LC

A man’s wife asks him to go to the store to buy some cigarettes, so he walks down to the store only to find it closed. So he goes into a nearby bar to use the vending machine. At the bar he sees a beautiful woman and starts talking to her. They have a couple of beers and one thing leads to another and they end up in her apartment. After they’ve had their fun, he realizes its 3 a.m. and says, “Oh no, it’s so late, my wife’s going to kill me.” He takes his shoes outside and rubs them in the grass and mud, then proceeds home. His wife is waiting for him in the doorway and she is pretty pissed off. “Where the hell have you been?!?!” “Well, honey, it’s like this. I went to the store like you asked, but they were closed. So I went to the bar to use the vending machine. I saw this great-looking chick there and we had a few drinks and one thing led to another and I ended up in bed with her.” She sees his shoes are covered with grass and says, “You lying bastard!!! You’ve been golfing again!!!”

If you look at performance of NA vs EU banks pre-crisis, results were similar. Performance after the crisis was widely divergent, presumably due to EU's zero/negative rate policies. This is my interpretation at least.

Yea that’s proper technique. You’ve gotta pull the finger-lick maneuver to remove excess grease particularly if you’re given a fixed amount of napkins and can’t afford to saturate the napkin’s full absorption potential on the first slice. And don’t go claiming jersey- ignorance, Jon Stewart knew it: http://www.cc.com/video-clips/0ect4f/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-me-lover-s-pizza-with-crazy-broad

LC, i am sitting here in the restaurant laughing like hell and everyone is looking at me like i am a nut. Best laugh i have had in a while and i needed that! Laughter is the best medicine...let’s try to laugh the coronavirus away?

Wow. ZIRP here we come. No need to stock up on toilet paper, just head to the bank! ;D

Thanks benny. IMHO that answer is unsatisfying as he doesn't address zero or neg. rates. Lets look at some of the large banks that Brk holds: Bank / Net Interest Income / Non Interest Income WFC / 47.2 / 44.5 BAC / 45.3 / 42.3 JPM / 50.0 / 53.9 Zero or negative rates will wipe out pretty much 50% of these banks income. ROEs will come down to the 5-7% (being generous) range.

Thanks, I’ll see if I can find a transcript and find those comments. I wonder what his rationale is. In Europe the experience has been exactly the opposite.

Is anyone aware of any analysis done on how zero/negative US interest rates will affect Berkshire? And/or if Buffett has made any comment on this? I would imagine a hit to the large amount of fixed products held at the parent co and the various insurance co's, plus all the bank holdings in the equity portfolio will take a hit. Partly offset by some benefit to the operating companies and rolling over debt.

This thread will be a pretty good case study regardless of which direction COVID 19 plays out.

I’m not positive but I did hear the quote on this forum, possibly from one of our favorite anarchists :) Regardless I think it’s a brilliant quote. It’s all fair to come to different conclusions given the facts and evidence, but that information must be presented!

"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master"

Atrocious.

A fellow rum drinker, and fleur de cana no less! The 7 year I think is incredible, and actually the 4 year is an incredible value. I personally don't like the ultra-aged rums. When I go to costa/nica I practically live on the 4 year over ice; incredibly refreshing in the heat and humidity. Cheers!

I was surprised to see this down 5% or so on Friday. I had gone to costco earlier in the day and it was flooded. Anecdotes here on COBF over the past few days have echoed the same.

ATT/Verizon Berkshire (operationally) Philip Morris

Not the only time either. https://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2019/12/931/524/TrumpJentezenprayer1.jpg?ve=1&tl=1 https://www.au.org/sites/default/files/Trump%20and%20prayer%20day.png https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2019/11/01/15/trump-prayer-final.jpeg Thoughts and prayers aren't going to help in a viral pandemic. Hopefully the CDC still has good people working on this.

Any chance he told you what timeframe constitutes an extended up market stretch?

You fuggin' said it. What a week.

1 bottle? Gotta be bourbon or rye. Probably something from Elijah Craig.

I'm a beer drinker and I don't buy it. Not because of the virus, but because it is not very good. Just got back from the store and wanted to buy corona for the irony factor, but went with wine instead. Gotta be prepared! ;D

Prior to COVID19: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-26/reddit-s-profane-greedy-traders-are-shaking-up-the-stock-market

Another way to think of it is to break it up into its parts: an overall market correction + COVID 19's impact. A lot of people had expressed concerns about market valuations two,three, four months ago. If COVID 19 didn't exist but we still had a market correction - what prices would be reasonable? Market multiples down from 24x to say 20x? Then, layer the COVID 19 outbreak on top of that and ask yourself again, what prices seem reasonable?

Don’t toot my horn - I’m down these last few days. Emotionally the objective is to stay even keeled. There is a spectrum. On one side we have national pandemic and fear totally gripping the US markets, massive sell downs. On the other side, the CDC finds a vaccine in two weeks, and whatever market rebound that possibly entails. The future is unknown but right now everyone is focused on the former and cannot even imagine the latter being a possibility. Guesstimate the odds of each and use that to discount your valuations and amount of dry powder to hold. That’s my goal at least, I’ll prob end up in the poor house voting for Bernie.

I too hope you are wrong. I will say, on the other side of the argument: COVID 19 does not change the underlying cause of high asset prices: very low interest rates globally. It may hurt the productivity side of the equation - low activity, low top and bottom lines. But (if things work out for human society - an optimistic view) this is a temporary problem until normal activity resumes. It has historically paid better to be on the optimistic side of human progress. The alternative is we hole up in bunkers with canned foods and burn worthless paper certificates for heat. I am hoping we somehow make it through this - globally.