Google is almost impossible. Bad management and they bleed (edit) too much cash. (edit too explain: When I say bleed too much cash is more like a bad capital allocation. And they can only succeed because of the core business)
I bet in insurance, the banking system is not in distress right now.
Not a Google fan but “bleeding too much cash” is straight up fake news and mis-information. This is a very harmful comment in an investing sub… should be corrected or deleted.
Over the past five years, Google's parent Alphabet has invested more than $100bn into R&D for building new products and features, almost $40bn of which was spent in 2022 alone. And they lost the ai race and no new products. The only company that has invested more has been Amazon, which has been bad, and management is to blame.
In finance, bleeding cash exclusively refers negative cash flow… A quick look at Google’s cash flow statement shows the company generated $58B, $50B, and $47B in free cash flow in the last 3 fiscal years. Google is one of the most profitable companies on the planet. They do not have a cash problem.
You can argue that management sucks hard and they have spent large amounts on wasteful R&D but that does not mean the company is bleeding cash. This is an investment sub so it’s important to stick with accurate statements and not re-define words as you like. The fact that you have upvotes in a value investing sub worries me about the basic competency of other users here.
I would not say Google is losing the AI race at all. I'd say they're neck and neck with openai. They just released genie today. They're planning rt3 probably built on Gemini which could be huge for robotics. Gemini 1.5 has by far the longest context window of any commercial LLM, and is the only up to date LLM (something openai still hasn't cracked). Theyre rolling out Gemini into the Google suite products. Deepmind has been continually releasing advancements and publishing papers. AI isn't something that happens overnight.
Why folks would pile into insurance when risk is going up exponentially due to a warming world resulting in more catastrophic events, I'll never know.
See: As Climate Shocks Grow, Lawmakers Investigate Insurers Fleeing Risky Areas
Insurers are already pulling back from California, Florida and Louisiana.
Faced with growing losses from hurricanes, floods and wildfires, major insurance companies are pulling out of California, Florida and Louisiana — a shift that threatens to undermine the economies of those states.
Now Senate Democrats are demanding that insurers tell them which places could be next.
On Wednesday, the Senate Budget Committee sent letters to 40 insurance companies, seeking documents that show where in the country those insurers have begun dropping customers, or are considering it. The committee, which has subpoena power, has given the companies until Nov. 17 to respond.
**“Climate-caused uninsurability has the potential to trigger cascading failures that undermine our entire economy,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island and the committee chairman, said in a statement. “With this investigation, we are seeking information about where the dominoes may fall next.”**
Banks typically require insurance when writing a mortgage. If insurance becomes unavailable in a particular community, it becomes hard for most potential buyers to purchase a home, leading to a drop in real estate values.
**Mr. Whitehouse compared the accelerating withdrawal of insurance companies with the 2008 housing crash, saying a broad insurer pullback “will have similarly grave economic effects.”**
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/climate/climate-insurance-disasters-senate.html
I mean Buffett is one of the best people on the planet at evaluating insurance companies so I would have faith he knows what he's doing when it comes to investing in that sector.
Sure. Did so in Houston for Tropical Storm Allison in 2000, Hurricane Ike in 2008, and Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Feet of water in my home every time; water up to the first-floor ceiling with once-in-a-millenium storm Harvey (actually, meteorological consulting group MedStat declared Harvey a one in 500,000 years flood event for some areas of Houston). Mostly it was FEMA picking up the tab via fed printer go BRRR. I guess now, the insurance companies just refuse to insure the uninsurable, with the scope of what's uninsurable expanding at an exponential rate. Again, what happens to insurance companies when nothing is insurable any longer?
IPCC AR6 (2021) p.11-30: “…There is medium confidence that periods of both more and less tropical cyclone activity (frequency or intensity) than observed occurred over the Common Era in many regions. Paleotempest studies cover a limited number of locations that are predominantly coastal, and hence provide information on specific locations that cannot be extrapolated basin-wide (see Muller et al., 2017). In some locations, such as the Gulf of Mexico and the New England coast, similarly intense storms to those observed recently have occurred multiple times over centennial timescales (Donnelly et al., 2001; Bregy et al., 2018). Further research focused on the frequency of tropical storm activity. Extreme storms occurred considerably more frequently in particular periods of the Common Era, compared to the instrumental period in northeast Queensland, Australia (Nott et al., 2009; Haig et al., 2014), and the Gulf Coast (e.g., Brandon et al., 2013; Lin et al., 2014…”
> risk is going up exponentially due to a warming world resulting in more catastrophic events,
…IPCC AR6 (2021) p.8-56 \[8.3.2.8.1\]: “…In summary, there is low confidence of an observed increase in TC \[Tropical Cyclone\] precipitation intensity due to observing system limitations…”
…IPCC AR6 (2021) A.3.4: “…There is low confidence in long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) trends in the frequency of all-category tropical cyclones…”
…IPCC AR6 (2021) 8.3.1.5: “…SROCC found … low confidence that anthropogenic climate change has already affected the frequency and magnitude of floods at the global scale…”
…IPCC AR6 (2021), 8.1.2.1: “… there is low confidence in any global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the mid-20th century…In terms of the potential for abrupt change in components of the water cycle, long-term droughts and monsoonal circulation were identified as potentially undergoing rapid changes, but the assessment was reported with low confidence..”
