gfp

Man, even thought this tightened up to around a ten cent daily range you can still take $900 per swing out of this range each trip. I for one have been enjoying the beer money

Good post Cigarbutt. It probably obvious but of course the corporate income tax has been materially reduced as well.

I don't think he still makes the books. He tells some stories about the margin and first BRK share purchase in '83 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6bPl1IXlhs

As far as T-bills go, which is where most of the government is funded, the Federal Reserve could do this almost immediately. And it would be incredibly inflationary. Not cost-less. Which kind of highlights the backwards nature of conventional thinking on Fed moves.

Please don't lose any sleep over the social security trust fund.

Presumably the Brussels market is closed and the OTC market in the US is open when he spoke about the stock

Yes the current net interest paid by the Fed is stimulative and should be added to the deficit to determine the amount of fiscal stimulus we are currently getting. But this is stimulus now, not during QE. The net interest paid by the Fed (the losses they are experiencing on their balance sheet) are not big compared to the "regular" fiscal deficit. So - during "QE" they were accidentally taxing the private sector and now that we are inverted and in "QT" their balance sheet is stimulating the economy by paying net interest into the private sector. Not exactly what they were going for on paper...

It sounds like that but in reality it is a swap of some type of Bond for Bank Reserves. Bank reserves are not useful or important and they can't be used to buy stocks or really make their way into the real economy. Lending by large Fed member banks is not constrained by bank reserves in the system. Lending is restrained by capital ratios, demand for loans, appetite to take risk, regulatory changes on what counts for what, etc... New money ("inflation") makes it into the real economy in two primary ways. 1.) The government deficit spends it into the economy. and 2.) Banks make new loans. Swapping one government liability (treasury bond) for another government liability (bank reserves) does not have much of an effect. It used to be that bank reserves didn't pay interest, so QE was actually taking away an interest bearing security that was paying interest to the private sector and leaving the bank with useless, non-interest-bearing, neutered banking system tokens. In that way, QE was the opposite of stimulus. It was more like a tax - and you can see that because the Fed was making a profit on the balance sheet and remitting the extra capital to the treasury. A tax is when money is transferred from the private sector and remitted to the treasury. But then bank reserves started earning interest and the yield curve inverted and then you had bank reserves paying more than the bonds of the Fed's balance sheet so the Fed started running a loss. The only thing QE did of any consequence was slightly tighten mortgage spreads while the Fed was buying those securities. That is it. A few basis points.

Yes, today's "unskilled" labor hauling packs of shingles up an extension ladder on his shoulder is tomorrow's "skilled" roofer. Yes, we need the kid who carries the shingles up the ladder. No, the kid who carries the shingles up the ladder isn't going to ruin your country.

I knew it was coming and Dinar did not make us wait for long. Take a trip out of New York City Dinar. There's a whole country full of hard working Latino immigrants out there literally building the country. It doesn't make sense to send them to NYC. That was a political stunt. Let them naturally flow to where they are needed and have family support systems.

Don't get me started...

No. Absolutely not

I see your added edit now and I was thinking the same thing. I was a very happy buyer at 4.36 and kept buying below 4.50 but I feel like a seller at 4.81 here. Maybe we won't get another swing at it but I appreciate you highlighting the opportunity - I wouldn't have seen it otherwise. I owe you a few thousand beers if we ever meet. Cheers!

Thanks for posting - regarding this statement, "Ashford estimates that approximately 1.1 million shares (representing approximately 31% of the shares of common stock currently outstanding) would be cashed out in the Proposed Transaction and the aggregate cost to the Company of the Proposed Transaction would be approximately $5.5 million, plus transaction expenses, which are estimated to be approximately $6.7 million. Ashford intends to fund such costs using cash-on-hand." Isn't there a decent chance that shares transfer to a bunch of 9.9k share owners / baby arbs and the company doesn't have the cash to redeem the much higher than projected number of shares?

Here is an interesting case study on Philadelphia & Reading Corp, an early Ben Graham and Warren Buffett holding. I found it interesting. This is from Turtle Bay, who is on twitter and this website. Good BRK content Case study link: https://www.turtlebay.io/_files/ugd/f2fd00_f9def6fca1f4401f9d12a071be30352e.pdf Other interesting notes from the website above: https://www.turtlebay.io/notes Twitter - https://twitter.com/turtlebay_io

Word on the street is that they have been retiring some stock

Since the rewards for mining Bitcoin get halved in a couple weeks I would not count on the business staying the same.

I am not an expert, sleepydragon, but I will ask you this question - does Core Scientific sell all of the Bitcoin they mine for cash or do they accumulate Bitcoin holdings on their balance sheet? My understanding is that for the most part the miners sell their Bitcoin.

The number one reason to consider cutting short term interest rates is that they didn't work as intended to slow the economy or reduce inflation. They used to work slightly better by pulling back on the creation of new bank money creation into the economy but that indirect dynamic has been overtaken by the fiscal effect of t-bill interest increasing deficit spending stimulus. The best reason to stop doing something is that you realize it isn't working. If the government is really concerned about inflation it isn't all that hard to figure out how to tackle it (moderate fiscal deficit stimulus as a percentage of GDP). But it won't involve the Federal Reserve except indirectly through their policy rate's influence on government interest expense / deficit. I will add, like a broken record, also, that QE and QT are not effective tools and accomplish almost exactly nothing (and have several dynamics that are more effective in the opposite direction than the way they are used and commonly understood). The Federal Reserve is not the agency with the toolkit for this issue.

The profits have been cash settled periodically the entire holding period. There is no lump sum gain at the "end." What we don't know is if these gains are taxable at all. In the United States, "profits" in an issuers own stock are not taxed. Someone should ask this question at the annual meeting.

It really isn't a dressed up share repurchase unless they ask the banks to close out the swaps by delivering the shares to them when they are ready to end the trade. A share repurchase consumes cash and doesn't effect profit / loss or produce cash flow. This trade does not consume cash (when it moves in their direction), directly effects profit / loss like any other equity position, and produces cash inflows (if it moves in their direction).

Thanks - I knew you would have a useful insiders take on it. Cheers!

Yeah but because of that there are sometimes nasty contaminants mixed in that will clog a fuel filter and then you lose power to the generator. I also believe that they actually run on slightly cleaner fuel when they are in the harbors and switch to heavy fuel oil or whatever bunker fuel is when they are out at sea.

Just a hunch that bad fuel caused the problems in the first place

I would be nervous if I was the company that had just filled that ship up with fuel.