Spekulatius

Bought: AGM, ABM, CXT (Spinoff as of a couple of years ago, security products), SONY

whatever:

Banks are macro dependent, more so than other business. I also bought a bank stock today AGM (the federally chartered Agricultural lender).

I think it’s getting clearer that Israel is the tail who wags the dog ( USA). They literally are the brain (note all the high profile kills were orchestrated by Israel) and hired the muscle (USA) to provide the punch. FWIW, I think the EU will get involved in some capacity after we have a truce of some sort.

All the news is about the IranWar but Ukraine has been doing very well this winter and pushed the Russians back while also I inflicting losses at rate of ~1000 casualty a day. that rate means the Russians take a US Vietnam war sized casualty every 2 month. Might be time for regime chance in Russia too.

Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

I will tell my AI agent about it. It’s really up to him.

I think you are talking about the Board of Peace.

You are correct about Iranian oil export still occurring and it’s not because we can’t stop them. i do think they will stop soon, especially with Kharg island being occupied. This will further pressure crude prices upwards.

AIG has spun off their long tail life insurance and pension business into CRBG similar to what Prudential did with JXN. Then they kept selling down their share and used the proceeds to buy back their own stocks. That’s how AIG was able to purchase back so much of their own stocks, it wasn’t possible with their earnings alone. I agree that AIG is also worth a look as it trades around book value. They do have a history of under reserving , so that’s something to keep in mind when looking at their valuation metrics.

I agree, but the fact that they could not make it work in 2016 does not mean it won’t work it 2025.. Pix in Brazil is an example where another rail was established and competed with existing networks. The US has Fednow which is not build for consumer facing transactions but could probably get modified to do so. I expect Europe to launch something like Pix this decade for political reasons (digital autonomy).

Well , MN fraud since 2018 is estimated at 50% of $18B, 50% seems high and Cato is a conservative think tank, but even if I take this at face value, we have a fraud of ~$9B for the last 7 years. With the war in Iran we spent $11.3B in 6 days . So we spent more than a high estimate of fraud in MN for the last 7 years in less than one week on military action half way around the globe fighting a country that can’t attack us directly. The same people are up in arms about sending weapons and aide to Ukraine with ~$130B over 3 years. I think scales are a bit off here.

First 6 days of the war in Iran costs $11.3B. I am guessing that subsequent weeks get cheaper but if this war last, it will create a severe, hundred billion budget hole. https://www.csis.org/analysis/iran-war-cost-estimate-update-113-billion-day-6-165-billion-day-12#:~:text=The U.S. Department of Defense,first days of the war.

The gulf states are huge losers because the aura of stability from the region is gone. UAE and other states vision was to be a finance/ trade /tourisms hub with the underlying basis of being tax haven and modern infrastructure. Now all these tax refuges return back or are getting evacuated to their home countries and it’s unclear if they will come back. In the end it’s safety first and if a place isn’t safe, then taxes matter very little.

Block/ xyz could do this, because they both have a merchant facing business (payment systems) and customer facing apps (cash, debit cards). They could create a closed circuit payment rail without Visa/MC theoretically (via stablecoins)and nudge customer to use it. This implied in their last investor presentation and that how I became aware of this. PYPL could do the same thing.

Replacing V&MA only makes sense if you replacing the entire stack and the 185bps swipe fee going to banks and what not. Thats the risk to V and MA and also the rest of the current payment system. Whatever replaces it needs to be way cheaper than 200bps, otherwise why bother? I think there is a chance that V&MA can latch onto new payment infrastructure but in this case the other payment players like stripe, banks etc would be screwed.

Next chapter is assymetrical warfare and the play is outlasting the US on patience. The Iran could well be as toasty as Vietnam was in 1966 and I think the regime can take a punch. I sure hope boots on the ground won’t happen because then we are going to see coffins with flags coming back as a regular cadence. I also expect to see terror acts against US assets and possibly on US soil. I hope I am wrong on all the above.

Welk that name change certainly meant something, that for sure.

I guess it’s the same “stability” that Putin and Kim Jong Un provide. All of the above are killing their own people by the ten thousands , so they are not regimes any more, they are a tyrannies . They deserve to get removed but that’s easier said than done. I think most people will lose you when you are supporting this religious demagogues and tyrants. Thats not to say that I think Trump’s approach is a great one here, however it if it works, it’s great outcome. Most Iranian people in the diaspora and probably in Iran itself will agree. Although I do think the regime has quite a bit of support from a significant part of the population in Iran even at this point..

OK, went Polymarket to check the odds of the straight of Hormuz reopening. Chance is 33% by the end of April. Sounds like a disaster if the hive mind there is right.

BP and Shell have their headquarter in the UK (still) but they are multinationals and only a small fraction of their assets are in the UK. Starmer has no leverage. I do think he is calling them in to prevent price gouging with fuel prices rising more than is justified by rising input costs.You see some of this happening already on the US with diesel potentially. I expect Trump to make some similar noises pretty soon.

Iranians oil export are already disrupted , nothing goes out. The Iranians best chance to exert leverage is make sure that anyone else can’t export oil and LNG either through the straight of Hormuz.

Straight of Hormuz is open, the only thing prohibiting transit is Iran shooting at ships.

Yes, I think this is the correct assessment. Getting ships very close to the Iranian coast which is necessary to protect merchant ships there will make them vulnerable to attacks. On the other hand, the straight of Hormuz needs to be opened or the war will be lost politically.

They could have hit Kharg Island from the get go. It is just sitting sitting there, hard to protect a d easy to hit with air power. However I think the idea was not to destroy the energy infrastructure, but that concept was abandoned as our military had hit refineries and other targets already. So this is an indication of escalation , not an indication of winning either. Same with moving 3500 marines ( a ground invasion force) that may well be to secure Kharg Island. But think about this- if this escalation had been part of the plan from beginning, the Marines had been assembled with the initial force to begin with and Kharg Island had been hit during the first days (this was actually discussed upthread here). In other words, we are now getting into round 2 of this conflict and it looks like this will go on for a while.