gfp

My academic friend has a great current reply - "I'm on unpaid leave." I told him that was my new favorite term for unemployed. I agree with the sentiment about not telling strangers you invest for a living. I usually tell strangers I'm a carpenter (which I am).

Thats been an ongoing thing from the Walter Scott entities. Another increase in ownership will come when Greg Abel converts his stake to Berkshire common shares. https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/27/the-big-berkshire-hathaway-buyback-no-one-is-talki.aspx

This - exactly!

Good catch - I see that now. Sold $6.1 Billion net of purchases for the month of April.

He didn't sell any more Wells - 345 million shares (aprox) at quarter end. Doubt he touched coke either but haven't checked yet (edit: KO unchanged at 400m shares). Apple shares basically unchanged for the quarter as well. Previous to Q1, he had been selling Wells voluntarily - not due to 10% reasons. But he stopped. thepupil has it right - added $4 B and sold $2.1. and plenty of profitable lots along with the tax loss selling. It does not appear that Berkshire expects to record a large insurance loss due to COVID Repurchases totaled $1.7 B worth, but we already knew about $1 Billion worth from the proxy statement share count.

Not to get this topic off track, but this announcement is a big negative for Berkshire's USP subsidiary. USP and Simpson are imbedded in basically all building codes - at least in this country. But Berkshire's USP was available at Lowe's while Home Depot carried Simpson. Looks like USP has lost that relationship. USP is a subsidiary of MiTek. https://www.marketwatch.com/press-release/lowes-to-expand-pro-offering-with-simpson-strong-tie-products-2020-04-29?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts&tesla=y

For me it is good sushi from the restaurant (dine-in). Take-out sushi / delivery is just not the same experience.

Pure & utterly nonsence to me. something can't be utterly nonsense. utterly is an adverb, utter is an adjective and therefor grammatical. so, utter nonsense, yes, but only if you spell it correctly. just wait till you see my Danish spelling and grammar - that’ll really bug you

I trust the Quest Diagnostics test better than some mail-order kit but I'm not going to drastically change my behavior either way. Its more of a curiosity thing I've been wanting to do for a while and finally was able to get one scheduled. It's around $130 where I am going. I've got plenty of free time LOL ( ** update on this - my test came back negative, indicating I have not been previously infected with covid-19 )

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/28/quest-diagnostics-rolls-out-direct-to-consumer-coronavirus-antibody-tests.html So I actually signed up for this yesterday without a doctors prescription and it let me schedule the test for today at 1:45pm (at Quest). Many people in New Orleans suspect that COVID was widespread here by the time of Mardi Gras (MG ended 2/25 this year and is several weeks long) and most of us were really sick for a while after Mardi Gras - which isn't abnormal - but it was awfully bad this year. If I had to guess, I would say I have probably already had COVID with only mild symptoms, but I've been looking forward to taking this antibody test to see what it says.

I thought Berkshire owned 149,497,786 shares of USB as of August 2019 Which went up slightly to 150,088,061 since the 1st of the year. (The event that caused the Form 3 was USB's earnings press release & cc presentation on 4/15/2020 which showed an updated share count of 1,506,000,000)

That should be accounted for by using "a share equivalents" or "b share equivalents"

Looks right. Of course it cost them more than $1.03 Billion to buy because they were buying between those dates and it appears you used todays price to estimate the dollar amount. More than $1.2 Billion worth in three weeks - so a decent rate but they may have stopped buying in the dip just because that's how he seems to do things...

Charlie in WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/charlie-munger-the-phone-is-not-ringing-off-the-hook-11587132006?mod=hp_lead_pos11 Charlie_Munger:_‘The_Phone_Is_Not_Ringing_Off_the_Hook’_-_WSJ.pdf

yikes - a dud acquisition that PCP did a while ago: https://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20200415/NEWS06/912334059/Berkshire-Hathaway-unit-Precision-Castparts-Corp-wins-$700-million-award-over-fr

Yeah, these lifetime memberships are a successful product at Agora (Agora majority owns Stansberry which owns Empire). There is usually a "maintenance" annual fee as well. Its a zero marginal cost business essentially, so money up front is a great deal for the company. Get Whitney's PDF's emailed to your inbox for life! OR however long Whitney works for Agora... The one thing I've learned about marketing is to never underestimate human ignorance ;D ;D ;D

I would just like to thank muscleman for his early 'on the ground' perspective from his family in Wuhan - January 24th seems like a year ago! Certainly got my attention at the time and I know one or two people at my dog park that I shared the story with who started taking it seriously then as well. You could still buy lysol wipes on amazon back then lol

Update from Fairfax - preliminary first quarter results: https://www.fairfax.ca/news/press-releases/press-release-details/2020/Fairfax-Reports-Recent-Developments/default.aspx

Canadian friends of mine tried this - saving on tax by moving to and reincorporating in Puerto Rico - it did not work for them. Perhaps because they still owned property in Canada or perhaps because of where / how the business earns its income.

Morgan are these numbers ($4k-5k per unit) and the caps rates you are mentioning for self storage properties that include the real estate? This one does not. As mentioned above, when push comes to shove the landlord probably already owns this business and its improvements - at the end of the lease term. Without seeing the books and the length of the lease, it really sounds like someone trying to sell his job because he knows his income is about to be halved by non-payment / deferred payment / etc by the ultimate tenants.

A few more details from Bloomberg - "In Asia, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is set to join the record bonanza of corporate debt sales with a multi-tranche sale of yen-denominated bonds maturing in as long as 40 years later this week. The conglomerate is offering 10-year notes with a spread of 100-110 basis points, about double the 50 basis points it paid to sell similar-maturity notes in September."

re: how do we know when its over - Ubiquitous antibody tests - cheap online through amazon and the like, and then a widely distributed and adopted vaccine. Fully back to normal may never happen. Some behaviors will change permanently. But back to normal-ish could be scalable vaccine availability and adoption

6 mile daily dog walks through New Orleans have been pleasant. Plus the city closed the golf course in Audubon Park so its been taken over by the people. The dog is certainly happy. Another positive (or negative depending on your industry) is that it is very easy to get a good price on a car if you want to buy one right now. It's a ghost town out at the dealerships. They'll take just about any offer to get some inventory off their lot.

love the head shots - suit, suit, suit, suit - guy spier looking like a just rolled out of bed

The prime rate is still 3.25% Still plenty of room to earn a spread