Spekulatius

The felt the first episode was so so, but I think this might be turning out to be alright. The production and the acting still does feel a bit artificial to me. My hope is that they can bring this alive like Sméagol in Jackson’s trilogy for example.

I think companies worth owning are Deutsche Post, Porsche Holding (POAHY) and Exor Holding for example. For exposure to the German market, I would get an MDAX ETF , which gives you more exposure to Midcap German companies for example. I don’t know French business all that much, but I think choosing the Midcap route may be the way to go. FWIW, most European Midcaps have an international business focus, so they are not necessarily limited to doing business in Europe only.

Most European companies make only a fraction of their business in Europe. The actually numbers depend, but the multinational companies in Europe are closer to a 1/3 Europe, 1/3 NA and 1/3 Asia/ EM business mix than 100% European. So, I think there are great opportunities out there to get a double whammy from both a lower valuation as well as a currency kicker eventually. Likewise, a lot of US companies have significant revenues in Europe as well as in China (both secularly challenged).

Well the other currencies suffer from inflation as well. Also, the USD is going strong in every crisis and especially now. Since the US in energy independent and Europe, Asia, Japan are not. EM currencies are generally the real canaries in the coal mine.

Mauboussin is definitely into updating priors. He mentions this several times and it is also something that I have heard in several economics books that deal with forecasts. I think the expectation investing is a twist to value investing where you try to reverse engineer the stocks value as well, as embedded expectations in a stock. You can apply this such that it’s not directly value investing and I think quite a few growth investors do this as well, It’s similar to a DCF or reverse DCF method- both can give the same result and it’s fundamentally the same method , but require a bit of a different way of thinking. Mungers “invert, always invert” fits the same framework. FWIW, there is a recent podcast interview from Mauboussin: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/motley-fool-money/id306106212?i=1000578259992

People do get pulled over, mostly for speeding. The type of car matters much more than the color. If you drive a souped up rice racer with low suspension and dark window tints, expect to get pulled over more than driving a minivan.

I am just belatedly watching “Billions” on Prime video and the one guy at the hedge fund brainstorming session got scolded for proposing Apple, because it has “still room to run”. This was S1 E2 in 2016. So far, I like this show.

This episode in business breakdowns about CRWD was pretty good: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/business-breakdowns/id1559120677?i=1000578011308 Learned a few things about CRWD but also about the cyber security business.

Bought a starter in IAC. Also added to PYCO and CMCSA just a little.

@LearningMachine thx for the summary - I have nothing to add. Have been tracking ALLY on and off for years and whey they IPO'd they actually were a prime auto lender and over time went lower on the credit scale, because that's where the juicy NIM's are. COF auto has always been subprime, I think. Clearly, few of us would consider a car loan from either lenders - we would use the manufacturers lending arm or go to a credit union like Penfed etc.

It's not a matter of losses, it's a matter if the lender get compensated for the risk. The credit environment is currently unusually benign for credit cards, but even more so auto (low default rate and high car prices), so I am more concerned about car than CC. Ally has somewhat dived deeper into the subprime pool in car lending. I also think they have more interest rate risk. Maybe they are both good at this point and certainly look cheap, but I don't like Ally's dependency on just car lending, hence I prefer COF.

It takes about 5 years (until 2027) to bring the Russian gas that has been shipped to Europe to China. this assumes that they start to work on the pipelines now. Until then , the world will probably be structurally short NG, since Europe will crowd out other buyers for LNG by bidding more. Right now, Russia is flaring gas that is currently excess (they they don't ship to Europe), per satellite photos.

What really got my attention is how much stock they are buying back. Share count is down from ~460M shares at the end of 2020 to ~390M now. They are buying back shares at an almost~ 20M/quarter clip. Do this at a 20% earnings yield for some time and good things start to happen. FWIW, COF is overearning a bit due to lower than baseline provisions. normalized earnings (assuming normalized provisions) are probably closer to $15/share, give or take. But with this buyback clip, this number will be going up, because the # of shares is going down very quickly.

AI chips are dual use tech, just like high tech laser components. The latter had export controls for a long time. I think semis are very vulnerable to an escalation of Chinese- US trade war. The exposure of semi equipment companies like AMAT and LCRX is huge. Then there are those with indirect exposure like AAPL.

Most plug in hybrids won't last 50 miles though. I am hoping for a Hyundai Tuscan plug in hybrid (on a wait list currently) but they are more in the 25-30mile range. I do agree that they are a great value proposition, although most of them have lost the federal incentives currently.

it has been a long time since I visited Normandie (early 90's). We also checked out the Bayeux museum (famous carpet) as well as the D-Day landing beaches. After checking out 2 or three I came to the conclusion that the brits screwed over the Americans by choosing the easier to land beaches for themselves. The Normandy is a beatiful area - friendly people, and wonderful windswept beaches. Some of the beaches have enormous tides - more than 10m which leads to wide sand beaches sometimes with steep cliffs. We say people with Land yachts racing them and it looked awesome. Then there is great local food (cheese!) and Calvados. I plan to go full circle back there one day.

Died from “severe illness”. He also got a lifetime achievement award from Putin: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62750584

Well, first order principles would suggest that you need to replace all the gasoline used in California with the energy equivalent of electricity. It's probably a bit less because electric motors are more efficient than ICE, but then you have the electric energy conversion and transmission losses to deal with, so probably a wash. Charging is done mostly at night, if you charge at home and have a smart charger, so may not be that bad from a grid utilization POV.

Belated reply - but this is something I don't like about FFH. The Holdco seems to be constantly cash poor and there is considerable leverage at a Holdco level as well, both in terms of preferred stock (~$1.3B), as well as with debt, (the latter I am not sure about how much). In Q2, they had about $1B i n Holdco cash but this has been going down for several quarters. it was north of $1.5B last year.

Granite state vodka -$6.99 on sale. Best used mixing. You can create low cost "Desperado's" mixing this with Budweiser. Enough proof to use as a Molotov cocktail. Use to light your neighbors cat on fire or throw one on the roof on neighbors roof who pissed you off a long time ago. These random acts of vandalisms keep real estate prices and taxes low in your neighborhood and benefit everyone. This is how your beat inflation!

Starter in EXOR today. Also started / added to $COF.

I actually think that Grantham believes what he says. I also believe he has boxed himself in a certain corner of the market and couldn't get out, even if he wanted to. Those people that are known to occupy a certain niche are not really worth listening to, or at least just listen to their arguments and come to your own conclusion, if you do. That's why listening to Druckenmiller and others is much more valuable - they don't really have anything to sell and they do change their opinions, so they have an open mind, and hence they tend to speak freely.

I had no idea about Prince Edward isles, but now they are in my bucket list.

Been there a long time ago. Love the Normandie and the Bretagne, but my favorite is the northern part. The southern part / La Baule is way better for beach holidays though.

If Grantham would change his opinion all of a sudden and became bullish, he would lose 3/4 of his audience. Think about this for a while. He is in the financial doomsday business not in the investing business at this point.