rogermunibond

Nintendo has a pretty good return going back to 2015, if you buy it on the lows every 2-3 years.

As a broker, your moat walks out the door every night. Isn't a lot of capital tied up in the relationships?

@MMM20 good read. it would seem that PE-owned insurance brokers for the most part don't have a big share of the market that MRSH and AON play in. what abouth small and medium sized business? makes sense for TWFG and GSHD to get sold off more than the bigger brokers. there's a loolapalooza effect coming with PE owned companies getting EBITDA hits, debt hair cuts, then write downs in BDC, PE-owned insurance portfolios, and private credit CLOs.

If you live close to a Costco or K&L it's a great time to be a wine lover. There's so much wine that's being offloaded to independent bottlers. A few more years of tearing out vineyards etc and hopefully the S/D balances out more.

thanks @dpetrescu excellent insights on BIM. are there possibilities where AI/LLM makes BIM more productive, such as building in construction/fire code limitations in the design process, or perhaps BIM already does this. anyone have insight on the PD&M (product design & manufacture) business at ADSK?

It's been mentioned briefly in this thread before, but TWFG is looking attractive at $20.

I prefer to think we are headed for a Wall-E future but with thinner bodies due to GLP-1s.

Thanks @jfan Amodei addresses this in The Adolescence of Technology, 4: Player Piano. But alas, I don't think he does a very good job of discussing where humans may still be needed. Rather he discusses more about how to allay the effects of this labor disruption. UBI anyone?

Been thinking about the longer term impacts of AI, if it is in fact a technological revolution, and not a bubble. Past technological revolutions always mostly involved physical work and processes. Agricultural revolution freed up labor, increased agricultural productivity, free labor moved into other higher value physical work. Mostly the increase in productivity fed into the industrial revolution, so goods that were previously handmade became industrialized. Each subsequent technology improvement fed into this. To the point where high tech manufacturing is relatively speaking incredibly labor efficient. The next huge leap was the ICT technological revolution, which enabled huge amount of growth in services - software, accounting, legal, financial, engineering, etc. etc. Knowledge work became more valuable, highly compensated activity, but did require considerable labor to produce outputs. Now we have the next huge leap - the AI/agentic technological revolution. It promises to make knowledge industries more efficient, reduce labor requirements, and possibly result in price wars or increased margins. Maybe both simultaneously. Where's the surplus labor going to go now? Maybe into services that can't be replaced by physical AI robots? Maybe into services that require a human premium? But what's that human premium and how impervious is it to improving AIs and physical AI robots?

Okay I think the market is setting up for a macro environment with low inflation, 4 cuts in the back half of 2026 bringing rates to 2.75%, weak labor market with maybe zero growth, first signs of AI job cuts, and 2-3% GDP. Kind of a jobless recovery situation not unlike 1991-93. The huge jump in oil majors (XOM, CVX, COP), consumer staples seem very defensive.

Fiduciary interest income for premiums etc that they hold for clients. It's not huge but drops straight to the bottom line

Isn't the move in insurance brokers mostly about interest rates, P/C market softening due to low cat activity and lots of money chasing risk, and low M&A opportunities? I don't think any of the sell off since March 2025 is about agentic insurance agents.

It hasn't happened before in the last 20-30 years, and probably going back farther than that. Usually when the economy expands and GDP increases, employment also increases. This is even when GDP growth gets a boost from productivity improvements. Real growth coming entirely from productivity gains and no new jobs would be weird.

https://buffettbot.com/

@gfp @Spooky 50 bps move in the 10Y with 2.5% CPI and 2-2.25% real growth, you have to see 10Ys higher.

Tax Foundation provides a pretty good primer on what the tariffs are and their effects. Largest tax increase since 1993. https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/

Can AI/LLMs reduce the number of CAD seats? Thinking ADSK etc.

Economy strong - 10Y should be higher

Excellent take from Pimco on the +s and -s to the Takaichi landslide https://archive.ph/39uUK

S&P 493 has no productivity expectations built into the AI trade. Bullish.

December retail sales were flat. Market just bouncing around. 2026 US gdp is expected to be 4-4.5% this year from fiscal stimulus, tax cuts, capex. I wouldn't get too excited.

MSFT has a huge moat in terms of Active Directory and cybersecurity. We have all kinds of third party apps with possible AI/LLM use cases but who's going to allow any of that to integrate with the enterprise AD and exchange servers? For large enterprises this is a huge risk.

@TwoCitiesCapital a productive asset doesn't need belief. if I can farm land and generate $100K of income from it then it doesn't matter that others think it is zero.

@TwoCitiesCapital gold gold is backed by 5000+ years of belief BTC is backed by 15+ years of belief most speculative belief systems eventually get crushed. BTC is more persistent that most, and its backers are pretty good at political lobbying to get financial institutions and governments to accept it. but that's the key, without greater belief, BTC will die

Amazon $200B capex guide