Spekulatius

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!

Al is not a collectible. It has value because you can do something with it, like build cars or airplanes for example. The utility of BTC is fairly limited at this point. The #1 application by far is gambling right now. It is a collectible right now, similar to a bored Ape NFT or a baseball card.

No dogma and you can definitely use the volatility to your advantage but you can do the same thing with many other things that actually have intrinsic value. I think the best take for most is to avoid the crypto thing and just let it play out as it may. On FTX specifically, the mindboggling thing is that the founder of FTX exchange also controlled a crypto hedge fund that was speculating on the same tokens and crypto than the edchange. Who thought that this was a good idea? Seems like a bit red flag even if you know nothing about this space or the founder.

Yes. from a business perspective, the insurer retains very little risk and what little they have has a short tail, since the contracts are renewed (and repriced anualy). that means very little capital needs to retained. Then, the large players have massive economies of scale and network effects (most providers on the network is desirable for the user). Benefits from health care inflation, demographics etc. At some point this lollapalooza will reverse but people have been saying this ever since I moved to the US about 25 years ago.

On sector that has shown tremendous performance over the years and gets very little attention is health Insurance. My guess is that this is because of perceived policy risk and because people generally hat the product. However, look at how UNH has performed since the GFC when it traded at 8x earnings for a while. I hold some ELV (bought it as ANTM during the pandemic) and it really has performed well as a business and as stock. From time to time, the sector sells off, but so far, the stocks always bounced back. From a business perspective, I think it’s important to realize that health insurers are more like service cos than insurers who actually carry risk. They are similar to title insurers that way.

The war ending and the sanctions ending are two different things. I believe when the war ends, most sanctions will remain in place. Maybe Europe will start buying some NG from Russia again, but it will be far less than before. I think the iron curtain that has been build between Western Europe and Russia/Belarusian will remain in place.

@Viking I think the big pact between Russia and China may be more show than a real functional alliance than NATO. China said OK, you do what you want inUkraine and let them go first to see what happens. I don’t think they like what they are seeing and the implication for their main target Taiwan. However, it is also telling that China has done almost nothing to help Russia - No weapon deliveries for most. Russia had to go to a Iran and a North Korea. They saw that Russia got an arrow through their torso with Ukraine and decided “maybe not..at least not yet”. As for the Saudi’s, they just look out for themselves. They buy cheap russian oil and replace what they consume themselves with that cheap oil , so they can export more of their own for full price. Sorry, but it’s just business for us.

@Xerxes I had no idea about this Bandera follow before I heard about it in this board, it’s also interesting that he was in West Germany in 1959 when the KGB do his hit job on him. Not a big loss for mankind, I think.

A quick look in Wikipedia marks Bandera as a controversial figure rather than a hero for Ukrainians. Anyways, the Genozide attribute is a slippery slope, but we do know that the state goal for the Russians is de-nazification of the Ukraine and then there is stuff like this as well as mass graves Bucha , Lyman etc. We have yet to see the carnage that has a occurred amongst civilians In Mariopol which I think will be quite shocking: Maybe it’s all fake news, but my bet is that it’s close to the truth. As for military objectives, Crimea will likely fall, when Ukraine can severe the land bridge. If the Russians can hold it, it will remain Russian.

The ads are targeted . Google is very good at finding out what you are interested in. I got a lot of ads from car dealers and car companies because I was researching cars about a month ago for example. I have yet to see an ad from any of those business you mentioned above.

I think it’s hard to make definite predictions. I agree recessions are bad, but how much is priced in and how will certain sectors perform? In my post, I laid out why all may not be doom and gloom. I try not to predict macro as it has been an exercise in futility over the years. Sometimes, you will be right, but the times you are wrong tend to cost you much more. I do agree that using volatility to your advantage. That is one thing that tends to work in volatile bear markets.

Incorrect, there will be winners and losers.

How do you regulate this crypto complex though? All the tokens and cryptic currencies have different properties but have no intrinsic value. They literally make the rules (for their token), issue them and then eat their cake too. So basically Ponzi schemes by design. This SBH fellow for example owned a crypto hedge fund and an exchange with token holdings propping each other up. These things have to collapse. The only way they don’t is if more people keep buying them. For all we know, dogecoin will ultimately become a zero. Most others crypto’s as well. in my opinion, regulation is pretty futile. We have to separate the regular fiat financial system from crypto (no fiat lending backed by crypto ). If a crypto hedge fund going long dogecoin short Polkadot collapses, we shouldn’t care. An interesting thing will be the stable coins. Does anyone really think they are backed by real currencies? Those are just disasters likely to happen. Then there is the whole crypto lending complex. What we need to do is segregate the crypto system form our financial system and maybe regulate the on/off ramp in some way that a collapse causes no harm to our financial system.

Gets better. You can’t really make this stuff up: From $32B valuation to zero in a couple of weeks. Who is in: Sequoia, Tiger Global, Softbank and Ontario teachers pension fund,

Yeah, it’s not Lehman , more like a crossover between of Theranos and Enron: Here is an article from Sequoia caps website (taken down but accessed via way back machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20221109230422/https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/ Biggest red flag probably, even I’d you don’t know anything (eerily similar to Theranos):

Except the falling earnings part may not happen, especially if the recession is shallow. I believe margins for several sectors have room to expand. Tech has a lot deadwood and they can cut expenses. It looks like META, AMZN, GOOGL and MSFT all started to do that. Tech salaries may come down as well. Industrials have seen strong input cost inflation and generally have not been able to raise prices quite as much than costs implies. What happens to margins if costs start to come down and prices stay or even go up a bit more. Even if volumes go down, then margins may expand. I could make this exercises for a few more sectors. Banking and insurance will benefit from higher interest rates etc. Anyways, I would not assume that earning will go down from here because there are quite a few sectors where I can see margins going up.

So injustice in those cases which occurred hundred of years ago justifies doing nothing to injustice and attempt of genocide now? Like, we didn’t help Aborigines against the Australian colonizers 150 years ago and that’s why we need to stay put when Russia tries to colonize Ukraine now? That makes no sense to me.

Just because there is a war in Ukraine does not mean there needs to be a war in COBF.

Buffet is selling out USB. He used to own ~8.5% and is now down to ~3.6%. he is probably going to sell down his entire position. Now that I bought USB.... https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/36104/000119312522282565/d302279dsc13ga.htm I see our resident expert @gfp beat me to it.

You are likely correct. The Russian retreat does not look like rout and they may have just sacrificed some conscripts to preserve their regular army. Crossing the Dnipro under fire would be tough, so I expect this front line to become quieter, likely with artillery duels continuing.

That's an interesting one. The CEO / heir sleeping on the couch somewhere and reliving his fraternity years shouldn't really impact fair value all that much.

They are trying an ordered retreat but they only have 2 bridges that under constant bombardment to get 40k soldiers and their equipment out. They will likely lose a lot of soldiers and material in this retreat and it can easily end up being a rout. Those that are doing rear guard duty will have to sacrifice themselves and either die or go into captivity . These are some of the better troops that Russia has, so their absence will be felt in this war for a long time to come.

I think both IBRK (Paxos) as well as Fidelity have now buy/sell as well custodial services for bitcoin and major cryptocurrencies. No opinion if those are safe, but I trust them way more than Coinbase. I guess the idea with crypto is that you don't need these services, otherwise there is no point owning them other than speculation.

Putting money into FTX and even COIN is like lending money to a shady bookie in the red light district because I don't trust the banks.