Spekulatius

Russias industrial base is pitiful and yes they can export energy to China, but the cost to build the infrastructure is huge and it will be paid by Russia, either via loans or discounted prices. In any case, they will get much less for their energy exports then they would from Europe. Over the long term, they will become China’s gas station which won’t be a great economic outcome.

The idea is to make this a war that Russia can’t win either. Smaller countries have defeated larger aggressor all the time because modern more have made asymmetrical easier. Sure Ukraine would falter without western aid, which is why it must continue to flow and even gets increased. With somebody else doing the fighting it’s chance to put the Russian bear back decades auch that they be dangerous for a lot long time. This is not a new situation either. All these things including nuclear threats are nothing new. Russia tried similar in the 70’s and 80’s with the SS20 nuclear ballistic rockets to put a wedge between Western Europe and the USA. Same BS suggestions to cave to Russians and appease them - is it worth dying in a nuclear war etc. History quite rhymes itself. ass far as @Luke Russian friends are concerned, I recommend they pack up their stuff and move elsewhere to Europe or the USA. Much more freedom and economic opportunities there. I know quite a few Russian emigrants from work and not all of them are engineers or PhD’s either, but they all have done well. All of them came with basically nothing.

PLX and EDEN. I regard both at one position. It’s one of the best business models I have seen and it’s cheap if they do what I think they can do. They both have not worked out yet.

Berkshire provides you with all the information you need to value the business in their disclosures. What else do you need?

Nuclear Weapons are useless in this war scenario. Material numbers nothing until we discuss the quality of the material. it is not hard to find pre WW2 weapons like Moshin nagant rifles and 1938 horwitzers and Ws1 era Maxim guns. I am not sure how long you have been around but Sowjet Russia has a history of making threats - the most famous one was Khrushevs shoes scene at the United nations. You sort to know even they are losing when they do this stuff. This all bully playbook. If you know what happens when Russia were to use nuclear weapons read up on NATO flexible response doctrine. On Russian occupation, i have grandparents with first hand experience and let’s just say it’s worth a great deal of fighting not to get there.

Everyone in the oil sector looks very expensive when compared to PBR/ PBR-A. I think I am just about to get another 38c in dividends.

@Luke I believe the right plan should be to supply Ukraine with everything it needs to succeed against Russia. To be specific I am talking a bit huge casualties in military as well as degrading Russian infrastructure with long range weapons (destroying the Kerch bridge would be a start) as well as blkcing the Black Sea via long range weapons. If Russia then continues, their economy will convert into a war economy which means everything will just be means to feed the military. I think this is something that is happening anyways but it could be forced much faster. The Kursk incursion idea is to force Russia to act a to pull military units from the Donbas. So then the fight occurs on Ukraine’s terms not Russians. It’s funny when people say Ukraine should just give up Donbas basically because Putin wants it. What if Putin says, the deal with a Russia to buy Alaska is invalid and unfair and Alaska really belongs to Russia. Who cares about Alaska anyways, is it worth risking the lives of 100,000 US troops there? Maybe Putin is right and Russia made an unfair deal, after all they discovered it first? If we give it back to him, it will be all he good. However, I make a bet that the US would be willing to sacrifice 100,000 troops if need to be to guard its territorial integrity. So will most other counties if forced.

Any deal with Putin will be no more than a temporary truce during which he plans his next move, imo. I think it’s fallacy to believe Putin only wants the Donbas. 10 years ago, people though the same thing about the Crimea. The fight will continue in some way as long as he is there. I do think the sanctions and isolation will degrade Russia into a North Korean hellhole over time, but it will take decades. It’s also not driving tanks through empty land. The incursion has disrupted life for hundred throws and of Russians in three oblasts, which have become a war zone with evacuations etc. Also, it seems now that up to 3000 Russian soldiers are trapped in a salient due to all the bridges being bombed with no way to go which means that Russia loses another chunk of land and perhaps an brigade worth of material and troops.

It’s entertaining but I think it’s close to useless if not downward dangerous for an aspiring investor.

Both have had an impact. From a stock selection POV, I think I like Greenblatts approach to look at EV/EBIT and ROIC better. I feel Grahams asset based approach does not work as well any more in a world where intangibles become more important. However Grahams teachings about Margin of Safety and Mr Market are foundational which is why Graham remains very much relevant.

I think one issues with Graham was that he did not care about money any more, once he had enough. He cared about women, writing plays and a few other things. Buffett had one single focus and that was and still is compounding more. Also Buffett was an in and outer through ostmof his career and still is (see his Apple sales), I think he tried with KO and clearly realized his mistake.

Gospels sound good in the church but once you leave you tend to do the same stuff that you always do. You have to live through these things yourself and learn from it hopefully.

The bullish thing about multi family is that renting is very very affordable compared to buying a property . The lack of affordability pertains only to buying homes, but not renting. I can see some decent rent increases for a few years as these two will eventually converge.

These are all institutional investor that trade on the Powell’s speeches or Fed meeting notes. I don’t know any individual investor who even knows what he said today. Besides, I would argue that the Fed has done a good job so far. The economy is doing fairly well and seems to be set to do the soft landing that they have been aiming for.

I liked the GOT ending as well. I wonder why people disliked it and honestly have no idea.

I think it is related to tax cash flows which tend to be early in the year. So net cash flow for treasury is more negative in the second half which means more treasury issues leading to higher interest rates .

Interesting $SNOW revenues increase by 30% and net retention rate is 127% . That means growth comes from existing customer basically. If true, what are they spending ~$400M on sales and marketing for? That’s 46% of revenues. Makes no sense to me. Anyone has any idea what’s going on? I think I want a job in S&M at this outfit working remotely.

I did add a bit more PLX (Pluxee) on Monday.

I enjoyed this one (a Twitter spaces recording basically) of two fellows doing basically what Walter Schloss did decades ago. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/value-hive-podcast/id1492171651?i=1000665614853 The handle @buycheapandpray says it all . I think that gal used to be Inatailhedged (or similar) and I followed here since the PBR buying days.

Had to shop for insurance since I moved and my old is insurance co was raking me over raising rates again. Guess what, I got a quote from Erie that was less than half my current car insurance with the same coverage. There was no bait and switch either the quote was super easy to obtain. I highly recommend to shop insurance with Erie, if you are in one of the states where they operate.

They are pretty much the #1 and the #2 with almost 14% market share each. State Farm market share is only 15%, they are number one but would be much smaller than Geico and Progressive combined. Drawdowns don’t matter and it does not matter what government we have either because this would truly be anticompetitive especially since both have the same direct sales operating model.

Sold remaining DOCS position. Worked out really well.

I am not sure Hezbollah is next. They have been keeping pretty quiet except the mortar or missile strike every now and then. Even if Israel would start an incursion into Lebanon , they can’t really smoke them out unless they go very deep and stay there. So my guess is that Israel leaves Hezbollah alone and Hezbollah leaves Israel alone, except the usual smaller skirmishes. Any larger confrontation will be indirect and not on Israels or Lebanon's soil, That’s just my guess and could be proven wrong tomorrow.

I think the big question is how expendable that leadership is. There are plenty others who are willing to start where the past leadership failed or got killed. For example killing Bin Laden did little to reduce terror. It’s a never ending whack a mole.

@Kupotea what SPY options are you buying and what are your assumptions for a 10 x return? As someone who dabbled in index puts before, I find it hard to make 10x returns with them.