CashBoard: quite a while ago, I did a side gig job (year 2012), and I used this app for PDF invoice (professional looking)
ServiceTitan Inc (now a public company TTAN): saw a plumber uses this to generate receipt for me when I paid via CC. Just as I was looking at a possibility to look at buying some of their stocks, I realized they have quite high stock based compensation. ServiceTitan Announces Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2026 Financial Results (My Q: are they the biggest in the industry?)
Other examples of vertical industry software (or SaaS)
Constellation Software (Wikipedia): this is a Canadian conglomerate of vertical software companies. It’s probably the latest of its kind. Its stock is traded at Toronto Stock Exchange.
Full disclosure: I worked in the software (or IT) industry for last 25+ years ago. I put most of my 401k in the S&P 500 index funds. I also have a little individual stocks in my IRA and brokerage accounts, although comparing to the S&P 500 index fund, and other stock positions such as BRK.B and KO, my software stock holdings are insignificant.
There are tons of YouTube videos on this topic recently. Personally, I think the reality will probably somewhere in between, just like this LinkedIn post.
Thinking somewhat more bullet proof idea in this space is Constellation Software Inc., which is a Canada based software conglomerate (TSE:CSU; OTCMKTS:CNSWF). And I looked at both Robinhood and Schwab, it appears the former doen’t have it, the latter one has to pay $6.95 to buy the Over the counter market stocks. I don’t think $7 fee should be a deal breaker if one is truly believer of the company and the stock, though. Also, refer to this YT video Broken Compounder or Rare Sale? Constellation Software Stock Explained by Drew Cohen. And his stock researches here.
The news triggered a rout in stocks such as Landstar System (LSTR.O), opens new tab and C.H. Robinson (CHRW.O), opens new tab. The Dow Jones Transportation Average (.DJT), opens new tab fell 4.4%.
Jefferies analysts, however, said the reaction was disconnected from fundamentals. “Proprietary freight data and physical networks remain durable moats,” they said.
Overall, I think it probably made the content creators lives much harder. The list includes traditional newspaper and magazines, network TV (in the US, it’s the big 3 (ABC, CBS, and NBC) plus PBS, cable TV (there are many), local TV, and musicians including singers, song writers and bands. To some extent, it had impact on traditional radio stations too, but radio station in my opinion probably already had experience the disruption from TV and Internet (early days of Internet, Web 1.0 if I may), there are the digital radio stations such as Sirius and XM radios, but I think for the most part, radio stations survived – another reason is their operating cost is probably lower, with the exception of NPR.
once at Sam’s Club (Manchester road), I saw a lady who is probably laid off from the media industry. And she was doing samples there. We all praised her for her cooking skills for salmon samples. She said she had degrees in journalism but it’s hard to find jobs in that area 🙁
So I was at Sam’s club, tasting the free salmon sample. The lady passing out the Salmon said something funny “Being a Mizzou journalist graduate, I know how to propaganda”. Something like that. It sounds like she lost Journalist job. An old couple who complimented the salmon and the lady’s cooking (there is really not too much cooking because the main task was to warm it up, I think), said their daughter who is in graphic design, lost job since last July. I know it’s probably very difficult for journalists these days amid the new media etc (traditional media lost all the Ads revenue). My previous 2 jobs were in two industries that were both seriously affected by the government polices, luckily my skill can be transferred to other industry. I believe the two people can look at other relatively stable industry as well, as their skills can also transfer: good communication, writing and graphical design skills are always in demand. This is my chicken soup of the day.
These days we often hear layoffs or private equity companies buying or selling those traditional media companies. Even the big ones such as MSNBC etc. This is true in local media as well, e.g., stltoday and KSDK.
Music industry
I talked about it in my earlier blog post. As my friend who was a former attorney, and now has a side gig on Spotify told me the music industry is always “the top dog makes the most money, and it’s hard for the people below the top tier make much money”. That’s probably true, even in the CD, cassette, and the analog plastic disc days.
