gfp

I feel like we know almost everything that will be reported in Q4 ahead of time and all eyes (ears) will be on the conference call for guidance on Q1 wildfire exposures.

I've finally gone and bought some TLT this morning.

Thanks I appreciate it. I wonder if those 799,230 shares don't pay a dividend.

Interesting looking back at the 1995 Markel proxy (sorry to muddle up a Fairfax thread, but Prem does make an appearance)

@SafetyinNumbers I have a question about this interest (49.9% according to the 1992 letter) that Fairfax purchased in the Sixty Two Investment company - are these 800k look through shares counted as treasury stock at Fairfax when we cite a 22 million share count? I assume that these shares are outstanding and not cancelled but could still be handled at treasury stock for accounting purposes (just ask Sardar lol)

Looks like a little cluster of insider purchases in Beazer Homes on the recent price weakness, FWIW https://www.dataroma.com/m/ins/ins.php?t=y&am=0&sym=BZH&o=fd&d=d

It's interesting to look back on a b-share chart and see what looks like a "Fairfax-like" long flat period around my early ownership period. I don't remember it feeling like "7 lean years" at the time - but we were getting great news out of Berkshire and there were plenty of opportunities to buy more stock. Plus I was young and poor so I didn't want the price to do well just yet. The "big drop" that I used to buy the majority of my Berkshire position, the market re-opening after the World Trade Center attacks, barely even shows up on this chart as a blip. I think it fell down to $1900 or $2000 per B-share that week. We got a few more opportunities at that price and a near-round-trip at the lows of the financial crisis in '09. I guess these numbers get multiplied by 50 to get the old b-share price equivalents.

2001 for me

I don't think anybody will have voting control. Nobody has absolute control today. Warren is deemed to control Berkshire today because nobody is anywhere close to his % of the voting power (Warren has 30% of the votes and declining every year). The number of A-shares will continue to shrink through conversions and Berkshire's repurchases. Eventually they will become extremely illiquid and barely trade, which will make them very difficult to transact in for any potential activist. All of the volume and liquidity will be in the B-shares. Fidelity Contrafund will have more A-share voting influence than the Munger descendants. The conversions are one-way and many early shareholders know to convert before donating, convert before selling, or call Mark Millard's number in the annual report to sell to Berkshire.

Thanks to both of y'all for all the Fairfax analysis over the years @Viking @SafetyinNumbers

My hope has been that the need for a second airport well before 2033 (based more on location and commute times / traffic than absolute terminal capacity), coupled with BIAL's 150km "noncompete" will bring Anchorage or BIAL or whatever entity it is into the development project for the second airport. If everyone is happy with the way they are operating / managing / running the current airport - and I see no reason to believe that constituents are unhappy - this coupled with the "noncompete" make them a natural fit for the 2nd concession.

There are a lot of situations like that but you should be able to buy CA:ATZ through Interactive Brokers. Interactive brokers won't let people buy FFXDF either, but has no problem with the actual FIH.U shares

It is important to remember when we are translating all these Indian asset values back to US dollars that there is also the possibility to leak some value on the currency

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/06/bessent-says-trump-is-focused-on-the-10-year-yield-wont-push-fed-to-cut-rates.html this sounds to me like Bessent is going to deliberately cut down on supply of the 10 year for refunding to try to manipulate TNX lower. Not sure that will work but you can bet each refunding announcement will be “benign” - lots of bills!

For anybody who attended the Fairfax India trip / tour this year - was there any discussion of additional airport projects within the 150km zone around BIAL? It seem like there are one or two new airport projects moving forward and I was hoping the negotiation necessary with BIAL would result in Anchorage or whatever operating the new airport(s). Was this discussed on the trip? edit: I should have tried tagging @SafetyinNumbers

I certainly understand why Wall Street would be into the idea. I mean, Blackrock has to manage the governments assets already right? Remember when the Federal Reserve wanted to buy up corporate bonds? Gotta have helpers for that!

No that misses my point entirely. Where does US dollar "money" come from? Does Delta need a fund of SkyMiles held in a reserve somewhere so they have some to give out to you when they need them?

What is the point of the US government having a large sovereign wealth fund? Is it to "make money" in order to have money to spend later? It seems like people are missing the difference between a State that can't issue its own currency, a country that runs a large trade surplus and is forced to stockpile someone else's currency, and the United States - which is nothing like either. Remember how "government owning stuff" is, like, the worst?

It's a strange leap from "the Federal government is horribly innefficient and ineffective in everything they do" to -> let's have them run a sovereign wealth fund even though they have no need for a savings account, they can create legal tender with keystrokes on a computer... But, you know, tik tok... what was that Blagojevich quote? "I've got this thing and it's f'ing golden and I'm just not giving it up for nothing"

If I had to guess, they probably have a different view on the terminal value of the spectrum than the average investor. If the company can continue to generate free cash flow to buy in shares and pay down debt, by the time the core radio business peters out the spectrum they own between Xm and Sirius could be worth a lot. In the meantime it's got a DaVita kind of thing going on. I assume it is Ted Weschler for that reason but I forgot which one I decided it was from the broker used. It's funny that this company went straight from being controlled by Liberty to being controlled by Berkshire.

Well we know one thing Ted or Todd has been buying - https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/315090/000095017025012600/xslF345X05/ownership.xml

He 'gon be alright

Flying in the nice seats up front is nice but it ain't net jets. And you can't really afford to fly private until you are into 9 figures (or at least you probably shouldn't be flying private unless someone else is paying for it). At my wife's old job hand-holding the super wealthy she saw quite a few clients get themselves into trouble by ratcheting up to the private jet set before they could really afford it.

At the rate he was selling BAC I'm not sure there was enough time for him to completely sell it out in Q4. He could have stepped up the pace once he had confidentiality but it seems like he usually moves this aircraft carrier a little slower than that. If he blew out all the BAC in Q4 that would certainly send a message. edit - I asked chatGPT and it told me he would have had to have averaged 14.74 million shares per day on each of the 52 days the NYSE was open between 10/16 and 12/31. That's a lot of stock but I suppose it's doable. Just not very Warren-like This screenshot was his pre-privacy rate ->

Because you are curious how much BAC he sold? Or you think there will be other major changes? Seems like this next one will be awfully boring and predictable but you never know. Do we get the 10Q before the 13F? 10Q should reveal the moves on the top few positions.