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Any bets that it's not a crypto guy this time around? by the way, apparently you can track Justin Sun's (2019 lunch winner) crypto wallet assets in real time? https://debank.com/profile/0x3ddfa8ec3052539b6c9549f12cea2c295cff5296

Well that would certainly surprise me. They have only filed with the SEC on about $800 million of additional stock purchases so far during Q2 (the most recent shares of HPQ and OXY). Add in whatever repurchase activity we can deduce from Warren's recent SEC filings (say $1.2 Billion plus whatever they buy post 6/14). Let's call it $2.5 Billion. So that would total to about $3.3 Billion, which would be less than one quarter's cash earnings plus float growth. Float grew at $1 Billion last quarter but has been averaging over $2 Billion per quarter lately. Unless he was adding to securities like AAPL, CVX or C that would not require SEC filings anytime soon or buying stuff he is under 10% on (pretty much rules out additional Activision shares so far unless we see a filing soon) - you may actually see cash increase during the quarter. They also have two acquisitions coming up in Q4 to pay for, Alleghany and a big chunk of Pilot Corporation. Since they had ~$103 Billion cash at the insurance companies at the end of Q1, I would be shocked it they took it down to $30-$40 in Q2. But who knows... *edit: I should add that we may see more "cash" come off the balance sheet because he moves slightly out on duration with US treasury bonds. In Q1 he added $5.5 Billion in US treasury fixed maturity securities - I would bet that these are very short dated and barely outside of 'cash and cash equivalents.' Also as time marches on, these new purchases revert to 'cash equivalents' as they approach maturity. It wouldn't surprise me to see him add to 2 year, 52-week, 26-week and 13-week US government securities, which would look like depleting cash but it's not quite the same as buying equities.

Bill, maybe you can answer this question for me... Why has the outstanding share count of the A-shares only declined by 1,365 A-shares since April when the press release by Buffett says he - just that day - converted 9,608 of his A-shares into B-shares. As we all know, the shares are only convertible one-way. https://berkshirehathaway.com/news/jun1422.pdf edit: I should note I am not doubting your math - I get the same share count as you for A-shares when I use 37.4% being his remaining 229,016 shares and I get the same figures as you for total share count using 15.6% total economic interest in Berkshire.

Yeah my wife's friends were texting us that full transcript of the interview over the weekend. It is impressive but of course this instance of a LaMDA chatbot has been well trained to reply like that. The cajun priest was the one that "taught" this instance to "meditate" in the first place. In the end, he was basically fooled by the technology, which is surprising since he should know better how the technology works. A lot of people reading the entire transcript will be convinced like Lemoine was. Now he's practically organizing a labor union for the chatbot instances...

Many people do not realize that Warren exercises almost every day. He has a treadmill and a personal trainer. Warren listened to his doctors (eventually) when told that he needed to exercise if he wanted to keep doing what he loves. Staying in the game for longer is more important to Warren than avoiding exercise. Here is an excerpt from a book, but Warren has mentioned the training in several interviews. I believe he mentioned it in Charlie Rose's recent comeback interview as well. https://www.prweb.com/releases/buffett/michelle/prweb907864.htm Warren's trainer: https://www.omahawbfitness.com/home

In my experience, or at least in my state, if a plaintiff offers to settle with the insured for the policy limit or below and the insurance company declines to take that settlement - the insurer is now on the hook for paying ultimate awards beyond the policy limits. That is why there will frequently be a settlement proposed a couple bucks below the policy limit even when it seems bonkers at the time. In this case, she offered to settle the claim for $1 million and GEICO did not take her up on it. That was pre-arbitration.

This is the CEO of soon-to-be-consolidated-subsidiary Pilot Corporation talking about Union Pacific's demands that Pilot reduce their rail shipments by up to 50% on some routes. Pilot distributes 20% of the diesel and 30% of the diesel exhaust fluid (DEF) in the country. Much of this is shipped by rail. I wonder what Union Pacific's side of this story is?

Microsoft has joined Google and Facebook to participate in a group potentially opposing MidAmerican's proposed $3.9B Wind PRIME wind+solar project in Iowa. MidAmerican is seeking approval and would like an 11.25% regulated return. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-versus-big-tech-130015233.html

Bloomberg is running an article today saying that big tech companies (Google, Meta & Microsoft) are opposing MidAmerican's proposed $3.9 Billion "Wind PRIME" project (2042 megawatts of wind + 50 megawatts of solar). MidAmerican is asking state regulators for approval and an 11.25% guaranteed return. https://www.midamericanenergy.com/newsroom/2022-wind-prime-announcement bloomberg article (some paywall) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-10/it-s-warren-buffett-versus-big-tech-in-iowa-s-latest-wind-farm-debate?srnd=premium#xj4y7vzkg

Not sure I am understanding your post but the figures posted here are not "per share" figures if that helps.

