All Activity

Yeah we are on the same page there, the only difference is my gut feeling tells me this still has some juice left. That said my gut feeling is basically 50/50 so don't mind me.

I saw MU at 1200 and was thinking of shorting it but TSLA got me scarred and scared.

I accepted a limited partnership in a small local craft brewer for pretty much this exact reason; building things, share the risk and time commitment, create a lot of employment, enrich the community, and enable one to brew purely for the fun of it. The keys are partners you like, clearly defined duties (I'm the finance/accounting guy, and floating 'grunt'), staying small, and keeping it lean. Treat your capital investment as an immediate loss, your share of the years (modest) profits as a bonus to spend as you wish. Could just as easily be a bakery, etc, depending upon your interests. It has worked out well, is well suited to the early 'retirement' years, and the challenges are a great counter weight to the constant 'draw' of retirement. All our employees (including the part-time) have a partnership interest in the brewery, and we do at least 2-3 contract brew collaborations/year for staff development. We run it as we would any other business, but also include some 'non business' KPI's, as we're not in it for the money. Different strokes. SD

Sold my VTRS position

Thanks. I have an acquaintance where I live (that was weirdly on the Canadian National soccer team I believe at one time) and he is from Nova Scotia. One time I was introducing him to someone and I mistakenly said he was from Newfoundland. He said “You think I’m a Newfy!?” Or something to that effect. Apparently Newfoundland is like the West Virginia of Canada. I’m from a small Southern backwater state that everyone thinks is the worst and I know is the best, so I don’t care about those sorts of things haha. I was just looking at St. John’s average monthly temps and it sounds like paradise. Just saying.

I've started thinking this through, but am still early in the process. I'm a Gen Xer. IMO, the children of my generation have bigger opportunities than my generation, but have fewer and are in a more difficult world financially. So, I'm thinking about how much extra money those kids would need to level the playing field with Gen X, and what I can do to directly address that issue with the young people I know who don't have high-income parents.

In fact, 70% of population is in the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-Quebec City corridor and close BC The Canadian Shield north of the country ensures lack of fertile land so historically population gravitated toward already dense area.

Yep. The thing I wonder about is whether there is a deliberate "overload" strategy going on, or if it's just a side effect of the way things happen these days. Like, it's pretty clear that the "never let a crisis go to waste" thing from decades back was and is a deliberate strategy, and I'm wondering if overload is too.

100%. Ive always found impacting individual lives creates for bigger ripple effects than giving to broad organizations run by the wives of rich dudes who want tax breaks.

Stunning comeback by Argentina. @raveslayer, have you recovered yet?

Yeah, I think the value proposition of small and local is much better than national charities.

So maybe 18 months ago, a few of us did some work on STX, which at the time was trading in the $80-120 range. Right, the AI trade was already a bit long in the tooth, but the general idea was that the memory stuff was the last leg that needed a repricing. Of course the reason it was the last to rally after years of anything AI gains, was because it was and always will be a shitty commodity type cyclical biz. Nevertheless we ran a whole bunch of different scenarios, and even in the most optimistic blue sky scenario, the highest price we could arrive at for STX was about $400 per share. After exiting in its entirely this past April, the stocks of STX and all its peers then basically did a 3x. Classic blowoff top. Nobody, and I mean nobody when you ask them why you would ever pay $1000 per share for Seagate, can give you even 1/10 of a reasonable answer within the framework of how we arrived at $280-410 price targets 18 months ago. At best, you get some vague crap about "AI gonna be big" and "higher for longer" on memory prices. Which still no where remotely justifies even $500 per share. So end of the day, it's some legit analytical worked overlapped primary with a gut feel for where the cycle is. The majority of my most prosperous investments/trades have been gut feel calls. If it doesn't work out I can maybe at most lose MSD of my capital. NBD.

You could use bull put spreads. I just pulled up Micron out of curiosity, lots of ways to create a 100-200% gain if the price drops a little by next June (with a 100% loss) if it doesn't. I think you could do 500-700% with a drop to $500 if you go further out of the money.

The question is, what is different than 3 months ago? They were trading at high levels back then too, did not stop them from doubling. I am sure there will come a moment prices and margins come down but I am not sure this will be within the next year.

Are you not concerned about the general market buoyancy pushing these higher. My gut agrees with you but i'm not sure the risk reward is there. Id love to hear more about your thoughts. If the market moves higher will you fold and take a loss? Whats the strategy?

Made my first - large for me - six figure- donation to charity about 10 years ago, much larger than usual because the donation was meaningful to them and to me. Try to do this each year with a charity where smaller amounts go a long way. Also try to keep it mostly local so I can monitor and/or be involved with the activities and ensure the money is used for its intended purpose.

Absolutely regarding the Dominicans, the wild thing is that an obvious visible disadvantage becomes a hidden advantage. Less access to aluminum bats and softballs translate into higher hitting percentage once they play with the right equipment not a metal pipe or stick Its like listening to a podcast on 1.5x speed for a few hours, then when you listen on 1x its seems like slow motion. This is the hidden advantage to growing up playing on concrete. By the time you start playing on grass or turf the game seems like slow motion. Your brain and your body have been conditioned to an extremely fast paced game. Add to the above Spain's small physical stature has forced them to play a very team focused game that translates into success. You don't need super stars when you have a 100 world class players to pick from. Canada's access to our African heritage super athletes has us focusing on speed and power strategies over the finer details like pass accuracy and game control. Maybe France has the golden ticket of big strong players with a higher skill level. I love the world cup because you see so many strategies based on the nations strengths and weaknesses.

