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Hey, so I got the Fairfax India transcript off of TIKR, but they don't appear to have the transcript for the Fairfax Financial meeting - at least not yet. Maybe another service will have it or someone else here will have it. Good luck!

I was able to watch the Fairfax Financial annual meeting on the web but had to leave before the Fairfax India annual meeting. In case there are others in my boat, here is the transcript of the Q&A from this year's Fairfax India annual meeting. Fairfax India 2023 Annual Meeting.pdf

My wife still reminds me (and others) of the year I bought her a 210ES Highboy for her Birthday... Pretty funny stuff. That bad boy is still going strong all these years later.

Hooray https://s1.q4cdn.com/579586326/files/doc_news/2023/PRFFH-April-19-2023-Fairfax-to-Acquire-Additional-46-32-Interest-in-Gulf-Insurance-Group-from-KIPCO.pdf

Is it correct that 'all else being equal' this would reduce return on equity? Higher equity, lower future earning power from reserve releases, same assets..

You may be correct that he's not the best person to lead the company, but I think the damage was done by Tony Nicely and Todd was brought in to fix what seemed like a real miscalculation with telematics where Ajit realized there was some major adverse selection going on. It is going to take a while to fix this. Luckily they have a rich parent and a patient shareholder base. Incidentally, I had two more neighbors this week ask me what the hell was going on with GEICO after seeing their new premiums. I told both to get a quote at PGR and I expect both to switch.

Here is the full release - https://s1.q4cdn.com/579586326/files/doc_news/2023/PRFFH-April-18-2023-Preliminary-Report-on-Effect-of-IFRS-17-on-Common-Shareholders-Equity.pdf

You may be right about it being Japanese buying that is pushing up the A-shares the last couple of days, but I don't think those companies are going to come up with the cash to buy 7.4% of Berkshire any time soon. They range in market cap from like $25 Billion USD to like $55 Billion (Mitsubishi Corp.)

Yen bond sale results - https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/warren-buffett-s-berkshire-sells-1-2-billion-of-yen-debt-after-big-japan-bets-1.1907592

I took that line item on page 52, table 11 - the one referenced in footnote 2 - as being a loss on hedging not a gain. Is that not correct?

I assume those quotes are for the indoor air handler and the condensing unit together (or a package unit that includes both in one box). If that is just the outdoor condensing unit and not also an air handler/coil install those prices are real bad.

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