wabuffo

I calculate that as of today DJCO has total investments of about $280 million compared to a market cap of roughly $366 million. Did I get this right? Yep - based on current prices and ignoring taxes, margin loan. Here's my real-time tracker. I could be wrong, of course. wabuffo

When was DJCO's purchase? He's purchased BYD in a few lots over the years. - Mar-Jun Qs of 2011 - Jun-Sep Qs of 2012 - Dec Q of 2016 wabuffo

it occurs to me you likely meant to ask Wabuffo. DJCO's 13F-HRs disclose US-listed stocks. However Charlie has also purchased two foreign-listed stocks for DJCO (that do not need to be disclosed). The two are 1211.HK (BYD - Hong Kong Stock Exchange) and 005389.KS (Hyundai Pfd 3 - South Korean Stock Exchange). wabuffo

Probably more relevant to the value of DJCO in terms of percent of market cap. For every 1 share of DJCO one also "owns" 4.3 shares of 1211.HK. wabuffo

You can see the topics containing all of the unread posts since you last came to the site or just the topics you've participated in with new posts. Then you can click on only the topics that you are interested in. Thanks for the tip - that is better. I get less of a headache after signing in. 8) wabuffo

Its just not working..... I sign in to read informative investment posts and over half the new message thread on the opening screen is stuff that has nothing to do with investing. And I even put the Politics section on ignore. I'm sure I will get push-back = "but this stuff affects your investments". I really don't agree but its not up to me. Its up to the moderator to moderate here. I've seen a number of once great investing boards descend into chaos this year to the point that I don't even visit them anymore - much less post. Perhaps this is what everyone here enjoys and wants to discuss. That's ok. Reasonable people can disagree about what is relevant and what is not. But its getting to the point that its not worth the effort to wade through an entire screen of what I consider (but other may disagree) are political posts that add only noise. Fwiw, wabuffo

This is becoming a discussion that belongs in the Politics section..... can the moderator please move it there? Thanks.

1) capital gains inclusion go way up. 75 to 100% I don't think it will happen unless the US raises capital gains taxes significantly. Capital is fungible and flows easily across borders. That's different from labor which can't easily cross borders. Canada already has a problem with low investment levels and its main competition for capital is south of the border. When President Clinton cut the US capital gains tax rate to 20% in 1998, it's no coincidence that Canada had to reluctantly follow a few years later (cutting the inclusion rate from 75% to 67% to 50% in 2000). Prior to that, the combined Federal/Ontario cap gains tax rate at the top marginal tax rate was almost 40%. That was a plainly unsustainable 20% delta versus the US rate and thus was cut to a mid-to-low 20% top rate in Canada for much of the aughts. Canada can't afford to create a sizeable gap (current top cap gains tax rate in Ontario = 26.76%) vs the US capital gains tax rate (23.8% including Obamacare net investment income tax). Moving the inclusion to 75% - 100% would raise the cap gain tax rates in Canada to 40-53%. With potentially a divided US government and gridlock for the next four years, its unlikely that the US will be raising tax rates much, if any. There's no way that Canada could afford to open up a 20%+ gap again in how capital is taxed in Canada vs the United States. Much of the chatter about Canada raising inclusion rates was maybe predicated on large tax increases in the US when it looked like a Democrat control of Congress and the Executive Branch. That's unlikely now with Senate control likely in Republican hands. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. It's not happening. And if a Federal government tried to do it, it would be quickly reversed after a few years. They might tinker a bit, but there won't be any big moves. wabuffo

http://investor.pdl.com/news-releases/news-release-details/pdl-biopharma-reports-2020-third-quarter-financial-results-and For my fellow PDLI baghodlers. PDLI releases its Q3 balance sheet in liquidating accounting form. wabuffo

I think owning and watching AAPL may have helped enlighten the old man as to the true force of buybacks. C'mon man - Buffett talked about the importance of buybacks when he owned General Foods in the early 80s and they were buying back stock aggressively. He was around to watch Henry Singleton make his tender offers to repurchase Teledyne stock in the 1970s. Give the Old Fool some credit. I think he understands it full well as he encouraged many of his investees to massively repurchase shares. I think he just wanted to keep painting his canvas and thus never wanted to give back any paint until he absolutely had to. Perhaps he feels he's reached that point. My 2-cents is that he's stretched a lot to keep painting lately with sometimes poor results (Kraft, Oxy, the airlines, PCP) where his shareholders would've been better if he had returned those billions back via buybacks (not dividends). wabuffo

My line of work has involved repairing fractures. So a financial orthopedic surgeon! Interesting. 8) wabuffo