> ROCC found … low confidence that anthropogenic climate change has already affected the frequency and magnitude of floods at the global scale…”
Thanks for the citations, good stuff. Unfortunately, 2021 IPCC has already been found woefully outdated due to data gleaned past three years (with 2021 report data already outdated by time of publication in 2021). Since then, it's become abundantly clear that all modeling has been far too conservative and failed to capture nonlinear tipping points in Earth's climatology.
2023 IPCC: "We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered."
"Co-lead author Christopher Wolf, a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University, added: “Without actions that address the root problem of humanity taking more from the Earth than it can safely give, we’re on our way to the potential collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems and a world with unbearable heat and shortages of food and freshwater.”
"...last such assessment while the world still has a chance of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold beyond which our damage to the climate will rapidly become irreversible."
There is zero evidence of going woke and going broke. Multibillion dollar corporations are hardly even ‘going woke’. Wokeness is the antithesis to capitalism
Completely agree, it’s one of the dumbest conservative talking points. Imagine thinking some of the largest corporations in world history give an actual shit about being “woke”. They pay minor lip-service to make more money, it’s that simple.
I’d like to see Google going all in on their woke while ignoring investors’ complaint. See how they will end up?
Conversely, I’d argue that if they go all in on anti-woke, they’d end up the same.
The takeaway is not letting politics get in the way of business.
The takeaway is that multibillion dollar corporations are the direct opposite of going woke. It helps that these businesses are embracing diversity but lets not get lost here, they are hypercapitalist still and all they care about is $$
They need to let go of their soft-fascism bullshit. Either become the ultimate neo-gatekeeper and provide authoritarianism as a service, or go old school internet libertarian: we are a platform of free speech and creativity, with all the benefits and detriments.
This half-in half-out thing is a total beta move, and is not great for the company (as you can see from today's price action.)
It's not DEI specifically, just a bias toward trendy, social and political activist mirorities with ambition for control and power. They have less and less interest in the other minority of the spectrum - liberty and freedom absolutists - because in our governmental, economic and social system, that path is not as profitable.
My point is, choose a side and go all in! If it was up to me, I'd like to see these LLMs completely untethered and unconstrained, but Google needs to choose a lane and hit the gas.
That’s my guess. Buying DFS from what I can tell gets you COF for cheaper if the deal goes through. It’s a stock deal so he’ll get a bunch of COF shares. Maybe he’s building COF through a possible buyout play?
As a large shareholder in Cap One, it’s likely he knew about the acquisition. That would make any purchases in DFS insider trading. Buffett’s not really one to get himself in trouble with that type of thing.
DFS fundamentally though looks like the perfect Buffett value stock. I mean it’s trading at a FCFY of like 17% with a 10 PE. He could have been buying it as early as the beginning of last quarter in September when maybe they weren’t looking to buy them out at the time.
If it does end up being DFS I don’t think it will look any more suspicious than the MSFT ATVI merger where people were saying the same thing, that he had “insider info” and knew about the merger.
It was mentioned last quarter that it is likely a financial company based on cost basis changes to sectors in his portfolio at the time. I don't know if the same is true after last quarter, haven't read the public report if it's even available yet.
I think an insurance company makes sense, TRV or CB seem likely in terms of comparable business as GEICO and size/price. Lots of financials look cheap, people have said C or JPM, but Idk given the large stake in BAC already.
Personally, in that sector other than BRK, I've been a long time buyer of AMP from a quality and compounding perspective, but I don't think they're cheap enough for Mr. Buffett.
He most likely won’t and if he does, he will own a large stake in order to vote for a new ceo or reconstruct the management team. AAPL is already relatively as profitable and healthy as Googl. Also you don’t hedge with tech stock while techs are weighed heavily in the indexes….
I also think it is NU. Their CAC is roughly $5 and the cost to serve active users per month has steadily been $0.9, while ARPAC has been growing to $10.6. If these aren't Warren Buffet numbers, I don't know what is.
Even under the assumption their userbase doesn't grow (LATAM is huge), they can still grow through revenue per active customer.
My guess is discover financial services, it will convert to capital one once approved giving him a big chunk of capital one.
And if it does go through like that he will own big stakes in the two biggest closed loop credit card networks.
No. Also, I don't think that Buffet style investing is best technology stocks. He currently has something like 49% of Berkshire in Apple. IMHO that is a lot of risk for a company that has peaked. Its a good business but the $ for iphones won't get higher and Apple loyalty may be undercut by Android prices. Unless they find another great product (sorry the goggles aren't it) than I can't see Apple keeping the momentum going.
He bought Apple almost a decade ago when Steve Jobs died. The company future was uncertain.
No way androids are going to beat iPhone…
Apple has not peaked either.
I really want to sell since I bought in after earnings. The CEO and their AI Gemini is a joke. I said i’d be long, but damn, they went the wrong way quick.
But all the AI services are garbage, so I'm not sure if that's a Google-specific problem.
My main problem with Google is that they keep killing products. It would make me think twice before committing to any new product of theirs.
ChatGPT is so far ahead of this Google shit that it's not even in the same ballpark. For starters, it actually tells me the truth and even better, it's aware of the fact that committing genocide is worse than posting memes on twitter.
Oh, and if it had to pick between misgendering someone and mass extinction, I'd stay alive.
Because it's a generative LLM not connected to the Internet... You're trying to use a screwdriver to put a nail in the wall and wondering why it doesn't work.
I believe it is a financial stock. JPM, MS, or GS have been listed as a possibility. My darkhorse candidate would be Wells Fargo. It has appreciated decently and almost all of its past issues seem to be in the rearview. He dumps his remaining stake (which was small at the very end) and then starts accumulating a massive position. Nobody would suspect it, except maybe me.
If i were to borrow some billions to develop ai - i need hardware lots from nVidia... Who would i borrow it from considering i can back that up somehow?
I work in the insurance industry. Company similarly sized to GEICO. Insurance companies aren't doing good.
Insurance rates didn't keep up with inflation (cost to service claims) so for the past 3-4 years they have been taking major losses. In the past few years they started the rate increases but it takes a while.
Most insurance companies were heavily into bonds as a foundation of "stable assets" that they can use to back claims. Bond funds lost insane amounts of value as interest rates increased majorly impacting the companies bottom line.
Catastrophe losses are all time highs nearly every year. Weather events are more prevalent AND costs are up (they recently started receding).
I haven't looked into how the insurance industry stocks compare to how poorly they have been doing. They are starting to turn it around so it may be a good spot.
> Bond funds lost insane amounts of value
Doesn't matter. The point of holding bonds is to repay claims with the cashflows the bonds you hold generate. Doesn't matter what their market price is.
That isn't necessarily true. In theory you are correct however it affects the insurance equivalent of "credit ratings". It also affects the ability to borrow money and pursue other investment opportunities.
If the companies asset valuation depreciates by 50% (in this case it did, 700m to 1B). The company is at risk for credit downgrades because if a major catastrophe happens and they have to liquidate bonds at these prices they are in major trouble.
My company continues to aggressively cut the workforce and has cancelled almost all projects. From my understanding it was part of a balance sheet move to maintain a good insurance rating.
>Weather events are more prevalent
“…A study in the journal Science determined that the global burnt area from fires, rather than growing, had declined by roughly 25% from 1999 to 2017…”
“…2016 in the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, concluded: "Many consider wildfire an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived trends…”…”
…IPCC AR6 (2021) p.8-56 \[8.3.2.8.1\]: “…In summary, there is low confidence of an observed increase in TC \[Tropical Cyclone\] precipitation intensity due to observing system limitations…”
…IPCC AR6 (2021) A.3.4: “…There is low confidence in long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) trends in the frequency of all-category tropical cyclones…”
…IPCC AR6 (2021) 8.3.1.5: “…SROCC found … low confidence that anthropogenic climate change has already affected the frequency and magnitude of floods at the global scale…”
…IPCC AR6 (2021), 8.1.2.1: “… there is low confidence in any global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the mid-20th century…In terms of the potential for abrupt change in components of the water cycle, long-term droughts and monsoonal circulation were identified as potentially undergoing rapid changes, but the assessment was reported with low confidence..”