Thanks for the detailed run down. You may be interested in (or entertained by) this case if you haven't already seen it. Seems possible that it is another case of denying coverage and having it look like you chose not to defend your insured in court and then having the whole thing blow up on you without ever having the opportunity to defend your interests in court. https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=187183 Cliffs notes: A couple get intimate in a GEICO insured vehicle. One catches HPV from the other. GEICO told to pay $5.2 million. The HPV-giving party knew they had HPV because they were previously told that their throat cancer tumor tested positive for HPV. GEICO denies claim. The intimate couple appears to be working together (likely fraud imo), went to arbitration, were awarded a ton of money and GEICO is told to pay it. Of course they also offered to settle within the policy liability limits earlier ($1m), which I understand to have the effect of effectively eliminating the policy liability limit once GEICO declines to accept the settlement offer within the policy limits. The linked case is GEICO's appeal (which they lost).

Maybe ask @Tim Eriksen if you are interested in "expert market" type securities?

Some here might be interested in the minutiae of National Indemnity's business - this lawsuit was recently filed by NICO against 7 reinsurers for not paying their share of an asbestos settlement NICO agreed to with the state of Montana arising from policies written by NICO in 1973-75 (after Berkshire bought NICO but before Ajit was hired). NICO settled with Montana in April 2022 for $157 million to resolve the matter (some of this had already been paid) and sent a bill to each of the 7 reinsurers who basically indicated they weren't paying. Page 6 and 7 of the lawsuit show the figures. NICO has billed the reinsurance companies (many of them successors to the original companies) a total of $104.5m. show_temp.pl-11.pdf

I thought it was worthwhile to listen to Jamie Dimon's actual complete audio from the "hurricane" headlines. He's always interesting to listen to anyway - https://seekingalpha.com/article/4515787-jpmorgan-chase-and-co-jpm-ceo-jamie-dimon-presents-bernstein-38th-annual-strategic-decisions

BNSF was able to borrow $1B for 30 years at 4.5% - still an extremely attractive environment for high quality corporate borrowers. This was priced yesterday - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/934612/000119312522164076/d358107dfwp.htm

Thanks for the on-the-ground color. It is really interesting. I had posted this article on Sunday over on the Joe thread - recounts a similar situation as of Sunday. Berkshire and DE Shaw are quoting but at their price. Nice to see a few large deals getting done though. One of my favorite Berkshire deals in Florida was years ago when they wrote a policy where all they had to do in the event of a super-cat above a certain size was agree up-front to buy municipal bonds from the state insurance fund. Didn't end up being a big year for storms and Berkshire didn't buy the bonds, but what a concept - instead of paying a claim you just buy muni bonds... In New Orleans, I expected some of our policies to go way up based on what is happening to other people here. Our Flood policies, which are priced by Fema under a new opaque formula for the first time this year (risk rating 2.0), went down by 25%. Our homeowners and rental property policies stayed approximately the same. I think the new standing seam roof ended up offsetting a rate rise at home and our other properties didn't have claims for Ida. We use USAA for insurance though, and most other carriers are just exiting the market. USAA seems to stick with their members or at least we hope so. Here is the Sunday blurb out of Insurance Insider - "Storm clouds gather over the Sunshine State The 1.6 renewals in Florida are proving to be the toughest in a generation. With only three days to go before the deadline for the 1 June reinsurance renewals, there is still a plethora of unplaced business in the market. As this publication reported in a deep-dive analysis piece earlier this week, the property treaty market is now in a “state of chaos” as a sense of acceptance builds that a number of placements will not get over the line in time. Late on Wednesday, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed into law two key bills in an attempt to limit surging property loss costs. However, the response to the action has been muted. Among the concerns raised have been whether the size of the announced $2bn reinsurance fund – which will sit beneath the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund and provide cedants with much-needed access to low-layer limit – is adequate. One market source described the first of the two bills – which would establish the so-called Reinsurance to Assist Policyholders (RAP) program as “sticking a Band-Aid on a broken leg”. And analysts at KBW said that they did not expect the initiative to “meaningfully impact” demand or the soaring costs of private reinsurance. In an exclusive interview with this publication, Demotech’s Joe Petrelli said the ratings agency will not lower its minimum reinsurance requirements despite the likelihood of major holes in the cat programs of a significant number of Florida carriers. He also noted that the RAP reinsurance fund does not cover tropical storms or other non-hurricane events, leaving carriers who utilise it and don’t buy low down private cover bare for those perils. Meanwhile on Friday, we reported that, for those carriers with deep enough pockets for private deals, Berkshire Hathaway (BH) and DE Shaw – often described as reinsurers of last resort – were understood to have been quoting private layers in recent days. "

