gfp

Yeah - I can't believe Trump himself hasn't realized he's being played by the headline figures out of Apple. It seems like he actually thinks they are going to start building factories in the United States to build the products we have heard of. I figure he'll be sort of mad when he finds out the reality of the plan and he just never bothered to read it.

Blake, it's either you and your friends get to sewing or that tiny little lady in Vietnam needs to take out a loan for a GMC Sierra. I don't see any other solution bro

Cubs, you know a balanced budget would cause a depression. The US government isn't a household and you can't think of it like your household finances. What's wrong with a trade deficit? Why does it need to be zero? I don't want my Nikes made in America and nobody in America wants to sew my Nikes. Even if China buys the family farm with some dollars I force-fed them - they can't pick it up and take it with them back to China

Well the market is closed. I don't see a bunch of opportunity in that bid/ask anyway, unless you want to sell 200 shares at $12.70 or buy 100 shares at $50.42? What's to like about that? I did get a small fill on some PCHM today and that company doesn't usually have much liquidity.

If the fiscal deficit is too large relative to GDP, raise revenue and cut spending the best you can pull off without putting the economy into a depression. If the economy falls apart, revenue will plummet and the deficit will be larger. I disagree that the trade deficit (the other issue) is a problem at all and I certainly disagree that individual bilateral balance of trade between any two countries needs to be even. If you are the president and you think we need to run balanced trade with Vietnam, you are an idiot. I expect that stuff from bums at the local pub - not the oval office.

Hmmm... I'm not huge on charts but I'm gonna say this 10 year yield is headed back down

As I understand it, sort of neither. The tariff is charged to the importer on the declared value of the goods. Essentially that is the "wholesale" value, not the manufacturer's cost ($500 in your example) or the retail MSRP ($2000 in your example). Apple could import iPhones to a US entity that paid a wholesale price and distributed the products to carriers, Best Buy, and Apple's own retail operation. I think Apple ultimately gets a carve out here and I think quite a few of the numbers in the famous chart Trump brought out to the rose garden will not be the actual numbers. We'll see!

I got some more! $79,852.08 I'm averaging UP! uh oh!

Haha - we'll high five in 2028. Maybe I can run up a million miles on my toyota by then

Yeah, there isn't an ETN thread - you gotta start one to get one! The problem with a case like CRH or even JOE is that the name of the company is three letters. There isn't a longer search term to try. Hell, even St. Joe is two short words that don't work. Maybe you can sort the investment ideas section by alphabetical order and find the thread that way. Never tried that

And, honestly, I don't even know if that works very well anymore since the investment ideas section may be behind a pay-wall. It's possible that method only picks up mentions of CRH from general discussion threads like 'what are you buying today' or similar

I am just guessing here, but I believe this limitation on search (that it requires more than 3 characters, making it ill-suited to ticker symbols) has more to do with MySQL than it does with some setting Sanjeev can easily change. For CRH it is a difficult one to search. For JOE, I usually search "Saint Joe" to get to the thread and go from there. It's always been a pain. Sometimes using google and site search gets you what you need with less frustration -> Something like - site: thecobf.com "CRH"

Cleveland Cliffs at $3.39 Billion market cap! I think I'm gonna nibble on that. Kind of amusing to picture Fairfax just writing a check and taking the whole thing

Because taxes tariffs are inflation!

I think he's saying Fairfax's average ANNUAL return is now higher than the total return over the entire period for those indices.

It wasn't just Warren's Chubb stock that bucked the trend today - Mitsubishi Corp came out with an update and traded into the green. Also, Berkshire filed this week to sell more yen bonds. Business as usual! https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Buffett-backed-Mitsubishi-stock-beats-sell-off-on-new-buyback-ROE-targets https://www.mitsubishicorp.com/jp/en/ir/ https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000119312525069429/d852297d424b5.htm

https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/growing.pdf

For the long term, it's always better to "just hold the goddamn stock" - especially if it means deferring taxes. In the short term, Berkshire tends to behave like this before bear markets, when market participants who are really going to want cash at first rotate into safer stocks like Berkshire in case they are wrong about wanting to play a little defense. Then a bit later they realize, "oh shit, what I really need is cash" and Berkshire joins the bear market. Here's an overlay of BRK's valuation in 2007 with today (up till 3/18, so not current). Some of us lived through this squeeze at the time but it's helpful if you didn't. credit to Jim "mungofitch" for the graphic.

I agree with all of that - especially the reserve releases from the hard market years - except I don't think interest rates are headed higher. But corporate credit spreads could blow out and that could offer a similar opportunity for FFH

Yeah, they have really built a wonderful diversified and BIG company, brick by brick. And to think - just a few months ago I had people sending me notes that BHE was going to be bankrupted by liabilities and drive down the price of BRK stock. Okie dokey

Seems like this 5 share $539 execution from yesterday afternoon might be it for a little while at least.

They didn't stick with any sort of true 'reciprocal' tariff calculations. The 39% would include anything they felt like including - particularly value added taxes and other 'non tariff barriers'. When all is said and done, they based the tariff rates in that chart on the US trade deficit with the other party, not any sort of reciprocal tariff as "promised." Here is the calculation -> https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations

The dividend comes out of book value but why would it effect EPS?

That's just the end of the quarter/year closing price. Not their cost basis.