Spekulatius

Reduced $JXN (which is really ripping) a bit more. Reduced $CASH as well.

Regardless of what Powell is saying, they still raised Rates by 0.25% and they pretty much said, they will raise rates again at the next meeting in March. This still does not sound that great to me.

Reducing $JXN just a a bit in tax deferred accounts.

Based on his response, Adani is screwed. Now they are appealing on national interest. LOL.

This is a short one from Motley Fool about Buffett buy framework, which I found very insightful: https://www.fool.com/podcasts/motley-fool-money/2023-01-28-lessons-from-buffetts-investing

I agree the Citicorp meets the cannibal framework. Banamex is actually one of their better business, so the sale is a bit of a headscratcher to me, especially with Mexico overall being depressed

How is a regulated utility like AQN allowed to rack up that much debt? I think the capital structure of the regulated entities is given by the utility regulator. Then there can be some debt added to the holding company. Now the cost of holding company debt is not pass through (the regulated entities debt may be, but with some delays). Tikr.com has the debt at 8.4x EBITDA. I see 7,7B CAD in debt. I have trouble determining what they run rate cash flow is with all those adjustments. Seems to me that AQN need to raise some equity with all the debt become due at much higher interest rates.

I use the global screener in Tickr.com. I look for 8% annual CAGR share count shrinkage. Edit> found that I I go to just 2021 rather than 2022, I get better data:

Enron wasn’t an isolated case. There were a bunch of independent power producer that went bankrupt with Enron - Calpine, Mirant and other got severely damaged like El Paso and a few others. Then we had Worldcom, Global Crossing in telecom and many others. The US had a severe recession then. The classical cockroach syndrome - a cockroach is never alone, especially when the government is deeply involved. That does not mean that the entire economy is a fraud, just the part that is build on easy credit and with high debt and possibly government involvement.

The real problem with Adani is that the Indian government / Modi is likely a participant in this fraud (if that’s what it is). Modi strikes me as someone who is an enigma for me, with stuff like this: https://time.com/6249393/the-modi-question-documentary-bbc-india-controversy/ If Adani is a fraud, then maybe the Indian economy is a fraud too of sorts.

On Discover - their charge off rate for 2019 was 3.2%. If you ask anybody - 2019 was hardly a recession. While 3.2% is higher than current levels, the current CC chargeoff rates are extremely low. I think it's important to set these numbers in perspective.

SYF, ORCL, HPE, DDS, CASH are a few that pop up in my screen. AZO doesn't make the cut because they are valued too highly so the speed of their buyback the last couple of years is too low. PFSI is another interesting one that has recently started to buy back a boatload of shares.

Sold most of my COF to reduce risk here.

I do agree that CVX has done better than most on capital allocation and that’s why Buffett bought the stock, imo. However, buying back <5% of the shares over more than a decade isn’t exactly a cannibal. If you want to look at cannibals look at something like COF which reduced shares from 510M shares in 2016 to 383M shares now. That’s a 25% reduction in shares. I do have a cannibal screen looking for companies that reduce their share count at a rapid pace and there are no commodity companies in it.

This is going to be interesting to watch. The inflation in Japan is picking up steam - the latest print was 4.2%. It’s interesting because they didn’t have inflation even past the epidemic until now. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-consumer-inflation-japans-capital-234353233.html

CVX dilutes shareholders when shares are cheap and buys back shares when they are expensive. This is the way.

The Abraham tanks were sent because Olaf Scholz (German chancellor ) stated that no German tanks would go on the battlefield unless US tanks go first. Quite honestly, I think it was an excuse for the Germans to not sent tanks because they didn’t want to (at least thr SPD - ruling party had this line). So this created a stalemate and now when the US announced to sent Abraham’s tanks, that excuse was negated. I do think what the Ukraine needs to Leo tanks. It is lighter and way simpler to run. The diesel engine needs less fuel and can be swapped in less than 30 minutes, basically on the battlefield. I don’t think the tanks will be used near Bahkmut, thatsjust a stalemate killing field with little strategic value. The Ukraine is likely to use the tanks else where and I think severing the land Bridge to Crimea seems like an obvious target. We will see in a couple of month.

Reduced my position in CMCSA a bit pre-market. These quarterly results weren't really that great. Still holding most of my shares.

Some moves from the bottom have been astonishing: $TSLA almost 50% from it's bottom around $102. $META - 50% from the bottom around $92 $BABA almost 100% from the bottom around $62. $ASML - ~85% up from the bottom around $365. If you know how to bottom fish, l there is a lot of money to be made here.

I count 31 Abrahams, 14 Leo's, maybe some more Leo's from the Poles. Any ideas how many they will get? It will also take a while to get them operational. Guderian knew his stuff and said " Nicht kleckern sondern klotzen" - as it referred to tanks. This means loosely that tanks should be used en masse and not piecemeal like the French did in 1940. I think the best use of tanks is to use them to severe the land bridge to Crimea and get the Russian troops there bottled up there and destroyed. Taking out the bridge to Crimea would be necessary as well to accomplish this goal.

I bought 2/3 (roughly) $CPT and 1/3 $ESS position after pupil posted is multifamily Reit trade. I think i will do Ok, but probably not great on that one.

Whether tech stocks are dead (money) or not depends on if earnings in this sector will be growing or not. I don't think tech will be dead. Tech wasn't dead in 2002 either.

Looks like BRK sold USB close to the bottom. Another incidence where cloning does not seem to be a good idea. Results look pretty good and union bank will be a nice acquisition. Now USB needs to get their capital levels back up again before resuming buybacks. https://ir.usbank.com/static-files/8cd68595-d3df-4682-a972-4c6d0cdc3624

Operation Blau 2.0: Some good stuff getting some action - Abrahams, Leopards, Bradley's etc. I think Abrahams were sent to force Olaf Stolz to sent Leo's as well since he had the lame excuse he didn't want to go alone... https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-updates-germany-approves-sending-of-leopard-2-tanks/a-64506202