Spekulatius

Q3 is done. The market is brutally oversold. Inflation fear driving the selloff and looks overdone. Might be a bear market rally, who knows.

Definitely true. There are a lot of very cheap stocks out there.

I think one development to watch for is what happens to the UK / BOE. The UK almost had a Lehman moment. It may have been the first case, where market participants told a central bank to back off from MMT. There is probably more to come on that trajectory. As for Turkey, I think that's a case where Wile E Coyote went already past the cliffs edge. Remember that Erdogan guaranteed the value of Turkish Lira deposits relative to hard currencies. I wonder how this is going to be paid out if depositors call in this insurance blanket policy...

Market is terribly oversold and ready to rip. One decent inflation report trending in the right direction and we are back at 4200for the SP500. Nobody gives a damn about CAPE ratios and all that stuff. From Spek's market forecast that is worth exactly what you are paying for it.

ZH has been garbage for many years. It's a rabbit hole that is not worth going down , imo. As for the war in Ukraine, you can stitch together a pretty good picture by following some bloggers and main stream media sources and occasionally look at reddit. Lot's of propaganda out there, but if you follow several sources a bit, you know what tends to be reliable and credible and what not. Using the Occam's razor approach helps as well cutting through the BS.

This not cost competitive. The USD strength has eliminated any advantage from lower cost energy and then some, except maybe some petrochemical products and similar basic materials that require a lot of energy inputs.

I agree on this. The Opec cutting production is obviously bullish for energy but I also think some bulls may be underestimate the demand destruction from third world countries and China. China may well have structurally lower demand for oil going forward.

Looks like the Ukraine also achieved a breakthrough in Kherson along the Dnipro river. We don't know how far, but there could be ~25K Russian troops and lots of material trapped in this pocket because it is hard if not impossible for the Russian to pull back (bridges over the Dnipro have been destroyed for the most part by HIMARS). Multiple breakthroughs on the frontline are an indication that the Russian army is disintegrating. Will be fun to watch the mental gymnastics here of the Russians. (the channel below is obviously pro Ukraine but they are not the only ones reporting this)

Nordstream is just a distraction. Looks like the Kesselschlacht in Lyman is over and the Russian took heavy losses and managed just a partial retreat. Another 5k strong army group that is out of the fight right now. It looks like the complete frontline along the Oskil River is now rolled back to a line around Svatove. I think there is a chance that they can roll the frontline quite a bit further. Once the Russian conscripts hit the frontline, I expect it will be an incredible target rich environment for HIMARS and long range artillery strikes. As I mentioned before, I expect about a 30% casualty rate there for whoever is one the frontlines.

I think longevity has a lot to do with living a healthy lifestyle and to live and work on your own terms. WEB tap dances to work, has the office environment arranged the way he wants and works with the people he wants to work. Be probably has way less stress through his life than the average CEO or money manager. That could be worth an extra 5-10 years of the lifespan.

You are right, MSGE‘s Fiscal year 2022 ended in June 30, 2022. I was thinking calendar year.

There is absolutely a lesson here. Longevity is one of the secrets to be a successful investor. Buffet, Munger, Walter Schloss all lasted a long time. Buffett elaborated this in his talks to students where he tells them that you have only one body and so you need to take care of it. He himself is a bit of a mixed example because of his terrible diet. Of course the other key thing is not to blow up financially.

@Dinar. LEVI is targeting 6-8% growth for the next few years. I am not sure how they think about adjusting for inflation. The latest IR presentation gives you a good idea how they think about their business evolving: https://s23.q4cdn.com/172692177/files/doc_presentations/2022/08/00709_08-22_LSCo_Abbreviated-investor-day-deck_ppt.pdf

This may be the case, but the claim was that yahoo finance numbers are wrong and they are not. FWIW, TiKr does operating earnings as well, based on S&P estimates and they are negative too. In my opinion, 2022 was already a post epidemic year, yet operating earnings for MSGE are still negative. We will see about next year, I think there are a lot of uncertainties how it will shake out.

@Viking I take that you like $LEVI as a vindication. Anyways it’s a small position for me and I traded it twice before with success. I followed the company since they IPO‘d. I know them ,one enough and remember when they went private decades ago. Anyways, I like what I heard so far. Demand collapsed during the epidemic as everyone was Zooming along in their underwear apparently, but hey never lost much monos, emphasized DTC and stayed cash flow positive. The stock hung out around $12 and a bit blow and I bought some shares and sold them at $17 in one of these bounces after the vaccine. Too early as it turned out. So, ingot interested again at $16 when the stock dropped despite much better fundamentals and even though their Q2 2022 result looked solid. They showed some rise in inventory, but nothing extremely out of line if you consider revenue growth. Now, I think they might get hit too by the consumer recession, but I can’t see this being as bad than the epidemic by a long shot. The stock is now at $14.5, go figure. Net debt is almost zero and what shows up is just LT lease liabilities, so balance sheet is not is not issue. I guess there are many other stocks like this, but LEVI is one I know and it‘s an easy business to understand. FWIW, I agree on BAC and JPM, but my bank of choice amongst the large caps is USB. I also own a bit of CASH and COF.