I also heard another friend who has presence on Spotify, and she said 1,000 plays on Spotify will bring in about 7 CNY (about $1). Again it’s not easy to get 1,000 plays for musicians or songs that are not very famous.
I received my H-1B visa about 25 years ago. I went directly from F-1 student visa to H-1B worker (without the OPT or Optional Practical Training) because I quit from the Ph.D program from my graduate school at the time. I was probably one of the first batch of the international graduate students took that route in my school. Do keep in mind the US job market and economy was in much better shape at the time (1999 and 2000) compared to now. The current job market is the worst job market I’ve seen in last 25 years.
I came across a thread re: H-1B on linkedIn re: this topic. I pasted the content below as not everyone has LinkedIn. You may find the discussion below the post interesting too.
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I’m seeing a lot of takes about the new H1B $100,000 fee. What I rarely see is this issue framed from the perspective of the unemployed senior software engineer with 10–20+ years of experience who has been searching for months; or the recent CS graduate who can’t land their first job.
The reality is that the H1B program has been heavily used for cheap labor. When you count renewals, there are over 600,000 H1Bs in the U.S. Roughly two thirds (400,000) are in technology; and the vast majority of those are software engineers.
Multiple studies by the Center for Immigration Studies; a group that is generally pro immigrant; have found that H1B employees in technology earn about 30% less than domestic engineers. With around 1.2 million employed software engineers in the U.S., that means roughly one third of the field has been replaced by H1Bs over the past decade. This isn’t a case of “we can’t find enough domestic engineers.” This is “we’re going to replace our existing engineers with cheaper labor.”
The most glaring example came recently… Microsoft laid off thousands of employees and then applied for thousands of H1Bs to replace them. So yes, the program is heavily abused. I’m not calling for it to be axed; the original purpose of H1B was to bring in the best and brightest to fill genuine gaps. That’s still important. But the way it’s being used today is a complete distortion of that purpose.
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The US is obviously going through a lot of changes since the new administration took over in January 2025. But I didn’t expect things happened so fast: probably some other friends felt the same way too.
I started keep track of my monthly subscription on various things. Here is the google sheet for that. It’s $231.11 total per month. I also pasted below.
Subscription
monthly cost (updated 06-21-25)
Netlfix
$17.99
Hulu, Disney ad tier
$3.99
panera sip club
$10.00
apple news
$12.99
apple icloud
$3.98
google drive
$1.67
youtube
$22.99
Peacock TV
$6.67
AT&T
$70
Medium
$4.17
Strava
$6.67
mint mobile
$55
Amazon Prime
15
subtoal
$231.11
Xu household digital subscriptions cost – year 2025
Also, last night (or this morning to be precise) I noticed since I downgraded my Netflix subscription a few month ago to a Ad-support plan $7.99 a month, and I happened to watch the Virgin River show last night as I could not fell asleep. And I really disliked the interruption of the ads. So I went ahead and switched back to the standard plan $17.99 a month. Besides no Ads, it also allows more screens or allows for popup screen on iPhone.
Streaming
I noticed this stat from the newsletter from Morning Brew, and I will copy a bit below.
Prime number: Streaming overtakes broadcast + cable (this is the subject)
All those Hot Ones interviews you watch while muted and off-camera during companywide calls are adding up. For the first time ever, more Americans watch streaming services on TV than broadcast and cable combined, per the latest Nielsen data:
As of May, streaming accounted for 45% of all TV viewing, while broadcast + cable represented 44%. When Nielsen started measuring in 2021, streaming made up only 26% of TV time, while traditional TV dominated at nearly two-thirds.
