nsx5200

Just curious. Why the third? Trying to understand if there's something magical about the third that you're not getting with two.

TBH, I think even at $100 lifetime is a bargain. I think Parsad is going for the bigger moat instead of more traffic, Costco style. Thumbs up.

TYSM for your insights. I'm still stuck in the conventional job mindset, and need to nudge myself to cross that threshold. At I think I have an exit plan in place... whether I take that leap of faith and execute it may be a different beast. In regards to being "righteousness", my TLDR version is that most people are steered into default decisions, and we should not fault them too much for them. IMHO, the system has a huge influence on how people behave, based on the results from the Stanford Prison Experiment. But ultimately, people have the final choice. For example, if people are born into a poor family/system with few resources to hoist them into middle class, it doesn't mean they can't work harder to better situate themselves. It does mean they almost have to work harder than most to get at to average. The same thing can be seen with food choices as well. When grocery stores are 80% filled with processed food, somebody who's trying to eat healthy must work harder to figure out what is actually healthier. We see it everywhere in life that systems pushes the mass to do certain things, and most people do them without thinking about it. It takes effort to actually figure out what is optimal for themselves.

For those that was able to 'retire early', any regrets not retiring earlier? https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/05/31/way-hermit-ken-smith-book-review/ "So what has he learned, in a lifetime alone? His opinions about his life decisions remain firm: “I’ve spent the majority of my life living outside the conventions of mainstream society, and I’ll tell you what I think is weird, and it ain’t the hermit. It’s how entire generations of people have been conned into believing that there is only one way to live, and that’s on-grid, in deepening debt, working on products you’ll probably never use, to line the pockets of people you’ll never meet, just so you might be able to get enough money together to buy a load of crap you don’t need, or, if you’re lucky, have a holiday that takes you to a place, like where I live, for a week of the happiness I feel every day.”

@Charlie, this is what started it all for me: If you like what he says, you can go find his book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12921211-search-inside-yourself I like that he explains the science and reasoning on meditation from an rational point of view and not just some feel good reason. @frommi, the lessons you described is captured in https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49814228-the-biggest-bluff. In a mostly chance game, it's easy to take away the wrong lessons just because you happen to be lucky (at least for a short while). There are a lot of interesting psychology nuggets in there as well, which I think is applicable to investing as well.

Wow. I was trying to start a new thread, and found this instead, and thought it's an appropriate place to revisit this, seeing the OP was started about a decade ago. This is essentially asking the same question, but a slightly different take: Now that you've 'made' it (however you want to define it), what would you wish you had done when you were younger in regards to making spending/savings tradeoffs? This assumes when you were younger, you had to trade off spending less to get more saving. Was it worth it 10-20-30+ years later? If you were younger, what would be worth robbing the future self to pay your current self, or the opposite, what should you have gifted your future self by depriving your current self? I'll start with some of mine: No regret: 'Splurging' on trips traveling with my wife pre-kids. So much fun. Was able to do occasional long weekend trips to Europe, and splurged on more exotic cruises that checked off so many things on the list. The small regret is probably not doing a bit more. No regret: Small splurging of time and resources on the little ones. Spend to make sure things are done right. So so worth it when they're young. Regret: Not learning about health and the forces driving it from big sugar/processed food/farm until it's harder to fight it with more exercise and better diet through higher quality but more costly food. Regret: Not discovering meditation earlier. Could've gone through a significant chunk of my life less angry, and but it does cost time. No need to spend for some fancy app/class but do need to be consistent to really make a difference. To me, this was one of the many significant life-changer for me. Once practiced past a certain point, it's bliss on tap (amongst other benefits).

This is probably apt: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist" - John Maynard Keynes The same concept is probably relevant to the cloud/social media as well. Except the defunct economists are now the still-alive tech moguls. Nothing's terribly wrong with ignorance is bliss, as that is the default mode, but there are probably better ways.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/janitor-vermont-amassed-8m-fortune-140000770.html I think engineering is one of those discipline that has a harder-to-get-to path to reach, but has a more known reward path. Most people don't take it because it's just a harder grind. I'm not saying that everything in this world works great, and I think a lot the 'default modes' needs to be changed such that the 'default mode' is to get people to save instead of spend, which I think is showing up in the 401k systems where companies now default to put in some small amount. The problem arise is when people see their statement with their accumulated 'wealth', and are tempted to access it to spend again. Again with the lack of mental muscle to do these now/future tradeoffs. It would be nice if everybody got some training to build up this muscle as part of their standard education. My father's family actually been in a long period of terrible debt due to, essentially bad business decision similar to Citibank's fat fingering, and the whole family had to grind our way out. Reading some of the stories about the other members on this board that come essentially very little, and yet able to accumulate to be comfortable, I think speaks to the power of grinding. So, yeah, those $100 cellular phone bills and $10 Spotify subscriptions goes in my bucket of not-willing-to-grind pile. Even now, I will balk at paying $10 Spotify for something that is accessible for free. $120/year... who knows how much it really would be compounded over 30 years. Crawling through some of the reddit personalfinance/povertyfinance's budgeting threads, and you'll find some of those type of spendings... sigh. If there were some better default modes.

