Spekulatius

Valuation doesn’t make a lot of difference when your thesis is right, but it sure makes a lot of difference when the thesis is wrong. To buy a little by at least when you like the business but consider the valuation stretched, with the intent to buy more if valuation becomes more favorable is a reasonable approach. It does goes counter the currently prevailing wisdom to never average down though.

Maybe people expect their sanitizer sales will sky rocket... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/24/coronavirus-kegs-are-going-bad-boston-beer-has-a-solution.html I think SAM May benefit from the demise of some craft brewers. As far as I can tell, booze sales have been pretty good so far during the pandemic. I certainly did my share buying beer, wine and cider. The valuation is egregious, but that’s true for a lot of stocks including those with much crappier fundamentals than SAM. I wish I had gone long this one at ~$460. Their sales have been gangbusters. They have category killers in craft beer, ciders and now hard Selters. Aaaand maybe, hoping to hit $12 in EPS for CY20. Jim Koch and insiders continue to dump their shares all over. Cant really think of too many better recession hedge stocks than this. Competition is coming from all over with the new seltzer releases....just like it did with soda and cider. I didn’t even realize the stock is up ~25% today until now , my comment was solely based on business performance. In my opinion, they have done a great job with the Dogfish acquisition and now with Truly Selters, which at least here near their. Home base (MA) seems to be winning over White claw in terms of display. They are also grabbing market share in beers (call it craft beer or not). Anyhow, as a consumer and just an observer how they do on retail or just looking at their financial performance, they do a great job.I can see them using their stock to roll up region craft beer producers (maybe Sierra Nevada to get a west coast stronghold) and growing organically with new products. They are clearly better operators than TAP or BUD. Eventually, they may get into spirits too. The stock is overvalued, but so what. Overvaluation alonein my opinion is almost never a good reason to short something.

Yes, if there is a substantial change in the story (not just an earnings miss when overall numbers are still good etc.) than AH tend to lack. It figure that funds managers don’t well AH they are going to meet in the morning and decide to sell. I think it’s faster than 3 days in many cases, but something it takes weeks to dissipate. I have MSFT on my watch list as well, but I don’t think I would take a bite above ~$180 (~30x earnings).

Is it just me, or is the website currently very sluggish, especially when making a post. I suspect others here experience the same, since I do see double posts quite a bit.

Are you just being sarcastic? Rarely does the fundamental investment case go from investable to not a great idea in 24 hours or with a few buck s/t move. Or are you just looking for a quick flip here? Bought a small bit this morning, not super exciting, but basically at mid March levels now. The fundamental bet will need time to work out, but my entry was in retrospect too hastIly, as it often is good idea to wait a bit and letting the bad News And selling to dissipate a bit. In fact even today’s entry may be too early. But then again, I typically start small and adding more is pretty much part of the plan. iI am typically not that keen on turnaround any more, but in this care, I think there is enough meat on the bone that I can get out flat if they keep screwing up and it should work out nicely, if they get a few things right. They are lucky they they have a lot of secular tail winds (5G, cloud, remote working, AI) that goes in their favor he gives them more time and resources to execute. Worst case, they need to pivot and abandon their strategy to keep leading edge manufacturing in house, sell or spin off wafer fabs and use TSM like AMD did more than a decade ago when they couldn’t keep up.

More INTC (my AH buy yesterday was clearly not a great idea) and a bit more CBOE.

I cant think of any other way a virus that started in China goes global...can you? Way to totally miss the context. The countries that are doing badly are doing badly because they didn't do the steps to control the virus, and those that do well do so because they did. There's variance and some places were less lucky or had worse demographics/density/etc than others, but generally, the virus was within the borders of all these islands and if they hadn't done the steps, they'd be doing just as bad as anyone else. In the early phases the virus spread by travel, but once it's everywhere and travel has been mostly shut down for months, what matters is the local response, not blocking new infections from outside. Or in other words, it's been many months now that the source of new infections is local, not international. I agree on this , local response matters more later. Being isolated ( relatively speaking) gives a country a better fighting chance to isolate early outbreaks and prevent subsequent reinfections. All this doesn’t really matter if your local response let the virus run rampant - the UK is a great example of this.

