gfp

We were just in town for the day doing some shopping and grabbing lunch. My wife and I are in central Virginia looking after her Mom who just had an ankle replacement surgery, plus our neighbors house back home is under construction and there are like 3 jackhammers going simultaneously for a couple weeks.

In Charlottesville VA this afternoon, had to snap a shot of Ted’s office! (Above this bookstore). This is where the magic happens lol

Yes, Warren sold sold OXY common he had bought and the shares they elected to pay his preferred distribution with for a couple quarters. He sold the shares at low prices but ensured he got his 8% out of the preferred. Sure he got warrants in 2019 but the strike is at last weeks prices, it didn’t lock in some low cost basis.

My impression was that the go shop period was awfully short to allow an unprepared potential bidder to do what they needed to do to put together a serious bid. Not everyone can spit out a number at lunch and stick with it. Plus the direction of interest rates and the effect on Y’s bond portfolio meant the price/book offered by BRK kept rising. It is very true what Warren says, that Alleghany is worth more in Berkshire‘s hands that it was on its own or to most other buyers. Plus it was clear that management and major shareholders had already blessed the Berkshire deal so other deals would get labeled “less certain to close” and so forth

That is true for that one ticker, but the increase in their holdings of this company was more like 40%. (and we really have no idea what percentage of Li Lu's portfolio is invested in Alphabet since we don't know his AUM)

That is correct. The only BHE shares owned by the Insurance Companies are the preferred shares issued to fund the recent pipeline deal. Much of that has already been paid back / redeemed. The insurance companies also buy publicly trading bonds of Berkshire subsidiaries from time to time in the market as an investment and I have seen some BHE bonds in National Indemnity's portfolio.

No problem. I was driving to Virginia all day today but here is the entire document for National Indemnity. Common Stocks owned are on pages 24 and 25 but if you browse around those pages you can see the individual bond holdings and other details. 20087.2022.P.AN.PI.O.M.4461731_NatInd_Inv.pdf

There is a two year note that resets every week

Yeah man! "Fearless Five" or something like that? Chucks Angles, Ben's Angels... It went by a few names over the years to honor people

Sheesh, what happened with RFP shares going into the close today? (besides the merger closing)

How did you get 5.2%? What is the CUSIP and what price did you pay?

I read everyone's posts on this site. I follow wabuffo (Bill) on twitter and actually go there every day to see what he has posted - like the newspaper! I also follow @dirtcheapstocks on twitter to keep up on the ECIP banks. I also follow mungofitch on the shrewdm.com board and he also has a website that he has only ever made one post at but it called the exact 2022 market bottom so it's a high value per post ratio there - https://mungofitch.com Oh, and one spot or another, I've been reading dealraker / chompin / charlie / chuck's posts since I was like 20 years old...

I was curious if chatGPT would write a better one

This article is pretty funny. Go Toronto Star! “And a renowned stock investor who left Berkshire exposed to last year’s stock-market rout is difficult to regard as risk-averse, which Buffett declares himself to be.” https://www.thestar.com/amp/business/opinion/2023/03/02/berkshire-investors-would-do-better-if-the-firm-was-broken-up-its-time-for-warren-buffett-to-step-aside.html

$1 million minimum! That would be bonkers. Since short term T-bills are purchased at a discount like zero coupon bonds the minimums are actually little bit lower still... .98-.99 on the dollar vs face value

Share price up 57% in the month since this post. Hat tip ragnarisapirate....

That was me 4 months ago!

$100 USD on treasury direct

Some folks were disappointed that Warren omitted the list of the company's 15 largest equity holdings by value, since this list sometimes gave additional disclosure of the size of our foreign stock holdings vs. what shows up in a 13F. This screen shot below is for calendar year 2022, and is only for National Indemnity. There are additional foreign stock holdings inside General Re and other Berkshire insurance subs. The list below is just the new shares acquired during 2022 and I have put a red mark next to the foreign purchases since the US stocks are disclosed on dataroma and other 13F sites. Pay attention to the date acquired and you can see that Berkshire was still adding to the Japanese trading houses late in the year, so he may have omitted the chart for just one year since it would have probably caused his favorites to move up in share price. I will try to post a few more screenshots of other stuff. This isn't for all of Berkshire - just National Indemnity. (BTW, National Indemnity owns GEICO at a $43B carrying value and $6.9B cost basis, and also owns BNSF at a $47.3B carrying value and a $33.8895B cost basis) The "Harney Investment Trust" is a $77 Billion investment fund that Buffett created decades ago to keep trades hidden, so some of these will be transfers from Harney to National Indemnity direct. Wallacbeth Capital is Berkshire's preferred "broker" for large block trading. edit: that screen shot was made pretty blurry by this site's compression, try the attached PDF (also added a PDF showing General Re's year end stock holdings, some foreign, some well known) National Indemnity Foreign Stock purchases.pdf Gen Re stock portfolio.pdf

Yes, the first three entries are Li Lu from Himalaya Capital.

I hold Fairfax shares in both tax deferred and taxable accounts for myself and other people. I'm not concerned with Fairfax's capital structure but it is true that it is nothing like Berkshire's. Look around and you won't find very many companies like Berkshire. If Fairfax moves to a more reasonable valuation I may reduce the size of my Fairfax holdings, probably starting with shares held in tax deferred accounts. But who knows? Maybe I will be more enthusiastic about Fairfax's prospects at that time. I am not particularly excited about the returns from owning Berkshire going forward. They will be decent and they will occur with a high likelihood as compared to other options. The degree of certainty has value. The interest free long term loan from the government has value. Plus I like following the company and it is easy enough to value that occasionally you can play the options with uncommon safety (as far as buying call options is concerned). Berkshire's great! Fairfax is great! Someone should make a website to discuss!

That's interesting. Berkshire is a completely different type of situation, but every time I look at Markel, which I own a tiny amount of, I end up purchasing more Fairfax (which I already own a consequential amount of). The Berkshire I own is held in taxable accounts at such high deferred tax burdens that it will probably never be sold. Owning a few companies with such large built up unrealized taxable gains that they won't be touched is the closest I will get to the 'dealraker ideal'...

https://www.saratogarack.com https://www.propetroleum.com https://www.scfuels.com https://pilotwatersolutions.com There is also a large energy commodity trading business, a small part of which was shut down by Berkshire. The CEO (first non-family CEO I believe) came from Castleton Commodities International and has an energy trading background. https://www.pilotcompany.com/leadership/shameek-konar https://www.pilotcompany.com

Here is the 10-K filed this morning for Burlington Northern Santa Fe, LLC for those nerds that like to look at subsidiary annual reports, check the cash distributions ($5 Billion in 2022), compare to other railroads, etc https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0000934612/000093461223000005/bni-20221231.htm

Thanks to BiggieCheese, FindingCompounders and longterminvestor for posting the letter and its more readable PDF form. Every time I read something from Ted I am more reassured that Berkshire is extremely lucky to have found him and brought him on board. It's interesting how many of these portfolio holdings have been acquired over the years, putting cash back in his former shareholders' hands. W.R. Grace was acquired after a huge gain, DirecTV was acquired, Valassis Communications (VCI - the direct mail/coupon insert outfit) was acquired by Ron Perelman, Cincinnati Bell was acquired by Macquarie Infrastructure. The ones that haven't been acquired: DaVita, Liberty Media (which kept splitting into tracking stocks post distribution), WSFS Financial (huge gain) and Cogent Communications, which delivered a large gain and still pays a 5.77% dividend today. I wonder what Cogent's current dividend represents as a percentage of Ted's Peninsula cost basis?