Eldad

Maybe a bad metaphor on my part. Unless you are selling everything at the start of the bear market, you are taking almost the same risk I am. You are trying to think through an impossible Macro puzzle and maybe save some cash for when it gets worse. Make a plan to deploy cash in a pyramid, less in the beginning more at the end. The end should be a predetermined market level. Literally do not listen to anyone about the sky falling or even try to predict what will happen. If you went to the grocery store and everything was 30% off would you thumb suck and try to figure out if it would be 40% tomorrow?

But what if you had the stats that said only 1% of all the people running through the dynamite factory every blew up and you got a massive reward for running through said factory? I enjoy talking about the macro stuff but IMO you have to get really dumb with bear markets. If you see big red numbers, you buy and think about it later. You predetermine a level to be out of cash and you follow the plan. Don’t even watch the news or read anything other than things concerning the individual companies you are buying.

I am not confident. It could have all been dumb luck or we could be about to take the next leg down. But if it turns out that China just told their best customer to F off while SE Asia was agreeing to deals, it would look pretty brilliant. Trumps entire political life has been people telling him he was crazy, stupid, etc. only to have been proven right many many times.

You think he bought anything? I realize the turmoil could be far from over, but I’m not really confident he pulled the trigger in a big way. I was having to hold my nose and buy stuff that wasn’t really even cheap yet so I could see WB skipping the whole thing.

What a crazy ride. Only got to deploy half my cash. All of the crying over the reciprocal tariff formula. It was half-ass because it didn’t matter and was always a bluff. China was and is the main target. Hopefully we have deals in hand with all the SE Asian countries in anticipation of a huge amount of Chinese manufacturing moving South. I don’t really care for Emperor Trump and think Congress should claw back some of their lost power, but Trump has outfoxed the world enough times now to stop with the”Trump is an idiot with no plan” stuff.

I thought about this as well recently. What is the tailwind for US financial multinationals from being the reserve currency? Were there a bunch of British debt rating agencies and payment processors that used to rule world? I’m just getting a bad gut feeling about all of this and am leaning towards deploying the rest of my cash in Europe and Canada.

Call me when XOM is at $30 again. Otherwise, get ready for a 50% drawdown.

Just work hard. You will put your coworkers to shame and be indispensable to your boss. I am naturally nervous and used to always worry about getting fired. Then one day I looked around and realized everyone around me was pretty lazy and didn’t give a crap like I did and I had nothing to worry about. I know it’s different for you with the Doge, but hard work should get you through. Be careful with the oil stuff. Buying it in the 30s and 20s is some of the most fun you can have but we are still in the 60s.

S&P is still at like 26.82 PE. Average is 15/16. Now it is hugely weighted with extremely high ROIC companies so maybe like 20 makes sense. GOOGL is a fair buy here but as cool as Waymo and YouTube etc are, it’s all about search. Can Google keep up the growth and the margins for the next 10 years with AI maybe eroding the moat? Maybe but it is highly uncertain. Most investors here probably own a good amount already as well. Most other high quality valuations seem way above 2023 and 2022 lows currently.

What a day. Have not gotten crap done at work. I think I’m done for today unless we get a big drop at the close. Have to remember, it still isn’t even close to historically cheap. MSFT, TXN, CSWI, MCO, AME, UNP

Thanks. Great stuff. How long before we have to start printing Squanderbucks to buy Squanderbonds?

I think we mostly agree on this. I’m just saying he ultimately signed the bills that grew the national debt by 50% that accomplished nothing in the end. So he made a colossal mistake in hindsight. Now let’s find some cheap stuff to buy.

Correct. Sorry. Waste of time. Still gets me pissed.

Almost all subsequent studies show all lockdown measures had a big fat zero effect on mortality rate. Emails show Fauci knew masks did nothing as early as Spring of 2020. One of the biggest mistakes maybe in American history was the US response to Covid and Trump was the top guy.

Then they should have dealt with the fall out. No PPP from Trump. Some times you have to do the right thing and not worry about re-election. He lost that one anyway. You can’t just spend 5 Trillion on the flu and say you couldn’t help it.

What Sweden did, nothing. Mortality rate was the same no economy shut down.

Yes he fought somewhat harder than most but still doesn’t absolve him of a horrible mistake that happened on his watch.

Besides shutting down the whole economy in response to Covid and ballooning the debt beyond repair as a result. If ever there was a time for an outside of the box leader, it would have been the guy that said screw Covid. If you are old stay home, otherwise we are doing the Swedish model. Also, now that apparently every intelligence agency in the world agrees it was a lab leak; wouldn’t achieving the ends of this tariff stuff be much easier if Trump put together a worldwide coalition to punish China economically for that terrible mistake they burdened the world with?

BRK, CSU, TRRVF, & Cash are 45% so not bad so far. Recession will spare no one but cash if Trump doesn’t call off the dogs soon. Still so far to fall if this isn’t a bluff.

Agree. GOP will get smoked. Nobody jumping ship yet which is totally different from 1st term. All of this just paves the way for an even worse Democratic Party with less guardrails for their crazy because Trump got rid of them. I’m a conservative but this sucks.

“You are the salt of the earth;” Matthew 5:13. Jesus is saying the world is a rotting carcass that can only be preserved through acts of selflessness, kindness, generosity.

Fink says as he talks to CEOs what they tell him is the economy is slowing as we speak. If you think we need an unforeseen shock for it to get really bad, if we are normally playing Russian roulette with one bullet, we are now probably playing with 2 or 3.

That’s not true. https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/ Bottom 90% have 52.2% of all wealth. That percentage should go up quite a bit this year as the rich get crushed in the market. I have seen many studies that there is still tremendous social mobility up and down in America. Today’s rich are tomorrow’s middle class and so on besides at the tip top.

I find their moat ratings to be valuable on the whole, but they do seem to hold on to biases for longer than they should. For example Campbell’s soup they still have as wide moat as the margins have been eroding for a decade or more. And they left AAPL as a narrow moat for a ridiculous amount of time. How many years in a row of 30+% ROIC does it take to get the upgrade? And yes the drug stocks all wide moat and 5 star buys for years that never go anywhere.

It’s my ideal based on my limited circle of competence. Basically it’s stuff I already own but with better weightings. Own but want more: MCO, GGG, CSWI, CSU Don’t own and would like to own a lot: Lagercrantz