gfp

He may be referring the the new subsidiary that they got as part of Alleghany, which also built the structure for the Sphere in Las Vegas https://www.wwafcosteel.com (edit: by the way, I checked this site under projects and this new BRK subsidiary is building TSM and Intel's new factories, Tesla giga, and basically everything else on a huge scale that gets built from steel)

The first hour is available as a free podcast called "Squawk Pod" and I'm sure the next two parts are coming there soon. (edit: no video on the podcast and the content starts at the 5 min. mark)

Personally I don't understand the focus on fatalities. I am not worried about being murdered, I am worried about being shot. My wife worries about me getting murdered. It never made much sense to me when cities tout a falling homicide rate when shootings and violent crimes involving guns are way up in the next statistic over. Like we are celebrating that the kids shooting the guns are getting less precise in their aim?

Also, "why did you keep BAC but sell almost every other bank holding?" Well, I got a special deal back when I bought the majority of the position and I really like Brian Moynihan.

Also, when was the last time you heard an investor cite "seismic risk" when discussing potential downside on Taiwan Semiconductor

I thought it was pretty funny when she asked him about Paramount, which from his answer is clearly his position and not Ted or Todd's. He went on to list a bunch of reasons why streaming wasn't a good business and why Paramount and the industry in general wasn't a good business to invest in. Then she said something like, "well that was a lot of reasons NOT to buy Paramount, but why did you buy it?" and he basically said, "well, we'll see how it works out." As in, "this company is going to be sold."

He mentioned they have put out $7-8 Billion to pay for Pilot and $4 Billion buying BRK stock and are still probably "up on cash and treasury bills" vs. year-end. Sounds like insurance float is growing well and when hedging his comments about conditions in the general economy (carloads down, some managers surprised demand is weaker than they would have predicted 6 months ago, retail down, etc..) he was always pretty careful to point out that insurance is not hurting. I expect a decent result from Insurance at BRK this year, despite the shrinking into profit going on at GEICO.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/buffett-says-geopolitics-factor-berkshire-sale-tsmc-stake-2023-04-11/ Some interesting color coming out of interviews Warren is doing in Japan. Seems TSM was his position, as I suspected.

Who knows, but I do believe that Greg is running things more than people believe and there has not been a lot of supervision or many challenging questions from headquarters to a lot of Berkshire's subsidiaries. Greg will be earning that paycheck for quite a while wrapping his head around that hodgepodge of smaller firms that have been flying under the radar.

Nice plane - certainly makes that trip easier! Warren and Greg Abel will be on CNBC tomorrow morning, being interviewed by Becky Quick off and on for the entire show. Nice to see Greg putting his mark on things by installing his own two executives to run Pilot and now meeting with each of the Japanese trading houses alongside Warren. There are plenty of opportunities for these five Japanese companies and Berkshire Hathaway to do business together. Doesn't hurt to show up in-country when you are trying to put together a yen bond sale either! I do think these companies were the reason Warren omitted the list of the 15 largest equity investments in the annual letter. Hopefully the list will return next year.

Surprising that Berkshire is flexing their 80% muscles and replacing Pilot Company's CEO with two executives from Berkshire. This follows a shut down of some of Pilot's energy trading activities that Berkshire didn't care for. https://www.knoxnews.com/story/money/business/2023/04/10/pilot-flying-j-new-ceo-after-warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway/70085946007/

Some might remember a while ago when BHE proposed building gas peaker power plants in Texas as a form of "Insurance" following the 2021 freeze/blackouts. It seemed to not go anywhere at the time and the deal Berkshire proposed is no longer on the table at that price - but the idea hasn't died and Berkshire is still following along and supporting the new bill SB 6. So who knows - maybe Berkshire gets to build their idle gas power plants at a fixed guaranteed return after all. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/2023/04/10/texas-californias-its-energy-grid-and-warren-buffett-may-benefit/be725774-d791-11ed-aebd-3fd2ac4c460a_story.html

Buffett says more questions, less long-winded replies, Greg and Ajit available for questions - https://twitter.com/YunLi626/status/1644044734254444544?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1644044734254444544|twgr^3752cb9ec415f1e8f45ddd5d5e89fa747e9d9a5c|twcon^s1_&ref_url=

One thing that stands out to me is that we had whatever that Bank scare was and the S&P 500 failed to make a lower low below the December / End of year levels. So we have higher highs and higher lows and the index is above both the 50 day and 200 day moving average. All the downtrends of the "bear market" have been broken to the upside and everyone is bearish. Hmmmmm

I think they were just pointing out the level that the S&P 500 had already bounced back to following the mini banking "crisis."

Ha! No thoughts on NVDA personally, but I can't be the only one out there that has had a big 'ole downtrend line drawn on Apple for over a year and there went the stock price right into it and stopped going up. Look out if it breaks higher though. It looks like a popular line in the sand to draw.

There was a large block trade (~$3.5 million, large for this security) on Friday that appeared to be initiated by the buyer (price went up). There was also a 4,000 share insider purchase reported recently. Not aware of any specific news but the value gap can start to close at any time unpredictably.

Berkshire is about to borrow in Yen again. It will be interesting to see if they keep increasing the size. They were still buying sogo shosha at year-end so might want to expand the yen float to match the growing size of the Japanese equity basket. Lots of positive carry in addition to the built in currency hedge. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000119312523091454/d380137d424b5.htm

+1 !! Three cheers to muscleman's early anecdotes and word on the street info that he shared with us all. It was certainly helpful and timely

I came across a written version of this interview in case anyone is interested in saving a copy. https://drive.google.com/file/d/132Aul_OH0hNP3B00S5jcIEtgAnbdV1Cq/view Singleton Prize for CEO Excellence_ Charlie Munger in Conversation with Todd Combs_020623.pdf

https://www.marubeni.com/en/research/report/political_economy/global/data/shoshaexp-20170629_003.pdf This might help. Also at least a couple seeking alpha articles taking a look since Berkshire's investment became public - https://seekingalpha.com/article/4373016-reverse-engineering-buffetts-thinking-those-japanese-trading-companies

Don't worry, Dinar has doubts

I believe he was specifically commenting on Potash.

It's funny, and I guess it reveals our internal biases to some degree, that Cod Liver Oil thought dealraker was referencing Apple while I read the same post and immediately assumed he was referencing Tesla.

Yeah, I got a condo in Ft. Myers under contract 2 days ago for my Mother to live in (her last place flooded). Contract above asking price (which wasn't underpriced), just a couple days on the market, multiple offers above asking price. I wouldn't have won it at all if the listing realtor wasn't favoring our bid and sending "suggestions" back to us on a modified offer to match another bidder. Not very ethical of that realtor but happy to have the help.