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If you read what I write, you would likely come to the conclusion, and rightly, that I disagree with much of what Kernen has to say. But I oddly still like him. I think CNBCs lineup with Andrew, Becky, and Joe is perfect. I don’t know. It’s kind of like having @cubsfan on the board. He drives me crazy but I still think his views are important to consider.

I didn’t know the peace deal consisted of Iran continuing to hit people with missiles. Is this not a board of value investors? Why are there many here so incessantly fixated on today’s prices? Prices today mean zero outside of your option to buy or sell. And of course this goes beyond just the price of oil. I mean, my god. The last two decades nearly have been a time of general exuberance across markets: easy credit, low interest rates, low inflation, booming asset values, everything in the book. And while two decades in the context of time is nothing but a blip, there has been so much emotion and prediction within that period. Fundamentals are the only measurable thing that matters. Very rarely do I see some gotcha post talking about how the fundamentals changed, it’s always seems to be some bullshit about prices. Just because the price of an asset has performed poorly in the past is no indication that it’ll do the same in the future. It’s of course the same thing for the inverse. But yet prices seem to grab ahold of people’s souls. And I feel like people on here should know better; y’all are smarter than that.

Joe Kernen is old enough to be Greg's daddy!

How crazy would it be if @Gregmal was actually Joe Kernen?

I’ve never been to Europe, but it would definitely be interesting. You ever bring up politics and the sort with them? If you do, what do they have to say about America currently?

We’ve spent plenty of time in small European towns, often being the only Americans around. But we are city people and feel very stimulated there. And guess what plenty of locals to talk too and likely with more sophisticated perspectives. No, give me the Four Seasons.

As with travel everywhere, most major cities are simply hubs with international airports. Overnight the day of arrival, or the eve of departure; thereafter, use the transport links to travel elsewhere. Much easier in a Europe, where distances are shorter, and travel infrastructure better developed. Typically, the more contrast the better .... if you can handle it. Most US travellers outside of the US aren't going to be so hot in the typical press of a New Delhi, or a Cairo ... yet they are both great places to visit . Most European travellers outside of Europe, will have much less of a culture shock. Size matters. The US and Canada is big enough, that one can stay entirely 'in-country', yet still have radically different experiences. If you are not so hot at cultural adaption, you don't have to. The cost, is the richness of the experience. SD

LoLz - It's obviously Silly Season by now here on CofB&F about Europe being univestable. - It's also too hot by now!

That takes a lot of nerve.

Our loves: Hike a bit, do culture, history, and enjoy the beauty of the outdoors. Then hit the pub late afternoon and chat it up with locals. Its an obsession now, we can't seem to find any small place in Europe that doesn't fascinate us to no end.

Isn't the market overpriced most of the time? So what? Can't ever remember the overall market valuation ever affecting even one personal investment decision.

Could it be that Americans work much more than Europeans? That said, I spent most of the month of May in Italy - during the off time in many places. As someone posted earlier, avoid major European cities and destinations in peak Summer months.

Everybody's thirsty till it's their turn to buy.

This is the way to do it. I guess you are in the top 1% of people in terms of travel experience. The WS guy who lives in Manhattan and does his annual vacation for a week in an overpriced beach house in the Hamptons or Montauk, while answering teams messages from his work while sitting on a beach share is travel poorer in many respects than Europoor peon who travels on a package deal to Spain for 4 weeks with no worries whatsoever.

Yes, you could essentially modify the opensource code and remove any bias, but that may require quite a bit of work. However, if you regard an LLM as an utility to do coding or run some mundane excel task etc , why would you care about the LLM answer about Xi Jinping or why Karthago lost the 2nd Punic war? In a way, these frontier models are massive bloatware and I think the likely way forward is to have specialized and much leaner tasks specific models that do the job.

Is $69 too low? We just went through a geopolitical scenario that was the oil bull doomers’ wet dream and oil peaked at $110? A lot of it because the major powers (USA, China, G7, etc) all coordinated to contain the upside…what that tells you is that the upside in oil is basically capped. Now you have a large amount of DWT moving through the Strait releasing pent up supply back on the markets while you have new pipelines being built to bypass the strait, other global producers who have upped production, majors getting serious about Venezuela, UAE leaving OPEC and maybe Iraq too soo they can pump more oil… $69 ain’t enough to get me interested. And if the Strait normalizes for a while, oil likely heads even lower than before the war…

In September Angela and I will stay three weeks in Conwy then most of the time in Betws-y-Coed - both Wales. I think Betws-y-Coed population is 476. LOL! And 6 weeks ago we spent two weeks in Okehampton UK then one week in Falmouth.

I normally don’t reference SeekingAlpha but I thought this was a great analysis of Altius Minerals. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4917683-altius-minerals-the-royalty-factory-is-starting-to-look-like-a-compounder

Yes, it's a bit more balanced now. Can see Oil price go down more as a) it's what the US wants/needs and b) more obvious pain trade - not all the bulls have been shaken out, I think. But yes, doesn't feel like the conflict is over by any means. And I think hard to predict what would happen if it restarted. So not so hard to see price going up. This is why I've learned my lesson and am sticking with boring Royalties!

Sorry if a dumb question, but if it's Open Source, can't you just do a fork that removes any censorship? I don't know if there are different levels of 'Open Source' e.g. whether you need a licence to amend.

Irony is that the GMO Quality Fund (& ETF) is actually one of the better mutual funds out there - has pretty consistently outperformed S&P500 which few funds do. And is basically a tracker but with some bad stuff taken out.

Thanks, @Spekulatius, As a Northern European citizen I learn something new here on CofB&F almost every dag about USA and American culture.

I agree, the $69 spot price seems too low. With inventories in a drawdown and continued supply disruption, the skew is to the upside.

Trojan horses should be easy to find in open source. I would be more concerned about gotcha’s in closed models. Censoring doesn’t really matter if you do coding etc. Yes, the Chinese models will give you the party approved answer if you ask them anything remotely politics related about China but it does not matter if you do so some coding.

Added a bit CME , MSFT and a tiny bit of ZTS