OXY - WEB Missed Badly

Should we expect WEB to dump OXY? Not a good call by him. How many rode his coattails on this one?

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Me! And it’s been terrible so far.

I did! About a 1% buy so not going to hurt much. I’m going to see how it goes through a few cycles of oil production.

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WEB knows the fortunes of the oil industry is dictated by Oil prices. Unless he has some view on the Oil price over a decade, he may not have entered. Berkshire timeframe is very different from yours. So if you coattail, you are doing it at your own risk and due diligence. You cannot blame him.

No, I don’t own it. I own only XOM and CVX. Crude has been going down for sometime, yet Oil companies share prices held, so I shorted XLE to hedge. If you are looking for cheap Oil names, look at EU oil majors, they are lot cheaper than XOM & CVX.

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I bought some OXY leaps but placed some covered calls so losses are not as bad.

OXY was Buffet’s worst investment. Not because he relentlessly bought it but because he could instead have bought 100% of Tesla for $50B.
He had bought BYD on Charlie’s recommendation (liked the CEO) so its was not a big leap.

I put my money where my mouth as and backed up the truck Tesla at that time.

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Incorrect. It is not like he had XX $$ and had to make a decision between OXY and TSLA. No, he made a choice not to invest in Tesla for his own reasons. For me, as much as I believed in EV, and battery technology and some future options, I could not buy TSLA because of the valuation and more importantly Musk risk. I viewed TSLA as a binary risk on Musk, meaning it is not clear what is TSLA without Musk.

Again, a gentle reminder, he is not investing to become rich, :joy: He is investing for his long-term investors who are already wildly rich. Whenever we talk about a guy who made $100 B gain on a single stock, we need to be more deferential.

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Berkshire’s avg. buying price of OXY is ~$54 over last several years.
The current price is $48.Tesla has gone from a market cap of $50B to $1.3T.

I understand your point that this is not how he thinks and this is not a choice. I am saying that this is the problem. The choice was “oil economy” or “disruptor of oil economy”.

With the exception of Apple, most of his decisions in last 10+ years have been wrong (KHC, Airlines, PCC, OXY, Banks etc.)

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No. I think you are not understanding this.

You take High risk to build wealth, low risk to protect wealth and slowly grow

Tesla is a risky bet, it could have, should have gone bankrupt multiple times. It survived, great, but that doesn’t make it a compelling investment for everyone.

You can comment on what he said, when he didn’t say anything, you are speculating his intentions. Why?

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You are doing selective reading. He sold WFC for reasons known to him. But he made tons of money in $BAC. Again, there is no need for him to prove anything to anybody.

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He invested in a Chinese company BYD for crying out loud.

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That was a Charlie investment.

OXY and Tesla going in opposite directions.

I am cotailing. Buying leaps around $46.