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Great post as usual Charlie - thanks! Will the youngsters listen and copy? Probably not!

Not sure where to post this, but some might find this second issue of industry magazine "E&S Insurer" to have some interesting commentary. As dealraker pointed out, it reads a bit like a tabloid, much like its sister publication "insurance insider." It is also primarily written out of the UK I believe. But there are interviews and renewal scuttlebutt, etc. Only the first two issues are free, it will be paywalled after this one - https://pdf.static.prod.wbm.infomaker.io/NByENF43Hs4HyauotoWgX6hsNGI.pdf (link is a PDF file)

They always say Prem "controls" Sixty Two, so I assume there is some family estate planning going on there. That would be normal in the USA at least.

I don't think that was $50 Billion! Maybe $6 Billion?

The policies are all capped, so you can't just extrapolate a typical percentage of cat exposure and apply it to an $800B to $1 Trillion claims event.

I don't follow RYAN specialty, but noticed the CEO there, Mr. Ryan, definitely bought the dip recently - http://openinsider.com/search?q=ryan

With no stock to buy back, Buffett is busy steadily dividending out the last of his cost basis. Who says Warren doesn't do private equity

Hopefully dealraker will chime in but I just wanted to say the thread title would probably make an excellent ETF.

I wouldn't read too much into a brief spike caused by less than $1,500 in buy orders, followed by what looks to be on its way to a complete reversal of the price move. Anyone could move this thing a thousand percent with their bar mitzvah money.

What's the idea here? I'm assuming you bought 130,000 warrants and not $130,000 worth of warrants (which doesn't look possible). So you spend like a hundred dollars and it becomes worthless when the SPAC liquidates? Am I missing the point? This looks like a zero.

Berkshire reported higher stakes in the 5 Japanese equities and is issuing Yen bonds again https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/buffetts-berkshire-boosts-stakes-japans-five-biggest-trading-houses-2022-11-21/ https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000119312522289445/d372820d424b5.htm who says carry trade is dead

Thanks for posting Libs - great stuff

I guess it would be entertaining if the single family home address they list is actually where these geniuses are living. Also, you have to appreciate the honesty in this FAQ entry. Never is a strong word but they weren't afraid to use it:

https://berkshirehathawaytx.com killer name for your crypto biz bro https://berkshirehathaway.com/news/nov1822.pdf

Good luck. Make sure the deals would still close if basically everyone redeems their shares at trust value (which I would expect to happen). I assume the rights are worthless if no deal is consumated but I am not familiar with any of the tickers you listed. Also there does not appear to be liquidity / trading volume for some of those securities. If they don't trade, or have very wide bid/ask spreads, you might find it difficult to execute a hypothetical trade in the real world. If the deals end up closing, consider the possibility that the current price of the Rights may be telegraphing an expected future share price for the post deal shares.

So, whatstheofficerproblem, are you planning to actually short the common on each of these or are you only interested in going long the warrants?

What are you going to arbitrage?

This link opens a PDF of a new E&S Insurance industry publication with several articles quoting executives on the state of the industry. These magazines are usually not free but this one is a new launch from 'The Insurer.' Berkshire is big and growing in Excess and Surplus lines (BHSI) so I am linking it here but it may be interesting to other insurance investors (FFH, MKL, etc) as well. https://pdf.static.prod.wbm.infomaker.io/JcntEWo9rNCEbfRJb1rjM3trOeg.pdf

So Berkshire hired Michael Fowler to run this operation, who is the number one executive in the space. He built a huge operation inside AIG that was called SunAmerica Affordable Housing Partners. AIG sold it to Blackstone I think. This is an in-house operation at Berkshire, not just a case of Berkshire buying tax credits from a bank because Berkshire has a big tax credit appetite. Here is one article that mentions Berkshire's operation and Fowler - https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20120412/NEWS03/120419922/oracle-of-omaha-invests-in-chicago-area-affordable-housing

These are from quarterly NAIC filings: NAIC = National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Columbia Insurance is a large insurance subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway that goes all the way back to the Diversified Retailing days (it was a subsidiary of Diversified Retailing, the department store company). National Indemnity even larger, as you would expect. Other individual filers are General Re and Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance. Some insurance subsidiaries don't file on their own because they are subsidiaries of other insurance companies. These are screenshots because to find this information in the filing would take most people a lot of time. Here are a few of the Q3 filings (attached) - edit: they are too big and taking too long to upload so here is one. You can buy the individual filings at the naic website here https://insdata.naic.org Another interesting thing you can see from these filings is the internal structure of Berkshire Hathaway through the multiple Org charts they include on what all the corporate entities are, which subsidiaries own what, etc. Also it becomes very obvious that Berkshire went huge on affordable housing tax credits when it hired over the guy that build AIG's affordable housing business. National Indemnity Q3 NAIC.pdf

After your post I went and looked at Maverick Capital's portfolio. Jesus what a mess. I couldn't even count the number of positions and inconsequential trades made every quarter. To answer your question, they were probably buying the units at IPO knowing that they had some optionality and couldn't lose money on a cash substitute with the possibility of a pop. There are companies that were specializing in these pre-deal SPACs and it was popular when interest rates were lower and SPACs sometimes went up. Now not so much. Guys that routinely did this would get the calls to be offered the new SPAC offerings and the warrants were sort of "free" and had value when they separated. You can still make money buying a SPAC below trust value and voting to redeem when the time comes but there are better opportunities out there. Also a one year t-bill yields 4.63% today so that raises the hurdle on what is worth doing.

If you can't ask him you have to guess. We'll see how big the position gets. Personally I think this is Warren and Charlie and not Ted and Todd. If it blows out to 8 or 9 billion by year end I think we can put high odds on it being Warren.

This screenshot is from National Indemnity Q3 NAIC filing - showing purchases of stock inside National Indemnity only. I thought it was interesting that Buffett was buying TSM as early as August 25th at around $88/share. Makes it more likely he continued to buy the stock after quarter end but that is a guess. (I should add that several of these entries are intercompany transfers and the rightmost column is price paid, second from the right is number of shares) He bought another billion dollars worth of TSM at around $76.84 / sh. inside Columbia Insurance Company.

Yeah I doubt PARA is a Warren Buffett pick. USB was, and he went right up to 10% and kept it just below for years. When Warren starts to sell he usually sells it all, so it could disappear next quarter.