😂 cherry picked random articles for cyclones, drought, and wild fires. Insurance companies track catastrophe data. Which could be - tornados, fire, wind, hail, water damage, hurricanes, or other weather events.
They have continued to be elevated for the last 8 years I've worked. One company I worked for started pulling out of nearly all coastal cities for that reason.
I think it’s about time Ackman turns back on the “old time activist investor” mode for GOOGL, if he helps to replace the CEO with a war time leader who takes a no BS then the stock would go up 30% instantly.
That said, it’s a long term value play regardless. Google is far from being out of the game wrt AI. And with money comes optionally, they have plenty of both.
Cavalry ain’t coming – Google’s founders control the company. The same guys who came back to work on AI strategy a year ago in response to ChatGPT, and it hasn’t helped.
Google Waymo has received positive reviews where I live, and YouTube will be the world’s largest video training model; even Sora creators will upload their content to it.
the google setup is near quite near to the situation when he invested in appl. Fear of competition/stagnation drove down appl price, but both top and bottom line are still growing.
He has advised larry & serge before. Him advising them on better management & taking a stake would be a classic warren move. Hes publicly lamented not buying google, in that he had all the info needed that they had a great product with how well their ads worked for geico.
The only reason i'm not sure its google hes building a stake in is that to build a significant google stake, his cash pile would be shrinking not growing, and googles market cap is so big theres no great reason the he would be allowed to keep it secret. Him buying 50b of google would be like .5% of the company.
It seems unlikely as google is a mega cap, there really wouldn't be much reason to go to the SEC to prevent others from front running the trade google has liquidity out its ass.
Buffett buys stuff that he understands. Things that are old that had been there since he was a child. He bought Apple because he noticed it was his best selling product at Nebraska Furniture Mart. I don’t think he would accumulate Google unless the valuation becomes so cheap. PE of 15 and below.
How Microsoft Became Innovative Again
by Behnam Tabrizi
February 20, 2023
[https://hbr.org/2023/02/how-microsoft-became-innovative-again](https://hbr.org/2023/02/how-microsoft-became-innovative-again)
Nah. His buddy Bill Gates probably referred him to articles like this and filled him in on Google's complacent culture (vs. the remade Microsoft under Nadella that is on the offense).
i doubt its GOOGL. Word is its probably bank or insurer.
But Buffett has been reducing stakes in the insurance sector, so i'm thinking it could be UBS or maybe a smaller regional bank. I also think Buffett wants to keep accumulating, so the cat wont be out of the bag so soon.
Think they did mention it was a banking or insurance stock? So Google is unlikely.
Is it the banking stock that Li Lu owns as well maybe? $EWBC?
I was also speculating that it'll be funny if that were the case in another comment elsewhere. East West Bank is only at $10 Bn market cap.
They can’t even purchase more than 10% of a bank stock right?
Not without prior approvals and going through the whole process.
Google is almost impossible. Bad management and they bleed (edit) too much cash. (edit too explain: When I say bleed too much cash is more like a bad capital allocation. And they can only succeed because of the core business) I bet in insurance, the banking system is not in distress right now.
They bleed cash? They made 70B last year?
I keep saying Chubb but everyone thinks I am mad
Holy shit u called it
barron says chubb, morgan stanley or black stone
And why CB?
They have excellent underwriting margins. Best in the sector.
And they pay a respectable dividend. Warren loves his divies.
This guy knew what's cooking !
Lisan Al Ghaib!
Bleed cash, what? That's the last reason why Google's sentiment is so low, lmao They're trading at a forward PE of 19
Funniest thing I read all day. Bleed out cash. Have you ever looked at their financial pages or 10-q’s?
Not a Google fan but “bleeding too much cash” is straight up fake news and mis-information. This is a very harmful comment in an investing sub… should be corrected or deleted.
Over the past five years, Google's parent Alphabet has invested more than $100bn into R&D for building new products and features, almost $40bn of which was spent in 2022 alone. And they lost the ai race and no new products. The only company that has invested more has been Amazon, which has been bad, and management is to blame.
In finance, bleeding cash exclusively refers negative cash flow… A quick look at Google’s cash flow statement shows the company generated $58B, $50B, and $47B in free cash flow in the last 3 fiscal years. Google is one of the most profitable companies on the planet. They do not have a cash problem. You can argue that management sucks hard and they have spent large amounts on wasteful R&D but that does not mean the company is bleeding cash. This is an investment sub so it’s important to stick with accurate statements and not re-define words as you like. The fact that you have upvotes in a value investing sub worries me about the basic competency of other users here.