The popularity of streaming among the youths is well documented, but this latest surge away from regular TV and toward free, ad-supported apps like YouTube and Tubi is driven by the elders. The fastest-growing cohort watching YouTube on a TV set is viewers over the age of 65, the New York Times reported.—AE
I happened to meet the controller of the company yesterday evening. It’s a charter cruise company with a focus on music theme: jazz and country music in particular. The business is booming, apparently, America minted 1,000 millionaires a day in 2024 and it’s not slowing down helps too. I mean the older people, their main customer groups, are getting richer and richer 🙂
Also, this again reinforced my impression on the 行业细分 in the USA. I know there are large cruise companies such as Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line, or Disney branded cruise etc. But this charter music cruise brings the specialty to another level. The mentioned cruise company (see below) has zero debt, and they survived the pandemic with 2 years of no cruise 🙂
Zero debt is a luxury and it’s something I am looking forward to see as well 🙂
I have seen a few sudden changes of vendor in my career. And this is usually sign of either “not thinking through” or “the bean counters are in charge”.
Once at Ascension Health, it seems they only implemented the Okta two factor authentication for a few days or a few weeks, then suddenly they switch back to Microsoft AD (Active Directory). It seems to me this one was due to some executives have second thought on Okta. They want to go all in with Microsoft in terms of authentication (and authorization) as well, and they built a layer on the top of Azure AD B2C (and named it as AscensionID).
Now I think about it, in a way “sudden change” is probably easier than change an entrenched software (or rewrite), or trying to slowly change a software or app. Because the “sudden change” approach is somewhat like “just rip off the bandage”. In the case of the example above, because it barely went into production, it was not entrenched.
On the contrary, I have seen in a few cases in my career, we were trying to rewrite an app or a software, only end up going nowhere after spending quite some time. Re-write has its own challenges, btw.
In fact, in most cases: I realized we end up not switching – note this is after decent or significant efforts (in terms of money, multi-millions dollars). If it’s my money, I don’t think I would spend it like that.
The glitch at the center of this week’s headache was a corrupted database file in a pilots’ advisory system that issues warnings, known as NOTAMs, of various hazards that could affect a flight, ranging from notices of closed runways to the presence of nearby construction equipment. The damaged file was also present in the FAA’s backup system, a source familiar with the matter told CNN, which first reported the detail on Wednesday.
Officials moved to reboot the main NOTAM system early Wednesday morning, but it failed to be completely restored by the time rush hour began on the East Coast, leading to the FAA ground stop. A senior US official told CNN Wednesday there was no evidence of foul play in the incident, a detail the FAA later publicly confirmed.…
The NOTAM issue occurred just days after the FAA had said an “air traffic computer issue” was responsible for hours-long flight delays to Florida airports on Jan. 2. That system, known as ERAM, is responsible for tracking hundreds of flights at a time and is considered a critical component of the FAA’s efforts to modernize the US airspace.
More recently, I heard that the DOGE or more precisely Elon is going to fix the old systems at FAA. See below. Note this is different from the system above: also current system is neither Verizon or Starlink.
Elon Musk’s satellite business Starlink may not have officially taken over Verizon’s $2.4 billion contract with the Federal Aviation Administration yet to upgrade the systems it uses to manage America’s airspace. However, on Friday, FAA officials ordered staff to begin finding tens of millions of dollars for a Starlink deal, according to a source with knowledge of the FAA and two people briefed on the situation.
The sources note that these internal directives have mostly, if not entirely, been delivered verbally — which they say is unusual for a matter like this. The source with knowledge of the FAA tells Rolling Stone that it appears as though “someone does not want a paper trail.”
I can recall in a few other cases “verbal instructions only” are used, e.g., the dismantle of USAid, CFPB by the DOGE team.
Executives from rural areas in the Midwest of the United States generally do not realize the complexity of the world (the company is stingy and does not hire security guards, but you have to hire bodyguards at your own expense). Buffett’s annual bodyguard/security fee is probably hundreds of thousands. More than 20 years ago, Microsoft’s Balmer came to the village and also had bodyguards. I think he took these shots for the shareholders.
I have worked in the United States for 24+ years and have used basically all major medical insurance companies. I personally feel that UNH’s service is relatively reliable. There are many unreliable insurance companies-many of them just take money but do not do anything.
