backtothebeach

"Before joining and later leading GEICO, Todd Combs spent several years working directly in the property‑and‑casualty insurance industry, including as a pricing analyst at Progressive Insurance and as an insurance analyst covering insurers on Wall Street." I don't think he was such a bad fit, and ultimately he did the dirty work for Buffett. This year I listened to all past annual meetings, and Buffett was asked at least in two years, maybe three, about telematics and the competition from Progressive, and he waved it off saying he was happy with the way they were evaluating risk at Geico. Later, when they realized they had a problem, he let Ajit answer questions about Geico and praised Todd. Why is Combs disliked here on Cobf? Probably because in all these years there has not been any outstanding, needle moving investment by Todd or Ted (except the first AAPL purchases) that I can remember, they haven't beaten the S+P, and we secretly think we could have done it better, lol.

Gift horses...

Yes, but very illiquid. You can drive a truck through the bid-ask spread (like 1%) and I did not get any fills inside the spread. So not really for trading - except today. I already sold, too early of course, but this was a little flex on margin, which was close to free money. Made 3000 Euros lol.

Well for now it’s not getting bid up more than 1-1.5% over Friday’s close.

Market maker in Frankfurt is like "WTF is going on..." Already traded 3x daily average volume in the first half hour. I grabbed a few for a trade.

Whenever I hear "Sleep Country" I start thinking about how sleep is such a hot subject in the longevity/health community, and there may be a huge opportunity in smart mattresses etc.. But it is probably too much of a niche still, according to Grok only a 1-2% market share, albeit with slightly higher gross margins.

Damn, I knew about the "lost decade" post GFC, but actually, if you got in right at the peak in 1998, you only had the dividend to show for 23.5 years. https://www.fairfax.ca/wp-content/uploads/1998-Letter.pdf "After a 9% increase in shares outstanding, earnings per share increased by 51% to $32.63 per share. Book value per share increased by 47% to $185 per share and our share price followed suit, increasing 69% to $540 per share" "We have US$700 million in S&P Index puts" So it peaked at ~3x BV. Does not look crazy in terms of earnings though. This is probably old news for most here, but I think I am going to have to go back and read every annual report that is available, to really understand how this company has evolved over its history.

It was a funny image though, migrants sneaking across the Mexico-U.S. border herding cattle.

I found this podcast very interesting, including their attempts to explain quantum computing. If I understood correctly, the quantum risk will probably be solved, except for the 20-30% of lost and frozen BTC, which would be hacked through quantum computing, since they won't be able to join the new quantum-safe protocol. I'm an amateur here, so someone who knows more about this, how would that be dealt with? https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/btc253-quantum-computing-and-bitcoin-w-charles/id928933489?i=1000736349583

I wonder how much @Parsad makes on ads per user (on users that visit a lot). I'd rather make a donation of that amount than put up with ads.

Yes, sorry I changed my post when you had already answered, to include the formula p = c - s , which I found very useful to think about all the permutations when starting with options. For example stock = call - put stock - call = - put (the typical covered call) call = stock + put etc.

You still lose $40 more on the short stock than you make on the call. Shorting 100 shares and buying one $200 strike (OTM) call is equivalent to buying one $200 strike (ITM) put. The put costs around $39 right now. p = c - s

Listening in the Quartr app now, thanks! Who wants to call a phone number to listen to a conference call, that's so 20th century.

Does someone have a link to the conference call recording?

The theory of gap trading is that prices, especially of indices, eventually trade through every price, they don't just skip a price range. Maybe it is just randomness playing out, but for the SPX this has been pretty much true, years ago a did a quick analysis and if IIRC, there were only one or two minuscule gaps left over the last decades. One problem is that it can take a long time (a bear market) for some gaps to close. This just played out over the last few days. I would say these were "exhaustion gaps". I did make a bit of money shorting daily SPY calls, but did not have the confidence to post about it, lol. I always think I'm gonna jinx it by posting. Maybe next time I'll muster up the courage. Gaps closed yesterday and today:

Book value up 4.5% in the quarter, just like Markel.

Will they ever learn?

Record cash, record operating earnings (+investment gains of B$17.3). Lowest P/BV in 2 years. Not a bad setup... 2025 Q3 Book Value BH SE in Mio. 698,155 A share equ Q end 1,438,223 BV per A 485,429 BV per B 323.62 current B share price 477.54 Mcap 1,030,214 P/BV 1.476 Cash cash & equiv. 72,156 treasury bills 305,367 cash railroad 4,150 payable for treasuries -23,241 CASH 358,432 Cash % of Market Cap 34.8% Operating Earnings Insurance underwriting 2,369 Insurance investment 3,181 BNSF 1,449 BHE 1489 Pilot MSR 3,616 non-controlled businesses other 1,381 Operating Earnings 13,485

“those who offer to give you for free what you need to get on your own with hard work at the end, end up charging you with the most valuable asset you could have, which is your freedom, your capacity to decide and to make your own decisions.”

This was powerful: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-in-with-chamath-jason-sacks-friedberg/id1502871393?i=1000733890017

IIRC they said the U.S. just does not have these land based launch systems in quantity, and they would not want to give away all they have. Also, they said it is not as powerful of a weapon vs military infrastructure as one may think. I'm too lazy to listen to it again...

The recent war on the rocks podcast has good info on the tomahawk missiles. In short: the whole discussion is a bit of a smokescreen, since they need to be launched from ships, and workarounds to launch from land are not efficient or would take ages.

20 hostages Here are their names, faces, and stories. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-870233

Looks like there was a dedicated seller today: