treasurehunt

Housing prices will probably be affected if the 30 year fixed rate goes from 3% to 6%, but the monthly payment won't come anywhere close to doubling. The monthly P&I actually goes up by just over 42%, as you can verify using a mortgage amortization calculator. When you add in insurance and property tax, the percentage increase in the total annual expense of owning the house is even less - perhaps around 35%. If you look at interest alone, that would be close to double in the early years, but I am not sure why you would look at the interest payment in isolation.

First, $2bn of TRS on their own stock at an average price of $372 vs $1.4bn at $343 in the 4q. By my maths that means they added $600m at $460 per share. Is that how it works? I get $600m at about $440 per share. (2000*372 - 1400*343)/600 = 440.

218.62 on the B-shares 80,998 A share equivalents for $24.7 Billion. 5.2% share count reduction for calendar year 2020. December average basis was 225.73 and he was willing to pay higher average prices, continuing through the first month and a half of 2021. I get $203.30 when I do the math ($24.7 billion divided by 1,500 x 80,998)

Bumped up my FRFHF position by 15%. I think there is a decent chance that Fairfax will have a few very good years starting in 2021.

I was able to sell cash-secured puts on GME and AMC today in my Fidelity account. Got $2.10 for the July $10 strike GME puts and $.53 for the June $2.50 AMC puts. Didn't sell too much because I couldn't figure out who would want to be on the other side of this trade. Any idea who is buying these put options?

Wabuffo, Based on your posts here and DJCO's 10-Q, 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? I was wondering if DJCO is a cheap way to invest in that particular basket of stocks, but it doesn't look that way. I have no opinion on the value of DJCO's business, so the market cap would have to be close to total investments for me to consider it.

Sure, but part of the point in looking at all causes mortality is to sidestep such semantic questions. If you see a lot more people dying in March and April of this year compared to the same period in the last five years, you can reasonably attribute most of the excess deaths to COVID-19 (assuming you don't find some other global phenomenon that could also be a cause). I mean this in the very basic sense that these deaths would not have occurred if not for COVID-19. A few of the excess deaths -- such as a higher number of suicides? -- might be due to the reaction to COVID-19 rather than to the disease itself; and some deaths could be due to folks with other conditions receiving worse care, as Dalal pointed out. Still, I find the excess all causes mortality data to be a decent way of estimating the impact of COVID-19. disagree insofar as mistakes in public policy are being based upon this mistaken view of covid impact. using same analysis, we should shut down country because of prostate cancer, since most every elderly male dies with prostate cancer. I am missing something about your point; I can't quite make sense of the prostate cancer analogy. Just to be clear, all I am saying is that if we expect X people to die based on past experience and in fact X+Y people die, and the only significant difference between the past and the present is COVID, then we can attribute Y deaths to COVID as a first approximation. How does this imply that we can attribute a ton of deaths to prostate cancer because a lot of elderly males have prostate cancer?

Sure, but part of the point in looking at all causes mortality is to sidestep such semantic questions. If you see a lot more people dying in March and April of this year compared to the same period in the last five years, you can reasonably attribute most of the excess deaths to COVID-19 (assuming you don't find some other global phenomenon that could also be a cause). I mean this in the very basic sense that these deaths would not have occurred if not for COVID-19. A few of the excess deaths -- such as a higher number of suicides? -- might be due to the reaction to COVID-19 rather than to the disease itself; and some deaths could be due to folks with other conditions receiving worse care, as Dalal pointed out. Still, I find the excess all causes mortality data to be a decent way of estimating the impact of COVID-19.

Interesting article on excess deaths in March and April in several countries that were hit hard by COVID-19: https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c This article is not behind a paywall. The conclusion is that total fatalities from COVID-19 are likely much higher than reported deaths, even in developed countries that have good reporting systems.

David Tamberrino is no longer covering Tesla at Goldman. Looks like Mark Delaney is the new guy. Apparently he is more bullish on TSLA than Tamberrino. :)

We may have widespread serological tests in the developed countries soon, but I doubt they will be available worldwide. So this initiative might still be very useful for less developed countries.

Got this text early this morning from a friend of mine. He has an MD in internal medicine and is a hospitalist at Sharp Chula Vista (south San Diego). "Things are beyond stressful. This is unprecedented. I learned when we started seeing suspected COVID patients mid last week that we have been basically testing no one. Testing capacity is so incredibly low even this week that everyone showing up with covid symptoms are just sent home without testing and told to self-isolate. Testing is ONLY being done for those sick enough to be hospitalized - and the labs soon got so overwhelmed that even these tests took many, many days to result. We were getting results yesterday for tests ordered last weekend for hospitalized patients. The federal government response couldn’t have been worse. Here we are two months after they were made aware of this threat, and only scrambling to ramp up production of protective equipment and covid testing now. I really am appalled and saddened. Indeed, we are flying blind with regard to numbers. The reported numbers in no way reflect how widespread the disease is.... we have been testing hardly no one. And in the rare instance we do test asymptomatic people (NBA players!) quite a few test positive with no to minimal symptoms. And unfortunately these asymptomatic are indeed the people who are spreading it around to the unfortunate who will end up clogging the hospitals and dying from the disease. These are unprecedented times!"

I have been buying AXP as well. I believe their business model is more flexible than that of most financial institutions. Also, their loan book has relatively short duration, so they won't have to spend years taking charges for bad loans. Capital levels look good as well. AXP rebounded fast after the financial crisis. I am hoping for a repeat here. But I am okay holding for longer if the rebound is slower this time.

EV hacker wk057 on Teslamotorsclub has an open $10,000 bet for anyone who can show him a Tesla with a genuine sudden unintended acceleration problem: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/sudden-unexpected-acceleration-today.114650/page-29#post-3448407 He says he has pulled logs 17 times so far for purported SUA, and the problem turned out to be spurious each time. Having driven a Model 3 for a couple of years now, I can believe that hitting the accelerator pedal by mistake is more likely than with a gas car, since Tesla drivers do a lot of single-pedal driving. Also, there is less time to correct the mistake because of the instant acceleration.

Page 42 of the 10-Q says that cost of automotive sales revenue includes reserves for estimated warranty expenses. I interpret "reserves for estimated warranty expenses" as the provision for warranty costs in the quarter, not the actual warranty costs incurred. I think this makes sense as warranty costs in a quarter don't have much to do with cars sold during that quarter, whereas the provision is an estimate of warranty costs for cars sold. The provision for warranty was about $188 million in Q3 and $119 million in Q2. Looks fairly reasonable.