It looks to me like these operating losses are not a typo but quite real. MSGE business has improved in 2022 relative to 2021, but still had operating losses. If you think otherwise, pls explain based on their 10-k why you think so.

For the US to sabotage these pipelines makes no sense. The pipeline was non-operational to begin with and there are no plans from the German side to put them into operation. So why risk a huge political rift, if US were involved into this? I think it’s just a covert operation from Russia to keep us guessing. It coincides with the Baltic pipeline from Denmark to Poland becoming operational and the area where this happened is very close to this. Russia did this to make a cover threat to more important pipelines that are operational and very important with the current NG shortage. https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/27/baltic-pipe-norway-poland-gas-pipeline-opens-in-key-move-to-cut-dependency-on-russia Its low risk for them because if they were to be caught red handed, they would said it’s failed repair of their own pipeline as ridiculous it may sound. Russia could have destroyed the pipeline closer to home, but that would appear less threatening. Putin is a KGB guy who loves to saw doubt, discontent (guessing that someone else within the West did it) and all those little cat and mouse games. same with thr sanctioned Turbine just a few month ago that was in repair in Canada. He let Scholz run through hoops and in the end it didn’t matter at all. My guess is that next they will offer to repair the pipelines in exchange for lifting sanctions etc. Maybe the only purpose is to distract from another Russian defeat in Lyman, where the Russians are for all practical purposes encircled and probably take another beating.

Bought a starter on LEVI again. Maybe not the cheapest consumer stock, but one of the most durable brands. I also like management. They have done an excellent job to during the epidemic etc.

Agreed on this. One thing to keep in mind is that post WW2, Germany actually had quite a bit of oil production in Northern Germany, so this would not be without precedence. Maybe shale production in shallow waters is a possibility as the North Sea was a large oil producing area in the 70's and 80's. I do not know if shale reserves exist there, but suspect they could. I think for some poorer countries in Eastern Europe like Poland or Romania, the incentives to produce shale will be very high. Argentina has huge shale reserves that are probably equal to the US, but it's mismanaged and it will be hard for them to develop the infrastructure needed to export it. Maybe they come around or some Europeans government guarantees will help to make a deal and get this going. It could be a huge win win for both.

One thing that is increasing clear is that the Russia Ukraine war is a nothingburger for the crude oil market. It does have an obvious impact for the NG market , even worldwide, because now the russian gas that went to Europe is stranded. So this is a shortfall that is going to last for a while and pushing prices world wide higher. many countries are going to be looking for NG and the most likely source is going to be shale gas. The US is not the only country with large shale gas resources - Argentina and Europe and many other places most likely have reserves that hadn't been explored yet. The UK already rescinded their ban on fracking and I think countries like Poland are likely to follow. Discussions in Germany have started as well. In Europe, I think it's almost inevitable that shale goes comes into play. The Ukraine has huge NG reserves too, so once this war is over, that's another source that could come into play. Europe's NG crisis will mostly be over in 2023. At that point enough G liquification trains will be in operation to replace most of the Russian NG. There may be some lingering effects into winter 2024, but it will be far less than the coming winter 2022/23. Europe will pay the world market price of LNG and I think with more capacity for LNG liquification going online, US NG prices will go closer to world market LNG prices. In other words, the global LNG market will equalize prices around the globe and it will more resemble the global crude market.

Speaking of the war on weeds and specialized stuff, if you have problems with crabgrass in your lawn, this stuff from BASF (DriveXLR8) is the chemical warfare bomb: https://www.amazon.com/BASF-AMDRIVEXLR-Drive-XLR8-Killer/dp/B08DJ8XTBR/ref=asc_df_B08DJ8XTBR/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=507730646855&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9985564175916134754&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001910&hvtargid=pla-1253150176265&psc=1

Is there some longevity gene with Berkshire investors? Maybe a hidden benefit. Key to compounding is duration and that's where Buffett is king, doing this for more than 60 years now. Even a mediocre investor will do well if he lasts long enough; at least that's what I keep telling myself.

Bought a starter in ADDYY (Adidas) today. I also added to PAH.DE / POAHY.

This crowd can achieve now significantly higher income from their investments. Lower inflation will also be good for them. They supposedly have locked in a low cost mortgage. I would say what is happening now is a plus for them, unless they had an imprudently risky asset allocation.

Yeah, everything went great when Leisure suit Larry was in charge.