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Friday File: The Curtain Comes Down

Some thoughts on Ukraine and what that means for our investments, plus Annual Review updates on a few holdings.... and one new buy


It seems almost silly and trivial to think about the quarterly updates from our various investments right now, but I’ll get to a bit of that in a moment — and my top 20 positions in the Real Money Portfolio do all now have updated “buy below” prices, for whatever that’s worth.

First, though, my thoughts on what’s happening in the world and what that means for us… if you want to focus just on investments, you won’t hurt my feelings, just skip ahead to the next section (*****).

Like most of you, I spent the past week being horrified by the horrible, immoral and above all unnecessary Russian invasion of Ukraine. War is awful everywhere, and no nation that has ever waged war has lived entirely on the side of the angels, certainly including my own, but here we at least see a stunning moral clarity that rekindles our confidence that liberal democracy is worth protecting… and has perhaps been taken too much for granted by many of us in the West as we dabble with the convenience and comfort promised by charismatic authoritarian leaders. The invasion of a neighboring country, with the intent of squashing and absorbing an independent democratic state into an autocratic empire, presents one of the clearest examples of Might vs. Right that we’ve seen in a long time, at least in Europe and the “developed” world.  It’s both inspiring to see the Ukrainian resistance, and horribly saddening that it should be necessary.

And the unity of most of Europe and the “Western World” (which includes Japan and Australia these days) in retaliating politically and economically has been heartening, though it’s also true that most of us probably feel helpless and a little heartbroken. In the face of this kind of aggression, the emotional response of many folks is that we’d like to see NATO tanks pour across the border to defend the brave Ukrainian citizens who have inspired the world (and perhaps surprised the Russians)… but we also know that world wars have been started with much less, and that’s why, despite the fact that much of Ukraine wants to step further from Russian influence, the country has not been invited into the EU or NATO… and why the major powers of the West, though more unified than perhaps expected, are being pretty measured and mature in their cautious response, ...

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