Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, Buffet Munger Analysis, Thoughts, High Points, Words to Live by and be Successful According to them …

On May 5-6 of 2023, the Annual Shareholder Meeting of Berkshire Hathaway (BH) occurred… if you are not familiar with BH, here is a nice review from Wikipedia.

At 92 (Warren Buffett) and 99 (Charlie Munger) a 7 hour marathon where random, unscripted questions are answered in very good form (if we could all be so lucky) makes for great theatre and some what of a cult like experience…

Until just a few years ago, thanks in part to the lockdown years, BH meetings … while not secret, were behind closed doors and demanded in-person attendance, even if one had to sit in the hall outside of the actual area of the meeting and watch a live feed of the event… today as noted, earlier in our pre-view post not only can you access the event live, but also in replay with the ability to turn up the speed !

Personal High Points of Interest from the Sped Up meeting (Live by comments at end):

Neither man would rather live in a different country or location, even while there are of course, short comings,

Warren would not mind starting over today with nothing, to see if he could do it again, Charlie, not so much.

Charlie: China and the US should just get along, do business together and jointly prosper, rather than bowing up to each other for perceived dominance. Was Russia in the day, today China. (Large Applause)

Not withstanding point one, the bifurcation and hatred in society is disheartening, unproductive and destructive according to both men.

Buffet reversed course on a $5 billion investment in a semiconductor company located in Taiwan due to tension, location and likely provoking point three above.

100 Year Plan/Dream/Desire (question from audience) Buffet explains to operate a Company that compliments society, is good for society and has good people working for it. (Simple, fresh, positive!)

Vice: NetJets – Charlie still rides in coach, even on NJ – Expensive, but worth it according to Warren, especially on overseas extended trips.

Absolutely bash (and do not care for), Venture Capitalists and Private Equity guys at every chance and state that at the onset of most deals, they are already looking for the escape hatch/sale.

BH is actually too big to make agile, more aggressive and growth like investments, which prevents it from being a growth like company. (Reiterated for years now)

Management Skill recommendation – “Phrase by name, criticize by category!”

Live on less then you earn to keep stress down.

You do not have to be lucky to make it.

Be nice to people.

Get toxic people out of your life.

From the infamous Buffett Shareholder letter, released 2-25-23

  • The world is full of foolish gamblers, and they will not do as well as the patient investor.
  • If you don’t see the world the way it is, it’s like judging something through a distorted lens.
  • All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there. And a related thought:
    Early on, write your desired obituary – and then behave accordingly.
  • If you don’t care whether you are rational or not, you won’t work on it. Then you will stay
    irrational and get lousy results.
  • Patience can be learned. Having a long attention span and the ability to concentrate on one
    thing for a long time is a huge advantage.
  • There is no such thing as a 100% sure thing when investing. Thus, the use of leverage is dangerous. A string of wonderful numbers times zero will always equal zero.

Remember, these are Warren and Charlie thoughts, only with a few comments and notes from us!

Have a Happy “Oracle of Omaha’s” day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Happy Mother’s Day Weekend – Oracles of Omaha (Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger) Preview – Turn Around Trip Week Productivity – Friday …

Happy Mother’s Day weekend to all of you very important Mother’s !

Enjoy your very special and much deserved Day!

Nerds in Action

So you guys all know we are Financial Nerds …we are ok with this – calling a spade …..if the shoe fits… or however that goes…ha

Care to guess what Financial Nerds do to multitask?

Turn Around Trip Productivity – Warren and Charlie, Oracles of Omaha

If you click here, you will be directed to the 2023 Annual Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder meeting… it is a mere 7 hours and 44 minutes long…. eeeekkk

Break In – Think we finally figured out how to make the picture hotlink back to the webpage – lets see if it works when the email is received – fingers crossed!

Shhhhh…. don’t tell anyone, if you increase the speed to 1.75 X it is only a bit over 3 hours AND the voices sound amazingly normal (because everyone is speaking so slow normally) …

Turn around trip completed, lots of fun to a state just north of our resident Texas, great visit with Friends and clients…. AND the complete Berkshire Hathaway Annual meeting digested….

Now that’s multitasking…ya ya.. nerds, but that is ok, we will keep the review short but with the most important stuff!

Full report next week….ahhhh, but that is next week, enjoy your Friday and your Mother’s Day Weekend!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Kastle Back to Work… Stuck on Half Way! Effects beginning to be seen …

It has been a while since we previewed one of our favorite resources from the lock down. A chance article, below, rekindled our attention. We have added more observations.

