Spekulatius

@mcliu if actually follow the Twitter thread , you will find out what it really is what you are seeing.

Self driving and electric have very little to do with each other. the problem with RR is that it’s slow and loads needed to go on a truck for the last leg. I could see a hub model for cities where trucks arrive form the longer HSY stretch’s and drives do the last mile thing and drive them to their destination. a self driving on a highway isn’t far off, even consumer cars do a pretty good job with driving assist now on highways. Driving trucks in any road is going to be way harder and that’s why I think highway self driving will come way before self driving in general and it will benefit trucking more than railroads.

Agricultural stocks: KWS.DE has a pretty nice family controlled seed ( non GMO) business. CNHI is a competitor to DE , but much cheaper. They have over time systemically improved the business imo. I also think that their biggest owner (EXOR) is rational and gives strategic direction. CTVA (Seed, crop protection) is a DuPont spin-off , but way to expensive right now. I guess Bayer would fit in here too, but the management is just too horrible.

Blockchain does not solve real world trust problems. You still need to trust that the real world reflects what happens in the blockchain. I can sell you a Ferrari on the blockchain and when you drive to pick it up, you find my 10 year old Hyundai beater. I guess that’s what the crypto brothers calls an NFT. FWIW, Germany after WW2 was a barter economy and with many people scraping by, it was certainly more corrupt than it was later. However, I don’t think Germany as a society was corrupt even back then.

Self driving trucks would shift the moat away from Railroads to trucking. I think self driving trucking on Highways is a solvable problem in the not too distant future. It’s possible that truck drive themselves on highways and then park on exits and drivers will assist with the last few miles. This won’t take away the energy use advantage of railroads but it will take labor out of trucking. This is probably inevitable because we won’t have enough truckers 10-20 years from now otherwise.

If you truly believe that Putin would unleash a nuclear holocaust when his special operation turns out to be a total failure, then Putin would be in the same zip code than Hitler. Can’t have it both ways - believe that Putin isn’t that bad and then believe that he unleashes nuclear holocaust, when he doesn’t get what he wants. Just remember, he isn’t really cornered. He can take his army (or what’s left of it ) and move it back to Russian borders. He does have a choice. Nobody has attacked Russia territory.

The semi equipment companies like LRCX, AMAT, KLAC and others should see a huge hit from this. Revenue % From China per 2022 10-K LRCX: 31.4% AMAT:33% KLAC: 29% TER: 17% Even worse, the percentage of revenues from China has been rising for years. I don’t know how much of thee revenues is directly at risk, but I think it’s substantial. I am guess we will see double digit drops in these stocks.

Afghanistan was an insurgency . In Iraq, the US won the war, but can’t win the insurgency Insurgencies are like weed in a yard, you can control it, but you can never “win”. Once you stop working in your yard, the weed comes back. Afganistan wasn’t out even our yard, so we got the hell out there in a way that didn’t look good to put it mildly. Ukraine - Russia is a conventional war. There is a front line. Two armies are fighting each other. Afghanistan and Ukraine are very different conflicts and have little to do with each other. To get back to a similar similar situation with the US involved, you have to go back to Korea in the 50’s. The US has not lost a conventional war for a long time.

The bridge from Kerch to Crimea needed to go, so that’s great news, and it looks like it’s mostly gone. It may need another strike to totally severe and make it unusable. We can see now the broad strokes of a giant encirclement. First the 15-20k army group north of Dnipro is pinned down and probably get’s destroyed. Then I think Ukraine can attack and cut off the land bridge to Crimea and whatever is there going to be sealed off as well. Frigging Putin can end this - take the balls and go home. Claim it all was the plan to begin with and Ukraine is de-nazified successfully. Apply doublethink playbook. Blame whatever failure there is on his army generals and throw them out of the window or sent them to Siberia. It has been done before and that’s how I see the war ending.

@UK thank you for posting. These restrictions are fairly broad and will significantly impact the semi equipment companies. AMAT, LCRX and the likes had more than 25% of their business in China. Again the fault zone towards the China are getting deeper - a new sort of economical Cold War is developing here. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/white-house-adds-restrictions-chip-151509945.html

The firewood wood is mostly leftover from regular harvesting or thinning out. It’s there anyways and would otherwise rot. From a CO2 perspective, burning it gives the same results. Air pollution is a different issue. A lot of people used firewood to heat homes in the past in rural areas in Europe. I know we did from the 70’s to the 90’s. The older heating oil burners can do both. I guess these are making a comeback for those who have those older burners. Newer burners don’t have enough room for firewood unless they are specifically designed for dual use, as far as I know.

The same is true for banks. Market to market losses on bonds losses don't affect statutory capital unless they are realized. GAAP accounting <> statutory accounting. Some banks with an outsized bond portfolio have high market to market losses but it should not affect the statutory capital. EXSR is an example.

