Spooky

I like it

What we really need is a step change in productivity to improve people's quality of living. Maybe a combination of AI and automation could get us there.

I wish this were the case but it seems to me like they have been moving in the opposite direction. We might need to wait until new leadership emerges.

Mark's letter from March 25, 2010. I haven't looked at that company in much depth, I'm not very familiar with the Polish exchanges / governance.

I made this meme which I think is relevant

Channelling Phil Fisher, my view on a wonderful company like Apple is that the right time to sell is never.

Awesome. Feels to me like this environment will be pretty good for CSU in general going forward. So I also have a number of TOI and LMN shares that I received in both spin-offs. My plan is to just keep these as well as the shares of any other possible spin-offs and not sell them for a really long time, maybe I'll get lucky and one of them will generate returns similar to the early days of CSU (Mark L mentioned he hopes his kids are still holding LMN shares in 50 years). Personally, since I am holding such a large position in CSU, I like the mothership - you get an extremely well diversified stream of cash flows across many many software verticals / industries as well as geographies with minimal debt. Also, CSU still maintains a pretty hefty economic interest in both of the spin-offs, so if they do well CSU also does well. My goal with this position is to achieve above average results with a high probability of success / minimal risk of being wiped out. Also, I'm hoping / expecting more spin-offs in the future which could unlock more economic value. That being said, I could see the two smaller entities generate higher returns than CSU going forward just given their smaller size. One, Topicus, is more of a regional / European focused CSU and the other, LMN, is focused on a specific vertical. It's funny I was actually re-reading Mark L's letters again this weekend and one of the early letters talks about two potential strategies a) the "many verticals" strategy and b) concentrating on a fewer number of verticals - with b) Mark hypothesized this would likely lead to paying higher multiples for larger acquisitions and paying strategic premiums to accelerate the number of tuck-in acquisitions. I'm not sure I really answered your question but hope this is helpful.

Seems like a short transcript with not too much new in there. Hopefully they release the full thing.

Praise Wabuffo . I've been considering getting back on Twitter just for him. Seems like a pretty good time to keep your head down and keep buying.

Why is everyone so pessimistic. The US prints an impressive GDP figure and it's all doom and gloom.

Sure, you can afford to take more risks when you are younger since you have time to recover. However, the biggest advantage you have right now is a long runway to compound returns. If you stay invested / in the game, don't make any big mistakes and let your investments compound, even small amounts can turn into significant sums of money over time.

This chart has me wondering what is going on in Brazil...

Start small, experiment and lean more heavily on ETFs at the start. Try and minimize transaction fees and taxes. Be careful about investing into individual companies until you have more experience and a grounding in fundamental analysis. Invert and think about not losing money rather than hitting home runs. Read and think as much as possible rather than act. Buffet and Co are trying to make one or two good decisions a year. I like two of Buffet's analogies: 1) imagine you have a punch card with 20 spaces available in your lifetime - each time you invest in a company you punch the card - makes you need to think very carefully about committing to an investment; 2) in investing you can sit at the plate and watch pitches go by forever waiting for a fat pitch - wait for a fat pitch and then swing heavily. Some good books that really helped me: 1) Lawrence Cunningham's collection of Buffett essays; 2) Phil Fisher's Common Stocks And Uncommon Profits; 3) Howard Marks The Most Important Thing; and 4) Poor Charlie's Almanac; In terms of online resources there are a lot of great lectures from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger on YouTube (Warren's talk to the Florida University is a great one. So is Munger lecture on elementary worldly wisdom). There is also a whole series of Google talks from famous investors.

Agree, it looks like he is mainly talking to pension plans that have certain required actuarial returns and have more favorable tax treatment for interest income. In his memo, he also had a strange comment about nominal vs real returns - seeming to suggest that some investors are seeking to hit nominal return targets not necessarily real returns.

I'd buy an S&P 493 index today over the S&P 500 over a long investment horizon. The biggest companies today won't be the biggest ones 30 years from now. Plus you get less exposure to the overvalued Tesla / Nvidia fad stocks.

Are you looking at this with dividends reinvested? YTD the S&P 500 with dividends reinvested is kicking gold's ass (up about 13.5% while gold is down about 13.5%).

A lot of this is macro speculation so take it with a grain of salt but Canada seems to be in a tough spot right now. Fairfax has been doing quite well vs the TSX recently and I would guess it is a better place to be in the short to medium term. Purchasing power parity has been eroding. Housing investment has been a higher percentage of Canadian GDP (~9% vs OECD average of ~5%) and Canadians have the highest household debt in the G7. The rise in interest rates is starting to bite, causing people to spend less since more disposable income is eaten by higher interest payments (At least this is what I am seeing with people in Toronto). Financial stocks account for ~34% of the TSX 60 and the Canadian banks had been shifting a lot of their loan books to mortgages rather than typical commercial loans. I understand that roughly 20% of mortgages on the big banks books are now in negative amortization. A lot of the banks have been announcing layoffs. Also, our economy is still pretty resource dependent and with China and the world economy slowing down there is less demand for resources. Oil prices have also been softening and the Canadian economy is overweight energy. Canada also has a persistent productivity gap with the US of about 20%.

Certainly feels like a reckoning is coming in the Canadian economy given the sea change in interest rates. A higher percentage of our GDP is reliant on real estate and we have the highest household debt in the G7.

I can't get over the fact that Grantham said US capitalism / companies were "fat and happy" and the only thing working well was the US venture space. Meanwhile, that is where his super bubble turned out to be....

He's always saying to never bet against America. One thing he said in a prior AGM is that he bets in 30 years there are more US companies on the list of biggest companies by market cap than Chinese companies.

Anecdotal but my girlfriend went with a competitor's product since it was cheaper and undifferentiated.

Congrats man, crushing it!

My problem with Ray is that he looks at the economic system like a machine where X -> Y when truly it is much more complex than that. Bridgewater got burned bigly with their big shift towards China in recent years.

Another little nibble of BRK B

Bought a small amount of BRK B shares.