Spooky

Y'all know what this means! Very bullish for Berkshire haha

Yes indeed! Almost always a good buying opportunity when the narrative is Warren is washed up.

Agree on gold. It is behaving like other speculative assets.

There was an interesting section in the latest JPM Eye on the Market talking about central bank gold holdings: https://am.jpmorgan.com/content/dam/jpm-am-aem/global/en/insights/eye-on-the-market/mad-libs-amv.pdf Basically, they talked about how the argument that the share of central bank foreign exchange reserves invested in gold indicates substantial institutional concern about the US$ is flawed. Almost the entire increase in the gold share of reserves since 2009 is a function of the rising market price of gold itself. The partial disintegration of the post-war world order and rising developed world government debt is driving gold prices higher but central bank gold allocations do not appear to be a big part of the reason why, nor are they clear verdicts on the US$ as reserve currency. If you keep gold prices flat at 2009 levels and use actual central bank gold holdings, the gold share of reserves actually falls to 8%.

Do you have any theories on why this is the case?

Strange times indeed. I keep reading about the "debasement trade" but it is not showing up in bond yields.

check out the energy company backed by Sam Altman - up 8x this year and a $26 B market cap with ZERO revenue.

It’s a funny market. Some areas look pretty bubbly but it means there are lots overlooked companies / opportunities. Big divergence since liberation day between profitable and unprofitable companies (the unprofitable ones doing significantly better).

I was thinking about BHE building out energy infrastructure for the A.I. boom and wanted to share this image Gemini created. Let’s go.

A masterclass in capital allocation!

Do you not see the trajectory the US is on? You are descending quickly into fascism / totalitarianism. It is terrifying.

Thanks for the input. I agree that it looks attractive relative to other choices.

I've been thinking a lot lately about acquiring more shares, it just still seems so cheap to me. I haven't been following the thread that closely, what does the hive mind think these days?

I always try and keep asking "and then what ... and then what..." or "what are the consequences of the consequences?"

This interview was super interesting. Did you manage to track down the paper Bouchaud wrote?

100% agree. You need to concentrate in your best ideas. Obviously you need to pick companies which will survive so it changes how you look at your investments. As Warren Buffett once said: “Keep all your eggs in one basket, but watch that basket closely”

Definitely true!

Maybe it is just my circle of friends but they are obsessed with gold / miners. Everyday they are messaging about gold reaching a new high! Hyperinflation is around the corner they say....

Gold looking like a crowded trade. From a recent Bank of America fund manager survey:

You could have held many other assets other than Bitcoin instead of the Turkish Lira. Gold, for instance, actually has a track record with respect to inflation (although not perfect). The reality is that Bitcoin is a speculative asset which is very correlated to the NASDAQ.

There is no evidence that Bitcoin protects from inflation - during the inflationary period after 2021 Bitcoin price suffered like most everything else.

Are there any other jurisdictions that you find interesting right now?

Indeed it is but with a different flavour. I'm not going to rehash all the arguments from a few years ago in the Netflix thread. They have the largest subscription base of any of the streaming platforms which allows them to develop more content than the competition which translates directly into lower content costs per subscriber for their original content. The advantages of scale are returned to the customers since they get access to the most content for the price, encouraging growth and extending scale advantages. There are a few other similarities especially around how Netflix divides the pie between shareholders, customers and employees in particular.

Netflix

The IPO market is a good counter signal - if it starts popping off it is generally time to watch out.