Spooky

Just saw an insider filing that John Malone bought roughly $4.6M of Liberty Latin America Ltd. (LILA).

Please no

Constellation Software Google Berkshire BAM Verizon BABA

Opened a position in BABA.

Any clues on what the mystery Chinese company Munger / DJCO are buying in addition to BABA?

A lot of controversial takes from Charlie at the DJCO annual meeting but they sure are original. His depth of knowledge is staggering.

Agree. BRK is already my second biggest position so I have been buying when the price looks attractive. A 5% drop in the share price would still present a nice buying opportunity to add more although given BRK's focus on succession planning and long term oriented shareholder base I doubt the decrease in price will be very significant. Hey this thread is about what we're salivating to buy at the bottom so I'm allowed to dream!

I'm want to be ready for this day too. I have faith in the Berkshire model for the long run and they are so well positioned for the future.

Spring of 2020 I bought GOOG for an easy double. BRK would be my ideal stock if it was ever having a fire sale (not super likely). In that environment you know that papa B is also going to put his cash pile to work on some wonderful companies. Problem is having enough dry powder to swing hard.

Started a position in SHOP and NFLX.

Agree with Spek 100%. I'm in Toronto and have been looking at buying a house and the value proposition just isn't there compared to the US. The dynamics here are that people are just borrowing larger and larger sums to buy houses since there is an attitude that you need to own a house no matter what. It seems like a mania to me. We looked at one semi-detached house that was West of High Park and it had 15 offers and went for nearly $500k over asking. People are just valuing houses based on comparables so if someone overpays that becomes the new comparable. If you buy a house here you are also taking on the interest rate risk because you can only lock in a fixed rate for 5 years. 30 year fixed rate mortgages are not available like they are in the US. Personally, I think stocks are the way to go if you are looking to compound your wealth over a 30 year period. If you look at the historical performance of the TSX with dividends reinvested over the prior 30 year period it has crushed the Toronto housing market by like 4x (it's been a while since I ran this analysis so it might be somewhat different now). If you buy a house you are buying a depreciating asset (other than the slice attributable to land) whose top line revenue (rent) should logically only grow at the rate of inflation. If you buy a good stock, it will reinvest retained earnings into the business and increase its earning power over time at a higher rate than inflation. As others have pointed out the benefit of buying a house is the easy access to leverage but you could always replicate this in a stock portfolio through margin or options. I think the picture changes if you are looking at US real estate since it is actually still pretty cheap compared to Canada / Western Europe and you can lock in the 30 year fixed rate mortgage. This McKinsey study was pretty interesting: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/the-rise-and-rise-of-the-global-balance-sheet-how-productively-are-we-using-our-wealth Particularly this chart which has the US at the bottom (they are saying real estate is 2/3rds of net worth):

Interesting, thanks for sharing. Reading the article reminded me of a piece in the WSJ discussing investor's expectations for the future: https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-a-59-annual-return-just-isnt-enough-11625238010 Feel like a lot of people will be disappointed going forward. Assuming that US stock market returns follow a similar pattern over the next 17 years as outlined in Buffett's 1999 article (i.e. 4% real annual returns), what strategies can we use to get better results?

Is there a class of stock / security to own an interest in the mother ship similar to BAM? If I wanted to get exposure to everything under Liberty Media Corporation would I need to own positions in each of FWONA, LXSMA and BATRA?

So I'm trying to think through the implications now of the Fed raising interest rates in this environment - based on your position it won't stop the inflation experienced due to the expansion of the money supply but will lower asset prices, increase interest expense for government / firms, potentially reduce demand for goods / growth. So it seems like we are possibly headed for stagflation (assuming the government continues to run large deficits going forward). Also, can you contrast the environment now with the environment where Volcker broke inflation with significant rate increases? What is similar today and what is different? Trying to figure out why that worked then and why.

Thanks for the explanation, appreciate it!

Can you elaborate on this please?

Been slowly trying to learn more about Malone and his different companies and investments. Does anyone know if there is a tracker to show what his key / major positions are?

Added a little bit of Agnico Eagle (AEM.TO) this morning.

Half baked thought here but it seems like the dividing line in the data is 1975 which is the last year before the US left the gold standard in 1976. One thing I have been thinking about is how much of the run up in the prices of homes is related to the incineration of the value of fiat currencies.

This letter is interesting because it also incorporates all the representations / terms of the tender offer into the letter. Can't really say he does an acquisition just using a two page letter based on this.

You still have this risk with investing in China. It is an extra layer of risk on top of what I mentioned. This is definitely a big risk factor to consider when investing in Apple and a serious concern. However, if you are an apple shareholder and for some reason China causes difficulties in manufacturing, you still have an ownership right / legal claim on all of Apple's assets which are not located in China - their giant cash pile, their IP, etc. Apple also has the ability to move / diversify it's supply chain in a worst case scenario.

No doubt that China's growth and trajectory are extremely impressive. However, as others have point out above, how can you buy stock which is essentially a bundle of legal rights in a country that does not have rule of law or respect individual property rights? Any investment you make in the country is subject to the whims of the CCP. What are the odds that the CCP comes along and nationalizes a company or rewrites the rules resulting in a permanent loss of capital? Not zero. What are the percentage of returns captured by shareholders of Chinese companies resulting from China's economic growth? Lower than US stocks. Personally, I have no ability to estimate these percentages with more certainty than others in the market and am unwilling to take an unknown risk of a permanent loss of capital. Especially when I can invest in other jurisdictions with robust legal systems and shareholder rights where this risk is virtually non-existent. Maybe Li Lu and other investors can properly evaluate and navigate these risks but I can't. Also, to me it seems like China is actively taking steps to prevent US citizens and Westerners generally from benefiting from China's growth by limiting overseas listings and IPOs. Only favoured institutions like Blackrock / Bridgewater that toe the party line get access to Chinese markets. To capitalize on the China growth opportunity I landed somewhere similar to SD - look for investment opportunities / companies in safer jurisdictions that have things China can't acquire or build at home that will benefit greatly from China's growth thus avoiding any CCP risk.

Two points here: A) Bonds and cash would do well in a deflationary environment. I wonder what probability weighting Buffet attributes to this outcome in his scenario analysis / mental models. Listening to Powell's speech at Jackson Hole he highlighted a lot of dis-inflationary forces out there and it seems like the Fed's continued dovishness is geared to minimize the probability of this outcome (rather than the inflation scenario). B) Bonds and cash also have an option value tied to them - if there is another large crash then perhaps some elephants become available at attractive prices.

I'm in downtown Toronto and there has been a pretty big divergence between home prices and rent with rent falling noticeably. The supply of homes for sale is also much lower than normal so my view is that it might be one of the best times to rent rather than buy right now.