Was that legal? Well they did it and issued a press release saying they were doing it. https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/pages/hp1144.aspx More importantly is that why it is super unlikely the US Treasury should not default because the Fed can just payoff their debt? Seems like this could be highly inflationary if done routinely. LH -- follow your thinking. There's nothing being "paid off" - its just a swapping of liabilities. But the liabilities are still real. They are just financed differently. If the Fed buys debt directly from the US Treasury what does it change? If the US Treasury swaps $100b in 30 year T-Bonds with the Fed, and then spends it, here's what happens: Fed swaps T-Bonds for a "deposit balance at Treasury's General Account" with the US Treasury 1) Federal Reserve asset: +$100B T-Bonds Federal Reserve liabilities: +$100B Tsy General Acct balance Treasury spends the $100B which gets deposited in the US banking system 2) Federal Reserve liability: -$100B Tsy General Acct balance Federal Reserve liability: +$100B Bank Reserve Balances So, net, net - we get $100B of spending which would've been funded by the US Treasury issuing $100B in new 30-year Treasury Bonds (a liability of the US Treasury) but instead we still have $100B of spending but instead it's funded by bank reserves (a liability of the Federal Reserve). The Federal govt (on a consolidated basis) still has "debt" of $100B. Is it better that it is funded by debt at the Federal Reserve than at the US Treasury? Is it even cheaper to do it this way? Perhaps in the short-term, the rate on excess reserves is lower than the fixed rate on a 30-year Treasury, but that short-term rate is variable whereas the rate on the 30-year is fixed. Will it continue to be cheaper in 5 years, 10-years, 30-years from now vs the fixed current yield from issuing a 30-year Treasury bond today? Inflation can always occur due to excess spending, but "monetization" of Federal debt is a nonsensical issue. If someone starts hand-waving about "monetization of debt", you should just ignore them. Its like someone trying to talk sports and saying "I think Tom Brady is going to hit 30 home runs for the Tampa Bay Lightning this year" -- you hear that and you just snicker. The core issue is deficit spending levels vs GDP, not "how its financed". Hope this helps. wabuffo

How do I do this? 1) Go to "Profile" 2) Go to "Ignore Boards Options" 3) Click on "Politics" board (check mark in box) 4) Click on "Change Profile" button at the bottom Done! Enjoy the peace and quiet in your "recent posts" list. wabuffo

i would offer the opinion that the 27T number may look completely irrelevant. Thanks for your thoughts, CB. Can we also agree that the $27T number is not just irrelevant, its plain wrong? As of yesterday's Fed H.4.1 report (plus US Treasury's daily statement for the same day), the total liabilities of the Federal government (currency in circulation + bank reserves + Treasury debt held by the public less that held by the Fed) = $21.648T. The private sector has decided it wants to hold the portion of its wealth ($21.648T) that is in US Federal Govt assets ("money") in the following mix: a) cash (9.5%) [currency in circulation] b) demand deposit (13.8%) [bank reserves] c) time deposit (76.8%) [Treasury bills and bonds] If our total wealth doesn't change, but the Fed switches some our wealth from time deposits to demand deposits, why does the Fed think we will spend more? (ie, more consumption and investment). If one thinks about it that way, it shows how ridiculous the Fed's policy is. Plus, as I've shown before, lowering interest rates hurts savers more than it helps borrowers - so savers save even more, further hurting consumption. The savings from interest rates may not even hold. When the Fed buys Treasuries, it is swapping a long-term fixed interest rate (interest rate on a, say, 30-year Treasury bond) for a short term variable rate (interest rate on excess reserves). While in the short-run that might lower the interest rate the Govt pays (and I'm including the Fed here as part of the consolidated Federal govt), in the long run it could actually cost more if rates rise. Its crazy, stupid policy. wabuffo

Interesting and helpful as always and this is a reply, not to attack you, but to attack the foundations upon which you stand Sorry CB - I'm kind of dense so I don't really understand what you are trying to say (attack?). Is your point about MMT? Is it about bank reserves? From a monetary system perspective: 1) If the only thing happening is the Fed is buying Treasuries in order to increase the size of its balance sheet (and the US Treasury is running a balanced budget). Then, yes, the Fed will convert the US commercial banking sector's assets into a greater percentage of cash assets (reserves) while total assets more or less stay constant because the Fed is swapping a bank asset for another bank asset and not creating any new asset. 2) If the only thing happening is the US Treasury deficit spending while the Fed stands pat (rolls over its Treasuries but doesn't add or subtract from its pile). Then the US commercial banking sector's cash AND total assets will grow together (ie - a new asset will be created - a reserve balance; as well as a new liability - a bank deposit). This was the Meta example. 3) When both are happening - then both the cash assets will grow slightly faster than total assets. If this is what you are arguing, I have no dispute with this and the data would show the same thing. This is much of what has been happening since March (unless you are Wells Fargo and are under a hard asset cap due to being in the Fed's penalty box). wabuffo