NZ did very well. One overarching theme is that islands ( NZ, Australia ( technically a continent but still surrounded by water), Iceland, Japan , South Korea ( norther border is impenetrable) can do better because they have easier ways to control access. The exception are the turds from the UK of course.

Maybe people expect their sanitizer sales will sky rocket... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/24/coronavirus-kegs-are-going-bad-boston-beer-has-a-solution.html I think SAM May benefit from the demise of some craft brewers. As far as I can tell, booze sales have been pretty good so far during the pandemic. I certainly did my share buying beer, wine and cider. The valuation is egregious, but that’s true for a lot of stocks including those with much crappier fundamentals than SAM. I wish I had gone long this one at ~$460. Their sales have been gangbusters. They have category killers in craft beer, ciders and now hard Selters.

where in NYC? I live in Burlington, VT. I remember the days when people (myself included) would line up for an hour or more to get it. Now, it's available at every supermarket, gas station, corner store, etc. here. I still grab some every once in a while, but there are so many other amazing IPAs here in VT. CT/ Burlington has some good stuff to drink. We recently stopped by at von Trapp in Stowe and Vermont Artisan Coffee and I loved Citizen Cider in Burlington when we visited a few month ago. Would be nice to meet for a cold one when this pandemics crab blows over.

One way to monetize the size is to market add ins like screeners or data sources like rocket finance, tikr.com through the website in exchange for a cut. The clientele here is likely susceptible to these products/ subscriptions.

Curious what interests you about MRTN? TL trucking is a pretty rough and tumble industry. MRTN just posted outstanding results, and after following(like with a lot of names) for some time decided to use some cash to put it in the portfolio. They are incredibly well managed, have an impenetrable balance sheet, have refined the business to be primarily temperature controlled transport rather than competing for everything under the sun. As such they've been able to hold reasonable leverage on pricing and grow revenues much more consistently than the "peers". Theyre basically a trucking company that doesnt really have the problems most trucking companies have, and this has historically been the case. Someone recently blogged on ODFL and how despite being in what is typically a "commoditized" business have earned very good returns on capital. Marten doesn't seem to earn returns on capital or achieve operating ratios similar to ODFL. Do you think their business is improving so that returns on capital and operating ratio continue to improve? ODFL is the class act in the industry. I owned it for a bit in 2007 and then sold because of the economic unrest with the upcoming recession back then. I wish I just stashed it in a coffee can. Today the trucking stocks are much much more expensive. Edit, back to the topic, I bought some WFCF today. For whatever reason, there was a very motivated seller who hit every bid.

I think we're gonna have a shit show this go around. No worries, the Fed prints a lot of toilet paper.

Russian dealers are so 20th century. Just buy it on Amazon FFS: https://smile.amazon.com/Images-SI-Uranium-Ore/dp/B000796XXM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2X6ULNHYIQ44Q&dchild=1&keywords=uranium+ore&qid=1595350695&sprefix=uranium%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1 Good news! I was able to get in contact with a prince from Nigeria. Wired him money to buy call options on Uranium. He said he has both U-238, and U-235. He said he would US mail me a confirmation. I think we can find Uranium closer to home now - how about Ohio? It seems it’s not needed there any more. I wonder who the goto guy is now. Apparently “marketing” is done by politicians: https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/07/fbi-agents-deployed-to-ohio-house-speaker-larry-householders-farm-report.html

I wonder about the difference between U-238 and U-235. I know it looks and tastes the same. The Russian dealer I have been chatting with sells both.

I feel like Nacho Libre.

What precautions do you need to take to store/handle uranium? Uranium investments get interesting once you reach critical mass.

