I think bears are very right just early. If history will rhyme we are setting up a next big depression. We are also close to a WW3. Now if this will happen is a different story, but you can't blame bears for being gay. Just to say a huge chunk of our economy relies on one of the geopolitical hottest places (Taiwan). Theoretically if Taiwan blows up, middle east gets worse and Europe gets unstable with Russia/China hybrid war - we are cooked. Same time, we can settle all down and ride the AI revolution to the best times ever. Still, we had now 30 years of almost constant prosperity under mainly one superpower and this is unlikely to be sustainable.

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You on west coast or east? I hope west and it’s 11:30 am.

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It isn't really his caution. He's has consistently increased his cash position since 2010. He has said he literally can't find a large company at the right price that he doesn't get outbid on. Some people say his cash position is needed in case of a West Coast "Big One" earthquake and a Cat 5 hurricane hittting the East Coast. But Berkshire has said that both of those things combined would only cause ~$20B in payouts. He literally has excess cash he doesn't want, but Buffett would rather have too much cash than purchase a bad deal.

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Guessing east coast? West coast ones aren’t very sharp ime

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But the main drivers for inflation right now are housing and energy... and higher interest rates makes it more difficult to build housing which means less supply which drives prices and rent up... and energy is based on middle east and Russia shenanigans. Like.. just look at the graph. Housing makes up almost the entire increase. Increased supply is the most well backed and proven way to bring rent inflation down.

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It looks like they transferred about [$500 million](https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/riskified-latest-company-transfer-money-out-israel-media-2023-03-08/) out of Israel over it’s judicial overhaul last year. I haven’t seen a direct connection to the IOF. Being an e-commerce security company, its work with them might be limited. But at this point, I don’t think I can invest in any Israeli company. One way or another they’d get funds from my purchase.

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Invest in Vietnam or some other countries in South East Asia. China's manufacturing is going to move there

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I suspect China will retaliate in-kind by dumping foreign goods in favor of domestic products. We've already seen the effects in tech (Apple, Tesla, Intel, etc) but there are still a lot of western companies in China. Middle East boycotts were able to send jitters in stocks like McD and SBUX. China can do way more damage since they control the information stream and have the means to turn a billion+ people against Western goods. Keep an eye on companies with high exposure to China.

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Lmao so the last two presidents both have very sketchy pasts with underage women. Maybe they are controlled assets by a certain foreign intelligence agency in the middle east.  Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself.

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Middle east tensions are generally a bull catalyst for ZIM because it leads to higher frieght rates.

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