LC

The luxury of not have a job as an adult can make life incredibly boring. Especially without kids. Speaking personally I need something to work on, I need some deadlines, I need other people to depend on me…otherwise I am just skiing and surfing and partying and frankly it can become incredibly boring and kind of lonely- even with my girlfriend. I’ll have a job until I’m 60 - otherwise I have to say I’d probably die in a skiing accident off a cliff, taking too many risks out of boredom! Money does reduce stress- if management or company culture or my colleagues piss me off I can tell them to screw off and go work elsewhere. But I don’t think I would ever quit working.

Maybe? Unless the FDA goes deregulating a la DOGE

OK fair point - "trades" maybe not the best word. But some of the other long term themes would have similarly long term plays? Deregulation? Tariff outcomes? Impact of gov't spending on interest rate direction? Probably it requires making too many up-front assumptions on what Trump actually does (vs. say he will do) , to even get an estimate of that the outcomes will be. Better to just keep it simple and focus on the micro vs the macro.

So now that you all have predictably argued in circles - what are the solid trump (Stump?) trades we should be looking at? Manufacturing onshoring/nearshoring? Is steel the best we've got here? Real estate (Trump is a RE guy)? RE pushed by low interest rates? Won't rate drops benefit Tech even more than RE(like it did during COVID times)? De-regulation? Banks I guess? What other highly regulated areas are in scope here? On the short side: Environmental deregulation would promote supply -> lowering materials and energy prices? Defense spending? Does Trump really play here? Pretty sure he wants to "end the war"? My guess is his circle doesn't benefit from defense spending, so maybe he will cut here?

Frankly as a Nintendo shareholder I think this is positive news. I eagerly await the next Luigi spinoff featuring vigilante justice for Princess. edit: Oh, this is just pure gold. Should be in the "tell me a joke" thread: https://www.unilad.com/news/us-news/luigi-mangione-ceo-shooting-mcdonalds-worker-reward-333982-20241210

Yep that's pretty much it. I have some personal funds tied up in 401k's with terrible options, I manage some family money which is locked in a variety of annuity/pension-esque types of accounts, also with limited options. Pretty much I'm choosing between a short term T-bill fund, an SP500 index fund, or a variety of other very high expense / very low performance nonsense funds. So it's just a matter of trading in/out of the SP500. But I am not a good trader so I keep it to very small, infrequent moves, just trying to generate slight alpha over the index. Edit: but otherwise @gfp I totally agree. ~70% of my freely-investible assets are in two stocks.

Well yes but for folks like myself who are stuck with a chunk of assets with very few investable options (cash vs. SP500 are the best ones) - the level of the index is important. Remember kids - don't let financial advisors convince you/your family to buy into convoluted investment structures!

Guess it's too much to ask for management to represent shareholders AND not do stuff that makes their customers want to murder them.

OK - please let's leave national security up to DOGE. I am sleeping more soundly already. We raise 3.5 trillion/year to pay for healthcare. Where does that come from? I'm sure citizens and corporations would enjoy 500B back in their pockets.

I think so - when a single payer system is expected to increase coverage, it makes sense to measure cost changes on a per-unit basis. But overall cost comes down too on an absolute basis as well...so what's not to like?

I am not sure if single payer would work. But I do think it would work better than the current system. One thing government does well? National defense. How much would it cost? Half-a-trillion less than the current system: "Through the mechanisms detailed above, we predict that a single-payer healthcare system would require $3.034 trillion annually (Figure 3, Appendix), $458 billion less than current national healthcare expenditure.40 Even after accounting for the increased costs of coverage expansion, our data-driven base case includes $210 billion savings on hospital care, $111 billion on physician and clinical services, $224 billion on overhead, and $180 billion on prescription drugs (Figure 3). Consequently, per-capita annual expenditure would drop from $10,7396 to $9,330, equivalent to a 13.1% reduction" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8572548/#:~:text=Through the mechanisms detailed above,than current national healthcare expenditure.

The doctors I know who run private practice say the opposite - they will not bill more than what insurance will reimburse. Perhaps it is different across practices.

Good time to update the spreadsheet. I included an index fund allocation here, unfortunately I cannot actively invest that amount so I look at is as my performance buffer: Fairfax: 26% SP500: 25% (I cannot invest this) Aecon: 12% Cash: 7% JOE: 4% Japan Basket (ex-Nintendo): 3% Nintendo: 3% MSGE: 2% 5 next largest positions: DFIN RTO C FRPH HSW +about 30 tiny tracker positions / option gambles

The providers many times can only charge what insurers will pay. Providers are not the ones with pricing power - it is the insurers. But yes the whole system is screwed and only a single payer solution will work. And so it tells you all you need to know about American society when the best, most obvious solution repeatedly gets voted down.

Honestly how surprised are people? US health insurance tactics have pushed people into bankruptcy. Lives are ruined and they have no recourse. I'm surprised something like this hasn't happened sooner.