Spekulatius

Unfortunately, with inflation at 8% you are losing purchasing power even if you don’t lose money. I have some gold (a few percent as Cash substitute) , but I think my allocation may be way too small. Gold may or may not work out well, but just cash won’t do well either if we get a 70’s style scenario. I am in my mid fifties and don’t like the prospect of large losses either, so am am staying very diversified. I do this because reducing risk is more important than maximizing gains. I don’t think that staying in cash is the answer though.

I think Mearsheimer makes good points, including that Putin likely wills survive this. I do think he is wrong about sanctions though. The goal of the sanctions is not to overthrow the Russian government, it is to ruin their economy to such an extend that they are financially and economically not able any more to keep their military complex running. This alone will be a great benefit and make Russia much less dangerous. The other lesson from history is that the sanctions against Russia here are very likely to stay, even if a peace deal or some sort will occur. There are direct investment implications for this because of you think we will be back to normal after some sort of truce will be reached, I think you are very wrong, at least based on how this has worked in the past,

I actually think that many Americans are really that dump. Just look at his car dealer sell you a monthly cost rather than the price of a car. I also got aware early on that many can’t conceptualize that interest cost matter much more so than the monthly cost of a loan. That’s why car deals stretch out the payback duration more. Thats also the reason why credit cards in the US are a bigger and better business than literally anywhere else.

The end likely will be ruined Russian economy, Ukraine be destroyed and depopulated and Europe will become much less dependent on Russian energy. The Iron curtain will raise again. I think we might get a recession in Europe in the near term, caused by higher energy costs, pot. Energy shortages as well as supply disruptions and less trade with Russia. Yes, war is almost always precedent by diplomatic failure although I would argue that sometimes it is inevitable, if you you get someone like Hitler showing up, WW1 was a diplomatic/policy failure WW2 was not. I am still not sure which camp Putin is in, he might just be one of those guys that are looking to get into a fight when they think it’s opportune. You certainly also can take the other side that there has been a series of policy failures dealing with him from Obama, Trump to Biden (before the invasion). I think Biden did one crucial mistake since the Invasion telling Putin that he will not get US troops involved. This is a mistake because you never want to paint a red line to your opponent and tell them where it is. You rather want Putin guessing what you might do, even if you have no intention whatsoever to actually put boots on the ground. This was an unforced mistake, imo. They also made an mistake not getting the deal with the Polish MiG-29 ‘s done. They should not have talked about this and just call it “donation of NATO surplus to the Ukrainians” if they must. We are supplying weapons to the Ukraine so I am not sure why we paint another red line for ourselves here.

Fully agree. I actually think the reporting from the MSM is quite good. I watch NBC News / Sky (cause I have free Peacock with my new TV) and they have people on the ground and do seem to do sober assessments. Using the arguments “It’s their own fault- they poked the bear” is like saying, a school bully can kick in another kids teeth and crush his skull with a hammer because that kid looked at the school bully funny and made a wrong joke.

By most accounts, the semiconductor related shortage should subside in the second half of 2022, but now we have to deal with other shortages. The German car manufacturers are hit by disruption of cable assemblies from Ukraine, which will take 2-3 month to work through fully by some accounts. Then we have issues steel (high prices and perhaps shortages of some qualities as well) and a host of other things. I still think that towards the second half of this year some stuff will subside but who knows. I would hate having to buy a car in this environment.

Yes, plug in hybrids save more gas, but you also need to account for the electricity cost to charge them. I am pro hybrid, but I think driving a relatively high mileage ICE car the way to go. I never could make the numbers work for a hybrid, much less and electric car. My next car is likely a Subaru as well, these cars drive like trains in the sometimes icy backroads here in MA where I live. My wife loves her Forester.

I wonder if the issues were on the long or the short side. The short sides seem to get quite tricky, because at times all the junk and suspect stock frauds become correlated and can run against you, leading to risk management issues. On the long side, we have seen very quick and sudden factor shifts. If you invest with a longer time frame, the you can look at very severe underperformance at times.

Your numbers are way off. A hybrid does not save 70% on gas, as you imply, it’s closer to 30%. A typical car will go perhaps from 30 miles/ gallon vs 40 miles/ gallon for a hybrid. So, if you do 15k/ year, the savings will be 15k/30-15k/40= 125 gallon/ year. At currently $4/ gallon that’s ~$500/ year in fuel savings. Now let’s look at Subaru Crosstreck (I like Subarus). MSRP for the Crosstrek is $35.8k. ICE model (Limited, which has more power than the hybrid) is $28.5k. So you pay 7k extra to save $500/ year on gas. Even more, if you step down a model (the hybrid has many extras I don’t care about) you can save 10k outlay and pay $500/ year more in gas cost, which I think you might not get back during the lifetime of the car.

@oscarazocar Great summary on GHC and I fully agree. GHC‘s Management is at best mediocre. I owned this for a while and they do some talk that sounds good, but their capital allocation is below average and capital allocation is what it's about with a conglomerate.

Same here. This decline gets annoying. I also bought some LNR.TO / LIMAF (Starter)

These are expensive Molotov cocktails. This one is in my budget: https://www.liquorandwineoutlets.com/product-detail/2031-Granite-State-Vodka-Vodka

Yeah, you can't just nilly willy switch the entire car production to hybrids, much less electric cars. besides, it looks like the trend is going away from hybrids to foully electric cars. In any case, we are talking about a decade long project here to get production switched and then those vehicles produced up to that point are still going to be an average of ~13 years on the road. That takes us to ~23 years from now until we can phase out ICE engines for good. Maybe be some "cash for stinker" program this is going to be quicker at some point down the road, but I think we are talking at least 20 years from now.

Looks looks the new defense spending bill implies +5% for 2022 (less than inflation though) i do not know if this includes stuff related to Ukraine these incidentals are often is added in additional bills later. https://www.airforcemag.com/congress-unveils-2022-spending-plan-boosting-pentagon-funding/#:~:text=All told%2C the 2022 Department,requested by the Biden administration. This still needs to go through senate.

Russia has nationalist groups as well. I am not sure why this is relevant. I haven’t really heard about countries attacking another one to get rid of them. NBC had an article about this a few days ago. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ukraine-has-nazi-problem-vladimir-putin-s-denazification-claim-war-ncna1290946

Interesting thread. I try to avoid digging into twitter on this matter (time suck), but do appreciate selected gems. As for turning cities into rubble and then trying to conquer them - this has been tried before: Stalingrad.

I am going to explain to my grandkids why investing my money in communist and totalitarian countries is a great idea one day.

BTU also got a margin call on their coal hedges. I imagine some E&P's might blow up due to hedges if prices really go parabolic like some think. That would be quite ironic.

Found this one interesting for bank investors: https://www.bankregdata.com//allHMmet.asp?met=ONE

I think one that gets very little recognition is SONY. SONY used to be a consumer goods company, but now they do consumer goods, gaming (both software and hardware), financial services, sensors, media (music and film). They also compounded with a 20.5% CAGR over the last 10 years if my tikr.com is correct. It's a quite well managed company now. I don't own it, but it's definitely on my "close look" list.

CMCSA is mostly broadband, but with media properties like Sky and NBCU one could regard them as a conglomerate. I own them and they do have a pretty good track record over the long run (mid teens returns since IPO).

Reduced PAOHY (about flat). A bit concerned payout production disruptions.

Warren is just making noise. She also was complaining about expensive Thanksgiving Turkeys and a few other things and there was not windfall taxes on those either.

If we do get 8-9%, I think the "returns" this year will beat stocks. I have put a bit more in late January, but we haven't filled out family allocation for 2022 yet. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-09/u-s-inflation-data-to-capture-prewar-prices-rather-than-peak