Spooky

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.

Is there any more context for Dimon's statement?

Odd Lots has been on fire lately.

Because I was talking about investing capital in the frothy markets of 2021. I just using 3 year data as an approximation.

Sure, but if you look at the past three years BRK still outperformed VITAX / VGT and the S&P 500 by a big margin (my quick analysis doesn't include dividends so this will change things a little). And VITAX is 40%+ Apple and Microsoft so performance has been pretty close to the S&P 500. The individual names my friend was pitching totally tanked (looking at 3 year returns what was his biggest holding is down 54% while BRK is up 75%) and there were a tonne of early tech companies / SPACs down 90%+ from the 2021 period. People were not exactly being rational and buying a tech index. Really my point was that when people are counting BRK / Buffett out and market sentiment about the company is very negative it is generally a good time to buy.

I love it when this happens and the market narrative is that Buffett is washed up. That's when I try and buy as much as possible. Back during the 2021 craziness a friend of mine of who is an investment banker in the tech industry told me that Buffett and Berkshire were irrelevant. I just look at how everything played out since then and chuckle.

Good picks. Some media companies are getting the shit kicked out of them like Para. Also second US financial stocks. US small cap stocks also seem like a decent hunting ground.

Totally agree. They allowed the Rogers and Shaw merger to go through and the Telco space in Canada was already completely anti-competitive.

Thanks @gfp, I'll do some more digging. I've actually been wanting to read that Milton Friedman book as well!

Somewhat off topic - I've been thinking lately about something that Buffett said at the AGM with respect to the World War II period and the US federal government re-organizing the whole economy and government under direction from someone from Goldman Sachs to build its war time production. Does anyone have any good books or resources about this time period and the changes to the political system and economy that took place?

Stocks for the long run baby. Observing everything that has happened over the last few years just reinforces the view that no one can predict what will happen in the short term. The key is asset allocation and being invested in good businesses / assets over the long run. Always be buying the best thing in your opportunity set.

Agree that one of the government’s jobs should be to break up monopolies to promote healthy competition, otherwise part of the capitalistic system breaks down with some companies extracting monopoly rents and driving up the cost of living (just look at Canadian banking, Telcos, etc.). Personally I am also anti union - this hampers North American competitiveness versus countries like China. A big problem also seems to be regulatory capture where the winners / incumbents can dictate the regulation to stifle competition or give them advantages. An idea that I like would be to give everyone a trust account when they are born with something like the Vanguard total US ETF that no one can touch until they are 18+. This would give everyone a stake in the economy and shift peoples mindsets to having an ownership mentality.

Good post and I agree, this is a big contributing factor to the rise of populism across the political spectrum. Not really sure how we get out of this malaise, delegating economic policy to central banks and printing money has not really worked other than to inflate asset prices and drive further wealth inequality. Personally, my view is that there should be much more deregulation and free trade and governments should get out of the way to create the conditions for businesses and individuals to thrive rather than picking and choosing certain industries / companies to boost.

Combine this too with China's demographic challenges and it doesn't look pretty long term. I think people are underestimating the impact this will have on the world economy.

Ya I read a bunch of performance documentation that the S&P 600 has significantly outperformed the Russell 2000 and I think it is because the profitability requirement cuts out a lot of companies. (credit to @Spekulatius for pointing me in this direction) I went with the Vanguard one, VIOO

I agree, Buffett went extremely deep on finance / investment and Munger extremely broad on all the big ideas in the different disciplines. Together they cover everything!

I bought an S&P 600 ETF at a p/e of 12x. Think this will significantly outperform the magnificent 7 over the long run.

The people arguing that China and the Yuan will become the reserve currency don't have a clue. The US dollar has decreased as a share of global reserves (60% now) but the decrease hasn't lined up with an increase for the Yuan but rather other smaller countries like Canada, Australia, South Korea and Sweden. The Yuan has a similar share of reserves as Canada at under 3%! How can you have a reserve currency for a country that doesn't have rule of law, doesn't allow its currency to trade freely and has capital controls in place on capital leaving the country? If they allowed capital to move freely into and out of the country my guess is that Chinese citizens would pour even more money overseas. Pretty good eye on the market for this: https://am.jpmorgan.com/content/dam/jpm-am-aem/global/en/insights/eye-on-the-market/oh-the-places-we-could-go-amv.pdf Looking around the world the US economy still seems the most robust and dynamic...