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bizaro86

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  1. I think MLB needs gambling money more than they need Shohei Ohtani. MLB is probably the sport that has the most to lose from the bundle/RSN model breaking. I think ultimately MLB needs gambling and wants Ohtani. I think even if it was him it gets swept under the rug. May be he takes a year off as a soft suspension - this year is good as he can't pitch anyway.
  2. I'm not an American and have no political affiliation in that country. I avoid their politics whenever anyone talks about them. But as a shareholder, my strong preference is that Berkshire not consider politics when writing insurance contracts, only premium and risk. I think that's reasonable and relevant to the conversation here. If you've been appointed moderator of the board without me being aware of it then I apologize.
  3. Republicans buy insurance to. Charging high fees for bespoke insurance that no one else can write is what I want Berkshire to do. If they didn't feel his collateral was good then fine, but I hope they aren't giving up lucrative opportunities for political/optics reasons.
  4. I think this is likely to end up happening at some point, especially if buyers commission is removed. On a $1MM house $500 + 15% over 900k provides more incentive to get a good price than 1.5% of total, even though the expected commission is the same.
  5. Yeah. Buyers will be way more price sensitive than sellers, imo, on offering their agents commissions. Sellers feel they need to offer the full amount to attract buyers, while buyers paying their own way will want a deal. Sellers also have a big influx of funds at closing so never really see the commission, while buyers will have to either add to their mortgage or pay cash.
  6. Airlines are often not great for float, because their credit card processors often either keep the money, or require large amounts of restricted cash. AirBNB has tons of float along those lines. For your example, if they have $20 MM of cash from some sort of licensing deal (no ongoing costs) I'd value it at $20 MM. That's exactly like having $20 MM in cash from some other source, except the GAAP shows over many years which doesn't matter, imo. What they do with it is a capital allocation question, but it isn't different than what would they do with $20MM of cash balances.
  7. This. I didn't start investing until late 2008. My results have been better than if I bought and held BRK at that time. That would have probably been lower risk though (and a lot less work).
  8. Since he complained about railroad wages in the letter, I think he wanted to make it clear that while he respects the front line workers he has issues with the politicians. Otherwise "billionaire rail baron complains about front line worker wages in letter to millionaire investors" is a bad look.
  9. I think SIRI will get added to a variety of smaller indices once the Liberty shares are spun off into the float.
  10. I only owned it as a trade. I bought the dip on the short report last week and am taking my profits now. I will never own it as a long term hold, because I don't trust management. I get that's not the consensus opinion on this board (and the last couple of years have been good). But after they had Fairfax India effectively borrow money from Omers at a high rate along with giving them a free upside option on their best asset (the airport) in exchange for getting a mark to charge fees with I'll never trust them. All that said, the short report was obviously opportunistic so it was some easy short term money to pick up. Was able to get a nice round-trip on nearly a 10% position.
  11. I think in a situation like that predicting thr future is less important than controlling the spread of your own outcomes. You can size it like an option and sleep well knowing it's probably a good risk-reward but is a bit binary. If you want to size it larger you need a good hedge. So something that will benefit from gas prices staying the same or dropping, and ideally you want that to have a bunch of leverage. Something like a fertilizer company, or maybe puts on a nat gas producer or nuclear power generator (both of which benefit from high gas prices).
  12. I think reducing the size of the investment portfolio would be a good choice for a post-WEB world. I'm not sure about the "paying capital gains" taxes part of it, that doesn't seem like a great plan to me. If their insurance subs are overcapitalized, couldn't they move a chunk of Apple to the holdco, and then do a swap with shareholders for their BRK shares on a tax free basis? That seems like it would function as a buyback, reduce concentration in Apple (which is no longer cheap, imo), and reduce the size of the securities portfolio which helps the successor be successful.
  13. I hadn't considered them selling ECN, and agree that would be a home run. I'm somewhat skeptical of that, in the same way I don't like accounting for intangibles on finance companies In all seriousness, I agree completely a financial can deserve a premium to TBV (eg Geico) but I'm uncertain that their origination platform delivers high enough ROEs for it to have much intangible value. Probably the best case would be they find an alt-manager looking to expand or someone looking to build private credit capability who pays up. Anyway, ECN seems like a mix of too hard and not rich enough for me right now. I'll probably nibble on the DRT debs, as it seems like management wants to get them repaid, which is a surprisingly important factor in credit investing imo. And the spread is very high. I took a brief look at ACD and sort of like their debs as well, and might add there. Obviously only 11% ytm but I did a deep dive on them years ago and think they do a good job. Recent large write-down not withstanding I think factoring is a reasonably low risk operation. The equity might be the better bet there as it's cheap and a go-private probably pays close to TBV
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