I don't buy that narrative, as described by the typical left, in whole. If a janitor with sub average wage can save and invest to have a net worth of 8 mil at the end of the run way, I think the the majority of the population can find ways to save, even a couple dollars a paycheck to slowly bootstrap themselves out of a situation. (yes, extreme frugality is, IMHO, like saving sex for when you're old, as Buffet would describe it. In the case of the janitor, it may be like saving sex for after death). https://www.ramseysolutions.com/retirement/the-national-study-of-millionaires-research Outside of the high wage types (CEO/lawyer) typical millionaire is your everyday CPA/engineer/teacher. What do they really have in common: financial knowledge and willingness to grind, which essentially is deliberate delayed gratification. IMHO, the ability to fight all the forces to get you to spend and actually save is a skill that must be learned, and honed over time. If I met my younger self today, I would admonish my younger self for a lot of the unnecessary spendings that was done (but would give my younger self a thumbs up for willingness to grind). The power of compounding outweighs minor financial mistakes. I read somewhere that language provides the framework in which the mind thinks. A language like Chinese has less focus on time, so Chinese speakers are forced to consider the past, present and future, whereas a language like English with clear delineation for the past, present, and future only considers one of those three states. So a English speaker will typically think in the now, and not consider their future self, and thus affecting their default savings, which I think shows up in the difference in savings rate.

It might be a reflection on the negative impact social media on people's wallet. Going to have to quote Charlie on this one again, since he's figured out a big chunk of the world already: Charlie Munger: ‘The world is not driven by greed, it’s driven by envy’ Dug up these studies: https://www.bankrate.com/banking/is-social-media-to-blame-for-unrealistic-money-expectations/#social-media-s-impact-on-your-budget https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewarnold/2018/12/27/heres-how-social-media-is-affecting-your-savings-goals/?sh=7b0a1e036436 https://www.bankrate.com/personal-finance/social-media-influences-consumer-spending/ So it seems like the group you hang out with online affects how you save, and COBF probably has a positive effect on savings rate.

The system's rigged against the common naivete. IMHO, these are the major input that leads to such poor outcome: - Bell curve, half of the people are below average intelligence - Built in cognitive bias thinking they are smarter than others (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority), AND thinking they can outsmart most people, even when they're below average intelligence. - Herd mentality/keeping-up-with-the-jones/envy pushes those making less money to keep up with the spending of those making more money in the same group. - Marketing promotes unnecessary spending due to a side-effect of free market capitalism. Worse, marketing is one of those things that scales, so the best marketing will take over the lesser marketing, causing greater overall effects that leads to money to separate from people. - Coupling all the above elements leads to such Lollapalooza Effect. So somebody who, by default, is not trained to see these forces and act against them will lead to the separation of their money unnecessarily. You can see it everywhere... people wanting a bigger/second house, luxury car, mechanical watches, the latest smart phone, Birkin bags, and even Stanley water bottles too. I remember getting sucked into collecting Garbage Pail cards back in the day. Get them while they're young. Looking at Charlie and Buffet, they've pretty much avoided all those (except for the Indefensible). IMHO, this is really the ultimate truth to building wealth: "you become rich, literally, the moment you don't desire, or have the need for more money". Reminds of this clip from The Devil's Advocate. But thinking about the alternative if everybody lived like Buffet and Munger... I can see the destruction of many many industries. I guess we've seen a mini-version of that through cancel culture, but rise of new ones in social media, so it probably have gotten worse.

Barron's speculation list: https://www.barrons.com/amp/articles/berkshire-hathaway-mystery-stock-bfd8ec86

I thought about DFS as well, but the hidden disclosure (Nov. '23) was before COF announced DFS acquisition intention(Feb. '24). That in itself is not an issue, but was there wasn't an obvious catalyst back in late '23. In fact, it seems like their net income (quarter) dropped. Maybe he thought the drop was only temporary so that's why he bought into it. FI is an interesting possibility. Anybody know what might be cause of the run up from late '23 to now (~$120 to $150)?

https://www.barrons.com/amp/articles/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-stock-purchase-431172f6 "When Berkshire Hathaway disclosed its U.S. equity holdings as of Sept. 30 via its quarterly 13-F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in mid November, it had asked the regulator for confidential treatment for one or more stocks." "Barron’s has written about the Berkshire mystery purchase and speculated that it was a financial company based on disclosure in Berkshire’s third-quarter 10-Q report showing an increase of over $1 billion in the cost basis of its equity holdings in financial stocks. The ultimate position in the company could total $5 billion or more." Any idea? Trying to see what companies might be in this space, and see if the idea can be reverse engineered.

Do you have links/insight into what kind of process and gases are used in the semi manufacturing? It may be something I will need to ramp up on. TIA

IMHO, the answer is in the question. There simply not enough margin in the business to support yet another competitor and the economy of scale to achieve a decent profit is not very well known. It took Uber 37 billion in annual revenue and roughly 15 years to achieve profit... I don't know about you, even if a new company is 4x more efficient, it would take nearly 10 billion in revenue to achieve profit, and I'm not sure if 4x more efficiency can be achieved without a real breakthrough in operating style. I say there are easier fish to catch, and looking at a 37 billion 10+ year problem, unless there's a real compelling new angle to this, I would, IMHO, rather just chunk money at S&P500.

