliminating bad ones, I am all for that.

You don't know how the disruption takes place, neither do I. So it's dangerous to opine how exactly it will happen.

Why do you think the broker won't get fired? Most likely will be prior to next renewal.

Well I work with MMC broker for all my personal stuff & they are just ok, not great. They make a lot of mistakes so you have to double check every damn thing. They once insured the same home twice & billed me for 2x from the same insurer. I am almost certain AI will eliminate a lot of these people. As with any tech, the disruption will be at the margins at first , and then perhaps will accelerate as tools get better & better over time.

This space will be interesting to watch for sure. Seems like a low hanging fruit that's ripe for disruption.

Why can't other startups with just a great app compete & destroy the existing brokers who have basically zero IT skills? This is what happened in the stock brokerage industry. The full service guys had shitty online tools, and many still do, so folks dumped them for cost savings & convenience. Moved t online discounters.

A well designed AI app can easily accomplish that with fewer errors than an idiot human.

Can AI eventually kill all or most of these brokers? Seems like a reasonable bet to me, Most of these people add zero value. Same thing happened with full service/online discount brokers.