UK

Thanks!

Nimble move:). Curious if you sold it all / for good or until somewhat lower valuation?

Plus: "When you put all of that together, we look at that operating income of $4 billion as a pretty conservative number."

"In the fourth quarter of ’23, the net earnings of $1.3 billion included pre-tax net expense of $781 million, and the net earnings in the full year of 2023 of $4.4 billion included a pre-tax net benefit of $210 million related to IFRS-17. The pre-tax amounts are reported within two financial statement lines in the consolidated statement of earnings." It seems that this item has reversed back quite a bit in q4?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampi I really liked this place and remember traveling to it via Bengaluru.

Second bullet: "The aggregate projected loss of the top three concentrated stocks (and their derivatives) will be compared to what would otherwise be the aggregate portfolio margin requirement, and the greater of the two will be the margin requirement for the portfolio." Does this mean that for an account, with a large position in FFH, margin requirement will be calculated as if it's top 3 positions were zero: at the extreme no margin, if an account has less than 3 positions, or a big reduction of it, by zeroing top 3 positions? Is this normal/common practice by IB?

Rotated some META into more FFH:)

Thanks for these snippets!

+1:)

Yes, but didn't they supposed to accumulate their position (short) before the publication? This seems plausible and maybe also would explain the quality of the work:)

So I was reading about this whole situation and allegations (which seems quite silly and bizarre, nothing to add, and many thanks everybody for discussion on it), but one thing, if true, I do not quite understand: "Block appeared on CNBC on before markets opened Thursday to reveal his short position. Data compiled by Bloomberg show that 0.7% of Fairfax’s float was shorted as of Thursday morning." "Fairfax currently has a short interest of 0.65% of free float worth C$203.81 million ($151.36 million), with short sellers having made over C$21 million in paper profits so far today, according to data from Ortex." How does this short selling operation even make any sense, If short interest is really so low?

Great post! Thank you!

Nice start of the year!:)

It was a very good year:). Up 74 percent pretax in EUR. META & other from magnificent 7, FFH, JOE, BRK and some lesser/more speculative things. Also was ~120 percent invested at the start of the year. Big thanks to Parsad, Viking, Gregmal, gfp and many other participants of this wonderful forum!

LOL. Thanks!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-12-29/wall-street-s-worst-investing-mistakes-of-2023-from-stocks-to-treasuries?srnd=premium-europe&leadSource=uverify wall All across Wall Street, on equities desks and bond desks, at giant firms and niche outfits, the mood was glum. It was the end of 2022 and everyone, it seemed, was game-planning for the recession they were convinced was coming. ... Blended together, these three calls — sell US stocks, buy Treasuries, buy Chinese stocks — formed the consensus view on Wall Street. And, once again, the consensus was dead wrong. What was supposed to go up went down, or listed sideways, and what was supposed to go down went up — and up and up. The S&P 500 climbed more than 20% and the Nasdaq 100 soared over 50%, the biggest annual gain since the go-go days of the dot-com boom. ... For some on Wall Street’s sell-side, doubts are creeping in. At TD Securities, Gennadiy Goldberg, now the head of US rates strategy, said he and his colleagues “did some soul searching” as the year wound down. TD was among the firms predicting solid 2023 bond gains. “It’s important to learn from what you got wrong.” What did he learn? That the economy is far stronger and far better positioned to cope with higher interest rates than he had thought. And yet, he remains convinced that a recession looms. It will hit in 2024, he says, and when it does, bonds will rally.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks!

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russian-has-lost-almost-90-of-its-prewar-army-u-s-intelligence-says-2e0372ab https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/eu-gas-supply/ So perhaps there are many more other outcomes, but just looking at those two above...and then the answer to your question maybe depends from whose position you are looking at all this situation.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-11/blackberry-won-t-spin-off-iot-unit-names-john-giamatteo-ceo?srnd=premium-europe

From this article: https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/11/29/an-unruly-opec-is-causing-problems-for-russia-and-saudi-arabia The last time the group faced a similar state of affairs—decelerating demand, new entrants and co-ordination problems—in 2014, officials chose a different strategy, as Alberto Behar of the imf and Robert Ritz of Cambridge University have written. Back then members increased supply in an attempt to drive down the oil price. The aim, as announced at opec’s meeting in November nine years ago, was to grab market share (and in so doing drive out American competitors). This had the advantage of stimulating demand and not requiring discipline among opec’s members: they were able to produce oil to their heart’s content. Such an approach is no longer feasible. opec’s market-share strategy last time round helped discipline America’s oil producers, pushing them to become more efficient and therefore more resistant to future squeezes. JPMorgan Chase, a bank, reckons that the cost of getting oil out of the American ground has declined by more than one-third since 2014. The country’s oilmen have found methods to fracture rocks that produce more fissures, easing the extraction of oil, and now drill deeper wells that have longer lifespans. Saudi Arabia would very much like opec+’s current strategy to succeed. Its free-spending government has pushed up the price at which the country’s budget balances to $85 a barrel, according to the imf—and that number is higher when outlays from its sovereign wealth fund are included. Russia, meanwhile, needs oil revenues to fund its war in Ukraine. Delaying the meeting to November 30th did not help either country. Doing so wiped another 5% from the price of Brent crude.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-06/can-ozempic-wegovy-treat-alcoholism-for-big-pharma-it-s-not-a-priority?srnd=premium-europe

Thanks for feedback.

Interesting way of doing business: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-03/tsmc-intel-s-key-chip-materials-maker-goes-into-debt-rather-than-raise-prices?srnd=premium-europe One of the chipmaking industry’s small but indispensable suppliers is sinking deeper in debt because it’s refusing to raise prices to cover mounting capex costs. Osaka-based Fuso Chemical Co. is bearing the cost to help churn out bigger volumes of sophisticated chips without asking customers for more. That’s despite holding a more than 90% share of the world’s silica used to polish silicon wafers and counting deep-pocketed heavyweights Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Samsung Electronics Co. and Intel Corp. as customers.

So all the recent underinvestment, ESG, sanctions, strategic reserve drain, two conflicts (one in the Middle East), substiantial infliation...and yet oil is somewhat cheaper even in nominal terms than it was a 10 yers ago? It is kind of a bit perplexing if you look at it this way, isn't it? And I still have no idea even how to explain this ongoing situation, not to speak about trying to predict the future:)