Thanks, couldn't get past the paywall but this SA page provided insights in the comments section. https://seekingalpha.com/news/3507213-brookfield-to-take-25-stake-in-dominions-cove-point-in-2b-deal I would love to be a fly on the wall in the meetings where Brookfield determines their fair value marks. Between this, the overpriced Railroad they bought, the GCP shopping malls, the Forest REIT projects etc. The mental gymnastics will sure make the flys head spin. It would probably kamikaze into cow poop to feel better afterwards. I started wondering today if any of these public private equity firms are good short/put option candidates. Some are levered at the parent level, and generate are likely coming from highly indebted investments. If investments start turning sour, fees could dry up. Without deeper insight I would tend to own the parent and short the stepchildren. The reason is simple - the debt is with the subs and BAM will dilute theit equity if they have to and even benefit at this point if they can.

Curious what interests you about MRTN? TL trucking is a pretty rough and tumble industry. Probably not as rough as owning shopping malls and NYC office space nowadays. FWIW, I added a bit $LEVI today.

LOL, that women “dancing” in front of the police car. FWIW, if I were to guess the demographic that is mit likely to skirt mask rules based on my limited observations, it would be a young black male in his twenties.

Fascinating, the COVID-19 lockdowns (or other factors related to COVID-19) may have reduce the number of very prematurely born baby’s. Nobody knows why: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/health/coronavirus-premature-birth.html

Or maybe strongly held beliefs (backed up in many case by previous large Fairfax projects) are being held on to even in the face of disconfirming evidence. “For some of our most important beliefs, we have no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs. Considering how little we know, the confidence we have in our beliefs is preposterous—and it is also essential.” —2002 Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman Moat beliefs aren't necessary to change, which is why people don't change them. However, if a management team begins to take shareholder unfriendly actions, it's usually best to assume those actions will continue and not change back. You can see that on this board on the Biglari thread. Many folks were defending how optically cheap that was long after it became obvious that ~100% of the value was going to Biglari and ~0% to outside shareholders. I don't think Fairfax is at that level, but there are enough examples of shareholder unfriendly actions that a management discount is absolutely appropriate. Maybe that hasn't always been true, but like Munger said: "We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side." Dismissing cogent arguments as paranoia is pretty obviously an ad hominem attack, imo. FFH is run like a Family business and outside shareholders have no recourse and are just along for the ride. This is fine and doesn’t matter much when they are performing but it does matter a lot when they don’t (as is the case here) and warrants a discount. FFH and Biglari are just different shades of grey here’s with BH being extreme and uninvestible. FFH is just a much milder form of nepotism. That’s the real danger with family run business. If they perform Mr Market Will not care much about the lack of influence for outside shareholder, but if not, Mr Market will discount a steeper and steeper discount to fair value based on perception of management capability (or lack thereof), much more so than with a truly public company, where an activist could jump in and shake things up.

It is good advice. But given that in most office buildings in North America you cannot open windows that's not really that applicable. Cover my ass here: I don't know what's the window situation in those low rise campuses in silicon valley. The company I work for has all person -person meetings cancelled indefinitely. Conference rooms have been closed since March. We do the meetings online now, but there are far less meetings now. I can’t say I miss any of this. Edit : Ouch - 5k posts. I clearly spent too much time here.

It's an interesting point. I've thought about this in the past because it kinda works like that with HIV. I'm not sure how it will shake out. But I am sure sooner rather than later this issue will come before the courts. It’s a bigger issue for business than for individuals, imo. Imagine an outbreak in a large office building etc. FWIW, I wonder how these meat processor for example deal with this. They likely get sued already.

Yes a smaller military budget would br a headwind, but the composition matters. The thinking expressed before is that future spending will go more towards high tech and less towards boots on the ground. This is based on the the threats from China and Russia increasing and become ing more sophisticated. Our future military might become much smaller, but also more technologically advanced. This would be a very good news for defense contractors.