Spekulatius

Most semiconductor cos have rising inventory which started from very low levels in 2022- This is because the product is readily available and the customers then have become much more likely just to order just time. We know how this ends on the other side of a downturn.

Ally has been very aggressive in the auto loan space moving less credit worthy customers for few years for better NIM. Those chickens seem to come home to roost.

I do t see this happening , way to complicated and risky. Biological molecules required are impossible to make, you need a multi million $ lab for those at the bare minimum. I think the more likely path are illegal imports from countries like China or India which have a significant generics industry and produce these patented drugs as generics (ignoring patents) about 90% cheaper and they get smuggled in the US via offshore pharmacies. Thats already happening right now, but not on a huge scale. Thalidomide was never approved or sold in the US, it was approved in Europe as Contergan ( regulators in Europe were more easygoing back then) and I recall seeing quite a few Contergan babies/ kids back in the sixties and seventies. This is more of an argument for more and stricter regulation than failing the health care system. Image what will happen if everyone starts to produce his own drug in the garage or you buy them from the coke or weed dealer around the corner?

Unexpected / accelerating inflation is a problem for insurance, especially longer tail, but stable or decelerating inflation should not be a problem..

I don’t own it, but CVX currently yields ~4.7% and has been raising their dividend forever. I think one can do a whole lot worse than buying CVX as an income instrument.

I agree, the Rings of Power series really brought Middle Earth into life. I almost feel sorry for the Orcs and I think the Elves are portrait well too - far more human unlike the more fairytalebeings in Jackson’s movies. The reviews are middling for the series, but I feel the Season 2 is quite well done, despite some film making mishaps, mostly because the storyline is quite compelling.

You can sent cash back to shareholders and innovate at the same time, those two things are not mutually exclusive. Apple always run a tight ship on R&D expenses and in any case, those are already deducted in the income statement. When PDD supposedly makes huge cash flows while also have a mountain of cash it has nothing to do with innovation either. Quite frankly the only expiation for the cash hording is as an sort of insurance that in case the CCP destroys the business model, they have cash to lay the fines and also to take a second shot at new business model to resurrect their fortunes. It’s not a very capital efficient model to run the economy, thats for sure. I talked with a manager who works in robots and he told me that the Chinese are massively pushing into this field with backing from the CCP. The way the CCP does this is that they pay subsidies based on revenues and market share in robotics. This lead to growth at all costs because the more revenue they generate, the more subsidies they get. Profits for these players are nonexistent but at this point, it doesn’t matter because it’s a growth race and the goal is to be the biggest here, since the expansion is pretty much paid by the government subsidies. Clearly, the CCP does not believe in Adam Smith invisible hand, at least not for strategic sectors like Solar, EV’s, semiconductors , rare earth minerals, AI etc. I guess you can say that the Chinese way to boost certain strategic sectors could be more deficient than the US, since thy tend to feed the biggest sharks that have already shown some success.

I actually enjoyed it. Yes it’s a bit cartoonish and lacks depth sometimes. The scary Forst somehow isn’t really scary or magical. I do like how the storyline evolves and ties the characters together. I think the real storyline is good but the filmmaker are sometimes in over their heads.

At some point, you don’t own stuff, the stuff owns you. This is particularly true if you get older.

It seems to me that if you retire early, one of the most logical things to do is to move to a low tax lower cost state. There are a lot of states where you can own a home and pay $3K in taxes and pay less than 5% income taxes or even zero which goes a long way to reduce your cash outlays without lowering your standard of living.

If you really know macro and the future, you probably don’t talk about it on Twitter or write a substack.

Bought a starter in MBLY and CELH. Added a bit to ATKR. For MBLY Intel selling should be good news longer term.

Yeah, Saul’s thread on MF is the quintessential embodiment of FOMO. The ghist of his approach is that he needs to catch the momentum train just a bit before the crowd does, which means the follower who trail his decision are likely to hold the bags. He does rapid fire trades with fairly concentrated positions into momentum names like CELH and needs to get out at the first hint of trouble , many times just a few month later. Its not easy to do what he does.

Always good to hear that Russia is warning about red lines. It means they are hurting and we are on the right track. Ukraine needs long range missiles to destroy the Russian logistics infrastructure that supports their troops.

Getting a contract and completing it profitably are not the same thing, especially with a company that does it have strong accounting as the late 10-k indicates. This is not for the faint of the heart.

So what wrong with above? As far as the a Russian land, I they could become a bargaining chip if Ukraine can keep them am sure Ukraine would trade them for Ukrainian land that Russia has occupied.

LOL, the infamous HK dump, from hero to zero in less than an hour. There are a couple of those every now and then.

I don’t think much will change if Bibi loses the election and a new Israeli government is formed. A new government might take a slightly different approach but the basic directive will be the same. Oil prices did not care about the outbreak of the hostilities to begin with (there is no oil there) so why would they care to much if they end?

While the industry is dominated by large players, there were always a bunch of upstarts in the defense space. In most cases they develop some specialized technology (I know some folks who developed optics for satellites and many drones came from upstarts) and they typically get acquired by large defense contractors later. The US military has many funding programs for smaller cos to do innovative work. Quite a bit of it actually transitions to commercial use later or becomes dual use. I think Anduril is just the first one who does this on a large scale with VC backing and they market themselves well. However what they are doing isn’t really that new in many respects.

Cash is never a problem. No cash, now that’s a problem.

I found this short video about budget airlines demise interesting. This Wendover Productions YT channel has many pretty well thought out clips on various topics.

I checked on NetDragon after they reported and numbers weren’t that great but also some reporting seems weird, especially a round the partly spun off educational business- now named MYND. Also some reported numbers look weird to me. NetDragon 777. HK went into the too hard pile. Just posting this in case anyone is interested or has done some work on this stock as well.

Correct. Maybe it’s even the right thing to do, I am just putting this out there because it’s not a free lunch and some one is on the losing side of this, which in this case are the banks. China is also aggressively lowering interest rates which isn’t great for the banks either. I think XI is willing to sacrifice the banks for here greater good, most are state controlled anyways. This is probably a sector to avoid in this context, since so much of their performance is driven by central bank decisions as well as the economic environment.

This CT40 40mm gun looks extremely impressive to me. It’s a whole new system development BAE and I think a Thales subsidy. Looks like GD may have the US license for this.