Economy Stocks thread v28: in loving memory of Rob Mafia and Brackis1

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump will personally announce the Pentagon's decision on a next-generation fighter jet contract worth at least $20 billion as soon as Friday, despite concerns about budget constraints and shifting priorities, sources briefed on the plan said.

The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program will replace Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor with a crewed aircraft built to enter combat alongside drones. The plane's design remains a closely held secret, but would most likely include stealthiness, advanced sensors and cutting-edge engines.

Lockheed and Boeing are competing for the winner-take-all engineering and manufacturing development contract, worth more than $20 billion. The winner will eventually receive hundreds of billions of dollars in orders over the contract's multi-decade lifetime.

…….


Trump just awarded it to Boeing. I strongly dislike this man. LMT down 6%.
 
HOLA said:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump will personally announce the Pentagon's decision on a next-generation fighter jet contract worth at least $20 billion as soon as Friday, despite concerns about budget constraints and shifting priorities, sources briefed on the plan said.

The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program will replace Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor with a crewed aircraft built to enter combat alongside drones. The plane's design remains a closely held secret, but would most likely include stealthiness, advanced sensors and cutting-edge engines.

Lockheed and Boeing are competing for the winner-take-all engineering and manufacturing development contract, worth more than $20 billion. The winner will eventually receive hundreds of billions of dollars in orders over the contract's multi-decade lifetime.

…….


Trump just awarded it to Boeing. I strongly dislike this man. LMT down 6%.
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Nice bump for Boeing tho, should have picked some up at the 140 level
 
HOLA said:
Woohoo. Up to $97. Buffett just added to all 5 of the trading houses.

…..


Warren Buffett’s love for Japanese stocks grows fonder even as he increasingly sells U.S. equities.

The 94-year-old investor’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company raised its holdings in five Japanese trading houses — Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo — by more than 1 percentage point each, to stakes ranging from 8.5% to 9.8%, according to a regulatory filing.

The “Oracle of Omaha” said in his 2024 annual letter that Berkshire is committed to its Japanese investments for the long term and has reached an agreement with the companies to go beyond an initial 10% ceiling.

All five are the biggest “sogo shosha,” or trading houses, in Japan that invest across diverse sectors domestically and abroad — “in a manner somewhat similar to Berkshire itself,” Buffett said. Berkshire first bought into the companies in the summer of 2019.

Part of the investment strategy involves Buffett hedging currency risk by selling Japanese debt and then pocketing the difference between dividends from the investments and the bond coupon payments he has to make to service the debt.

At the end of 2024, the market value of Berkshire’s Japanese holdings came to $23.5 billion, at an aggregate cost of $13.8 billion. The investor praised the companies’ managements, relationships with their investors and their capital deployment strategies.

Buffett first unveiled the Japanese positionsd on his 90th birthday in August 2020 after making regular purchases on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, saying he was “confounded” by the opportunity and was attracted to the trading houses’ dividend growth.

In 2023, Buffett even paid a visit to Japan with his designated successor Greg Abel and met with the heads of the Japanese firms. He said he’d like Berkshire to own the companies forever.

The student of famed investor Benjamin Graham has been aggressively selling U.S. stocks and growing his record cash pile to $334 billion. Berkshire sold more than $134 billion worth of stocks in 2024, largely by shrinking the size of Berkshire’s two largest equity holdings — Apple and Bank of America.
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Speaking of Japanese companies, Sony has been doing pretty good. Got in at $18.
 
King Joffery said:
Starting to have some doubts I'll hit my 100% return target for the year. I was up 49% after 6 months but went into the negative last week although very slowly starting to recover and back to around a positive 4% now.

Talk about people massively overreacting, bunch of morons, those who panic sold deserve to lose money. I'm confident it will bounce back eventually but unfortunately I will be forced to sell a good chunk of my stocks next month as I'll need the money for some other investment which is bad timing as the stocks will still likely be undervalued then.
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I’ve been panic buying the last two weeks <lol>
 
We’re sinking again boys. Get your life jackets.

Picked up some GOOGL, MSFT and AMZN just now.

Also some good news today:

“W. R. Berkley Corporation Confirms Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co. Intends to Purchase 15% of the Company’s Shares in Open Market or Private Transactions From Third Parties”

WRB up 8.5% today.
 
I got out of the market first thing this morning once again. I probably shouldn't do that, but the market does look more uncertain with all the changes going on. Took my profits and I'll watch and wait.

A write up I read this morning on the market concerning China and currency manipulation.

www.billionairesportfolio.com

Latest – Billionaire's Portfolio

www.billionairesportfolio.com

March 27, 2025

Yesterday we talked about tariffs and Trump’s objective to rebalance global trade.

It’s about China, and the multi-decade economic war it has waged using its currency as a weapon. That’s led to a wealth transfer, from the West, to China. And that has led to a structurally fragile global economy.

That said, a weak yuan has been the go-to strategy for manipulating economic advantage, and the formula for its rise to global economic superpower status. And we should expect China to counter Trump’s tariffs by … weakening the yuan.

If we look back at 2016, in the seven weeks surrounding the election, the Chinese central bank made the largest seven week devaluation of the yuan in a decade — in anticipation of tariffs.

This time, for Trump 2.0, the yuan is already set around the weakest levels vs. the dollar since 2007.

And if history is our guide (from trade war 1.0), we should expect China to create some leverage in trade negotiations by threatening a big one-off currency devaluation.

What leverage would that create?

A sharp yuan devaluation would (very likely) trigger global financial market instability. A small one-off devaluation in 2015 sent global stock markets into a sharp fall, on the fear that a bigger Chinese currency devaluation was coming, which could have led to a global currency war, as export competitors devalued to stay competitive.

A currency devaluation threat from China could either 1) put pressure on Trump to negotiate more favorably to avoid a bigger economic fallout, or 2) it could embolden his effort to end China’s economic warfare — perhaps by rallying allies to coordinate sanctions (to put China in the penalty box). My bet would be on the latter.
 
Today:

GOOGL: $152.79
MSFT: $369.52
AMZN: $187.10

Managed to be up about 10% this quarter, despite what’s going on. Thanks in large part to Berkshire, which is up 17.5% this year.

I’m happy, but somewhat surprised at Berkshire’s performance. I don’t think people realize how much the wildfires litigation has hurt Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

It’s fairly easy to see what Buffett himself values BHE, since it wasn’t 100% owned until recently, and he’s been purchasing minority interests. Using some back of the envelope math, it looks like a 45% decline from 2022 to 2024.
 
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For example:

In 2022 Greg Abel sold his 1% interest in BHE to BH for $870 million. 740,961 shares. This implies a value of $1,175 per-share.

In 2024 Walter Scott (or his estate since he’s dead now) sold their minority interest, with an implied value of $650 per-share.

That’s the 45% decline.
 
NewsMax NMAX was up 735% today lmao.
 
Ouch. My port is down 1.5% overall right now, which relatively speaking, is pretty good. SP 500 down 3.4%, Nasdaq down 4.7%.

AAPL the hardest hit in my portfolio. Down 9.4%.
 
Oof. I was hoping that tariff shit show was already baked into the drops over the past week as people braced, but it was still a bloodbath at the opening bell
 
HockeyBjj said:
Oof. I was hoping that tariff shit show was already baked into the drops over the past week as people braced, but it was still a bloodbath at the opening bell
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trust the plan?
 
Waste Management is up today

Rotate into some safe haven
 
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