I didn't dig too deeply, but it seems like they had to borrow to buy back shares, and yet their EPS is still not going up, if Macrotrends' data is accurate. Their operating performance is also not too consistent, even though their target market is the high volume, low margin business. Doesn't smell like a no-brainer to me yet. Is there something else besides the cannibal side that I missed, @Vish_ram?

So many to choose from. Any particular government do you recommend?

While contacting them, here are some hints on optimizing your chance of getting what you want: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/16/1086915600/get-what-you-want-customer-service IMHO, with business-class seats, I'm pretty sure United CS will try to accommodate you as much as they can. Enjoy, and if you can, report back on how things have changed(or not changed) post-pandemic. TIA.

Don't about untold, but I ran across these relatively unknown interviews from the Kunhardt Film Foundation with the people that interacted with WEB: Warren Buffet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieXLNVwshRU&t=31s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd-w9H0G6nQ Charlie Munger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6s2HAzMeL0 Sandy Gottesman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WGC69B3tWE Peter Buffet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1bOnkLh_9E Doris Buffett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C5IuD6rZjc Howard Buffet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SY1OCV0vko Carol Lomis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F7SN3ID420 Bill and Melinda Gates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBAiRcDzZ7U The one from Howard is probably really relevant to shareholders of BRK Possibly more that I might've missed. Most of them are on my backlog. Please share if you find any interesting nuggets in the videos, and if anybody have any interesting speech from Peter Lynch, I would appreciate some links to that. The ones I've come across seems like they have the same standard speech material and jokes that Lynch uses.

I didn't know Biden was crowned the king of OPEC+ in secret. If you have credible news, please share. He did, however, pump in trillions of dollar that ended up inflating everything, and not just oil, so Joe's not completely blameless. @Gregmal, I whole heartedly agree with you. If you know of a viable way to buy Gazprom at near zero pennies, I'd be happy to put in a dinner-valued lottery ticket. If the ticket is redeemable, it won't matter if we choose to blame Joe, Trump or heck, you can even blame me. Here's an interesting article I ran across regarding dictorship and Putin: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/putin-dictator-trap-russia-ukraine/627064/ Something to think about if Trump decides to run again.

They are the leader in their very small ponds. IMHO, their biggest competitor is Apple. Every time Apple makes their phone/watch a little better, Garmin’s moat gets smaller. Great pivots from Garmin over the years, but can they really keep fighting the Apple beast? Unlike Home Depot vs Amazon, where there are natural moats, I don’t see that in Garmin. Doesn’t mean it’s not there. I just don’t see it, but I haven’t been looking. Let me know if there new insights.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine You poke the bear, expect the bear to bite. It seems like the facts haven’t really changed. A minority trying to rule an area due to Karen syndrome.

I remember having a mock debate on this back in high school decades ago. Back then both sides more or less came to the conclusion that Israel invaded and took over West Bank territories without any real good reason. All the safety and other reasonings were pretty much not really significant. At the end of the day, Israel just wanted more land. Why? Couldn’t explain it then, still can’t explain it today. The closest thing I can think of is some ‘divine’ prophecy about some promised land leading to entitlement complex, which I think is what Putin is suffering from right now. Over the decades of accumulating casual readings, my impression is that they are treating the Palestinians as second class citizens, if at that, and continuing to take over land while asking why the Palestinians are so angry. In a way, it reminds me of the Angry Bird game…. In a very sad way. I guess the short summary is that we see countries suffering from the Karen syndrome as well. On a country-wide scale. It makes me wonder. Does having more land really mean a country is great? We see countries with relatively small land area and natural resources accomplish great stuff like UK, Japan, Singapore, etc. Doesn’t it show that to make a country great, it does not take land, but the quality of the people/government? I find it amusing that great country have problems trying to keep people out where bad countries have issues keeping people in. Use that yard stick to measure Russian in regards to what it is trying to do with the Ukrainian refugees. The US immigration problem is a good problem to have compared to the alternative.

We’ve only seen Munger go all in on ideas that he knows he’s got an edge on. Some idea that more or less nobody else have figured out yet. Looking at the process they went through for Coke, I suspect it’s something along those lines. Something micro, with multiple factors at play to create a Lolla effect. My current thinking is that he sees BABA will one day challenging Amazon itself but on a global scale. I remember seeing a lot of reviews/feedback from different countries when shopping on Ali, so it’s just a matter of continuing the execution and let the network/scaling effect take care of it since they seem to have the only practical(although not great) global logistic chain that delivers from supplier to consumer. Does anybody have seen other competitors that can challenge that? I welcome ideas that refute those thoughts. Full disclosure, I’m long in BABA and a bunch of other Chinese companies during this time of tech crackdown. Probably prematurely…