Per the article:

A San Francisco office building was worth $300 million before the pandemic. Now, it could sell for only $60 million — a perfect example of why downtowns are in trouble

Kastle Systems Analysis and Barometer

Latest release

Publicly trade REIT – Real Estate Investment Trust – Actual Company withheld purposely (Public Venue) – Specializes in office space Assets

About a 75% drop in value. Not sure if the office headcount stays away, but certain office buildings are bearing the brunt!

Have a Great “Kastle Office Asset Analysis” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

The BTFP – Bank Term Funding Loan Program UPDATE, Created a new process of Banks Merge/Buyout …

Did you happen to catch the Financial System adjusting the way it does business right before your eyes?

No worry, if you said no… it was not super obvious, but worth a quick review for future knowledge…

So here we go!

BTFP- Bank Term Funding Loan Program Makes Adjustments to the Financial System

As we explained in great detail here in this post in March, the Federal Reserve set up a Backstop program for struggling banks. As several more banks have had issues, the creation of this program has changed the way mergers or buyouts will occur while this plan available.

If you are an acquiring bank, no matter desire, you would be crazy not to wait until your desired bank, if under stress, hits up the Federally backed program aka BTFP, as the Government essentially will guarantee much of the buyout once entering the program.

While it may seem unfair or counterproductive to price discovering markets and mergers, possible unintended consequences created from this program…. they are what they are … and look to continue until we are beyond the rain clouds….

Have a Great “Watch the Financial System Adjust” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

SLOA mailed in May – What’s a SLOA? Standard Letter of Authorization (Clients) … Friday

As a regular practice for almost every client we have instructions on file to move money back and forth between other linked accounts a.k.a. SLOA – Standard Letter of Authorization –

Side note: We can remember when every request needed a signature and then was faxed AND THEN a day or two later is was processed… Eeeekkkk – ok, digressing!

From our back office:

“Dear Valued Advisor, 

In May 2023 we will mail the annual Standing Letter of Authorization (SLOA) confirmation notices to your clients, if applicable, listing all active SLOAs that we have on record for their accounts as of December 31, 2022. …

 

…Your clients will receive a confirmation notice for each account that maintains an active SLOA with TD Ameritrade Institutional. As required, we will continue to notify your clients whenever new SLOA instructions are established for an account. “

Here is what one looks like from prior years:

Take a peek and let us know if something is incorrect… we actually do not get a copy!

Happy Friday, and Happy May aka Schools out month, Weekend – Talk Next week!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Advanced Analysis … Part 4 of More to come … Standard Deviation – Dust that Statistics Off !

OK so while maybe not a complete advanced topic it may be unfamiliar to many, so let’s code this Advanced Analysis as a refresher that we’re going to use in the future to build on.

Standard deviation

Below you will see a nice graph of a bell shaped curve that attempts to depict basically a broad estimate within a certainty of an outcome.

Said in a much simpler way and by example… on June 1st in Dallas TX … there’s a 95% chance that the temperature will be between 90 and 110, and on average over longer periods of time, this deviation will be somewhat normal… this makes the graph even on both sides.

The only reason that you want to know this is so that when the result we are measuring greatly varies from this temperature one can infer how unusual it is.

By M. W. Toews – Own work, based (in concept) on figure by Jeremy Kemp, on 2005-02-09, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1903871

Two standard deviations is the very most common and represents a probability of 95%!

There you have it .. likely the simplest advanced analysis topic that we’ve had and a refresher for many, but again this brings us up to date for some items that we can build on soon with more to come in advanced analysis topics

Have a Great “Standard Deviation Refresher/Advanced Analysis” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

April 2023 Audio Video Review – Cyber Reminder, US Dollar Discussions, Chat GPT the modern .COM (Dot Com) – Financial Planning and Capital Market Review – By John Kvale CFA, CFP

Hello and Welcome to our April 2023 Financial Planning and Capital Market Update!

If you are too busy to read, feel free to listen as we describe our post and thoughts in friendly podcast audio format as well as Video!

Newbies –

We like to articulate our thoughts and review on a Monthly basis our Financial Planning Tips, Capital Markets thoughts and current events!

Hope you enjoy!

April 2023 Video –


YouTube

Financial Planning Tip(s)

Cyber – Fraud Reminder

In this post about cyber fraud and a reminder we point out where some 95% of all intrusions come from….

The trojan horse of clicking on a spam email!

Capital Market Comments

US Dollar Currency Status –

After hearing from four different directions …discussions of the US dollar and weaking in its status… the follow post was born

Likely overstated…but acknowledge there are surely effect from cutting a countries Swift code- (lifeline to wires)

True Foreigners, likely want a WEAKER US dollar – as its strength is not waning currently!

.COM and Chat GPT Comparisons

One of the neat things about staring so young in this industry and doing this for so long, is at a fairly young (this is subjective our course) age we get to recall and remanence about times of old….

…We all know what happened eventually, tons of .COM companies came public and expired in short order… BUT public companies learned by adding .COM to their name or services would drive the stock price up… many times in huge amounts…

.Com rhymes with Chat GPT – in almost every way…. but be sure to follow the revenues, not the narratives!

Have a Great Day, Talk to You at the End of April !

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Patience with Upgraded Technology … Good Bye Tax Month, Hello End of School Month (New Nick Names) … Friday …

Break In – Our IT folks are taking our server down for a regular (2-3 hours) update this afternoon – mandating a pre-summer exit today- tethered remote, but practicing what we speak about… ok, on to regularly scheduled programing!

Over the last few weeks we have updated some of our Technology and changed our internal communications systems…

With a few accidental invites from various platforms… just so you know… there are a few kinks we are working out….but hope you can appreciate our constant improvements and updates for our collective cyber safety!

Happy to say Farewell to April aka Tax Month – Our new nick named month…

Hello May – End of School month… Hey we may be on to something here- haha

With a video coming next week and a new Advance Analysis … today is a slide into the weekend Easy… and a Friday!

Have a great Day, Weekend – Talk Next Week!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

How Much to Tip? Restaurant, Transportation, Hotel … Personal funny notes …

Break In – Jogging season has arrived in full force … tend to be chatty after a long jog, especially in the cool weather… funny personal stories … warned!

With the “Tax Month” aka April, almost over, a monthly video review coming your way, and travel season nearing….

Our friends at Visual Capitalist came through with a three part graph that we just could not pass up…

Enjoy!

World Restaurants – How much to tip?

Funny personal story – while on a trip in one of the much lesser foreign tipping countries below….

Could not figure out why the great service at the bar …

Then bar tenders began fighting over our service as we rounded up, not only in a lesser tipping country, but a foreign misunderstood currency that was WAY too much… But … GREAT service for sure! ooops

Transportation – Taxi aka Lyft Uber

Another personal insight – The earlier or more unusual the time, the better the tip –

Running late and made it for sure a good tip (rare late arrival, but has happened)

Always a good tip, as any lost or left behind items seem to find its way back quickly – very frequent when the kids were younger!

Hotel Tips Protocol

As a family we try to always leave things nicer than the way we found them… especially in the individual owner world of Airbnb or VRBO —

Always leave a nice tip for everyone…again similar to transportation, the large numbers of power cords, video game accessories and “Unique” personal items that have made their way back more than compensate!

Told ya that jog makes for chatty! ha

Have a Great “Know Your Tip amount” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents

Reliving Memories of .COM Exuberance Time Period … Chat GPT and AI Comparisons … Recall History Really Rhymes!

In late 1999 heading into the infamously dud of Y2K … MANY including most financial companies were very concerned the clocks on computers would cause MASS outages- not kidding here – cannot make this up, even if it seems silly now! (Yes we were doing this back then… showing age – but all good!)

Wow a lot of stuff happened all at once, there was also an effect grabbed on to by many public companies called .COM …

We all know what happened eventually, tons of .COM companies came public and expired in short order… BUT public companies learned by adding .COM to their name or services would drive the stock price up… many times in huge amounts…

History Does Rhyme – .COM & Chat GPT

We are in no way saying AI and the afore mentioned Chat GPT is going away…. but where we see the rhyme… companies announcing some type of AI/CHAT GPT are finding novice investors may be rushing to their stock with ever greater enthusiasm… hmmmm

Revenues need to be associated with such services… just saying… great idea, neat tools… but very likely the “True Long Term Uses” are yet to be revealed…

Be Careful with the narratives – History does rhyme!

Have a Great “History Rhymes” Day!

John A. Kvale CFA, CFP

Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.

A Dallas Texas based fee only

Financial Planning Total Wealth

Management firm.

jkfinancialinc

street-cents