bus isn’t bad at all. although i’m lucky to be on an express route
2021ltr.pdf
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Depends on the amount of luggage.
I took the bus to lunch yesterday, despite my car running fine.
Exact same for me but I’m not really sure why.
I take buses from time to time but lots of reasons to avoid. They get stuck in traffic, behind double-parkers, wait a while for people to embark/disembark. Can’t change to a faster route if one’s available. They’re just slower generally.
Berkshire letter. I struggle to comprehend how massive Apple is.
e class="onebox pdf" data-onebox-src="https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2021ltr.pdf">Sure I’ve got 2 hours to take the LA metro that I still have to drive to catch vs. 30 minutes by car.
I do love taking the Subway in real cities though.
It is very weird - I think of Berkshire’s major holdings being Coca Cola, American Express, and Wells Fargo. But those three in total are worth $48.5 billion (and Wells Fargo is donezo), while their holdings of Apple and Bank of America(?!) are worth $207 billion.
Took the bus a ton in Chicago, nyc people did not say good things about their busses
The Bank of America thing has always seemed weird. Are they really distinguishable from JPM?
well if anyone survives nuclear war, russia stonks are going to be an amazing opportunity
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After the nuclear apocalypse, only the cockroaches and Jim Cramer will survive. Cramer will still be pushing the cockroaches to buy Bear Stearns and Lehmen Brothers.
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If I flee to rural Pennsylvania and survive unharmed, locate a crank radio and turn it on, and the first thing I hear is Jim Cramer’s voice, I might drive back towards the fallout zone.
It’s going to be hard for him to survive, though, when the nukes are halfway to the east coast and he’s still in Manhattan, live on CNBC yelling to buy REITs.
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The trick is to envelop yourself is an aura of toxic capitalism so intense that the radiation can’t pierce it.
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I don’t know if I updated this when I bought it, but I’m not going to keep my value-play losers a secret either way. I went for 1/3 my usual allocation on EDU, ATHM, and QIWI. I kept it lower since they’re in countries that are riskier to invest in (China on the first two, Russia on the second).
QIWI is a Cyprus-based company that does like 80% of its business in Russia and the CIS, and it trades on the Moscow exchange with an ADR available in the US. I got in at $7.25 with a liquidation value of $5.12 and a book value of $8.64, with a 15% dividend yield.
Thank goodness I went smaller due to the risk factor, because the crumbling ruble is going to drag this one down a shit load. I tried to get out pre-market, but the Central Bank of Russia put a ban in place on foreigners selling their Russian equities, while also making Russian companies put 80% of their revenue into Rubles.
I was hoping they wouldn’t be able to halt the trading of an ADR on the NYSE, but my pre-market access doesn’t start until 7am EST and it got halted at 6:38 am. Extra annoying since if I had 4am access I would have unloaded it in the range of $4.94 to $5.00.
So we’ll see what happens. Part of the investment was based on them avoiding sanctions because they weren’t based in Russia and weren’t on great terms with the Russian government, which I read into to assume they probably wouldn’t be a Western target and probably weren’t particularly involved in helping the oligarchs move money. That was accurate on the first round of sanctions, but obviously the latest stuff is taking down the whole Russian economy. This is going to be my first loser lifetime on a Graham-based value play, sample size is around 12 to 15. Perhaps the run good is coming to an end, but of course I don’t expect them to all work out in the long run either.
Anyway even with that in mind, as of Friday close, my value plays that I made earlier in February were up 1.6% while the S&P was -2.2% to -3.4% since the entry points (they were made across a couple days). Even if QIWI goes to zero today, I’d be -2.8% so averaged across the entry points I’d be pretty close to matching the S&P.
Still very short-term and small sample size, of course.
Can’t make this shit up. In searching Twitter for news related to QIWI’s trading, the only tweet in the last 45 minutes is a Russian dude who, to the degree I’m able to understand the poor translations on Twitter, is trying to figure out how to get around the SWIFT sanctions so that he can pay camgirls. Apparently he’s thinking he can use QIWI to do so.
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Uber has found a new way to lose money - they have a large stake in a Russian ride share company.
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Softbank loves nothing more than innovative new ways to waste Saudi money.
Really curious what’s going to happen to these Russian companies that trade in the US. Like, the Central Bank of Russia is buying up 1T rubles of shares and they’re banning foreign investors from selling. The NYSE and NASDAQ are either honoring that freeze on ADRs or putting the halt on to make sure they don’t accidentally violate sanctions. That combination will at least temporarily hold values up somewhat.
Wouldn’t be surprised at all if Russia just says that shares of equities held by foreigners no longer exist, go fuck yourself rest of the world. What recourse would anyone have?
That cuts the number of outstanding shares significantly and between that and the state basically buying shares, it would go a long way to preserving Russian shareholders value.
(And this is why I only bought 1/3 my usual allocation even though QIWI was huge value and wasn’t likely to be directly targeted in sanctions.)
get out of any stock that’s connected to russia if you can. best case scenario, you can get some value back in a year+