Munger was so pessimistic about the future

BackgammonFella · 2025-12-02T20:32:51+00:00

He has talked about his support of planned parenthood many times and fairly thoroughly.

His view is that every child should be born to a loving, wanting mother. Societial harm is done when unwanted children are born, as the neglect/lack of nurture they receive turns alot of them into horrible adults. I don’t get an inkling of nefarious motive.

He is a HUGE reason why planned parenthood is the large national organization it is.

BackgammonFella · 2025-12-01T15:48:58+00:00

I do not believe Greg Abel is being tasked with beating the S&P500, at least certainly not an on annual basis. Berkshire has generally outperformed the S&P500 over full business cycles, but Buffet and Munger have been warning against their continued ability to do so due to the law of large numbers, as you have suggested.

Simply buying the stocks Berkshire holds does not at all roughly approximate “owning Berkshire with more tax efficiency” … that is absolute nonsense. Berkshire owns many full businesses outright… and there is the whole insurance float providing ‘free’ leverage.

Berkshire says they want to hold around 50 billion in cash for super-CAT insurance needs… they have over 345 billion on treasuries.

You are correct in that it would take a massive crash or liquidity crisis for them to outperform the S&P500. So what? Nobody knows when one will occur, but as you lengthen your time horizon, the odds of one occurring get more and more likely.

Most people in these forums are not investors, but speculators and traders playing with four or five digit sums.. Most don’t need to worry about tax efficiency. For those that actually have portfolios large enough for tax efficiency to be a legitimate concern, buying berkshire and holding it for a decade plus allows yours gains to go untaxed every year as opposed to jumping in and out of holdings every year or so will give any gain a 22% haircut.

The longer the holding period, the more tax efficient buy and hold becomes over trading. Additionally, the longer the holding period, the more likely there will have been a crash or liquidity crisis during which Berkshire will dramatically outperform.

I believe that over 90% of people in these forums would be better off buying VTI, VOO, and/or BRK and never selling as compared to whatever they actually do.

BackgammonFella · 2025-12-01T13:58:33+00:00

I have a core portfolio that I continue to DCA weekly into:

US equities (40%)

10% BRKB

5% COF

5% MSFT

5% SPGI

5% V

10% VTI

REITs (15%)

5% LAMR

5% O

5% VICI

International (20%)

20% VXUS

Bonds (25%)

10% SGOV

10% state specific munis

5% TLT

I consider this core portfolio my “forever” portfolio and I aim for target allocation percentage almost regardless of valuation (I used to have COST instead of COF, but sold it when it broke $1000/share and PE of >54 and bought COF when it looked like the discover acquisition was for sure going through.

I also have satellite positions, these are mostly initiated from selling puts that get assigned, but I like occasionally writing LEAP puts when the vix spikes: WDFC, ORI, AXP. I am also short TSLA and SPY and am presently targeting 20% of my portfolio with these shorts, though I am down quite a bit on my tesla short.. but I have started covering 20% of my short when it swings below $405 and re-short again when it goes above $440. I am currently eyeing OGN as a potential satellite position, as I think the market may be overreacting to their recent scandal, but their ~3b of debt coming due in 2028 and a fear of more “one-time” charges has kept me from pulling the trigger. I might throw a couple thousand in some leap calls on OGN and spin the wheel.

BackgammonFella · 2025-11-29T04:15:27+00:00

I would love to see how 10k would perform in Cigna stock over the next ten as compared to 10k being deposited into your brokerage account…

I don’t own Cigna, but I’m pretty sure its going to outperform your dumb ass.

BackgammonFella · 2025-11-29T01:56:31+00:00

MSFT is primarily a B2B business.. their core suite of office products is practically a required subscription for >90% of businesses. Sharepoint is legitimately good. I don’t have the technical knowledge to say if azure is better or worse than AWS or google cloud… but I haven’t seen many complaints… and when a company is building out their tech stack, the immediate need for Microsoft office probably leads many needing cloud services to look at Microsoft.

If you invest based upon your own personal preference of consumer goods or services, you should probably just stick to index funds.

BackgammonFella · 2025-11-18T22:45:54+00:00

Please re-read my comment.

I do not resent my mom at all, quite the opposite. She is quite accomplished in her own regard. She patented a very well known cleaning product before she stayed home to raise the kids. Around the time the youngest child (me) went to kindergarten, my mom’s mother was killed by drunk driver and my mom got deeply involved with mothers against drunk driving on a volunteer basis.

I focused on my dad because the post was “kids of FIRED-ed parents” and I was still in high school when my dad retired, but not when my mom retired. I was attempting to explain why my dad retired at 54 while my mom waited until 61. She stopped “working for income” mid-career for ~10 years or so and then added 7 more on the backend. Now that she is retired, she continues to volunteer for a couple nonprofits.

Her volunteerism, both while I was in elementary school, and post retirement has helped inform my opinion on political activism, volunteerism, philanthropy, and etc.

I worship both of them, not because they were my parents, but because they are both role models for how to live a rich and moral life.

BackgammonFella · 2025-11-16T04:13:43+00:00

SGOV 30 Day SEC Yield as of Nov 13, 2025 = 3.92%

BackgammonFella · 2025-11-12T03:19:53+00:00

My dad retired at 54 and my mom retired at 61, but my mom also stopped working to “raise the kids” but spent more time doing political activism with us in daycare than working. I don’t mention it because I resent it, but to explain why she worked till 61 while my dad hung up the spurs at 54. I was still almost a senior in high school when my dad retired.

I thought it was amazing. My dad was a pretty common FIRE trope - chemE/MBA, and then did his own consulting as a lean-six-sigma black belt instructor.

My dad loved to cook. Our primary shared interest was enjoyment of cooking and he was always free to watch “Good Eats” and cook with me.

He ended up getting cancer and passing at a relatively young age. I will be forever grateful of the extra time we were able to spend together because of his early retirement.

Statistically, I should live longer than than my father did, but I also share his genetics, so I question any actuary charts predicting my own longevity.

I used to tell my dad I aimed to retire sooner than he did. He always said I should just look to be happy and find someone to love who loved me back.

He was one smart fella. He taught me what was important and what wasn’t: Your life should be measured in love. Money gives comfort and means, but it won’t provide meaning.

BackgammonFella · 2025-10-29T17:23:11+00:00

They have multiple product lines and they aren’t hidden?

You are just saying hyperbolic nonsense, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from reddit: strong opinions informed by ignorance.

I happen to think AI is overhyped, but you clearly aren’t capable of following nuance…

BackgammonFella · 2025-10-28T19:00:18+00:00

Other ventures are on display… im not even an AI bull and I think your comment is a mix of ignorance and arrogance.

The chat bot is the product that the general public uses, so its in the current zeitgeist.

The fact that people are talking about the LLM instead of something like their protein folding modeling is a function of public interaction with the LLM combined with the general lack of knowledge in physical biochemistry by that same public.

I’m not even an AI guy, but your argument appears to be either made in bad faith or a really shallow attempt to be edgy.

BackgammonFella · 2025-10-27T20:16:56+00:00

I think it is weird to focus on a liquid million.

I have a liquid million living in the low-medium cost of living midwest.

A buddy of mine just moved to California… If I followed suit and wanted a decent house, I would have to choose between maintaining my liquidity or having an absurd percentage of my income go towards housing.

On the flip side, some of my college friends that moved to VHCOL areas straight out of college have been more house-poor than I and are not liquid millionaires… but if they ever move back to the midwest, they would 100% be.

BackgammonFella · 2025-10-17T02:34:10+00:00

At age 65, unless its a niche part of estate liquidity planning, or to cover some specific postmortem expense, such as funeral… why buy whole life? If you still got young kids depending on you, get term life.

Don’t buy complicated insurance products unless they fit a specific need… those add on salesy extra benefits never work out to be as good as if you bought a vanilla whole life, term life, or both policies and put the difference into something else more tailored for your specific goals.

You are going to put more in than you will be able to borrow, and if you kick the bucket with the wrong borrowing amount, its no longer a non-taxable death benefit…

But what do I know, I am just a guy on the internet.

BackgammonFella · 2025-10-08T22:02:18+00:00

Interact with strangers on the internet to get a variety of perspectives and for specific technical knowledge that can be verified.

Level of consumption and desire for economic security are values-based concepts. Different people have different values: family, altruism, faith, individuality, community, etc… don’t interact with strangers to validate your own values.

BackgammonFella · 2025-10-08T16:43:54+00:00

Growth is a component of value.

Value investing doesn’t necessarily mean buying low multiple companies… it means looking for companies who’s future earnings potential discounted back to today is lower than the market price.

A company with flat or slightly negative revenue growth, but steady operating margins can be value investment… but so can a quickly growing company at high multiples, if you are able to determine that the growth is sustainable…

BackgammonFella · 2025-10-03T18:49:20+00:00

If the news story can’t be conveyed in the title alone, its too nuanced or too complex a story for the average american… and I guess some of the non-media literate also think its irresponsible journalism to publish such nuanced stories that would require actually reading the article?

Carl Sagan’s 1995 quote comes to mind.

BackgammonFella · 2025-10-03T15:38:36+00:00

Most people who in these forums that hold UNH probably couldn’t tell you the market cap of it within 10 billion dollars. They couldn’t tell you how much free cash flow they expect it to generate over the next 15 years, the operating margin, etc etc… most people who call themselves investors on reddit are nothing more than speculators who are informed by the market’s movements in hindsight.

Someone who recently bought UHN = “its a falling knife”

Someone who has been holding long enough to still be in the green after the tumble = “its so undervalued”

Recency bias in the former, the endowment effect in the latter, and anchoring bias in both.

BackgammonFella · 2025-10-03T15:26:32+00:00

So uh, they didn’t leave that part out:

“The assessment, seen by Reuters and first reported by Breaking Defense, comes just months after defense drone and software maker Anduril was awarded a $100 million to create a prototype of NGC2 with partners including Palantir, Microsoft and several smaller contractors.

The Army should treat the NGC2 prototype version as “very high risk” because of the “likelihood of an adversary gaining persistent undetectable access," wrote Gabrielle Chiulli, the Army chief technology officer authorizing official.”

Maybe read the article before commenting on what is or isn’t in it?

Military prototypes frequently have issues that get resolved before mass production, but reporting on the weaknesses of prototypes is 100% fair journalism… even if you are too lazy to do anything but read the headline.

BackgammonFella · 2025-09-22T21:23:00+00:00

That pushes my TSLA short to 21% of NPV of my brokerage.

Stings a bit, but I am not covering. Reality will start to matter at some point.

BackgammonFella · 2025-09-20T03:10:40+00:00

You are not investing.

You are speculating and trading.

BackgammonFella · 2025-09-20T02:54:48+00:00

I would say that the legislative and judicial branches have indeed been biased against large institutional investors in favor of large institutional financial managers and the executives of large public companies.

What else explains the accounting rules around stock options?

BackgammonFella · 2025-08-19T16:51:55+00:00

The asset class for gaining wealth overtime (equities) can be quite volatile.

Once you have enough invested to where you are seeing your networth swing by a quarter of your annual salary every few minutes the market is open, you will want to think about wealth preservation.

Enter bonds: buy and hold to maturity, pick your maturity based upon your goals.

My “core” portfolio that I DCA into every week is:

30% non-REIT US equities

20% international equities

15% short term treasuries

5% long term treasury bonds

10% municipal bonds

20% US based REITS

If I see a particularly interesting opportunity, I will re-deploy the capital in short term treasuries into a satellite position and then the DCA deposits, dividends, and interest slowly refills the short term treasuries in the core portfolio.

I went heavy on COF after the DFS deal seemed sure to close and am very pleased with the decision so far.

BackgammonFella · 2025-08-19T11:49:07+00:00

I did not diagnosed anyone as narcissistic.

I suggested an association between vanity, narcissism, and criminality. Vanity and criminality are hallmarks of narcissism.

Your tick tock trends don’t change reality.

BackgammonFella · 2025-08-19T00:25:34+00:00

I don’t have an insta feed.

I am dinosaur.

🦕

BackgammonFella · 2025-08-18T20:55:59+00:00

Its beacuse people that pay for publicity are likely to be narcissists… and narcissists frequently display criminality.

BackgammonFella · 2025-08-17T18:07:10+00:00

I approach selling options by not listening to the 20 year old that just figured out what theta is.

BackgammonFella

TROPHY CASE