gfp

It could be a weekend at bernie's situation for all I know, but it has been a positive for his investment performance.

I'm pretty impressed with Guy Spier lately. He basically hasn't made a trade (that is reportable in a 13F at least) since Q2 2021. https://www.dataroma.com/m/m_activity.php?m=aq&typ=a https://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=aq

It is Dazel who thinks Warren Buffett is secretly adding to Citi despite Citi showing up in the 13F quarter after quarter.

LOL

Yeah, that's nothing. These law firms do this for every stock decline that makes the news.

Fairfax's year end 13-F was released - https://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=FFH

It doesn't matter what the Fed "wants." They have a mandate for "price stability" and maximum employment and they have recently followed other global central banks into spelling out an arbitrary 2% target. They were not the first to put out a target rate of inflation - 2% is a common target. 2% is their buffer to avoid deflation when inflation fluctuates above and below the target. 2% inflation over long periods of time is as sound of money as we can hope for with our elastic money. As you said, a debt-based system needs some positive inflation to avoid risking the collateral death spiral of deflation.

They would have to be methodical about it. If they tried to unwind the balance sheet in an aggressive all-at-once move it would be messy. If they just plugged away and actually brought it down and kept it down it wouldn't necessarily result in higher rates. Long term interest rates are set by the market primarily on long term expectations for inflation and economic growth and demand for safety and liquidity over other assets. Supply isn't an important a factor as many people think. "supply" of new bonds is pre-funded by the deficit spending that preceded it / "caused" it. Government bonds are money and the Fed swapping one government liability (bonds) for another (bank reserves) isn't a big deal for the economy. The bond is actually more useful out in the private sector than the bank reserve is. And in the old days it used to have a higher yield than the bank reserve. I can pledge a government bond as collateral and multiply it, transform it into virtually anything. A bank reserve is trapped and somewhat sterile. Certainly can't invest a bank reserve into stocks.

Sure, wrong-way macro guys are complaining as well. But if I'm on year 4 or 5 of a 5 year commercial loan at 4.5% and it's about to reset at 8+% with banks willing to do 55% loan to value - I'm watching that short term rate and interested in the timing and magnitude. And the banker is too.

You really think it's investors in Big Tech that are complaining? I'm thinking it is commercial property owners and their lenders that are obsessing over the dot plots.

I'm not sure what the difference would be between a bull market and asset price inflation, but I wouldn't read to much into any correlation with the Fed balance sheet and the S&P 500. QE doesn't create "real economy" money that can be invested in stocks. Excess bank reserves don't do much at all since US bank lending is not constrained by bank reserves. I believe QE does basically nothing, but it is possible that the way the US did it, there was a tightening of MBS spreads that goosed the refinance boom a little bit more on the margin that what would have occurred with slightly wider spreads.

Well he can buy Nintendo any time he wants and it won’t show up on a 13-F.

There is no scuttlebutt on what it could be except that it almost certainly falls into the category "Banks, insurance and finance" on Berkshire's filings. We couldn't figure out what it was by looking at the NAIC filings because it was hidden within the Harney Investment Trust.

Good point - that sounds right to me, given I expect higher reported book value growth in q4.

Hard for me to estimate but I would expect a pretty decent mark to market gain on the bond book for the quarter.

You should not use the 17.8% BVPS growth figure to compare to the 18.9%. You should use the 18.5% figure that includes dividends.

I wouldn't hold your breath. Berkshire is still being valued based on price-to-book value all these years later.

The Muddy Waters graph of book values appear to be each year's CAGR in Book value since some arbitrary day they are calling "the GFC." So it isn't the book value growth for those years, but those end-dates. The actual BV growth for those years (which is probably what most casual observers understood it as) was this: 2017: +24.7% 2018: -1.5% 2019: +14.8% 2020: +0.6% 2021: +34.2% 2022: +6% (and 2023 comes out this week and should look pretty good) * one thing about posting Fairfax's actual annual results as above is that the bumpiness goes against the narrative that this is a GE-style smoothed manipulator.

It's funny because my hometown team was not involved in that game but Nola has such a deep rivalry and hatred for the Atlanta Falcons that it is not uncommon to see murals of the 3rd quarter score, flags memorializing the score, etc, all over town. There was even someone that rented billboards memorializing the choke/comeback.

We use a lot of hot sauce in my household and Huy Fong Sriracha is still not available in stores down here. We have been buying the products directly from Underwood Ranches, the grower that Huy Fong tried to replace. The Sriracha is slightly spicier but works just fine for us. We also use a Sriracha out of Thailand under the Polar brand name that is very good but sweeter than the Underwood Ranches. We still have Huy Fong Sambal Olek in our fridge but the Underwood Sambal is also very good. One of my friends loves the yellow Trader Joe's "sriracha." We don't have any of that so far. Just say NO to Tabasco. I don't think anybody actually wants Tabasco I think it is just ubiquitous and well distributed. I even know some McIlhenny family members and still won't touch the stuff. Maybe the green or chipotle but never the original. Definitely not their "sriracha" product - blech.

Kind of funny that they are going to phase the margin increase in "over multiple days" and then say those days are from after the close on Friday to trade date Monday. That's one day, not phased in.

Why do you say Prem controls half of the shares? There are not 25m, there are 23.1 million shares. (brk.b has 2.166 billion b-share equivalents outstanding)

What options?

Honestly I can never make any sense of your posts.

Yeah, from your link: