backtothebeach

You are probably right.

Krugman turning bullish and cancelling the recession. Icahn running out of steam and can't keep his bearish hedges. changegonnacome quoting Peter Lynch Market arguably nearing FOMO mode. I've been taking profits / reducing leverage today. Probably early or wrong...who knows.

Cell phone and social media addiction.

Not actively bought I think, just the spun off shares. A few quarters ago they had OGN from a spinoff, and sold it within the quarter. So VTS might be already gone. Edit: Just realized that they had almost 3 months to sell it in Q1, but kept it - so maybe they think it is too cheap to sell. Hard to say how much analysis is going on at Berkshire for such a small position.

Good to know!

Added 20 million shares of AAPL (unless they just moved the shares that were previously in a separate filing, I forget which subsidiary).

How would a severe hurricane season change earnings? Buffett said at the annual meeting that Berkshire wrote a LOT of cat insurance, most of it in Florida of all places. Is it similar for Fairfax?

Taking bank robbery to a whole different level https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/first-citizens-bancshares-records-98-bln-gain-silicon-valley-bank-purchase-2023-05-10/

From 2009 to 2019 MKL stock had a whole decade of a very smooth 15% CAGR. Sligthly more than the S+P500. I think that gave it the reputation of being a solid compounder.

Yes, $150-160 million additional buybacks in April.

Wow CNBC posted the whole thing already. Good on them!

Munger said to Buffett something like “you kissed that one goodbye beautifully”. Not sure if he meant ‘you got out of the position beautifully’ or ‘you evaded that question beautifully’.

Great morning session IMO. Warren casually citing AAPL's number of shares outstanding off the top of his head...he's just on another level.

The ratio is now back to 1518. I made a few more of these trades when the ratio spiked, netting another 6 B shares or so. Left a lot of money on the table… it just feels really uncomfortable being short an A share even though it is hedged with long 1500 B shares.

Not pretty

Great story. When I first became interested in equities in the late 80s, the local bank gave us printed charts (on paper - no internet at the time), with all these different time frame charts, and a lot of them went from the bottom left to the top right. I remember thinking "If only one could get in at the bottom left". Congrats on choosing one of those! Funny how time heals even 2008-2009 when you have a stable, boring compounder.

GM may be a good "poor man's covered call" candidate: Long June 2025 20 calls, and selling the short term $35 calls over and over again. In 1-2 months one should be able to own the $15 spread at less than $15.

Thanks, that seems more likely than IB's explanation. Or maybe it's both. Last Friday you had the bid-ask as wide as 495000-499000, and trades going through at both bid and ask within seconds. Makes sense that it is fractional shares, otherwise whoever is making this market would pick up thousands of dollars every round trip between bid and ask.

I asked at IB what is going on: Example (without decimals for simplicity): Bid-ask is 493000 - 495000 I submit limit order to sell 1 share at 494900 The bid-ask immediately changes to 493000 - 494900 In the next minute or so several shares are traded at 494900, but my order is not filled. Someone is jumping ahead of my order, even though I submitted it first. Thank you for any information about how BRK-A orders are handled by IB or the exchange. IB's reply: Dear Mr. xxx, According to our records during time frame of submitting Sell BRK A orders, there transactions marked as FINRA -ADF executions. Executions reported as “D” FINRA-ADF are trades between one Broker Dealer and another Broker-Dealer not on a listed exchange. You can not direct route an order to "Finra-ADF". The executions are reported to comply with Finra's trade reporting requirements. These are reported to Time and Sales as completed trades and IB customer orders can not participate in these completed executions. The requirement is that they must be reported within the Bid/Ask at the time unless the order has been granted an exemption. Kind regards,

Closed the arbitrage trade. Put on at an A to B ratio of 1553, closed at 1528, so I picked up (the $ value of) 25 BRKB shares in the process. I'm pretty sure the ratio will drop to below 1520 fairly soon, but trying to not be too greedy and have the trade on for too long on margin. This time I used a hidden order in the middle between bid and ask to buy back the A share, and it got filled after a minute.

IB

The ratio seems to be shrinking. Does anyone know the mechanics of how the market for A shares is made? The bid ask spread is huge. What’s weird is, that if I put a buy order above the current bid, my limit becomes the new bid, and there is actually trades going through at precisely my limit, but mine is not getting filled. What’s going on?

Oh, didn’t realize how “small” they are. I think it is still likely that they will purchase a position in Berkshire, maybe 1 -2% between the five of them.

Thinking about it further, maybe the Sōgō shōsha are like: if this guy can buy 7.4% of us, over time we’re going to buy the same amount of his company. Keiretsu thinking. A keiretsu (Japanese: 系列, literally system, series, grouping of enterprises, order of succession) is a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings that have dominated the Japanese economy since the second half of the 20th century