Spekulatius

@Xerxes It looks like the situation in Iran gets more and more out of control. It’s not just about womens rights in major cities, there now minorities protesting as well in the South (Belutshistan ) and the North (Kurdistan). Once you start to use tanks against citizens, there is no going back, this either gets under control, or the government topples and their heads may roll as well.

No dog in this fight, but GBTC should really hold BTC in their trust or BNY would be in legal trouble: This ETF really should not exist. Looks like they are selling BTC in considerable numbers to keep the lights on: ~9.5M BTC sold in 9month, that's 1.5% dilution or 2% annualized. Just another crypto racket, imo. .

He is clearly wrong. Got to move on.

That guys has a good grove. Anchor steam for breakfast…

BTC and other cryptos are useful if your country becomes Venezuela and you want to move your money out. Thats about the only application other than speculation where I think BTC or other crypto currencies are useful. Other than that, I think BTC is just too clunky and due to complexity makes it vulnerable to scams and it’s too volatile to facility trade. The reason why it’s so volatile is lack of usefulness so the guys holding it are mostly traders. For them volatility is a feature not a bug. The other things like stablecoins and Defi are likely all scams in one way or another. How would the average or even informed person know one way or another? If you can’t know, it’s likely a scam.

I don’t think there is a link between drone deliveries from Iran and the protests there. The protests were caused by the Morality police killing teenagers in custody. The longer term reason is off course the more oppressive nature of the regime. Protests have been occurring from time to time in Iran over the years, but this time, they seem to be more persistent and spread deeper into the society (used to be just students etc). If anything, the causal linkage goes the other way around. Irans Autocrats have declared the US their enemy number 2 (Israel is #1) so their involvement against the Ukraine countering US aide is on brand and a welcome diversion from the troubles at home.

Might have been Alexandra. Her first name is Doris. She was not really Gypsi though and passed away in 1969. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_(singer) At that time many musicians in Germany had foreign names for added mystique.

This probably means they run out of regular an newer missiles, Now they are using Cold War stockpiles, same that they do with tanks etc.

It feel's just like a couple of frat brothers started up a company in a dorm, which just happened to be worth $32B. In a way, that's not SBF's fault, at the very least there are many more enablers.

Signal to noise ratio is very bad in seekingalpha. I used it way more years ago than I do now. There are just too many junk authors there. Tikr subscription is very much worth it, it’s a huge time saver.

Crypto is pure play on human psychology, greed and fear. You don’t have to worry about fundamentals or earnings , there aren’t any. In a way that makes it the ideal trading sardine.

Actually, he said that a victory soon (which he has defined in the next couple of weeks before ) would be unlikely. Nobody here believes that a complete victory is possible in weeks. The commentator from CNN actually has repeated this incorrectly. Kicking the Russians out of Ukraine will take month, maybe another year. I do not see a reason why it is not possible. I also think a political solution is possible. This is not exactly as earth shaking than the CNN reporter makes it sound, imo.

GLDM. PCYO

The issue in the 70's was that the Fed was easing too quickly. Inflation in the 70's was not consistently high all the time, it came in waves. For example in 1976 it almost looked like everything was OK. However, while inflation did come down, it never came down low enough and for an extended period of time. So the Fed saw all clear (or was pressured to see all clear) and started to ease and quickly thereafter, inflation started to rise again. Do this a few times over and the Fed lost all the credibility until Volker squashed it. The key learning from the 70's is that the Fed needs to keep the rates higher for longer to prevent flareups again.

On a high level, Malone complex companies tend to underperform in a higher interest rate/ tightening credit environment. The reason for this is that they generally operate at quite high leverage. That's my simpleton thinking. The fact that the media business has been challenging as of late does not help either.

The problem is that Ukraine's airspace is huge, so it's hard to cover it all. The likely solution is longer range missiles so Ukraine can destroy the drone and missile bases where these missiles and drones are coming from. The location of those is known and some come from Crimea and Russian ships. Same idea when Himars were delivered to counter the Russian artillery barrages in Summer with something more precise and with longer range. That artillery advantage went away quickly when those Himars went on the battle field. Same will happen when Ukraine gets a weapon to counter these rocket and drone barrages.

I remember all these charts in 2008 or 2012 that mimicked 1931. It’s amazing what you can do if you pick just the right starting point and scale with charts. I bet I could create a chart that looks just like the one we have know and predicts we are going to the .

Looks like the first LNG train will be operational in January 2023. Also, the NG storage is currently more than 100% full. I guess they can fill them at above nominal pressure. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-completes-construction-wilhelmshaven-floating-lng-terminal-2022-11-15/ Second LNG train in Brunsbuettel starts at around the same time. Both together are good for a bit more than 10% of the German NG consumption. Those go a long way towards replacing the 40-45% NG supply that is now missing from Russia.

The problem with PARA is that they assets are subPAR if you compare it with DIS or even WBD, imo. I think if they go it alone, they will destroy the value of their equity. Finding a merger partner that actually can come through regularity hurdles is going to be hard. If they wanted to sell out, they should not have merged CBS with Viacom.

You don't need to understand EUV tech to invest in TSM. You just need to understand how important this tech is and how hard it would be to duplicate what TSM has done. The financial statements talk for themselves. There is no issue there. the political risk is harder to quantify. I don't think WEB really has an edge there.

I think TSM is a WEB buy not T&T. I think he dumped USB and swapped it for TSM basically (seeling USB is still in progress I think). TSM is probably for WEB an "inevitable" company/business and he may have learned how important they are through Apple / Tim Cook. I hope he is right about buying TSM and wrong about selling USB , since I bought both recently.

Would love to be in one of these meetings. I am always good for a few beers or decent bottle of wine. I do think that emerging markets should really be called "Submerging markets". I also think EEM is a terrible vehicle to play emerging markets if so inclined.

This is correct, but Silver is also way more abundant than Gold, which tends to make Gold more valuable. The better comparison would be a platinum or Palladium which have many industrial uses and also tend to be about as rare in the earth crust than Gold.

Bought a few shares of $TSN this AM. Earnings seemed OK in the grand scheme of things.

So, these 10k people that Amazon lays off are going to be working construction in the future and don't need Word or Excel any more? Yay!