The Business Brew

Chris Bloomstran - Taking Principled Stances

Oct 28, 2021

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

How Are You Doing?

Having a Value Gui Translates Into Consumption Habits

I've Got a Ton of Old World Wine for the Kids

The Wines of the Day

Is It Possible to Lift a Lot of Weights in a Week?

I've Never Played Against a Better Running Back

Coach, I'm a Class Act, and I'll Go Back and Do That Again

I'd Put Barry Sander at the Top of the Best.

Stocks Are a Dead Giveaway

The Bull Market in the Nineties - The Last Four Years

The Nasdak Bubble - The Big Blue Chip Bubble

Microsoft - You Can't Repeat for the Next 15 What You've Done for the Last 15

Investing in Stocks That Don't Generate Profits

Then You Can't Measure the Return on Capital

The E T F Was One Point Nine Billion Dollars.

What's the New Re Rating?

What Is the Biggest Loss in the Stock Market?

Taking a 20 % Top Line, That's Best Case Valuation

How to Make a Mid Single Digit Return

Is There a Trigger Mechanism for a Loss in Common Stocks?

Are You Buying Assets in the Last Six Months?

Is the Cyclical Coming Back to You?

Youou Lose Money for 15 Years?

You Shouldn't Think About Twitter

'Tweet Something Out, Sunny'

Twitter Strategy

Investing in the Capital Markets - You're Misrepresenting Returns, Not Net

Are You a Good Investor?

The Give Back of Warren Buffet

What I've Learned Over 30 Years as a Professional Investor

The Stock Market Isn't Going On, but It's Not Going On.

Berkshire's Book Value Compound Annual Growth Series

BERKshire Shares Are Going to Compound in Line With the Integrative Value Growth

BERKshire's Stock Price Is Up High Teens

01:00:27 • 2min

Berkshire Utilities Earning Teams Returns on Capital

01:02:01 • 2min

The Stock Market Is as Expensive as It Was in the Late 19 Sixties

01:03:33 • 2min

How Do You Think About Opportunity, Cost to Capital and When May Be Going Down, Business Quality Is Worth Your Perception of Increased Return?

01:05:22 • 2min

The Opportunity Cost Benchmark

01:06:52 • 2min

Investing in the Portfolio

01:08:41 • 1min

I've Made the Mistake of Never Selling Good Businesses

01:09:56 • 2min

The Idiot Never Comes Back to It

01:11:40 • 2min

The Stock Market Has Bought Multiple Expansion

01:13:16 • 2min

Amazon and Cosco, You Know, Are More Profitable Than You Think?

01:14:58 • 2min

Amazon's Retail Business Is a Good Idea

01:16:44 • 2min

The Same Store Square Footage Growth of Cosco

01:18:18 • 2min

How to Scale the Opportunity Cost of What Can Cosco Earn Per Year?

01:19:48 • 2min

Shell Is Shedding Assets at a Rapid Clip

01:21:21 • 2min

The Scarcity of Energy Assets

01:23:02 • 1min

I Want to Have My Knee Replaced. Guess What?

01:24:31 • 2min

Energy Market - I'm Capable of Roting Those Assets

01:26:16 • 2min

Is This a New Normal?

01:27:53 • 2min

Hypergrowth Businesses

01:29:26 • 2min

Capital Intensity Is Not as Black and White as Some Think It Is

01:31:07 • 2min

The Servatism of Accounting

01:32:45 • 1min

The Decision to Extend the Deprecable Life of Your Rigs by Five Years Was Not Mine

01:34:12 • 2min

The Future's Role in the Energy Market

01:35:48 • 2min

Capital Intensity and the Cycle of Capitalization

01:37:31 • 2min

I'm Trying to Find Very High Quality, Lightly or Unlovered Assets That Make On

01:39:07 • 2min

I've Got 80 % of the Profitability of the Companies I Own

01:40:44 • 2min

I've Got a Higher Dividend Yield Than the S and P 500

01:42:21 • 2min

Leverage and the Stock Market

01:44:03 • 1min

The Next Ten Years Will Be Interesting, Chris

01:45:31 • 2min

Market Cap of the Top Five Stocks to Day, Is Almost Ten Trillion Dollars

01:47:09 • 2min

The New Sas Software Stocks Will Never Make Money

01:48:42 • 2min

How to Deal With Excess Leverage

01:50:24 • 1min

Cryptocurrency Is a Good Idea, but I Don't Know.

01:51:52 • 2min

Fed Debt Tapering

01:53:52 • 2min

Is the Fed Going to Buy the Paper?

01:55:26 • 2min

The Market's Got a Lot of This Right Places

01:57:09 • 2min

I'm Sorry to Have This Conversation.

01:58:49 • 2min

Bercher's Insurance Operations Are Massively OverCapitalized

02:00:19 • 2min

Berkshire's Operating Income, Averaging 25 Billion Dollars

02:01:51 • 2min

No Elephants to Be Had

02:03:30 • 2min

The Stock Marks Expensive

02:05:15 • 2min

The Stock's Been Cheap an Me.

02:06:50 • 2min

I'm in Charge of the Wine List

02:08:24 • 3min

This week Chris Bloomstran stops by The Business Brew to catch up. Part of this conversation are a bit scary. Parts you may disagree with. Regardless, it's very apparent that Chris thinks A LOT about what he is investing in.

Chris is the President and Chief Investment Officer of Semper Augustus Investments Group. He is best known for his annual letters; most of which have an incredibly detailed analysis of Berkshire Hathaway. See https://www.semperaugustus.com/clientletter

We hope you enjoy the discussion. Detailed show notes below the Koyfin sponsor and thank yous.

Please leave us a rating in your favorite app store.

This episode is brought to you by Koyfin, one of the fastest-growing platforms for financial data and analytics to research stocks and understand market trends. Check out Koyfin.com to see what a Bloomberg-lite, with tons of high-quality fundamental data and a powerful graph engine looks like.

Album art photo taken by Mike Ando. Please see https://www.mikeando.com/

Thank you to Mathew Passy for the podcast production. You can find Mathew at @MathewPassy on Twitter or at thepodcastconsultant.com

In this episode Chris and Bill discuss:

0:34 - Chris' wine hobby

7:34 - Chris setting weight lifting records in high school

11:33 - Playing football against Barry Sanders

17:04 - Pivot to investing

17:47 - What about today rhymes with the late 90s

25:00 - Chris' warning about Twitter, Shopify, and Tesla

28:00 - What rhymes between ARK and Janus

30:54 - How Chris thinks about today's multiples

38:25 - Why Chris has positions in energy companies

43:00 - Chris' use of Twitter and his Twitter threads

50:31 - Chris' love for teaching

53:03 - Bill and Chris discuss Berkshire

60:45 - Berkshire Hathaway Energy and how it fits within the renewable energy landscape

1:04:45 - Discussion about opportunity cost and value traps

1:08:45 - Why Chris is lukewarm on Big Tech

1:10:00 - Chris' take on the idea of never selling a great business

1:16:10 - Chris discusses Costco vs. Amazon and concludes the opportunity cost discussion at 1:18:52

1:22:00 - More energy (in the context of opportunity cost)