Spekulatius

Bought starter in CRM in various accounts.

The Fed did not sent out the stimulus checks, the Treasury did. If you don’t believe, check who signed the stimulus checks. QE and all this does little for the average John Doe, but a stimulus check does, because he can and did spent it. The Fed did a lot of stuff during the Great Recession but they could not prevent the Great Recession. The only institution who could have prevented or at least lessened the Great Recession was the Treasury. If the Treasury had sent enough checks (the helicopter money that Bernanke contemplated about, but never really pursued ) then maybe the Great Recession would have been a much smaller event than in turned out to be. Pinging @wabuffo here.

Anyone here also thinks that 2023 may be the year of recession? I think even Elon Musk tweeted a similar take. By 2023, the stimulus money hoard that is saved up will be burned and the inflation will start to eat seriously into the buying power.

The guys with laser eyes have become rare on Twitter....

Steel stocks on fire....

You use "format cells" - to protect and lock the cells with the formulas etc.. Then yon need to protect the worksheet to actually protect the locked cells in that worksheet. I personally found it useful separate or color code "input" cells from calculation and output cells. You can lock everything but the input cells to keep a worksheet intact.

I think this is a good take. At least it makes sense to me. BRK is certainly not optimized for returns, it is optimized for durability and resilience. I think this is important to understand as a shareholder.

Well, if this was a boxing game, the first two rounds went clearly to the other side. I had this thought before this BABA episode and think there is a good chance that Munger would have blown himself up, if he hadn’t met Buffett and basically let him manage the bulk of his money. His track record in his own partnership was very volatile and he used margin as well. Roll the dices often enough and chances are high that you get a couple of sixes coming up at once and you are done. Buffett on the other hand is far more risk averse than Munger and that’s what you need to be, if you want to survive for 7 decades. Risk management is far more important than returns in the very long run.

Added a bit to PINS and a starter in TWTR.

The other wildcard is if the numbers that BABA publishes really reflect economic reality. BABA balance sheet and income statement are a black box and it’s really hard to get confidence in their published financials. We had the discussion based on @LearningMachine inquiries about GMV of their platforms and couldn’t even get much confidence in this number as it seems quite large no matter how you slice it. So, I wonder what edge Munger really had compared to use dummies and that would be a question I would ask if I had one shot. If the answer is “behavioral edge” I would just move on personally. I think Tencent qualitatively seems like a much better buy. I have more confidence in Pony Ma (strikes me as more humble and just straight shooter) and the incomes and cash flow statement seem much clearer and more credible quite frankly. But that’s just me. FWIW, I think BYD was Mungers idea, but I think they both met the owners and I am guessing Buffett saw something too, so he agreed to take a position. I don’t think Buffett has the same confidence in BABA, it’s probably just went in his too hard pile. That’s just a guess of course, like anything else I wrote.

I don't need to read history books to understand the 1999/2000, I am old enough that i lived through it. In a way though I think 2020/2021 was even crazier than 1999 with meme stocks GME, AMC and some tech valuation were just as much out of whack than they were in 1999. Some stocks like LMND, DKNG and SKLZ pretty much look like the Pets.com back then. I do think that the people that look at the Fangs as an example of excess valuation are looking in the wrong place.

Hunger games is good analogy: Value: vs Growth right now:

We also use Echo's They are quite versatile to play music, make announcement (too our teenage son mostly) and even control lights (inside and outside). We have and Echo studio (with a small subwoofer) and a couple of Echo's from several generations. My wife likes the Echo's show (with a screen). We typically buy them on Black Friday for substantial discounts.

I think the last round of blackouts was caused by preventive wildfire related switch offs from part of the grid, which is a consequence of the issues PG&E was having with wildfire liabilities (not that they don't share some blame). I was in CA during the rolling blackouts caused by Enron gaming the electricity supply and it was no fun. The company I worked for lost hundred of thousands $ in some cases when the power was turned off without sufficient warning ( most of the time we got a 1h warning but sometimes not). Lot's of production batches were lost, some could be saved, but it was always a gamble. Fun times, especially with a simultaneous hit from the recession that was building up (pre 9/11).

The argument for nuclear will not be won with arguments, but I think if we get the first widespread power outage, it may cause a shift in perception. Even those that don't like nuclear power probably like sitting in the dark and cold even less. Germany is a small country area wise and it is possible that both wind and solar would get much lower output at the same time. Even when connected in an European power net, i am not sure where the supply security comes from using only alternative energy and russian gas. Well, Germany has a lot of lignite coal if push comes to shove, but I don't think it was in the LT plan to put coal wheezers back to supply the electricity baseload. The French will be building reactors probably close to the German borders because that's where the rivers are, so it's not like exposure can be avoided anyways, if you afraid of these things.

There are a lot of solar farms in Europe as well - it isn't just rooftop.

With Rising interest rate and value vs growth the same logic applies on how not get eaten by a bear: You can't outrun the bear, but if you can outrun the other person next to you, you won't get eaten. At higher interest rates, value stocks are better than growth stocks, so money rotates into them. Now if this persists, I do think the bear gets hungry again ... or value stocks eventually will get mauled as well.

I am old enough to remember that Leoni was a blue chip. What bother me is the high debt load and it might be getting worse, possibly due to raw material inflation, because they hold a lot of inventory (copper) where input price share rising. just taking a quick look, their cash from ops used to be backloaded with the first 2 quarter being FCF negative and the last two quarters positive, but now I see that Q3 FCF was negative as well. That’s not a great sign. This company has a lot of operational issues. I think Norma NOEJ.DE may be an easier bet, same idea, but much better balance sheet and a better business. I do think that the automobile suppliers are a good place to look for a turnaround plays in 2022.

Bill Frisell has a huge catalogue (basically one record/ year for almost 30 years now). It’s classified as Jazz, but some records sound pretty folks. All are instrumental only. He is great to listen to in the background but his music is complex enough to actively listening to. each record has its own style, depending on which musician are on board. Best to use a playlist to find out what you like. Here is a tune from a more folksy album (with a banjo etc):

Sold MITK in my taxable account. Stock has done Ok for me, but revenue has grown less than I anticipated when I bought it.

Nuclear only works, if the society decides that they support it. Trying to push this through as a company without general support is suicide and I think we have seen this with the reactor in South Carolina. The technical problems all have been solved more than 40 years ago. Germany has a path for nuclear waste storage in old Saltmines (which are very geologically inert).

It’s a pretty decently run company trading at a reasonable valuation. Their guidance for Q4 (published on 10/25) tanked the stock and it was probably a tax loss sale from there. It didn’t really help that they did not get approval for the open tank vaping systems either.

No concrete plans in Europe, but it seems that the France may announce something. France is 3/4 nuclear power right now and it looks like they want to keep it that way. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Macron-says-France-will-construct-new-reactors

It’s probably more positive for coal than for oil and gas. I agree this plan is nuts, Merkel did a knee jerk reaction to phase out nuclear power after Fukushima. I guess not all scientist are rational, at least not after they become politicians. I think nuclear power is going into a Renaissance. There is some risk of widespread power outages in Europe if Putin decides to throttle NG deliveries. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. That may change the mindset in Europe regarding nuclear power.

Roughly 95% in taxable counts , ~25% in IRA’s. The difference was $LAACZ.