<b><i>The numbers will help to explain if the main goal of the Treasury is to use the Fed General Account as a checking\deposit account or to soak up reserves in order to help banks (banking system).</b></i> <b><i>Opinion: it’s likely that the correlation that has recently happened between growing excess reserves and growing Treasury cash balance at the Fed will break down. </b></i> Agree to disagree. You know where I stand on this. The US Treasury set the same goal for Q3 ($800B at the TGA) and didn't even try to hit it. I don’t believe them. The Fed asked them to increase the size of their TGA account to help the banks. Here's what reserves would've looked like if the US Treasury kept its TGA at its historical $400B average target (click on charts to view full-size). Bank reserves would've grown to over $4.2t (or over 20% of total bank assets) which is a real problem when total assets only grew by $1.5t. After having spent some time on this, i must admit that my level of confusion has only increased about today's markets. ...When the Treasury credits a private account with money, it also (pretty much simultaneously for practical purposes) records a matching liability Its actually pretty simple as you've stated it. What is money? Is it a unit of account or is it actually always a fiat government liability? I think the latter. As I've indicated elsewhere, you need to consolidate the accounts of the US Treasury and the Fed on one side and the private sector on the other. The Feds (Treasury and Reserve) have three types of liabilities (with balance sheet amount as at 10/28): The US govt gives you a choice on how you want to hold your govt asset (in effect you can have it as cash, demand deposit or time deposit). 1) Currency in circulation ($2,042.7b) 2) Bank Reserves ($2,947.3b) 3) Treasury Debt, net held by the public less any Federal Reserve holdings. ($16,546.7b) Here's a chart for this year that shows the growth in total of all three added together (these are the private sector's asset holdings of Fed govt liabilities). The real rapid growth happened in March-May. IMO, the ‘real’ money creation is from the banks, through the fractional reserve system. Go back to the three types of Federal govt liabilities above. Total bank credit since the crisis has only grown by $818b. So how did total holdings of Fed govt liabilities grow by almost $3t? Where did that "money" come from? As agents of the Federal Reserve banking system, banks can create some money by following the regulations they operate under, but the vast majority of money (in terms of money as a Federal govt liability) is created by the US Treasury. Go look at the Q2, 2020 involving the US Treasury, the CARES Act EIP debit card program and Meta Financial (CASH) to see a micro- real-world example of how this works (no lending involved there, yet CASH doubled its assets in one quarter). wabuffo p.s your bank cash assets don't make sense to me. Total reserves (i.e, cash assets) are nearly $3t now.

Agree on Queens Gambit. Very good. The series used a renowned chess master to create realistic games for all of the chess play on the show. https://www.indiewire.com/2020/10/queens-gambit-netflix-chess-expert-bruce-pandolfini-1234594484/ Websites already appearing giving color commentary that analyze the chess play and provide explainers for all the chess scenes - episode by episode. https://www.chessbase.in/news/The-Queens-Gambit-Episode-1-review wabuffo

<b>Hearing good things about the mini-series The Queen's Gambit, but haven't seen it yet.</b> Two episodes in. It’s outstanding so far. wabuffo

Is the business is secular decline? It's hard to say. It makes specialized nanotechnology sensors that have very specific and defined applications in medical and industrial applications. Its main markets are hearing aids, pacemakers, and various industrial uses. While it's trying to innovate, I think its revenue trends follow these three markets. Due to the pandemic, I think its pacemaker business was down quite a bit this summer (but is coming back as surgeries were deferred but not cancelled). I think that unless one of its end customers gets out-innovated (say Abbott in pacemakers and NVEC loses business because Abbott loses business), it's probably a stable, annuity type of business. But I'm not sure about that. wabuffo

NVEC - small cap ($225m mkt cap). Consistent, after-tax net income margins of 45-55% year-after-year. Dividend yield of 8.5% currently. Nice, safe, boring, little Minnesota tech company. wabuffo

I'd very much appreciate anyone with a data set of Berkshire share prices as of the end of each year dating back to 1965. wabuffo is likely the gold standard for this kind of info As CB notes - its easier to find hi-lo quarterly prices, but year-end closing prices are tough to get. You can use this site to get prices for a specific trading day going back to 1984. https://bigcharts.marketwatch.com/historical/default.asp?symb=brka&closeDate=12%2F31%2F84&x=0&y=0 I guess you could try old S&P or Moody's manuals at a library for data going back to the 1960s and 70s. Are you looking for just year-end closing prices or high-low quarterly prices as well? wabuffo