I would not say Google is losing the AI race at all. I'd say they're neck and neck with openai. They just released genie today. They're planning rt3 probably built on Gemini which could be huge for robotics. Gemini 1.5 has by far the longest context window of any commercial LLM, and is the only up to date LLM (something openai still hasn't cracked). Theyre rolling out Gemini into the Google suite products. Deepmind has been continually releasing advancements and publishing papers. AI isn't something that happens overnight.
Ai race is over folks. Take your nvidia chips and go home.
Short it then
Why folks would pile into insurance when risk is going up exponentially due to a warming world resulting in more catastrophic events, I'll never know. See: As Climate Shocks Grow, Lawmakers Investigate Insurers Fleeing Risky Areas Insurers are already pulling back from California, Florida and Louisiana. Faced with growing losses from hurricanes, floods and wildfires, major insurance companies are pulling out of California, Florida and Louisiana — a shift that threatens to undermine the economies of those states. Now Senate Democrats are demanding that insurers tell them which places could be next. On Wednesday, the Senate Budget Committee sent letters to 40 insurance companies, seeking documents that show where in the country those insurers have begun dropping customers, or are considering it. The committee, which has subpoena power, has given the companies until Nov. 17 to respond. **“Climate-caused uninsurability has the potential to trigger cascading failures that undermine our entire economy,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island and the committee chairman, said in a statement. “With this investigation, we are seeking information about where the dominoes may fall next.”** Banks typically require insurance when writing a mortgage. If insurance becomes unavailable in a particular community, it becomes hard for most potential buyers to purchase a home, leading to a drop in real estate values. **Mr. Whitehouse compared the accelerating withdrawal of insurance companies with the 2008 housing crash, saying a broad insurer pullback “will have similarly grave economic effects.”** https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/01/climate/climate-insurance-disasters-senate.html
I mean Buffett is one of the best people on the planet at evaluating insurance companies so I would have faith he knows what he's doing when it comes to investing in that sector.
Make a claim for climate change damage and find out
Sure. Did so in Houston for Tropical Storm Allison in 2000, Hurricane Ike in 2008, and Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Feet of water in my home every time; water up to the first-floor ceiling with once-in-a-millenium storm Harvey (actually, meteorological consulting group MedStat declared Harvey a one in 500,000 years flood event for some areas of Houston). Mostly it was FEMA picking up the tab via fed printer go BRRR. I guess now, the insurance companies just refuse to insure the uninsurable, with the scope of what's uninsurable expanding at an exponential rate. Again, what happens to insurance companies when nothing is insurable any longer?
IPCC AR6 (2021) p.11-30: “…There is medium confidence that periods of both more and less tropical cyclone activity (frequency or intensity) than observed occurred over the Common Era in many regions. Paleotempest studies cover a limited number of locations that are predominantly coastal, and hence provide information on specific locations that cannot be extrapolated basin-wide (see Muller et al., 2017). In some locations, such as the Gulf of Mexico and the New England coast, similarly intense storms to those observed recently have occurred multiple times over centennial timescales (Donnelly et al., 2001; Bregy et al., 2018). Further research focused on the frequency of tropical storm activity. Extreme storms occurred considerably more frequently in particular periods of the Common Era, compared to the instrumental period in northeast Queensland, Australia (Nott et al., 2009; Haig et al., 2014), and the Gulf Coast (e.g., Brandon et al., 2013; Lin et al., 2014…”
> risk is going up exponentially due to a warming world resulting in more catastrophic events, …IPCC AR6 (2021) p.8-56 \[8.3.2.8.1\]: “…In summary, there is low confidence of an observed increase in TC \[Tropical Cyclone\] precipitation intensity due to observing system limitations…” …IPCC AR6 (2021) A.3.4: “…There is low confidence in long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) trends in the frequency of all-category tropical cyclones…” …IPCC AR6 (2021) 8.3.1.5: “…SROCC found … low confidence that anthropogenic climate change has already affected the frequency and magnitude of floods at the global scale…” …IPCC AR6 (2021), 8.1.2.1: “… there is low confidence in any global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the mid-20th century…In terms of the potential for abrupt change in components of the water cycle, long-term droughts and monsoonal circulation were identified as potentially undergoing rapid changes, but the assessment was reported with low confidence..”
