Spekulatius

@Luke I believe the right plan should be to supply Ukraine with everything it needs to succeed against Russia. To be specific I am talking a bit huge casualties in military as well as degrading Russian infrastructure with long range weapons (destroying the Kerch bridge would be a start) as well as blkcing the Black Sea via long range weapons. If Russia then continues, their economy will convert into a war economy which means everything will just be means to feed the military. I think this is something that is happening anyways but it could be forced much faster. The Kursk incursion idea is to force Russia to act a to pull military units from the Donbas. So then the fight occurs on Ukraine’s terms not Russians. It’s funny when people say Ukraine should just give up Donbas basically because Putin wants it. What if Putin says, the deal with a Russia to buy Alaska is invalid and unfair and Alaska really belongs to Russia. Who cares about Alaska anyways, is it worth risking the lives of 100,000 US troops there? Maybe Putin is right and Russia made an unfair deal, after all they discovered it first? If we give it back to him, it will be all he good. However, I make a bet that the US would be willing to sacrifice 100,000 troops if need to be to guard its territorial integrity. So will most other counties if forced.

Any deal with Putin will be no more than a temporary truce during which he plans his next move, imo. I think it’s fallacy to believe Putin only wants the Donbas. 10 years ago, people though the same thing about the Crimea. The fight will continue in some way as long as he is there. I do think the sanctions and isolation will degrade Russia into a North Korean hellhole over time, but it will take decades. It’s also not driving tanks through empty land. The incursion has disrupted life for hundred throws and of Russians in three oblasts, which have become a war zone with evacuations etc. Also, it seems now that up to 3000 Russian soldiers are trapped in a salient due to all the bridges being bombed with no way to go which means that Russia loses another chunk of land and perhaps an brigade worth of material and troops.

It’s entertaining but I think it’s close to useless if not downward dangerous for an aspiring investor.

Both have had an impact. From a stock selection POV, I think I like Greenblatts approach to look at EV/EBIT and ROIC better. I feel Grahams asset based approach does not work as well any more in a world where intangibles become more important. However Grahams teachings about Margin of Safety and Mr Market are foundational which is why Graham remains very much relevant.

I think one issues with Graham was that he did not care about money any more, once he had enough. He cared about women, writing plays and a few other things. Buffett had one single focus and that was and still is compounding more. Also Buffett was an in and outer through ostmof his career and still is (see his Apple sales), I think he tried with KO and clearly realized his mistake.

Gospels sound good in the church but once you leave you tend to do the same stuff that you always do. You have to live through these things yourself and learn from it hopefully.

The bullish thing about multi family is that renting is very very affordable compared to buying a property . The lack of affordability pertains only to buying homes, but not renting. I can see some decent rent increases for a few years as these two will eventually converge.

These are all institutional investor that trade on the Powell’s speeches or Fed meeting notes. I don’t know any individual investor who even knows what he said today. Besides, I would argue that the Fed has done a good job so far. The economy is doing fairly well and seems to be set to do the soft landing that they have been aiming for.

I liked the GOT ending as well. I wonder why people disliked it and honestly have no idea.

I think it is related to tax cash flows which tend to be early in the year. So net cash flow for treasury is more negative in the second half which means more treasury issues leading to higher interest rates .

Interesting $SNOW revenues increase by 30% and net retention rate is 127% . That means growth comes from existing customer basically. If true, what are they spending ~$400M on sales and marketing for? That’s 46% of revenues. Makes no sense to me. Anyone has any idea what’s going on? I think I want a job in S&M at this outfit working remotely.

I did add a bit more PLX (Pluxee) on Monday.

I enjoyed this one (a Twitter spaces recording basically) of two fellows doing basically what Walter Schloss did decades ago. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/value-hive-podcast/id1492171651?i=1000665614853 The handle @buycheapandpray says it all . I think that gal used to be Inatailhedged (or similar) and I followed here since the PBR buying days.

Had to shop for insurance since I moved and my old is insurance co was raking me over raising rates again. Guess what, I got a quote from Erie that was less than half my current car insurance with the same coverage. There was no bait and switch either the quote was super easy to obtain. I highly recommend to shop insurance with Erie, if you are in one of the states where they operate.

They are pretty much the #1 and the #2 with almost 14% market share each. State Farm market share is only 15%, they are number one but would be much smaller than Geico and Progressive combined. Drawdowns don’t matter and it does not matter what government we have either because this would truly be anticompetitive especially since both have the same direct sales operating model.

Sold remaining DOCS position. Worked out really well.

I am not sure Hezbollah is next. They have been keeping pretty quiet except the mortar or missile strike every now and then. Even if Israel would start an incursion into Lebanon , they can’t really smoke them out unless they go very deep and stay there. So my guess is that Israel leaves Hezbollah alone and Hezbollah leaves Israel alone, except the usual smaller skirmishes. Any larger confrontation will be indirect and not on Israels or Lebanon's soil, That’s just my guess and could be proven wrong tomorrow.

I think the big question is how expendable that leadership is. There are plenty others who are willing to start where the past leadership failed or got killed. For example killing Bin Laden did little to reduce terror. It’s a never ending whack a mole.

@Kupotea what SPY options are you buying and what are your assumptions for a 10 x return? As someone who dabbled in index puts before, I find it hard to make 10x returns with them.

You would think that sports betting competes with lottery tickets or crypto but it really competed for wallet share with stock market investments. It really says a lot about how these households make financial decisions. I think sports betting should be taxed more to discourage it.

Lifted from X.com. Sports betting a net negative especially for economically challenged households. Appentky, sport bets are treated as an “ investment “

I am in MAA, CPT and to a lesser extend SUI and they had a nice stealth rally. One thing that clear is that in many of the areas these Reits are operating the influx of people is still ongoing which means the supply bulge should be worked off in 2025/26. Renting is also much much cheaper than buying equivalent townhomes in most locations at current mortgage rates. I am keeping my shares (all in IRA’s for now), I think there is more juice here imo. That was a well timed trade with a one foot hurdle that @BG2008 and @thepupil pointed out, that seemed very easy to grasp.

My favorites: Thinking fast and slow (Kahnemann) Fooled by Randomness (Taleb) Intelligent investor (Graham) You can be a stock market Genius ( Greenblatt) Cautionary take: Education of a Speculator (Niederhoeffer)

Somehow got back into Warren Zevons music. I had the Sentimental Hygiene record back then. I knew Werewolves of London but never his other works and there is plenty of it. You got to embrace the dark side if you listen to his music. There is some F***** up sh*t to be found there. I love gems like Roland the headless Thompson gunner:

I remember he posted this on Twitter as well. He stated he would put some money in a trade even if it’s a Ponzi, if he thinks the setup is favorable or something like this. Again, i can understand where he is coming from, but if one of those trades goes bad and an investor sues him for loss of money, it would not look good in court. I guess it all doesn’t matter as long as it works.