Subject: Re: Paying taxes
When someone has spoken before about tax paying efficiencies suddenly executes in a very tax inefficient manner, I think it means something.

Is this just specific to Apple,

I will forever maintain that it was a position size vs risk assessment, but the latest news might not be so happy for Apple. Far be it from me to say Warren can’t see over the horizon, but…

Apple has now had several months in a row of declining sales in China, its 2nd most important market:

Apple's China troubles mount as foreign phone sales sink for 4th month

BEIJING, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Shipments to China of foreign-branded smartphones, including Apple Inc's (AAPL.O), opens new tab iPhone, fell by 47.4% in November from a year earlier, according to data released on Friday from a government-affiliated research firm, down for the fourth month.

Calculations based on the data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) showed that foreign brand shipments decreased to 3.04 million units from 5.769 million units a year earlier.

Apple’s sales decline has not been nearly so precipitous, but the worrying trend is the move by Chinese consumers to buy homegrown, rather than foreign cell phones.

its market share declines, Apple launched a rare four-day promotion in China on Thursday, cutting prices by up to 500 yuan ($68.50) on its flagship models to boost sales.
Huawei has emerged as a strong challenger since its return to the premium segment in August 2023 with locally-made chipsets.

Apple briefly fell out of China's top five smartphone vendors in the second quarter of 2024 before recovering in the third quarter. The U.S. company's smartphone sales in China still slipped 0.3% during the third quarter from a year earlier, while Huawei's sales rose 42%, according to research firm IDC.
https://www.reuters.com/busine...

It appears the slowdown in the China economy is quite real, with some speculating that they are entering a deflationary period. Consumers are trading down or putting off purchases entirely, the real estate sector is a basket-case and many households have all their wealth tied up in second homes they can’t sell or rent (shades of 2008) and there’s no great relief in sight.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be any positive news from China, just that it may be narrower than people have become accustomed to in the past decade.