rogermunibond

On your last question, agree 100%

If token prices plummet, lowest cost of compute will win out. Cheap tokens make so many more use cases possible.

Seems like this is what most big investors should be doing to some degree. Bain as part of due diligence on potential software company acquistions is having their employees vibe-code software pieces of potential acquisition targets to see if there really is a competitive advantage. https://www.ft.com/content/e5bac4d1-b1f8-43a4-bd54-b182d5357af0?syn-25a6b1a6=1

@villainx More like retailer

This was dated June 2 so maybe Treasuries have recaptured the lead. Two trends - gold as a diversification for CBs from USTs and physical holdings of gold moving from NY and London to CB vaults in the country that owns the gold. What does this reflect? Multi-polar world? The return of history?

FT on the very soft insurance market https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/ec8c2ca1-1026-43cc-b91b-bbffcba72dd8

Looking through the deal press release, seems like this is much more of a retail, distribution business. 101 store locations plus an importer business in addition to the wine and liqueur brands.

@MMM20 that's funny. Ian Cumming and Joe Steinberg of Leucadia fame bought four wineries the first in 2000 iirc. They opined in every shareholder letter about how bad they were as businesses but they liked wine and wine lubricated camaraderie. Eventually they spun off the wineries in 2013 as Crimson Wine Group. It's publically traded on the OTC but tiny and still a terrible business. lol

https://www.carlyle.com/sites/default/files/2025-03/Carlyle_The_New_Joule_Order.pdf

My WC bet is Brazil to win at +900 odds. A young team with a extremely good manager for these situations.

Yeah that's what I've done as well. Scuttleblurb has a great series on payment processors.

Started to find some interesting investment ideas and good write-ups on companies on Substack. What are some of your favorite newer Substacks? Macro/China - Adam Tooze Chartbook BRKR stock idea - Notes from the Beauty Contest

@Wanderer Abel got an early version of this presentation https://blog.google/alphabet/investor-presentation-june-2026/#full-stack-approach-ai

If you look up where Google's confirmed hyperscale data center projects are located, they are not in the BHE regulated utility footprints. But that doesn't mean that BHE's merchant power group, BHE Renewables, isn't involved in building a BYOG power plant co-located with the Google DC. It's just not known.

Comments from XOM and CVX leadership strongly hint that inventories are rapidly depleting unless flows get turned on again. The market is terrible at pricing nonlinear outcomes.

The interesting thing from this investment by Greg Abel is that BRK is undoubtedly a customer of Google Cloud, as well as MSFT Azure, and AWS. And Abel probably has the technical competence to see what makes the GCP more valuable over time than say Azure or AWS.

So if we're in a bubble, and it's an earnings driven bubble, then on the flip side, it's government deficit spend that's driving it.

The homebuilders are all pretty much following the NVR model of asset light, right? There's not as much benefit as with Clayton Homes where Berkshire Hathaway Finance was able to fund Clayton's manufactured home mortgages more efficiently than lenders or private capital. I'll be curious to hear from the 8-k if TMHC was being shopped around. The FT mentions that Abel met with Palmer "after being introduced by advisers."

Flag disrepair is just a victim of staffing cutbacks. There was a time when nearly every govt office took the flag down at night and put it back up in the morning. Now it just sits out 24/7. Same for those homeowners who lazily put a flag out in front of their house leaving it out in rain, snow, sleet, and wind. Pretty simple, put it out in the day, and take it down at night.

Oil price + crack spread > $180 over a sustained period leads to recession. So the US is not there at $90 WTI and a $50 3-2-1 crack spread. https://rbnenergy.com/market-data/3-2-1-crack-spread

US DOE Data Center infrastructure map as of 11/2025