And Trump is sort of like Nixon, but Nixon was smarter. Europe is going to do the sweater thing:

I also lost my hair.

As long as the labor market doesn't crack, we won't see defaults or bankruptcies. We are far away from any issues on this end. Even 5% unemployment is basically full employment and unemployment is at 3.5%. Latest labor market report confirms this: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/september-jobs-report-october-7-2022-203836987.html Then we have the incrementally bad news from Opec. If they jack up oil prices again, it will keep inflation high. Now, it's a big question if they are adhere to the plan and outrun the demand destruction that is mostly happening in emerging markets etc, but it's still quite bad news on the inflation side.

These hundred baggers(Railroads) that @dealraker wrote about are not "one decision" stocks. Railroads are examples of stocks that have just performed very well over long periods of time. You could have bought those many times along the journey to 100 bagging at opportune times and achieved very good results. other examples would be VISA and MA etc. It not a Sea Unlimited that goes up 10x in 2 years and then gives back most of it's games. There are many Sea unlimited stocks that multi-bag and then give back all there gains. Maybe the lesson is that once you recognize a business with staying power and long runway and durable moat you should keep tracking it and look for opportunities to add to your position. Over long periods of time, there should be opportunities to add to your positions or start new ones that you may have missed.

It’s becoming more and more clear that the Kherson pocket is a trap for the Russians. Supposedly, there are 15-20k Russian soldiers north of the Dnipro river and they don’t really have a way to get out, since the bridges are blasted up. This may take a few weeks, but I think the Russians will lose a lot of material and troops there that they cannot replace. Bloody recruits that do not want to fight can’t make up for the losses. I also don’t think the war activity will stop in winter. The Russians are not equipped for winter, they don’t even have the uniforms apparently. All the new recruits will need a lot of supplies are there will be huge problems. It’s ironical because the Russians army used to have general winter as their friend, but this time, it’s looking more and more like the opposite. I bet the Ukrainians have the means to keep fighting in winter and it may turn out to be a huge advantage for them.

That is exactly what I am doing. If I don’t like the counter party, I don’t deal with them, especially when it’s a private transaction. I have actually had this happen more than once. Was bidding on a house and got the impression that the owner were jerks and just moved on. Same buying cars at a dealer or from private or anything else for that matter. Dealing with jerks or scumbags is not worth the aggravation even if the deal seems good. Just my opinion, of course.

The Saudis are not our friend either. At this point they are just a force that seems to act somewhat rational (unless they chop people to bits and behead people in parking lots) and that we can deal with. They sort of made piece with Israel at this point. Iran could easily do the same thing, but they stubbornly choose not to. It makes no sense unless you just think they need Israel as an enemy to hold their radical ideological carpet together. The enemy of your enemy is rarely your friend. Just use the school court analogy. If you don't like a guy and see this guy getting a his teeth kicked in from another guy in a fight, is this "other guy" your friend? I think this other guy is just a guy who kicks other peoples teeth in and I wouldn't assume he is my friend at all.

I am too old for excitement. I aim for 40 positions, but they are not equal weighted. I typically don't go above 5% much (based on funds invested), but I do go larger occasionally (LAACO was an example) when I think I understand the business very well and feel it's bullet proof. Few business are. BRK may is another one, but something like FFH is not (imo).

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. It’s seems like Iran likes to be enemies with everyone including it’s own people. I think it was a mistake that Trump cancelled the Iran nuclear deal because I think they followed the letters of the deal at that time (but I am not 100% sure about that). However thy did and continue everything to destabilize whatever they can -Lebanon, Syria, state sponsored terrorism against Israel, selling drones to Russia (Shahed suicide drones). They do whatever they can to destabilize and hurt Israel or the US and even other Arab nations. They have made themselves a pariah. If they had some smart leadership, they would make piece with Israel and the rest would follow. They don’t even have a border with Israel, so it just seems like they need an enemy for deflect from their own failures and make it easier to stay in power. It is such a shame for a country with such a rich history and a fairly educated populace (middle and upper class). The Khomeini regime is designed to perpetuate the same thing over and over and the mystery. People need to get rid of these and despite efforts (like currently), I think they have a lot of backing from the masses. Sort of like Russia.

Redirecting meth coal to thermal coal means selling for a fraction (1/3 ?) of the price. Yes, it can be done but economically, it makes no sense.

Sold most of my KNBE and SU during my lunch break.

Following the talking heads in TV with their well known biases is not the way to make money. Never has been. Right now, everyone seems to become a macro investor. That hasn’t been the way to make money either. It’s not that macro doesn’t matter, it is because it is so hard to predict.

The 1420 vblogger (highly recommend to follow/subscribe) interviews random Russians in a rural town. Ouch: