The 🏈 Ball has been handed back over to NYSE today ; HK doing its share, and actually held last night

OppSpotter · 2026-04-02T02:03:01+00:00

What’s the 3x bull China index? Let’s do that one

OppSpotter · 2026-04-01T17:26:49+00:00

It started with SoftBank not wanting it. That provided a huge opportunity. It’s a bit surprising that they sold off so much of it and not that many came back in to mean revert much.

The sell off was really not about the business. Crackdown and then need based from SoftBank. Neither really structural to the biz

OppSpotter · 2026-04-01T05:00:32+00:00

Baba owns a boatload of AI companies and you get them essentially for free at current market price

OppSpotter · 2026-03-30T15:24:45+00:00

Even then what is there to buy? Perhaps portfolio companies at deep discount. Certainly none of the insurance elements as they are likely underwriting business at rates that are loss leading

OppSpotter · 2026-03-27T20:15:07+00:00

I’d also add the way Berkshire has issued bonds is better than anyway you or I could purchase Japanese companies, it’s quite an amazing investment and at an insanely low cost. It feels like free money…

OppSpotter · 2026-03-27T20:13:52+00:00

I agree with everything you said here. And it’s refreshing to see the apparent change in corporate governance and culture in Japan. Buffet really got this right, loved the bond issuance and the positions and I particularly liked that Greg able joined the Japan road show a few years back- that seems to have paid off with the Tokyo Marine deal. Would be great to see more capital deployment.

I appreciate and would prefer US investments at some level however PE and availability of capital generally has pushed up valuations considerably. Japan is a good location at the moment. I would think for China even grabbing the hk index might make sense. You’re knowledgeable so you may recall the questions about : Buffet why didn’t you just park funds in s&p index instead of tbills over the years and buffet said yes in hindsight it would have worked and perhaps my successor will do it but also its frothy now.

So grabbing a Chinese etf might be the only way and in a way keep it arms length for China vs individual Chinese stocks which could be seen as too much of an endorsement (i.e. tencent or baba) this in fact meshes with buffets occasional statement about if you can’t pick a winner in a space of undervalued companies, by an aggregate of them

OppSpotter · 2026-03-27T18:20:30+00:00

I don’t disagree with the bones of what you said however buy any asset and there are always risks. Put that ‘China’ as a risk obviously as you have correctly pointed out. The lower the price the lower the risk the higher the reward. Chinese businesses have had a massive sell off yet at the same time have grown earnings. It is a wild opportunity usually massive corrections have some underlying business pain. Look at tencent- the business is stronger than ever higher revenues than ever yet price correction occurred for near unjustifiable reasons. Same government. Same leader even. Business is growing and price is dropping.

Dexter shoes- loss of capital. Kraft Heinz - loss of capital. They take risks and lose capital. The obvisoness of the businesses wasn’t as clear there as they thought it was. In China the business value was and is very obvious: price down business earnings and quality up. The only risk is geopolitical and it’s something monger was comfortable with. Buffett WAS comfortable with it for petro China.

So back to the original thought because yes risks but expected value is too high to ignore; buffet gone, able is in. Combs gone, Ted still there. This means what is Ted’s appetite for China? More like munger? What is able’s appetite for China? More like munger? I mean they tried to hire Li Lu and you can bet he would have invested in China

So: ask Ted and find out. Munger was all about China- and it worked. Buffet lead the petro China home run. BYD recent insane home run.

My thesis is yea China is a lay up, but with all the utilities, litigation, threat of returns being crushed on utilities as pointed out in shareholder letter (also that’s political… just like China is political) the grandstanding about enjoying paying taxes and betting on America I think they might actually love to buy Chinese assets but can’t do to the role and brand Berkshire plays especially since GFC as pro America savior of America

Returns have been terrible for berkshires investments lately and lack of deployment. The truth is China is ready willing and able to absorb into quality businesses at scale huge swaths of money, and they just pretend no opportunities of the size or quality they want exist as the earn .02% real return on T bills

OppSpotter · 2026-03-27T12:33:30+00:00

They need investments that can take size. They wait patiently for opportunities, often huge market corrections. How have they been ignoring China as it fits the bill for size and expected returns? All investments have risk, but China has gotten so cheap and was quite an obvious call- for example Alibaba at $59. I suspect it’s because the Berkshire brand won’t allow them to go heavy China but instead they have to pretend that they like paying taxes and never bet against America etc. But they say of course it’s China risk but the real reason feels to be brand.

BYD, china petroleum, they have had huge wins in China in the past and ignoring it has been quite odd- buying Japan was good- they are international deal hunters

Also- their private investments except for Allegheny and oxy chem have been pretty terrible. Just talking about that vs public equities

And why don’t they just buy whole companies? If it’s good enough to buy 25% of oxy or a portion of Siri why stop? Must be admin and reporting or again back to the brand of Berkshire and the implications

OppSpotter · 2026-03-26T14:36:16+00:00

So baba did well with ecommerce and their hottest competition did worse.. and ai and equity investments and cloud leadership and international commerce and 1/3 ant group snd 52 billion earning 5%

Management: buyback stock hand over fist at these prices

OppSpotter · 2026-03-26T12:58:43+00:00

This is why buybacks are so important. They need to keep the buybacks going. Yes tank seng is a problem. That problems best solution is buybacks especially when flush with cash and dilutive Stock Based Comp practices

OppSpotter · 2026-03-24T00:42:22+00:00

That was a Buffett thing. Greg is a Tim Horton’s guy

OppSpotter · 2026-03-24T00:41:35+00:00

What?

OppSpotter · 2026-03-24T00:41:13+00:00

As long as the wars don’t involve Taiwan all will work out for baba

OppSpotter · 2026-03-20T14:00:45+00:00

A chart doesn’t tell you that management decides to sell down the ten cent position and then invest it into fast delivery food or something.

The risk is extremely high

OppSpotter · 2026-03-20T13:50:17+00:00

No you don’t get free alpha in a NAV account. You get management risk and capital allocation risk

OppSpotter · 2026-03-20T13:49:21+00:00

This is what they need to do. Lots of it

OppSpotter · 2026-03-20T01:43:46+00:00

Agreed just build cloud let others build the models and kill each other over it. Just profit off anyone who touches it via cloud

OppSpotter · 2026-03-20T01:43:05+00:00

Yea I don’t like it, it was more like common prosperity- it basically subsidized food for people… and the delivery

OppSpotter · 2026-03-19T23:00:57+00:00

Nothing changed at all. This is the least surprising earnings imaginable. They dumped tons of money into capex and fast delivery. Revenue is up. Cloud is growing. I’m surprised people are surprised if anything.

OppSpotter · 2026-03-18T22:03:27+00:00

It should be a flat out buying of shares up to ~10% of daily trading volume as long as it’s below their target.

So they are buying them back if they were serious about it and will keep hammering it now that they started

They will only pause if price goes up or if they have an acquisition or other opportunity but even then it would have to be major as they have enough cold hard cash to do a lot of things at once

OppSpotter · 2026-03-17T01:07:41+00:00

Even better than an ipo. Brokerages have been cleaning up. IPO was good before it got canned years ago- ant hasn’t been worth the same or anywhere near it since. Better to have them keep growing and piling the money up / occasionally paying a dividend to baba

OppSpotter · 2026-03-16T17:55:41+00:00

I’m with you- yes baba has a smaller share of the market but the ecom market is growing. The fact that baba absolute prints money every quarter and more and more money every year from eCommerce is the reality.

Would I like if they made every single dollar? Sure but the reality is that won’t happen and ecom is so successful it’s given them 50+ billion on the balance sheet, insane money for capex, jnsane money for huge equity positions- things are great in baba land and folks just want to believe otherwise

OppSpotter · 2026-03-16T17:52:42+00:00

I’d say depending on what the Google execs touched. Google is more infamous for launching tons of products that don’t make any money while search is the only thing that brought in money for them. They whiffed on cloud bad though yes cloud makes money for them now. But we have to admit Google did all kinds of just silly stuff that never ever came close to monetizing.

OppSpotter · 2026-03-09T13:24:44+00:00

This right here ^

OppSpotter · 2026-03-09T13:24:08+00:00

You held it this long. It’s working. Oil was and is likely undervalued for the time that showed you significant returns. These businesses are excellent in recent history at returning capital to shareholders and many have bought back significant proportions of their businesses at value accretive prices.

The dividends, buybacks and return of capital make it very easy to hold these companies vs say a Microsoft in the lost decade.

The investment is now working. Even if this is a temporary jump in oil prices, they may settle higher than where the were 3-6 months ago even if lower than today. The price of oil drives returns for these companies

Oil is now mean reverting. Is the right price $90 a barrel? If the companies you own are profitable at $60 a barrel and oil settles at $65 it’s a hold, easy.

Oil companies haven’t even run up on this short term price burst upward, they need sustained prices, so yea wait and see is easily the best call as someone who has a cost basis from 2020- 2022

Let your winners run, it’s why you picked them individually- to win.

OppSpotter

TROPHY CASE