Spekulatius

Agreed on this. Office usage for the company I work for has not changed, but a lot of this supports light manufacturing operations. I do see tenants round moving out and bland Office parks being less busy. Some of them seemed to move to nicer locations, which I think could point to @Gregmal Line of thinking. I would not want to own B & C class Office real estate in the suburbs either at this point.

80% of the things happening in the commodity space can be explained by the fact that supply lags demand. Oil does not really behave differently than all the other commodities like copper, iron lumber or even shipping rates. Both parties are talking their book here. Republicans blame high gas prices on Biden, Democrats blame high gas prices on greedy oil companies, it s all nonsense, but I can understand why they do this. I do not understand why people who are supposedly skilled in economics actually repeating some of those above as if they were true.

I am going to my suburban office and nothing has changed. I don’t think much has changed in the area I live in either. Traffic is still a bit less than in 2019, so I think that means Office has been somewhat affected, but I fail to see a fundamental change here, more like a gradual one that slowly seems to be reversing. Maybe not all Office is the same and suburban office has different dynamics than big cities? The rest of the world doesn’t necessarily look like NYC.

Yes, I think that’s the right take. Russia is giant gas station maskerading as a country (I don’t know who came up with this quote) and every time Putin is flush with cash from oil money, bad things tend to happen.

Yes, RR was too aggressive, but even GE engine business has the same issue: When a new generation of aircraft engines is developed, there is a huge drag on cash flow and elevated manufacturing and operational risk for a few years. Cash flow tends to be weak because it is backloaded (cash comes in as engines start to operate and get through their scheduled maintenance cycles) and the accrual accounting lends itself to frontload earning recognition years before the cash comes in. These are not hallmarks of a great business and there are similarities to running an insurance business with long tail exposure. Huge barriers of entry alone do not always make a great business model.

Uzbekistan going against the big kahuna is a big loss for Putin. On another note CNN has a good article on the air superiority and why Russia may have failed. Denying Russia air superiority is critically important, because this enables the Ukraine to use Drones and puts their troops and forces under less risk to get destroyed from the air. The fact alone that Russia has not achieved this is remarkable and in my opinion, NATO should revise their stance on not using a no fly zone option if Ukraine gets overwhelmed in the air. I think the long range anti aircraft missiles that the UK and others are delivering may help on that end as well. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/17/europe/air-superiority-ukraine-russia-intl-cmd/index.html @cubsfan you have no way of knowing what Putin may or may not have done, if Trump were in power. Blaming the invasion on Biden is a political play and speculative at best. It seems that all Presidents starting with Obama (and perhaps even before that) have done many mistakes as far as the Russian are concerned, including Trump.

https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/ukraines-lessons-for-taiwan/

How good is the razor blade model of the razor sales creates a loss and blade sale is uncertain and years later and is akin to selling insurance in way. I state this because the engine manufacturer needs to guarantee certain performance metrics (engine hours, uptime) and is on the hook if the engine does not perform. That happened to Rolls Royce and it cost them dearly. This is not Gilette where both razor and blades are cheap items and Gilette does not guarantee anything.

I never get why people think that QE is similar to MMT. Those two things have little to do with each other. QE swaps one asset for another , it does not create new "money". Treasury spending does create new money (or equivalent) in the private sector. I think that's why QE does not create inflation but more treasury spending can. MMT is just testing the limits on how much the treasury can be spent and it's much larger than many thought in the past. Maybe I get it all wrong (wouldn't be the first time ). It's in a way amazing that the monetary system works, but we don't really know how and why and sort of have diametrically opposed theories about it.

@changegonnacome has a point. Putins force is too small to occupy Ukraine if they put in resistance. They have 150k, maybe 200k soldiers against 15 Million people. That's a 100:1 ratio and really does not work. I think the plan may have changed from Blitzkrieg & install puppet regime to totally destroy Ukraine and such neutralize it that way. Now going back to history, how well has it worked out to make your neighboring country hate you by its guts?. Let's say Ukraine signs a neutrality contract or puts it in it's constitution. How much is that really worth? We don't have to go back all that long in history to find out. It's just a matter of time, until Ukraine will align themselves with any enemy of Russia as soon as it will be opportune to do so. If so, what has Putin gained? Countries don't keep peaceful relations because they underwrite a piece of paper, they do so because it is beneficial to them and they develop friendly relations, trade etc. Again a giant miscalculation of Putin imo, due to his imperialistic world view.