I also despise the American Boxers/keyboard warriors on the Internet, who smash Japanese cars of compatriots and make all kinds of medical troubles: the medical system and medical insurance problems in the United States are mainly caused by politicians. Republican politicians should bear the main responsibility: I dare to guarantee that they are the ones who receive the bulk of donations from insurance companies. The United States should learn from other Western countries to implement universal health insurance. I have experienced some of the darkness of American (extreme) capitalism, which takes profit as the only goal and relies too much on the market. I remember that Amazon laid off employees with cancer a few years ago, and the New York Times reported it at the time.
PS: The US medical system is huge and has its advanced aspects (new drugs, new equipment, new treatments), but it does have some drawbacks, which I have personally experienced recently.
Actually, I first saw this news on Xiaohongshu yesterday – I hope the Chinese people are not posting it out of gloating.
The shareholder letter and 2023 annual report PDF file here. Quote the letter, page 5
Our goal at Berkshire is simple: We want to own either all or a portion of businesses that enjoy good economics that are fundamental and enduring. Within capitalism, some businesses will flourish for a very long time while others will prove to be sinkholes. It’s harder than you would think to predict which will be the winners and losers. And those who tell you they know the answer are usually either self-delusional or snake-oil salesmen.
====== At Berkshire, we particularly favor the rare enterprise that can deploy additional capital at high returns in the future. Owning only one of these companies – and simply sitting tight – can deliver wealth almost beyond measure. Even heirs to such a holding can – ugh! – sometimes live a lifetime of leisure.
====== We also hope these favored businesses are run by able and trustworthy managers, though that is a more difficult judgment to make, however, and Berkshire has had its share of disappointments.
Warren did not use the word enduring here. I think he meant companies that have enduring competitive edge 竞争优势 when he said “……rare enterprise……”, or the “moat” 护城河 which was frequently talked about/used in the past shareholder meetings. By the same token, in investing we are looking for an enduring company.
Warren’s grades for the subsidiaries and companies that BRK has Equity Stakes
If I could summarize what Warren said about the subsidiaries and the companies that Berkshire Hathaway equity stakes. He is what he said basically insurance is doing good, BNSF is doing okay and will probably be okay in the future. He was not that sure about the Berkshire Hathaway Energy BHE, mainly due to the unknown regulatory risks such as the capped rate. As a capitalist, he expected to recoup the investments and then some. But for the BHE (electricity utility co.), because the regulators limit the rate they can charge, he was not sure BHE can get the money back from all the investments in green energy (wind, solar) and power transmission.
For companies BRK has equity stakes, he basically “praised by names”: they are American Express and Coca-Cola. Both are companies born in 1800s. They have enduring competitive edge. I guess this is true even after the recent Capital One /Discover merge. Amex is in a such a unique position in the market, and they are not afraid of Visa and Mastercard either.
American Express Rose Gold card
Warrren praised the OXY, its CEO Vicki and the US oil industry as well.
Companies that has long history or decent history
I noticed in the US there are companies that has long history or decent history. Many of them are family controlled or started by a family (or two, in the case of Leggett and Platt, Wikipedia entry here). In a way Anheuser-Busch the beer giant was like that too. But now AB is a part of AB InBev. Over the time as companies go public (traded in the stock exchanges), the families will gradually sell off the stakes, and eventually they don’t have the control or majority ownership. I think the few companies that families still have control included Ford. Also Berkshire Hathaway will selectively provide a home for those families owned business too, include the one in recent news – Pilot Travel Centers.
Below some of them have STL connection (HQ).
ADM: they had an accounting scandal recently. That’s bad.
I traded the stock around that day. I sold it on the 2nd day though.
Bunge: first saw their North America HQ at west port, probably in year 2008. On its Wikipedia entry, – I noticed this company have long history. They are in similar business as ADM (food processing, some call them agri business). Note Monsabto is in that business too. STL has quite some agri business.
