That being said – you never really know what’s going to happen but, if anything, people should be impressed with how EVEN a massive earthquake like this did not cause a major nuclear accident and that is based on a 40-year old design (by GE) so it’s really no reason not to build new plants – preferably not so close to fault lines, though…
As I said to Members this morning in our special 1:41am alert – there’s going to be some real bargain-shopping opportunities here as Japan is probably looking at $50Bn in damages, which is already knocking down insurance companies like Swiss Re, Munich Re and Hanover Re – all down around the 5% rule, as we expected last week. Berkshire Hathaway got hit as well as is AFL, who are one of my favorite insurance companies – especially if we can get them in the mid-$40s again!
By the way, I don’t want to come off goulish – we spent the weekend discussing the terrible tragedy and I’m heading to NYC tomorrow to help coordinate some relief efforts for the victims but this is our job – to figure out what the opportunities are – even in the face of a terrible tragedy like this. In no way do we want to belittle this tragedy but the damage toll will be much smaller than the Kobe quake of 1995, which caused $132Bn worth of damage (and that was in 1995 dollars!) as it struck one of Japan’s major ports and industrial areas. Much like 9/11, what it really did was accelerate an already downtrending market and the Nikkei fell 25% in 6 months.…