Index funds are hard to beat for a 10 year holding period, imo.

so I finally was able to watch Zelensky‘s speech, as well as Biden‘s and the commentary from some Republican senators. I think Zelensky made a good appeal to the US such that the average American can relate to their plight. Biden’s response was a bit weak (more of the same) without really anything new. The Republican Senators made a good point that’s we shouldn’t worry too much about what Putin might think about this or that. One of them also brought that in both the Korean and Vietnam theatre the Russians supplied plenty of aircraft to the North Koreans and Vietnamese and no one was worried about escalation. So why now? Too many self Imposed red lines that we let Putin know about is are a mistake. You should never made the opponent know about your intend and what you are going to do and what not. Let them guess or let them find out, hopefully when it’s too late. Even the Estonian prime minister later said the same. red Lines make no sense, especially since Putin doesn’t have any. Personally, we shouldn’t even let it publicity know what we going to supply to Ukraine at all. Just supply whatever they need and can use. If that includes MIG-29 then get them delivered. Keeping the Russian from achieving air superiority is essential. One of my former colleagues wife is from Odessa and her parents are still there. Pretty crappy situation. This city looks like it’s going to be the next hotspot, because the Russian Navy is starting to close in and has already started some bombardments. This might be a time to give the Ukrainians some bigger rockets to get these ships out of the way. Sinking one of these vessels would be also something that would be hard to hide for Putin. We sure have means to get this job done and should give it to the Ukrainians, if they can put it to use.

If you are on Fintwit, Patel is a must follow. He captures the Zeitgeist like no one else with his quips.

He wasn't wrong - we will not survive this:

Regardless of war and dire circumstances, dress code violations are not tolerated:

This could just be cheap talk from the party committee though. I recall they did a similar statement a few month ago while continue to cracking down on big tech. Congrats to those who timed this, especially with options.

LOL:

Of course the (gutsy, imo) visit of the Polish, Slovakian and Czech minister is just a gesture, but those can be important too. I think the next milestone is Zelenskyy's address to congress today, which might put pressure on Biden to do more. I also think his visit to Europe, which is likely a consensus building mission, is another sign that something is brewing, hopefully around a brokered cease fire and peace talk.

Thats the statement by the EU delegation in Kiev.

@no_free_lunch I don’t think Russia actually has air superiority. That‘s the surprising part. The Ukraine Air Force is still flying and contesting the air. If the Russian had air superiority, the Ukrainians could not use the relatively low tech Turkish drones and so effectively to destroy Russian armor and armored vehicles. Air superiority is necessary condition to conduct a Blitzkrieg and that was the Russian plan and it never worked. There simply is no Blitzkrieg. What the Russian now are doing is more like a slow grind with a siege like tactic. They are shooting at cities with either rockets or motorized artillery mortars. It is almost medieval warfare and It takes along time. The Russian Air Force isn’t showing all that much presence, perhaps for fear of getting shot down by stingers and such. Imaging the US we’re doing it and you would see swarms of air planes all over the place dropping precision guided ordonance. None of this is happening here. The Russian Air Force is a failure.

YTD tax receipts : $1.736T (March 14) 2021 YTD tax receipts: $1.42T (March 15)

The most important lesson is to never give up nuclear weapons once you got them.

Well to be fair, some growth investors did ride the likes of PYPL from $100 to $300 and then all the way down as well. That was when #neversell was trending and that's really no better. Maybe that happened to the Aravt fund as well. I guess the lesson is that if Mr Market gives you a gift, you should just take the bid and cash in the chips. I think the long bull market in some names made them forget this and that is the different market structure they are referring to. I guess as value investor you never get to ride the likes of PYPL to $300 though, so there are tradeoffs either way.

Modern wars have no winners any more. 200 years ago a nation could win a war (barely). The last war that was a clear win Franco Prussian war in 1870. The Prussians won this, because it was swift victory. Every war after that has two losers , the one who loses more and the other one who loses less. In this war Ukraine will lose more (devastation, depopulation) and Russia will lose less, relatively speaking, but still will be a loser as well. Let see how this peace deal will look like, if we get one. I think Putin will take a lot of damage. Europe is turning away from Russian NG, that's fore sure - I think they learned that lesson and the machinery to get there is already in motion. The other sanctions we will see. The Ukrainians will hate the Russians for a long time and who knows maybe they will move closer to Europe some day. They have negotiated about an entry in the EU while all this mayhem happened.

What do you get with DJCO that you can't invest in directly? Their software business looks crappy and isn't worth much, imo.