Spekulatius

Texas and Florida are also bad. Lots of shark lawyers and no damage cap.

Why does Germany need to lick up the tab? They don’t need Ukraine to continue fighting either, there are a lot of countries between Ukraine, Russia and Germany. I do agree that low crude prices is one arrow to hit both Iran and Russia in their pocketbook nd targeting the Shadow fleet would be one way to do so.

No. I would not buy a house with a pool. It’s a maintenance and to a lesser extent insurance nightmare.

Why BTI?

This is exactly right. Becoming a reserve currency is detrimental to their mercantilist export economy. They can either have their currency become a true reserve currency and run trade deficits or continue their export mercantilism but they can’t have both. Keep on mind that the first step to become a reserve currency is to have a freely convertible currency. With the currency controls on place and the yuan pegged to the USD, this point is moot.

If your business is importing cheap Chinese goods or even just any foreign ones, you are not a Trump trade winner. TGT also down. Retail is not the place to be. Housing stocks also down due to higher interest rates. .

Sold most of the bank stocks I had.

He bought 16% of a company with $1M in revenues with 36% profit margins for 60k. That company was growing profits 70% YoY. Thats paying 375k for a business that earnings $360k or ~1x EBIT. Even ignoring the 70% growth, I am not surprised he didn’t need a DCF model to invest in they one.

Seems like can save a lot of money and just dig a hole in your area and voila, you have a pool. Throw some chlorine and bleach in it for the price of mind and should be good to dive in.

Bought a bit more 6723.T (Renesas) and a starter in SIMO.

There is actually no free movement of money out of China. My understanding is thy If a local subsidy generates cash they have to get government for permission to move cash out. The Yuan isn’t a freely convertible currency either. Typically, I think the government will allow transfer, but if they have to gripe with you for whatever reason, they may deny your transfer. This can happen for example if you have some beef with local government (didn’t bribe them enough) or could be some lawsuit with another Chinese company that has strong ties with the local government and can make your corporate life there miserable. I am no expert on this and my experience is dated but i did talk to a finance colleague who handled the Chinese sub for a company I worked for quite a few years ago. I don’t think those things have changed.

Sovereign debt buyers hate political instability for good reasons. Any default of sovereign debt is almost always the result of political upheaval. So if we get another riot post election, I think the chance are pretty high than that US debt will get an explicit or implicit (via higher interns rates) downgrade.

I think Buffett is going to sell Apple and BofA down to zero. Apple for valuation reasons (they basically stopped growing years ago and multiple keeps expanding) and BAC because he does not like their AOCI loss - a result of mismanaging their balance sheet in 2021 (~$800B of 2% yielding MBS). I think he changed his opinion on banks overall. The lack of buybacks tells us that Berkshire stock is not cheap at the moment in his view.

Oof, This is what we are up against.: https://x.com/ThorntonWa47373/status/1853029791638987136 Idiots like this guy are everywhere, especially on X. They don’t even know how to use photoshop.

I am not a REIT expert either, but it’s clear that the disclosure with this trust is quite bad. As for the industrial properties, the math for revaluation posted above seem correct and it looks like there is a gap, but there are a couple of possible explanations for this 1) Cap rates are averages , but the value is the sum of all the property values. It is entirely possible that the NOI and cap rate stay the same but property value goes up if some properties get more valuable for whatever reason. This could be because an area where a property is located gets more valuable and would be evident by assessment from properties in the neighborhood. 2) They develop properties in addition to purchasing them. I cannot simply infer that they developed an industrial property form the disclosure in 2023 but it’s possible. They do mention a handful of so of development opportunities in their annual report. Again the disclosure around this is nebulous. What did get my attention is that the disclosure around how they conduct the annual valuation of their assets. It seems that they only really audit the value of ~900M / $1200M (in term do value) of their property, so 300M is based on managment discretion. Thats one quarter of the value that management has a lot of discretion over how they value them. I think this is quite unusual.

Interesting to look at power prices though, which have given back most of the astronomical increases that occurred in 2022: https://ember-energy.org/data/european-electricity-prices-and-costs/ I think wholesale prices are roughly double what they are in the US.

if you have not heard nothing about weapon packages, it because they slowed down to a trickle in the last 6 months or so. If Ukraine gets run over, Europe has a huge problem on their hands. Start with 15 million + refugees. Germany for example has only 180k troops and combat readiness is questionable. They may have to think about getting the draft implemented again, which creates a large reserve force over time. During the Cold War, the Bundeswehr had a 800k reserve force, mostly from ex draft, now it’s just a few ten thousands. Or perhaps there are other solutions, but 180k are not going to cut it. If Putin wins he is going to re-arm and start another adventure 5-10 years from now, when oil prices happen to be high again. You can stick your head in the sand and avoid confronting a problem, but in the end the problem will run you over. From a politicians perspective this preferably happens under the next administrations watch.

That indeed seems to be the case. The Russian steamroller in action and the Ukraine does not have enough material and men to counter it.

Bus kept driving to meet the schedule, I guess. Nobody was hurt, I guess it might as well not have happened.

Sold my MBLY shares. Made some gains in tax deferred accounts. I have no idea why it’s up - maybe better the feared INTC results? .

We can’t even believe the numbers coming from the Beijing as economic data for sure is massaged to meet the CVp’s goalposts, I am in the China is important but uninvestible (for the most part) camp.

Oil is the world’s central banker.

I bet Miami cannot top this:

Sold some TPB - has been on a tear lately. I believe it’s due to them having introduced nicotine pouches but I am not quite sure.