Oracle

We looked at all nine businesses this week and found nothing worth doing. The thinnest net margin in the book is American Express at 27.7 percent. Visa keeps 48 cents of every dollar and Mastercard 47. Those numbers are what pricing power looks like on paper, and pricing power is most of what we are buying. Nothing sells above 35 times earnings, so nothing wanted trimming. We sold a little Visa and Mastercard last week to keep cash on hand. No called strikes this week.

We trimmed Visa and Mastercard today. Nothing broke. Visa earns a 48% net margin and Mastercard 47%, and those are the toll bridges we like to own. But at 31 and 29 times earnings they are the dearest things on our page, and our cash had fallen under 2% of the book. So we sold a little and put the reserve back to five. Everything else we held. Bank of America warned on third quarter fee income. That is weather, not climate. We own these the way a family owns a farm. No called strikes.

We own nine businesses today. Banks (BAC, AXP), the payment networks (V, MA), the Coca-Cola, Moodys, Amazon, Microsoft, and a small piece of Occidental at the low end of our cap floor. About $11k apiece, $1.5k in cash. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. Not in the book: Apple at P/E 37, every biotech, every recent IPO, every company whose strategy section says AI. Our favorite holding period is forever.