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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.

Here is the good news : Seaspan may be a beneficiary of Canada moving ahead on its submarine procurement program as they own the Seaspan Shipyard in the west coast. Here is the bad news: This is not the business that FFH co-owns with Washington family

Bought some Comcast with the profits from closing some of my naked short BE calls today.

Yeah. The path to being a potential NHL player out of Canada is now a $200k commitment for the parents. Places like Rink Academy or Edge are hockey focused schools starting at middle school age for $20k+ per year, plus gear, travel team fees/costs, etc. Not many people coming from the pond behind the farm to the NHL anymore.

The next step after 3 TMP pipes are up and running in the same corridor, will be to remove/replace the original old line and replace with a new 1 million barrel line. Ongoing capital payback from recent/coming additions financing the upgrade (primarily capital roll-over vs new financing), that also removes the environmental risk from old pipe. Ultimately, congestion will fuel the need for underwater pipe feeding offshore Vancouver Island loading, but not for a decade or so yet. Times change; demonstrate responsible wins elsewhere, reduce the environmental risks from collisions, and it becomes much less contentious. All good. SD

Less of the scholarship thing, as there just aren't the scholarships, and its not part of the culture. Hence the next step calls for improved soccer development infrastructure ... and only small grants to help with travel and living costs while you continue to train/develop. The bigger concern is the coach abuse and corruption within the sports organisations managing this very one-sided power arrangement. Changing now as the women's games are emerging, and they aren't putting up with it. Good on them. SD

Ha I mean the only thing really permeating of late is wondering why every single numb nut Fed official and politician wants to talk about the horrors of inflation because of oil(war...DUH!), or heck BBQ prices(meat derivative)...but we all dance along oblivious as to why memory prices are A-OK having gone up 10x as 3-4 main guys sport 80% margins....is Liz the Indian still hammering home how unacceptable BX's 40% NOI margin is on rentals, or about big builders still having 20% margins financed by double digit construction loans? The more things go on, the more it seems the masses are just totally losing track of the things that are relevant to whats happening.

Speaking only for myself, I think separation and an oil pipeline to central Canada are both stupid. The shortest path to tidewater is to the BC coast. If they build another million barrel line there I'll be thrilled. Even the transmountain new pump stations to increase capacity there is very helpful. Dredging for the container port and deeper draft tankers also makes a big difference.

@rogermunibond I asked it to make a project tracker in google sheets and keep track of projects and status and inputs required and create a scheduled task to review each morning if any changes or new projects need to be added. Does require me to review regularly but helps me keep the rolling project list. I also, have several other scheduled things. It summarizes each weeks worth of emails each weeks and sends me a summary email of the past week with any open things i haven't responded to. I have terrible inbox management. As well as a few other scheduled tasks related to projects i am working on where it updates the spreadsheets and or documents and sends me reminder emails to go review them and provide inputs.

I'll put a marker down and say he can't do it for reasons I've laid out before. But beyond on that, I'm not sure why this should even be an objective for the Fed. There's no upside and only downside since too many reserves isn't a problem, but even a tiny bit too few reserves and things immediately go haywire in the Fedwire payments system and the short-term interest rate the Fed is trying to control. Meanwhile as the US (and global economy) grow(s), the demand for central bank liabilities grows organically so the objective has an ever so slight headwind. Bill

That's just it; I didn't complain non-stop about those with whom I had disagreements (i.e., Biden), and I readily acknowledge disagreements even with those I support (i.e., Trump). Last I checked, COBF didn't exist when Clinton was President(?) but there was a lot there to like in those days. Too bad he would be a pariah among today's democrats.

Nothing I post should be taken as seriously as the typed words suggest. If or when you meet me in person you'll find that I'm conversational, that's in print and speech. I mostly enjoy interacting with those on the other sides of issues than me, there's nothing more of a let down than hanging out with like minded's...it puts me to sleep. The only things that bother me are the intense extremes, which tend to be over-displayed of course by our news sources. But they sell ads and selling is what most news today is about.