Luke

Are you sure about 10x earnings for GDP/Inflation growth as a general rule? It depends on interest rates, maybe 10x is fine at 5%+ rates but at 2% rates, a high quality company that is in a saturated market, has a strong moat and pays 80% of cashflows via dividend shouldnt trade at 10x. If you take 10x as your exit multiple you wont find anything that looks good because quality still trades at 20x+ because it almost pays as much as bonds right now and can continue grow those 5% earnings but bonds can not. Id say that moaty high quality businesses with little growth left but that will grow sales with inflation and keeps margin stable should still trade a bit less than risk free rate.

I end up doing relative valuations most often, estimating a conservative growth rate and conservative terminal value with an earnings or FCF multiple. If you purely only discount the cashflows, the assumption is that the business will be sold in the final year. So terminal value becomes the next question, perpetual growth rate formula IMO distorts intrinsic value to much to the upside, punching a 15x-20x multiple on it is fair most often and if you still end up with close to 10% returns with conservative assumptions it looks worth investigating. I remember a friend of mine most often adds a 10-15% margin of safety but you rarely get that nowadays. Already happy enough if the business is high quality and gets you to 10% without tuning the growth rates and exit multiple too much...

I am having a close eye on Carl Zeiss Meditec, 25x earnings still, traded at double that in 2021. Decent company but too expensive.

@Haryana Perhaps you?

Can you link the full article?

China+Financial Institution--> Lufax Holdings (0.2x book). I think thats a neglected in the corner but can be wrong. If id tell this combination to most people theyd probably start laughing

I think i explained some of the motives for the invasion of russia already, not saying it isnt vicious and brutal. I don't think so

Yes, he is making us aware they have these weapons if we provoke them further. He wont nuke us if we leave russia alone.

See, that is the problem. You are already in a world war block mindset, "rivals". Highly dangerous. We "have to have defenses" combined with "rivals" is a big threat to any country and makes putins invasion even more understandable ironically. It became obvious that US foreign policy is quite hostile, china knows it, BRICS knows it.

Its still Putins fault to attack them for it but we did our own part. Its not an excuse, just an observation. And the invasion is still not okay. I want immediate stopping of intelligence support for ANY Ukrainian operations, stop delivering any education or training to Ukrainians, stop sending any weapons and THEN see how long Ukraine could last. They already received hundreds of billions in weapons so youd have to discount that too. Absolutely not.

Done.

The majority of the world did NOT join into these really quite useless sanctions that rather backfired and lead to an even more hostile western political climate due to the inflation etc. We now still buy russian energy but over more complicated ways and other countries which is a complete political joke and farce. China and Co now have the nice cheap russian energy that we lack and for what? So that this war can go on for a couple of months/years and will lead to ukraine becoming the defect rumpsteak putin wants it to be? Easier to just immediately stop the funding and stop wasting the tax dollars. We completely lost communications with russian administration too so the relationship needs to be rebuilt in the first place.

Its quite the interesting and balanced view. Disagree! If mexicans would want to join a chinese military alliance that wants to build some rockets close to the us with mexican chinese interoperability, theyd face the same as the ukrainians face now. They receive hundreds of billions of dollars worth of advanced weapons from foreign unfriendly forces (to russia), receive US and Nato intelligence information about russian positions etc, this is not just the ukranian men fighting, i cant blame putin for saying its a proxy war.

EDIT

Countries: China Pretty much anything is cheap there right now, mega caps, small caps.

Really hard to make any predictions on these "what if" situations, perhaps then we would have a different Europe and different geopolitical climate etc.

Really like to own this via Exor but have no deep opinion on that particular industry. Not a bad business and produces cash for exor.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66542065 Thousands often try to sneak out of the country, mostly across the Carpathian mountains to Romania. For those who stay, mass group chats help them avoid being drafted. Telegram threads give tip-offs on where drafting officers are patrolling. There are chats for different regions and cities across the country, sometimes with more than 100,000 members each. The family of one military draft chief in Odesa were even accused recently of buying cars and property on Spain's southern coast costing millions of dollars. The officer reportedly denies any knowledge of this. The family of Yevhen Borysov, military draft chief in Odesa, has purchased property and cars worth millions of dollars on the Spanish coast during the full-scale war. Records from the Spanish registry evidence this, although Borysov himself claims that he does not know whether his family has any property in Spain. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/22/7407993/ Two months following the exposure of information that Borysov's family had acquired a villa in Spain worth over €3 million, and that his wife purchased an office space on the main street of the Spanish city of Marbella, and several expensive cars, Ukrainska Pravda (UP) has obtained records from the Spanish registry for both the villa and the office space.

Yep, Germany is on its way to more than 5% of its annual total household budget for this war, around 25b. If you set budgets into perspective thats around the same what the US spent. For us way more than things like education etc. pp. NO inspector that sees where the money goes, LOL!

Yeah, sums up pretty much the state of the west. Inflation hit the middle class severely, they have been neglected for too long, average white middle class citizen is angry and disappointed and sees his taxed dollar thrown out the house for some weird foreign military projects, real needs are not looked after by the parties etc.

I'd say that looking at the last 80 years, NATO and the US have been doing more aggressive military moves/funding/interventions than China and Russia and that sets things well into perspective. "Do as we command, not as we did"! That doesn't matter for this discussion and doesn't justify anything, if you take china, they did one of the greatest wealth creations on earth Germany had a flourishing scientific and industrial base before WW2, we had growth pretty much all over Europe so that is not something unique what happened in Germany but rather the European industrial machine that started with the industrial revolution in England IMO. Yes, Ukraine could have done many things and some of them might have happened if there wouldn't have been continued expansion and tingling by the west with Ukraine. Putin doesnt offer much and its completely understandable that they want to join NATO and all the rest BUT the neighbor is not accepting that, same as the US wouldnt accept chinese/russian missiles and mexico joining foreign military alliances. Now Putin would rather destroy Ukraine so that there is nothing left to join anything anymore and set a statement, which is obviously monstrous and vicious. The west started to happily join fighting against Russians, throwing more and more coal into the fire, sending more and more heavy weapons and joining the 0 negotiation with russia clause that the selensky administration set. The dying will continue until Ukraine is bombed to nothing and most men are dead, easily thinkable Putin will use some smaller nuclear bombs if he is pushed enough into a corner.

And the EU is not up against a tyrant, Ukraine is. It's not our war, we have some responsibility for the cause but that doesnt mean we should do what we are doing. Right now germany still imports russian gas but via ships and other countries (so stupid and for a higher price even) just because we thought its a good idea to "get tough" with russia.

Always reverse the logic and try to think about what the US would do if there would be a chinese/russian "defensive" military alliance that starts to expand around the US and starts talking with mexico about setting up some missiles operated together with mexican military. We saw that happening before and the US got very very threatening with violence.