UK

Thanks for sharing John.

Elon Musk The US did conspicuous acts of kindness like the Berlin Airlift. And I think it’s always like, well, America’s done bad things. Well, of course America’s done bad things, but one needs to look at the whole track record and just generally, one sort of test would be how do you treat your prisoners at war? Or let’s say, no offense to the Russians, but let’s say you’re in Germany, it’s 1945, you’ve got the Russian Army coming one side and you’ve got the French, British and American Army’s coming the other side, who would you like to be just surrendered to? No country is [inaudible 00:27:58] perfect, but I recommend being a POW with the Americans. That would be my choice very strongly. Lex Fridman (00:28:07) In the full menu of POWs in the US. Elon Musk (00:28:08) Very much so. And in fact, Wernher von Braun, a smart guy, was like, “We’ve got to be captured by the Americans.” And in fact, the SS was under orders to execute von Braun and all of the German rocket conditioners, and they narrowly escaped. They said they were going out for a walk in the woods. They left in the middle of winter with no coats and then ran, but no food, no coats, no water, and just ran like hell and ran West and Vice Sherlock, I think his brother found a bicycle or something and then just cycled West as fast as he couldn’t have found a US patrol. So anyway, that’s one way you can tell morality is where do you want to be a PW? It’s not fun anywhere, but some places are much worse than others. Anyway, so America has been, while far from perfect, generally a benevolent force, and we should always be self-critical and we try to be better, but anyone with half a brain knows that.

Just shut down them out of these waters then: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/09/16/russia-oil-tankers-shadow-fleet-international-law-denmark-unclos/ Just kidding:), we have even worse situation (could well be a flashpoint) with their transit I think.

Same for me.

Thanks, fair enough! The example of South Korea is an interesting one, perhaps even somewhat simillar to this situation, maybe even with simillar outcome in the future, with at least most Ukrainian people ultimatelly living in the western world. But this would have not been possible in Korea without western intervention and without it, it will not be possible here. Despite of not all being succesful, such 'transitions' also is also very beneficial for the whole world in general and for US in particullar. I also think there is perhaps a mistake to treat Russia as some kind of a superpower, as Obama once noticed (and this hurts Putin to the core), since they are about Italian size power economically, despite owning all these nukes, which hopefully are not for the any actual use anyway:). This is my optimistic view of things and I will keep the pesimistic one to myself:)

I kind off agree with your thinking, that they do not want war per se, but one could always invert then. Reportedly Xi/CCP asked for US assurances as early as 2020 elections, also this year with EU, perhaps he/they are just too paranoid, who knows, I have no idea. But the question I ask is what choice would they have if e.g. in the next 4 years Taiwan will be encouraged to declare independance or something simillar happens?

Xerxes, I respect you and your deep knowlegle on such subjects and know that we had similar discussion. But I think this is completely not about good/bad or who are the moral ones (you are right here, most are immoral:)). But let me ask you, which immorals you wish to prevail and under which system you personaly would like to live? Easy decision for me personaly:)

May I ask how much capital are you willing to risk here?

I am afraid it is not only up to China to decide, this is important to understand. It is impossible to be certain in my view, same was said about Russia, before they did it. Btw I was almost 100 percent sure, they were bluffing.

And fundamental value investors still can not complain either:). If not for remaining geopolitical risks, this would be really fat pitch (and likelly will be), but I am afraid to participate big here, because of sanctions/war risks.

https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/china-supplied-weapons-to-russia-ukraine-war-lk7j2jb8v Duh..

Great idea!

https://stansberryresearch.com/articles/the-short-case-for-berkshire-hathaway

Basically if you look at KWEBs composition, this is mostly a basket you need, so I did not owned ETFs for ages, but in this case perhaps no need to overthink, it is easy to move in or out and you do not need to deal with Hong Kong jurisdiction and any possible spin offs etc. I think the same about allocation size as of today:)

Found it:

I think you may well end up being right, but I would argue, that even if buying shares in US in Autumn 2008 was somewhat premature, it worked out quite good at the end. Regarding giving away money, if there is a politicall will, as it seems, they will do or try to do whatever is necessary, as things will progress (high chances they will have opportunitues for some more experiments). It seems that CCP really changed their mind on this and so we could be past a real market bottom in China. This is very bullish in my view, because everything is still crazy cheap. The problem though, and Teper refers to limits after Becky's question on geopolitics, that until CCP has not changed its position on Russia etc or at least there is some kind of new and stable (if this possible at all) understanding between US and China, how to coexist peacefully, at least until another elections:), you will end up playing some kind of Russian roulette here (ex some economical risks, but still loaded with geopolitical bullets) and I am not sure how to estimate this or do I want to play this with substantial amount of capital. Surelly 25 percent would be still too much for me at this time. So but in one way it looks much better now, but perhaps still a basket type case for me. But my thinking may evolve on this.

Could you post a source of this? I was so dissapointed, he does not answered this question of Becky about limits for China in an interview.

I never made any big money from oil, but you buy these companies during extreme distress or panic, when they are visibly dirty cheap and sell when things normalise. Buying them fairly valued and rationalising your way out of this seems just does not work. Maybe finding some real small gems should work also despite of the cycle...

https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/varcoe-greg-abel-credits-alberta-roots-global-business-forum-honour “Right out of the gate, he’s super Canadian, highly likable and as honest as the day is long, and as authentic and as real as any person you’re ever going to get,” Farrell said this week. “He knows where the right deal is, and what the price is, and how you need to work on it. And he’s a man of his word. So if he says, ‘OK, we’ve settled now, let’s get this done,’ we get it done.”

LVMH:)? I like Tencent as a business very much and owning it via Prosus is even better I think. Maybe I would add also PDD, JD, perhaps even BABA. Or maybe the simplest way is to just buy KWEB (internet stocks ETF)! which by definition would exclude banks in China. Or something like this: https://etfdb.com/etf/CXSE/#holdings

Now lets wait until he drops Putin under the bus and everything will be allright:))