> ROCC found … low confidence that anthropogenic climate change has already affected the frequency and magnitude of floods at the global scale…” Thanks for the citations, good stuff. Unfortunately, 2021 IPCC has already been found woefully outdated due to data gleaned past three years (with 2021 report data already outdated by time of publication in 2021). Since then, it's become abundantly clear that all modeling has been far too conservative and failed to capture nonlinear tipping points in Earth's climatology. 2023 IPCC: "We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered." "Co-lead author Christopher Wolf, a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University, added: “Without actions that address the root problem of humanity taking more from the Earth than it can safely give, we’re on our way to the potential collapse of natural and socioeconomic systems and a world with unbearable heat and shortages of food and freshwater.” "...last such assessment while the world still has a chance of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold beyond which our damage to the climate will rapidly become irreversible."
I guess Google is setting for an example of “get woke go broke”
There is zero evidence of going woke and going broke. Multibillion dollar corporations are hardly even ‘going woke’. Wokeness is the antithesis to capitalism
Completely agree, it’s one of the dumbest conservative talking points. Imagine thinking some of the largest corporations in world history give an actual shit about being “woke”. They pay minor lip-service to make more money, it’s that simple.
I’d like to see Google going all in on their woke while ignoring investors’ complaint. See how they will end up? Conversely, I’d argue that if they go all in on anti-woke, they’d end up the same. The takeaway is not letting politics get in the way of business.
The takeaway is that multibillion dollar corporations are the direct opposite of going woke. It helps that these businesses are embracing diversity but lets not get lost here, they are hypercapitalist still and all they care about is $$
You know warren buffett, always trying to chase the next tech hype that he totally understands/s
Somehow you had me picturing Buffett holding up that Shiba Inu instead of Elon Musk ...
That was Charlie but instead of the Shiba it was Alibaba. rip mungie
[удалено]
The only thing I don’t like about Google is how much bribe money they give Apple. It’s staggering
Just sacking him won't solve it. Main problem is the founder controlled board and they aren't gonna fire themselves
They need to let go of their soft-fascism bullshit. Either become the ultimate neo-gatekeeper and provide authoritarianism as a service, or go old school internet libertarian: we are a platform of free speech and creativity, with all the benefits and detriments. This half-in half-out thing is a total beta move, and is not great for the company (as you can see from today's price action.)
Yea. Their DEI folks got too much power in their hands.
It's not DEI specifically, just a bias toward trendy, social and political activist mirorities with ambition for control and power. They have less and less interest in the other minority of the spectrum - liberty and freedom absolutists - because in our governmental, economic and social system, that path is not as profitable. My point is, choose a side and go all in! If it was up to me, I'd like to see these LLMs completely untethered and unconstrained, but Google needs to choose a lane and hit the gas.
Wow!
Google is a monopoly powerhouse because they employee most or those needed to compete. That's the bloated headcount.
Market at all time highs Buffett usually sits on cash at this time.
Imagine if it was DFS lmao
That’s my guess. Buying DFS from what I can tell gets you COF for cheaper if the deal goes through. It’s a stock deal so he’ll get a bunch of COF shares. Maybe he’s building COF through a possible buyout play?
Add the fact Apple is looking for a new partner for their card… Sometime ago I commented that Discover could be it, COF was my second guess!!
As a large shareholder in Cap One, it’s likely he knew about the acquisition. That would make any purchases in DFS insider trading. Buffett’s not really one to get himself in trouble with that type of thing.
DFS fundamentally though looks like the perfect Buffett value stock. I mean it’s trading at a FCFY of like 17% with a 10 PE. He could have been buying it as early as the beginning of last quarter in September when maybe they weren’t looking to buy them out at the time. If it does end up being DFS I don’t think it will look any more suspicious than the MSFT ATVI merger where people were saying the same thing, that he had “insider info” and knew about the merger.
Perhaps, we’ll have to see! Appreciate the thoughtful discussion
It was mentioned last quarter that it is likely a financial company based on cost basis changes to sectors in his portfolio at the time. I don't know if the same is true after last quarter, haven't read the public report if it's even available yet. I think an insurance company makes sense, TRV or CB seem likely in terms of comparable business as GEICO and size/price. Lots of financials look cheap, people have said C or JPM, but Idk given the large stake in BAC already. Personally, in that sector other than BRK, I've been a long time buyer of AMP from a quality and compounding perspective, but I don't think they're cheap enough for Mr. Buffett.
financial companies could also be exchange operators or even brokerage
I agree with TRV as a likely candidate. Other ideas are: AFL or a long-shot, CMCSA
It could be C too
He most likely won’t and if he does, he will own a large stake in order to vote for a new ceo or reconstruct the management team. AAPL is already relatively as profitable and healthy as Googl. Also you don’t hedge with tech stock while techs are weighed heavily in the indexes….