Founded 1818; 206 years ago; Amsterdam, Netherlands
Founder Johann P. G. Bunge
Somewhat related to John Deere, I noticed #Bunge moved its HQ to St. Louis in the last few years – https://t.co/H1s6Fq7xgG (they are also in the agriculture business, more on the processing side). I noticed their old North America (or USA) HQ near westport, about 16 years ago /6
Noticed the company HQ and company history of John Deere, Bunge and BRK
Berkshire Hathaway: nothing to add (this is a common phrase Charlie Munger used to say in the annual shareholder meeting).
Emerson Electric: this is St. Louis based company, and they recently sold the climate control business (White Rodgers and Sensi brands) to private equity, and the PE firm rebranded it as Copeland. Meanwhile Emerson continues to focus on industrial automation (compete against Rockwell Automation, Siemens etc) , and other business.
GE: 100+ years, in the progress of breaking up. The healthcare unit GE Healthcare is already being spun off, and its stock has done well so far.
IBM: 100+ years, sold or spun off some low margin business, still going strong recently.
Jack Henry and Associates: blog post (same blog post below for Leggett and Platt). The only tech public company HQ’ed in Missouri. Found in 1976, same year Microsoft was found.
Leggett and Platt: It seems they will have some tough time this year due to the consumer slowdown of beeding products (their main products). The company has a long history and is based in Missouri. I sold the stock recently, btw. My Blog post – Dividend Based Investing.
Twitter thread below. I have quite a few threads on this actually. But I am posting the last one here only. It seems the US consumers are tapped from year 2023 (and until now Feb 2024). I do expect some sort of recession for those consumers. This will impact consumer products companies such as Polaris too $PII (no position at this time).
Found one #dividendYield chart for $LEG: https://t.co/mNXqNcnKKU || For the dip at each quarter, it seems was caused by #exDividend. From visual the average dividend for $LEG is about 4%, and right now 6.95% yield seems juicy: obviously, the potential risk is the stock price drop
Btw, I sold the Rivian stock $RIVN on the same day I sold all the remaining shares of $LEG too. EV seems like the traditional car business, and similar to the airline business. They are both very hard to survive, and almost impossible to thrive in those businesses.
A related note is in the large commercial air planes space, there are only two players AirBus and Boeing $BA. And yours truly has a few shares of $BA at this time. And we cannot say that for EV. Tesla is obviously big in the USA, but in China BYD has just beat Tesla. And then there are also the legacy car makers, including the all mighty Toyota Motors, whose hybrid is taking the wind from the EVs now.
Macys: May Department store (Famous Barr). I heard they rejected PE’s take private offer. Long term I don’t see they survive. I recall we played with our soon to be 14 year old at Macy’s (hide and seek, when she was probably 2 years old). She could no longer remember. She shops at Aerie (American Eagle Outfitter), Hollister (a brand under ANF), and H&M instead.
Monsanto: bought by Bayer, operate as a part of Bayer Agri Science, and involved in lots of lawsuits on roundup (the lawsuit existed before the acquisition).
Sara Lee: Wikipedia. Came across it today as I saw people talked about its former subsidiary Hanesbrand. It looks like Sara Lee itself is broken up now: it split into the US business and European business, and the companies names also changed. They still kept the Sara Lee brand for bread. I used to have a roommate worked for Sara Lee in year 2007.
A side story: my 9 year old didn’t remember the brand name because of their font.
PS: in this year’s annual shareholder letter, Warren used his own little sister Bertie quite extensively, which is a good thing because he wanted non financial/accounting professionals to understand the business. He always paid tribute to Charlie Munger, who has the best 30 seconds brain in investing. Charlie does have other good attribute and skills too, e.g., he is a real architect (designing his own house, for example). And he did steer Warren towards the value investing in companies such as See’s candies and Coca Cola.
Coca-Cola can and drink (exaggerated)
Last but not least, I wrote a X thread yesterday on similar topic.
#BerkshireHathaway 2023 annual report (and #WarrenBuffett 's letter to shareholder) is out – https://t.co/VobyFbo5ML || I am reading it now, before reading others' comments. It seems I won't go to #BRK2024 at Omaha this year. Hope next year I can go. /1
