no_free_lunch

PLC.to a funeral home business. They are down near 50% from all time highs, and are basically a broken GARP acquirer story. I view the earnings as a bit cyclical and suspect they can bounce back. If you look at their historic results, it's just lumpy from time to time and that is where we are now.

This is good. It provides additional leverage for negotiations. Reading the coverage, I feel that when Russia gets attacked it's always spun as though they have been cheated. "The UK is supplying weapons..." Yes, they are. All predictable responses for attacking a country with which defense alliances exist. Russia can stop this immediately by simply removing themselves from Ukrainian territory. I have no sympathy for their position.

Interesting article. I mean I have no idea but I go back and forth on these arguments. I am still not convinced growth will translate to profits. I mean, what about AMD and Intel, are they just going to sit on their hands? As I understand it, AMD is close and Intel behind but still a lot of smart people there. NVIDIA's profits have to be drawing interest, I know they are. Then you have Apple, are they designing their own chips now? I don't think we can simply take the growth of the industry and apply it to potentially high earnings of a particular company. Desktop computers have been getting more and more powerful for the last 20 years and it hasn't translated to profits for Intel/AMD. For now, NVIDIA is so far ahead and the demand so substantial that they are killing it but I question if that's long term sustainable.

I have seen some studies that the superiority of spinoffs, in general, is no more. Perhaps over exploited by CEOs and priced in by the market. However, perhaps in Canada and other smaller markets there might be alpha here, I have seen it.

I thought the delivery was excellent.

China HAS developed over the past decades. The issue is investors haven't been getting wealthy there, at least not from index funds. Not worth the risk. I have to worry a out corruption plus investment risk.

Apologies. This is certainly a nuanced and balanced approach. It gives me hope. It is important that the west maintain some sort of moral consistency and the events of the last couple years really shook my belief in that. However, I do see more and more questioning the politicians and their motives and as long as that is the approach I hope things will turn out ok in the end.

Richard, I recall a police state or martial law being imposed, in Canada, within the past couple years. All to silence some blue collar workers. Not so democratic, not so liberal. You probably scoff at this but then Luca thinks lightly of our opinion on China human rights abuses too. From my perspective, it's similar, just different degrees of authoritarianism. China might kill you, in Canada the most they will do is take your job if you oppose them. For the average joe either option is catastrophic.

Since we are investors, I just look at things from that perspective. Is there really a history of profits made in China by investors? If I look at something like the ETF FXI, I have to go prior to 2005 to get to a profitable investment. This, in spite of huge growth of the Chinese economy during that period. If economic growth doesn't translate through to shareholders, why bother. Is there a real argument for profitably investing in China? I haven't run the numbers, is it just that the PE is much more compressed?

I completely agree. Isn't the saying there, keep hawaii hawaii or something like that, meaning don't build, don't develop the island. That is fine but it's also isolationist when you really dive into it. It's hard for me to go from there to "socializing" the fire costs. If they want to be isolated and independent so be it, but then hawaii can pay for natural disaster relief on it's own.

It seems that the market is doing what it is supposed to be doing, reflecting the true costs. In this case that means higher insurance prices in return for living somewhere with predictably nasty weather. I don't see a problem. The government needs to stay the hell out of this, I don't think the insurance companies are making a killing and if they start to, you will just have new entrants. Maybe it's climate change, maybe it's not, and certainly it doesn't matter, let the market figure it out.

Even the economic miracle was just China copying the west. I am way out of my element here but I don't buy the China story. It's just copying and stealing IP. Sure that could change but like investments I bet on the past continuing. I do think China will give us one hell of a run for it but that's good. Hopefully will motivate the west to clean their house up. All bets are off if a deep alliance between India and China develops. I think it's superficial but who knows.

The Mongol empire in that region continued for 200-300 years as I understand it. That's a long time, even by middle ages standards. I don't buy the internal division as an excuse. I will give them a full century to get their stuff together but that's it. After a century mongols have to acknowledge their limits. They ruled but they could no longer conquer. I would say the argument I see here is that, at best, the mongols had a Buffet/Jobs level leader in Genghis Khan with an array of revolutionary tactics that could not be beat. The evidence we see is that the genius was confined to the OG Khan. Further, the fact that subsequent generations stalled against Europe provides ample evidence that certainly without Khan's greatness they simply could not proceed.