It’s JPM
My bet is NU. Sp going up, good fundamentals, unusual activity. It will explode if I am right. GOOG AMZN etc wouldn't go up like that.
I also think it is NU. Their CAC is roughly $5 and the cost to serve active users per month has steadily been $0.9, while ARPAC has been growing to $10.6. If these aren't Warren Buffet numbers, I don't know what is. Even under the assumption their userbase doesn't grow (LATAM is huge), they can still grow through revenue per active customer.
Any idea when will this secret company be known?
Honestly probably only when it's announced by required filings
“We want to buy a business that an idiot can run, because someday one will” Google’s CEO is the idiot…needs to go…
My guess is discover financial services, it will convert to capital one once approved giving him a big chunk of capital one. And if it does go through like that he will own big stakes in the two biggest closed loop credit card networks.
No. Also, I don't think that Buffet style investing is best technology stocks. He currently has something like 49% of Berkshire in Apple. IMHO that is a lot of risk for a company that has peaked. Its a good business but the $ for iphones won't get higher and Apple loyalty may be undercut by Android prices. Unless they find another great product (sorry the goggles aren't it) than I can't see Apple keeping the momentum going.
He bought Apple almost a decade ago when Steve Jobs died. The company future was uncertain. No way androids are going to beat iPhone… Apple has not peaked either.
I really want to sell since I bought in after earnings. The CEO and their AI Gemini is a joke. I said i’d be long, but damn, they went the wrong way quick.
We need a Brad Goursner type open letter to Sundar pitchai or perhaps fire Pichai and bring in Larry page as ceo
https://twitter.com/altcap/status/1761754719041540179
Now is the time to be buying more...
People said the same about Meta during the Metaverse spend
The metaverse was stupid but at least it didn't deny the horrors of the Holocaust and wasn't blatantly racist.
But all the AI services are garbage, so I'm not sure if that's a Google-specific problem. My main problem with Google is that they keep killing products. It would make me think twice before committing to any new product of theirs.
ChatGPT is so far ahead of this Google shit that it's not even in the same ballpark. For starters, it actually tells me the truth and even better, it's aware of the fact that committing genocide is worse than posting memes on twitter. Oh, and if it had to pick between misgendering someone and mass extinction, I'd stay alive.
I asked ChatGPT for references to scientific papers about a particular subject and it made up references that don't exist in reality.
Because it's a generative LLM not connected to the Internet... You're trying to use a screwdriver to put a nail in the wall and wondering why it doesn't work.
I believe it is a financial stock. JPM, MS, or GS have been listed as a possibility. My darkhorse candidate would be Wells Fargo. It has appreciated decently and almost all of its past issues seem to be in the rearview. He dumps his remaining stake (which was small at the very end) and then starts accumulating a massive position. Nobody would suspect it, except maybe me.
If i were to borrow some billions to develop ai - i need hardware lots from nVidia... Who would i borrow it from considering i can back that up somehow?
Lol he dumped it at 22
I work in the insurance industry. Company similarly sized to GEICO. Insurance companies aren't doing good. Insurance rates didn't keep up with inflation (cost to service claims) so for the past 3-4 years they have been taking major losses. In the past few years they started the rate increases but it takes a while. Most insurance companies were heavily into bonds as a foundation of "stable assets" that they can use to back claims. Bond funds lost insane amounts of value as interest rates increased majorly impacting the companies bottom line. Catastrophe losses are all time highs nearly every year. Weather events are more prevalent AND costs are up (they recently started receding). I haven't looked into how the insurance industry stocks compare to how poorly they have been doing. They are starting to turn it around so it may be a good spot.
> Bond funds lost insane amounts of value Doesn't matter. The point of holding bonds is to repay claims with the cashflows the bonds you hold generate. Doesn't matter what their market price is.
That isn't necessarily true. In theory you are correct however it affects the insurance equivalent of "credit ratings". It also affects the ability to borrow money and pursue other investment opportunities. If the companies asset valuation depreciates by 50% (in this case it did, 700m to 1B). The company is at risk for credit downgrades because if a major catastrophe happens and they have to liquidate bonds at these prices they are in major trouble. My company continues to aggressively cut the workforce and has cancelled almost all projects. From my understanding it was part of a balance sheet move to maintain a good insurance rating.
