Ballinvarosig Investors

A very sombre tone.

My wife has bought me this for Christmas, looking forward to reading it. @Brett nice of you to drop by. A few questions for you, do you think the style of investing that Buffett did then is applicable today? Also, do you think you could get the same results today? Buffett has said himself that if he managed just $1M, he could compound that at 50%.

https://www.dataroma.com/m/hist/p_hist.php?f=BAUPOST Klarman's US equity exposure at the lowest level in over ten years.

No tax due, it's in my retirement account. A big portion of the book value increase is going to be Apple, nearly $25b for that alone. The outsized exposure at that valuation makes me uncomfortable.

Have been selling a lot of things and am at 70% cash. Like a few of you, I have sold out of BRK.B. Selling at this P/B has always provided an opportunity to buy in cheaper later.

https://www.yetanothervalueblog.com/s/yet-another-value-podcast Andrew Walker's Yet Another Value podcast is the best investing podcast out there.

Have been dumping a few things, one of which was brk.b. History says it's trading at a very expensive range when looking at it from a PB basis. Hoping to get a chance to buy back in at the 290 level.

Good riddance

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-jinping-china-weakness-hubris-paranoia-threaten-future Must read article on what's going on in China politically. Is Xi really the man you want to hitch your wagon to?

Maybe it's like Herbalife, the distribution needs to be tightly controlled? Honestly, I never understood See's. I tried it at the Berkshire meeting and found it far too rich for my taste, I think the box I brought home ended up in the bin.

Burry shorting Apple is interesting, especially when Buffett increased his position a touch.

Thanks! I had thought Allianz was the most likely one. Munich Re has really good numbers too, but Buffett sold it a few years back, which made me think he wouldn't want to get back into it. I mean how often does he sell something, only to buy back in later? BASF is one I would need to look into more. I did look at it and it looked cheap, but it was a bit lumpy and isn't really growing.

Should be easy enough to create a shortlist. There's only 70 German companies with a market cap of greater than $5bn. Doubt Buffett would go lower than that. Allianz is a high quality insurer that consistently writes at a combined ratio of under 100. Trades at 10x earnings, buys back stock. Anaemic growth however. Adidas has improved their business in the last few years, increased margins, now buying back stock. Doesn't look much different than something like Nike, which makes me think this one isn't likely. You'd think if Buffett was interested, he'd stick with the ones he knows better. Knorr Bremse is quite a bit smaller than the above, but it's reasonably priced, it's got some growth, reasonably stable operating margin. They don't buy back stock, but they don't issue it either. We know Buffett likes railways, why not train makers too?

Unilever getting smashed up at the moment on the back of an acquisition the market hates. Well below Buffett's buy-out from from 4 years ago, it was already the cheapest large consumer brands company going, now it's cheaper again. Looks tempting.

It's not quite as black and white as that. Berkshire had a long history of share buy backs and dividends before Buffett arrived, so while Stanton was committed to the textile business, capital was being returned to shareholders throughout.

Bill Brewster did a podcast with Preston and they discussed it. TIP began as a traditional value investing podcast, but then crypto became a thing. Investing and crypto have two very different audience's, so they made a decision to side pocket the crypto material away from the main investing channel. Both Stig and Preston like crypto, but Preston likes it more, so he's now fronting the crypto section. It's all very amicable, they just realised two things are going in different directions. The irony is that the crypto stuff they do is 10x more popular than the traditional "main" content.

2021 Q1 13-F out - https://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=BRK Very little buying activity there.

Wow.

I really hope that Prem is standing on a table somewhere in Fairfax HQ with his team of traders around him, beating his chest and telling the assembled traders that he wants them to ram shares of Blackberry down the necks of the WallStreetBets crowd. Epic Wolf of Wall Streets-style ;D Seriously though, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for Fairfax. We've stood by this thing for 8 years for no reward. If the market wants to take us out, then let it take us out.

If he's buying a basket of pharma stocks, then I wonder has he bought more than the ones listed in this 13F? I would not be at all surprised if he's bought Glaxo (London listed) and Sanofi (Paris listed). Both are good companies and would fit into his basket approach. He has also owned both before, and both are arguably cheaper than when he owned previously. He could have bypassed the 13F listing requirement by buying both stocks on the local exchanges, something he has done before (Tesco).

Ted Aronson the latest to shut his fund - https://www.ai-cio.com/news/recovery-will-tougher-good-investments-persist/

Bought some AEL

Bought a small position in Fitbit.

Gold bugs are all aflutter on Twitter, but the position size here is only $500m, which suggests it's either Ted or Todd.