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gfp

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Posts posted by gfp

  1. 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."

  2. 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.

  3. 2 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

     

    Thank you, @gfp,

     

    My immediate thoght - perhaps more a kind of a question - here is : Is this perhaps a token for Mr. Abel taking more control and putting his own personal fingerprints on things and processes in the privately held [non-listed] non-insurance companies?

     

    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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 3 minutes ago, formthirteen said:

    AAPL and NVDA puts

     

    image.thumb.png.ea19976582486ab43513b000b0bc9032.png

     

    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.

  8. 45 minutes ago, netcash1 said:

    any news today on Bangalore IPO?  shares showing some life

     

    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.  

  9. 39 minutes ago, spartansaver said:

    I think it's important to keep an open mind. I remember when Muscleman first described the situation in Wuhan. Those initial posts allowed me to formulate a pretty unique view that helped make 2020 one of my best investment years. I would say that while I viewed the posts to some degree with skepticism (it sounded like the world could end) they were actually quite accurate and no mainstream media outlet was ready to say just how bad it could get. 

    +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

  10. 1 hour ago, BiggieCheese said:

    This is a request, so apologies if I'm posting in the wrong spot, but has anyone come across a good primer/industry overview of the Japanese trading houses?

     

    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

  11. 4 hours ago, dealraker said:

    There is one stock in technology and other businesses that I think gets a very special treatment

     

    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.

  12. 4 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

    It’s almost always a good time because you control your destiny! Tangentially I was shocked to hear this anecdotal piece from a family member. She’s 28 and looking to buy and saw a starter home in Parsippany for $400k. Listed Monday and best and final due Thursday. 70 offers at or above ask. It’s why it’s so dangerous with RE to make generalizations because it’s all so specific to individual areas. The more NYC detonates as far as safety, traffic, and general livability aspects, the more suburbia gets jacked. 

     

    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.

  13. 11 minutes ago, sleepydragon said:

    If I remember correctly, someday after 3/8 I was looking at A shares’s volume, and noticed its ADV was higher than its historical ADV. 

     

    The reported volumes have been rising, but it is hard to tell what is real volume since the advent of fractional share trading.  A-share volumes are actually a tiny fraction of what gets reported as volume.  I think Berkshire and their order execution partners (probably Wallachbeth capital, who they seem to use for almost everything) have a good handle on what the actual daily volumes are on A-shares.

    big.chart?nosettings=1&symb=brk.a&uf=0&t

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