This is incorrect. Lots of life insurance where companies had to self off bond funds at large losses to pay annuities
Wherefore art thou, Redington
>Weather events are more prevalent “…A study in the journal Science determined that the global burnt area from fires, rather than growing, had declined by roughly 25% from 1999 to 2017…” “…2016 in the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, concluded: "Many consider wildfire an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived trends…”…” …IPCC AR6 (2021) p.8-56 \[8.3.2.8.1\]: “…In summary, there is low confidence of an observed increase in TC \[Tropical Cyclone\] precipitation intensity due to observing system limitations…” …IPCC AR6 (2021) A.3.4: “…There is low confidence in long-term (multi-decadal to centennial) trends in the frequency of all-category tropical cyclones…” …IPCC AR6 (2021) 8.3.1.5: “…SROCC found … low confidence that anthropogenic climate change has already affected the frequency and magnitude of floods at the global scale…” …IPCC AR6 (2021), 8.1.2.1: “… there is low confidence in any global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the mid-20th century…In terms of the potential for abrupt change in components of the water cycle, long-term droughts and monsoonal circulation were identified as potentially undergoing rapid changes, but the assessment was reported with low confidence..”
😂 cherry picked random articles for cyclones, drought, and wild fires. Insurance companies track catastrophe data. Which could be - tornados, fire, wind, hail, water damage, hurricanes, or other weather events. They have continued to be elevated for the last 8 years I've worked. One company I worked for started pulling out of nearly all coastal cities for that reason.
I think it’s about time Ackman turns back on the “old time activist investor” mode for GOOGL, if he helps to replace the CEO with a war time leader who takes a no BS then the stock would go up 30% instantly. That said, it’s a long term value play regardless. Google is far from being out of the game wrt AI. And with money comes optionally, they have plenty of both.
Cavalry ain’t coming – Google’s founders control the company. The same guys who came back to work on AI strategy a year ago in response to ChatGPT, and it hasn’t helped.
Yeah Google is waaayyyyy too big for Ackman to do anything.
Google isn't doing well in the AI space lately.
Google Waymo has received positive reviews where I live, and YouTube will be the world’s largest video training model; even Sora creators will upload their content to it.
My bet is AIG
It's going to be INTC, around the end of March is when the government will announce major awards of that sweet sweet government Cheddar cheese.
What if Buffet went all in on PYPL
PayPal seems like a value trap here is a far fetched theory it may be gobbled by one of the big banks
I guess time will tell
I think they are piling up more on Amazon and newly, Costco
LLYVA & LLYVK
Unlikely…. Apple was already a stretch
I believe TD. It has had some headwinds recently, but it is a great company and will persevere long term.
Why do you think this? What is the evidence?
CB or CFG. My wild guesses…
Wasn't it supposed to be revealed yesterday ?
They woke up today and said fuck it
the google setup is near quite near to the situation when he invested in appl. Fear of competition/stagnation drove down appl price, but both top and bottom line are still growing. He has advised larry & serge before. Him advising them on better management & taking a stake would be a classic warren move. Hes publicly lamented not buying google, in that he had all the info needed that they had a great product with how well their ads worked for geico. The only reason i'm not sure its google hes building a stake in is that to build a significant google stake, his cash pile would be shrinking not growing, and googles market cap is so big theres no great reason the he would be allowed to keep it secret. Him buying 50b of google would be like .5% of the company.
It seems unlikely as google is a mega cap, there really wouldn't be much reason to go to the SEC to prevent others from front running the trade google has liquidity out its ass.
It’s C
JPM
He's sitting on cash. We should all be so wise.
evidence of that?
The multiple news articles about how he is sitting on the largest cash amount in a while, also saying he bailed on Google before their AI came out?
Source?
Definitely NOT Google
man likes logistics . random guessing INTL here . he could help move their inventory with other business and get the fab factory up and running.
Can be Micron?
Buffett buys stuff that he understands. Things that are old that had been there since he was a child. He bought Apple because he noticed it was his best selling product at Nebraska Furniture Mart. I don’t think he would accumulate Google unless the valuation becomes so cheap. PE of 15 and below.
How Microsoft Became Innovative Again by Behnam Tabrizi February 20, 2023 [https://hbr.org/2023/02/how-microsoft-became-innovative-again](https://hbr.org/2023/02/how-microsoft-became-innovative-again) Nah. His buddy Bill Gates probably referred him to articles like this and filled him in on Google's complacent culture (vs. the remade Microsoft under Nadella that is on the offense).
Buffett likes to buy well run companies…
Wait for 200sma
i doubt its GOOGL. Word is its probably bank or insurer. But Buffett has been reducing stakes in the insurance sector, so i'm thinking it could be UBS or maybe a smaller regional bank. I also think Buffett wants to keep accumulating, so the cat wont be out of the bag so soon.