Off topic but anyone who wants a great foot/ankle/achilles/calf workout - go to a soccer field (or anywhere, really) and run a few laps on your toes only - heels never touching the ground. Great for kids too, it builds an unmatched base of agility that translates well to other sports with quick changes of direction. Came from my old coach who was an ex-cosmos player.

Yup, same way the Dominican/Caribbean kids whom learn growing up how to play baseball with bare hands, using little more than bottle caps and broomsticks run circles around the kids in more developed countries. Heck it was even night and day going from NJ to FL, where the rec teams in FL are worlds better than the Northeastern travel teams for little reason other than how frequently and easily they get to be on the field.

Always crazy to me that Canada has 4 people per Sq Km and the 10th lowest population density of any country and you all are always saying the cost of real estate is exorbitantly high. I realize probably half the land is almost uninhabitable but still. Isn’t there a nice 100k population town in Newfoundland or Quebec where you could live and work remote? Sounds like an opportunity for somebody to run indoor soccer clinics in smaller spaces and sell it as Spanish style.

Argentinan here, very nervous watching the game while working (1pm in Buenos Aires, Egipto just scored). What Jaygo says is true... It is amazing to see how children who play soccer from a young age develop a playing style (complex blend of technique, tactics, physical fitness, intelligence and cunning) that is difficult to teach later in life. I would encourage any parent to introduce their children to soccer culture. While it is true that in some countries (like here) it is highly competitive and puts a lot of pressure on the kids, it is a healthy culture with solid values based purely in team play.

Football / soccer is absolutely not cheap in Canada. We are spending roughly 8K per year between my kids. The reasoning is very simple, Canada has absolutely shit weather and outrageously expensive and prohibitive real estate and development fees. A single indoor soccer pitch with an hour of Toronto is going to cost about 10 million bucks. Many will cost multiples of that and if you want to play all year and actually get good you need indoor 6 or 7 months a year. Our yearly fee for my son who is U2017 is 5k and more than half is going to field rentals. He's on the field 3-4 days a week. Maybe in Victoria, Windsor or Vancouver you can get away with outdoor all year round but not anywhere else. Watching Canada and the US play this WC just shows you our kids are just not getting the touches on the ball that other global citizens are. We suck plain and simple when comped to the Europeans. We rely on speed and strength because we need to compensate for lack of ball control and Football IQ. The reason the Spanish players are less athletic ( smaller and slower ) but still excel is that they play the purest form of football, the type that comes from playing every single day in a small court in Barca or Cadiz. They play with the ball like it is glued to their feet because that is the life they live. They grow up playing on a concrete surface in a Plaza or a school courtyard so they are used to a much faster, closer game. In Barca if you play on grass you are rich and at a disadvantage because the tiki taka comes from playing street ball. The more money that gets poured into north American programs will help but a fundamental shift is required to get world class. My son is a top player in his age group here and when we play in a park in Spain he cant get close to the ball, the game is just too fast for him because he is used to playing on long grass or super expensive turf. The reason Canada couldn't get a pass completed against Morocco is because they had no time so panicked, but that is football everywhere else in the world. Pass and move, pass and move.

Giving is something I'm spending more time thinking about lately. For the last few years my (non-investing) business has been throwing off way more cash than I need. I'm intentionally keeping my lifestyle fairly flat, to not spoil my kids and to keep from becoming an asshole. That leaves savings for investmemt as an option, but with good returns the last few years even if my business crashed (which is 100% possible as I have significant and unavoidable supplier concentration so they could kill me if they wanted to) I'd be fine. At some point piling up more money stops being gratifying. I'm likely dramatically less rich than many on here, but I have enough to live more than comfortably the rest of my life - and there is some level where accumulating more and more seems like getting dangerously close to asshole territory to me. Anyway, the solution I've decided on is a fixed amount of money going to each of spending and investing every year, with the remainder going to charity. I'd be interested in hearing how other people manage that though.

It is lord of the rings in Ankara today.

I actually like looking at data that is 1-2 years old, so I can see what the management was saying during that time and fast forward to now, seeing if they actually implemented their strategy and the financials improved accordingly. I also like 10-15 years plus of data because I want to see how a business operations through a full business cycle (peaks and troughs). Most recently, I am most interested in how management works through COVID (2020s), which is out of their control. Or in your scenario above, a weak yen. In due time, there will be a stronger yen. As for the 2024 version, It's like looking at a chess board and seeing the optionality. If you're given the same data as Warren Buffett and don't see the "play".. then oh well. It's like working with quarterbacks and asking them what they see during their reads.... Tom Brady and other elite QBs will see stuff pre-snap and post-snap that the Bryce Youngs of this world will not see. You could run into "resulting" like Annie Duke.. but, I still think it s a good table top exercise. It's a regression testing on your thought/investing process. If you can see the fat pitch then, you should feel confident in applying the same analysis to the current 2026 version... if it's still available.