I have read about the Mongol empire as well. I don't know, interesting theories regarding the stop at Europe's backdoor. At the end of the day we can speculate on why they did not move on but we have to know that they could not. Europe had a lot of land, people, gold, surely something would have enticed the mongols. I have to think they just couldn't do it given the hundreds of years window they had and the hyper-aggressive behavior elsewhere. I don't claim to be an expert here but feel free to skewer me on this, the Mongols investigated and were unable to take Europe. The proof, or lack of proof, lack of a taken Europe, is in the pudding as they say. Otherwise i have to agree with much of what I have read. The Mongols were seemingly more civilized that many of the counterparts in the sense that they could be negotiated with, respected their treaties and would generally leave a conquered civilization alone. This is perhaps one of the reasons their empire ultimately faded, that beyond political subjugation they did not spread their civilization.

Is it a sovereign country, the whole country in the sense that they have complete control over their territory? Didn't they give up a bunch of land? The point I am trying to make is that giving land to Russia, repeatedly, will only lead us giving even more land to Russia. If I understand your point, that we can save lives in the short term by compromising, that only works if the enemy then abides by the terms. In Ukraine, there was Crimea, Donetsk, and then this much larger invasion. It doesn't stop.

There were multiple deals over the past decade. Putin doesn't honor them. I think it's similar to the nazis and so many others, Putin will just keep attacking if he feels he can win. So with these negotiations, Ukraine gives up its sovereignty and once that's gone they aren't ever getting it back. Putin learns the utility of force. China learns the west can be intimidated. Creates issues.. What history have you guts read that makes you believe Putin is just going to be content with some treaty?

Kadyrov and the whole RF can't even finish the war in Ukraine! They would not last 1 day against the nato block. The only concerns I have is how China and ultimately India play into this. China is rumored to be providing ever larger shipments of various drones and given their manufacturing capacity this needs to be followed.

Any thoughts on valuation? I have a big chunk in ffh but have no added.

One option if really pressed for time, try dumbell clean and jerks. Simple and hits many body parts. It's really not enough but if you do 4 , 5 sets you will feel it. I try to do some push-ups too at the end as well and still within 20 minutes.

I'm hoping real estate prices drop off in Canada as the 5 year rates sink in. Foolish to predict and i know it. Still sales volume are down 30 to 50 % in major markets so it may alreadyhavestarted. I wonder if the immigration charges over the past year aren't a last ditch attempt to prop up prices. There are now 2x the number of immigrants from a few years ago and that was already a high number.

There is likely more going on than we realize. It doesn't all make sense. There is a claimed rebellion but there is not large scale fighting and casualties as you would expect. Surely the Russian army could halt a convoy of road based vehicles if they felt the need. It seems to be all threats, maneuver. In a few months we may understand better what this was about. For now, I feel it is probably just noise, perhaps intentionally so.

If this is important to you then do it. As long as you are OK financially with the delayed career payout. Sure is more to life than maxing net worth. A faster option would be a nurse practitioner. I just throw it out there as an option. Full doctor is ideal.

It is hard to decipher the true growth. I think sentiment towards China for investors has changed and perhaps the PE multiples too? I don't have access to the data but if you standardize the PE ratio, I wonder if the returns in China look any different. Just casually observing, it seems China is not so different from say most European equity baskets over the past 30 years. Keep in mind the European economy is roughly the size of the US so should be a reasonable comparison. China equities certainly lags the US over any time span but the US is quite exceptional and doesn't correlate to Europe, China, Canada, etc. There was a time back in 2010, where the US was market was hideous and almost any other country (China included) had 10-15 year returns that exceeded it. Basically, this is complicated and while I am personally very cautious on China, I wouldn't write the returns off just yet.

Not much choice but to stand up to our enemies. If we don't, they simply get strong and emboldened. We are sending arms to a different country to defend itself, I don't see how that is aggression or provoking a war. Russia should be concerned too and all these arguments against nuclear war apply to them as well.

Just wanted to chime in and say this makes a lot of sense. If you can get some curating for next to no cost, why not. Lots of funny stuff happens at these smaller companies, it seems smart to put basic filters on and you are still very diversified. For similar reasons I have some money in Canadian small cap funds. They seem to match or exceed indexes, even with a 1 percent expense rate. It's possible that smaller space is not so "efficient".