Following reports that the 6/1 cat renewals were not going smoothly, there is a report that Berkshire wrote at least one large reinsurance policy for a Florida carrier (HCI). Hopefully Ajit got some more big deals done on good terms. https://www.insuranceinsider.com/article/2a65bnb78rcx9lqkk58u8/reinsurers-section/berkshire-hathaway-writes-400mn-line-on-floridian-carrier-hcis-reinsurance-treaty

20087.2022.P.Q1.P.O.1.4376224.pdf This is the Q1 2022 NAIC filing for National Indemnity. The screenshot I posted earlier is from page 155 I believe. There is a lot of detail to scroll through to get to anything interesting. Don't worry about the trades in American Express, this is just National Indemnity buying this stock from other Berkshire subsidiaries (not a taxable event). Page 157 shows the average price they sold most of the Verizon stock for - $52.64 / share, a loss of about a billion dollars before dividends and tax benefit.

1st quarter NAIC filing for National Indemnity. Will post the pdfs later but traveling currently

For the German companies Berkshire purchased in Q1, they were: Allianz, Munich Re and BASF

Ah yes, I forgot that became effective. So Berkshire has other reasons for not wanting to go above 10% on USB. Thanks for posting that

If we are just talking about non-bank stocks, there are two main "hassles" - one is the "short swing profit rule" which basically has the effect of forcing the 10+% holder of the stock to return to the company any profit it makes if it holds the stock for less than 6 months. Despite what your intentions might be on holding period, it is a pain to not be able to sell out of your position and keep any profits if something changes (like your liquidity needs or the share price for example). That's not the biggest hassle, but it does play into their thinking. The main "hassle" for a high profile investor (remember that Ted and Todd's trades will largely say "Warren E. Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway" when reporting) is that once you are in the stock and over 10%, you have to notify the world 3 days after your first share sale. So you greatly increase your friction costs to exit the position if everybody knows that Warren Buffett (who's supposed to know a lot about these things) is just beginning a major divestment and has a lot more stock to sell. So the price gets pushed lower on you and it costs you real money. With a bank holding company, you cannot go over 10% without Fed approval. Berkshire has conditional approval to go up to 25% on American Express if they remain totally passive and they have conditional approval to go above 10% on BAC - I don't remember how high they can go. Perhaps higher if it is only due to company repurchases. This is why Berkshire periodically sells USB shares. They don't have permission to go above 10%. So they only go above 10% when something is going to be a really long-term hold or they really really like it. They went above 10% on BNSF (something like 22%). They are above 10% on Moody's, DaVita and Occidental. There may be some others (obviously BAC & AXP above). KHC is sort of special because they are part of a control group and use the equity method. To me, it means that they are not buying OXY for a short term hold. They may want the entire company but who knows (not me).

For the Berkshire shareholders interested in following Alleghany's results now that it looks like the deal is on track - here are their recent earnings -> https://www.alleghany.com/investor-relations/press-releases/press-release-details/2022/Alleghany-Corporation-Reports-2022-First-Quarter-Results/default.aspx PDF of the earnings press release (same as above): https://s24.q4cdn.com/857140222/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/1Q22-Earnings-Release-(Final).pdf PDF of financial supplement: https://s24.q4cdn.com/857140222/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/1Q22-Financial-Supplement-(Final).pdf PDF of the 10Q: https://s24.q4cdn.com/857140222/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/29d616ca-5db1-45a1-a5a1-be93d181cd58.pdf ---------- When I first saw the decline in investment income I was hopeful it was due to a decrease in bond portfolio duration but it was not (avg. duration is 4.4 yrs, was 4.5 yrs at year-end). It appears Y invests some of its float in hedge funds and other LPs, some of which had significant gains on Cryptocurrencies in the year-ago quarter.

On Lanxess, I believe he started that position through one of General Re's European divisions back in 2017. There were articles at the time saying he was over 3% or something like that. He has added to it from time to time, so it could be one of the German securities that he referenced - but this hasn't been a great investment for him so far. Just speculating, but he has traded large positions in Munich Re in the past, and we did see a big increase in "banks, insurance & finance" category of equity holdings at cost basis - so maybe he is back into Munich Re as one of the German buys. The buying may not show up in the NAIC filings at all if it was done through Harney Investment Trust. If it does, it will probably be within one of the Euro subs of General Re - Cologne Re may have been re-named General Reinsurance AG or something like that. Will have to root around.

Yes - Thanks for posting this interview. Berkshire got so insanely lucky to find and hire this guy.