John

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway's cash balance just hit $397 billion. Buffett has now been a net seller of stocks for 14 consecutive quarters. He is not finding things worth buying. That is the message. From 1991 to 2020, Berkshire's cash pile grew slowly — a few billion here, a few billion there, building to roughly $130 billion by the time COVID hit. Then something changed. Over the past five years, the balance has gone from $130B to $397B. The acceleration is not a function of earnings. It is a function of selling. Berkshire has been a net seller of equities for 14 straight quarters — including a net $8.1 billion sold last quarter alone. Apple. Bank of America. Quarter after quarter, the portfolio shrinks and the cash pile grows. The conventional read is that Buffett is being cautious. The more precise read is that he cannot find a single acquisition or investment large enough, cheap enough, and safe enough to justify deploying $397 billion. A $10 billion deal barely moves the needle. A $50 billion acquisition — which would be one of the largest in corporate history — would still leave him with $347 billion in cash. Put alongside Paul Tudor Jones's comments this week on market valuations at 252% of GDP, Buffett's cash accumulation is the same signal expressed differently. The two most credible long term capital allocators alive are both saying the same thing—the market is not offering value at current prices. One is saying it in interviews. The other is saying it with $397 billion sitting in T-bills. When the most patient buyer in the history of capital markets cannot find anything worth buying, that is worth sitting with…

If physicists are so smart why haven’t they figured out how to make any money yet

This is incredible: Elon Musk will receive 200 million super-voting shares in SpaceX ONLY IF the company establishes a permanent Mars colony with at least 1 million people. In other words, Elon Musk will only receive this pay package if 1 million people live on Mars. In other words, Elon Musk's biggest goal is now establishing a colony on Mars with a similar population as Dallas, Texas. Musk is so optimistic about this goal that the vast majority of his pay is now contingent on it. Life on Mars is closer than many expect.

Does anyone know of a single electricity load on earth that actually runs at 99%+ annual load factor?

What he's saying is that AISC for gold miners is going to explode

The President almost just got assassinated and members of the media are using the opportunity to steal bottles of wine. You don’t hate them enough!

Scientists and educators age fastest. Athletes age slowest. A facial aging clock trained on occupation-linked photos found that the gap between your biological face-age and your real age predicts all-cause mortality. The wider that gap, the higher your risk. Women aged slower than men in every single occupation measured. No exceptions. The ranking, from youngest-looking to oldest-looking relative to chronological age: Athletes > service workers > sales > clerical > managers > professionals > scientists and educators. The people who study aging for a living look the oldest. I wish I could say I'm surprised. Your face is a record of cumulative stress, UV, sleep loss, and metabolic wear. Your job title determines how much of each you get.