How can the "Changes in Inventory" be positive on the cash flow statement? If the inventory decreases on the Balance Sheet, doesn't that mean that it went through the COGS, thus not needing to go through the CF Statement? Its very likely that I am not understanding your question. But when you say "changes in inventory" is positive on the cash flow statement - do you mean positive as in a source (rather than use) of cash? If so, then this is perfectly consistent with a decrease in inventory on the balance sheet. My answer seems so pat - that I'm guessing that I've totally misunderstood your question. If so, can you please clarify your question? Perhaps you could even refer to the specific set of public company financials to which you are referring? wabuffo

so what is the Treasury trying to achieve here? To help the Fed? I think you already know my perspective. Borrowing by the US Treasury is a reserve balance mop-up operation to absorb bank reserves that accumulate in the banking sector when the US Treasury net spends. There was a ready, fire, aim approach to the crisis by both the Fed and the Treasury - so in this crisis, there was a simultaneous Treasury debt buying operation by the Fed (asset swap that increases bank reserves) + massive deficit spending via the Treasury through the CARES Act (creates new bank deposits in the banking sector but also increases bank reserves). The banking sector was getting the asset side of its balance sheet massively converted to deposits at the Fed earning zero. I'm sure there were alarms raised by the big banks by early April (especially with the big April federal tax season also postponed that would've drained some reserves). But let's back up and look at the numbers. I took a look at the US Treasury Daily Statements from March 11th (the Tom-Hanks-has-the-virus/NBA-cancels-a-game night that unleashed the all-hell-breaks-loose financial panic) to today (I'm using 9/30 - the latest Fed H.4.1 report o/s). Here are the numbers. The US Treasury spent $2t more than it received. But it issued $1.4t more in debt than it needed just to maintain its settlement balance at the Fed at a constant amount (000s). US Treasury total expenditures less total receipts (ex. Public debt issues/redemptions:)($2,083,088) US Treasury public debt issues less public debt receipts: $3,492,430 Net Change in US Treasury general account balance at the Federal Reserve: (A)$1,409,342 We can foot these numbers with the change in its federal reserve account deposit balance as reported by the Fed. US Treasury general account balance at 9/30/20: $1,781,679 US Treasury general account balance at 3/11/20: $372,337 Net Change in US Treasury general account balance at the Federal Reserve: (A)$1,409,342 So why did the US Treasury borrow so much more than it needed? Since the GFC, it typically runs its account balance at around $400b +/-. I believe it was to help the banking system by soaking up $1.4t in settlement balances that would've remained in the banking sector. When the US Treasury issues a $1000 bond, it moves $1000 from the banks' reserve balances at the Fed to its own account. (asset swap). I drew up a week-by-week chart to compare what bank reserves would've looked like if the US Treasury kept its balance at $400b every week vs what they actually came in at. The orange line is the actual weekly reserve levels while the blue line represents where reserves would've been if the US Treasury didn't help the Fed out by building up its general account (even if it didn't need the "money"). IOW, the Treasury's general account would remained at $400b every week - and borrowing would match net spending. Remember the commercial banking sector has ~$20t in total assets - so bank reserves w/o the Treasury's help would've exceeded 20% of all assets (earning basically nothing). I would also point out that this crisis is a little different than WWII or even the GFC. During WWII, the US was still under the gold standard - so the reserve currency was gold (and not the USD). During the GFC there were also aggressive responses by both the US Treasury and the Fed -- but in opposite directions. The Fed was running an interest rate target with no excess reserves. In the financial panic of 2008, fed funds rates were spiking - so the Fed was selling Treasuries (not buying them) - the so-called "Treasuries for trash" program. In fact, here too, the US Treasury issued debt to help out the Fed but in a different way. In a one-off, double-secret probation letter kind of deal, the US Treasury sold ~$560b of short-term bills directly to the Fed (Fed is only supposed to buy in the open market). The reason was that there was a real worry that the Fed was going to run out of "bullets" (ie Treasuries) on its balance sheet because of Treasuries-for-trash. This is also the point in my ramble where I take my obligatory swipe at the bureaucratic stupidity of the Fed's responses to external stimuli. The whole point of the Fed's aggressive buying of Treasury assets was to increase its share vs the private sector's share (so as to reduce "supply"). But because the Fed needed to be bailed out by the US Treasury as noted above, the Fed actually owns a smaller percentage of US Treasury net assets than it did before the crisis started. Doh! wabuffo

Active suppression of interest rates (ie as the last example of this secular trend: the Fed absorbed most of the debt issued so far peri-Covid) has made it easier to issue debt (this point should not be controversial). Is this a good thing or is this the ideal choice? I think its controversial because I believe its wrong. What if the conventional wisdom has the causation totally backwards? What if the reality is that the US Treasury issues debt to help out the Fed, (instead of the Fed buying Treasury debt to help the US Treasury "borrow")? wabuffo

more PDLI (even though I own a lot already). wabuffo