Spekulatius

These hundred baggers(Railroads) that @dealraker wrote about are not "one decision" stocks. Railroads are examples of stocks that have just performed very well over long periods of time. You could have bought those many times along the journey to 100 bagging at opportune times and achieved very good results. other examples would be VISA and MA etc. It not a Sea Unlimited that goes up 10x in 2 years and then gives back most of it's games. There are many Sea unlimited stocks that multi-bag and then give back all there gains. Maybe the lesson is that once you recognize a business with staying power and long runway and durable moat you should keep tracking it and look for opportunities to add to your position. Over long periods of time, there should be opportunities to add to your positions or start new ones that you may have missed.

It’s becoming more and more clear that the Kherson pocket is a trap for the Russians. Supposedly, there are 15-20k Russian soldiers north of the Dnipro river and they don’t really have a way to get out, since the bridges are blasted up. This may take a few weeks, but I think the Russians will lose a lot of material and troops there that they cannot replace. Bloody recruits that do not want to fight can’t make up for the losses. I also don’t think the war activity will stop in winter. The Russians are not equipped for winter, they don’t even have the uniforms apparently. All the new recruits will need a lot of supplies are there will be huge problems. It’s ironical because the Russians army used to have general winter as their friend, but this time, it’s looking more and more like the opposite. I bet the Ukrainians have the means to keep fighting in winter and it may turn out to be a huge advantage for them.

That is exactly what I am doing. If I don’t like the counter party, I don’t deal with them, especially when it’s a private transaction. I have actually had this happen more than once. Was bidding on a house and got the impression that the owner were jerks and just moved on. Same buying cars at a dealer or from private or anything else for that matter. Dealing with jerks or scumbags is not worth the aggravation even if the deal seems good. Just my opinion, of course.

The Saudis are not our friend either. At this point they are just a force that seems to act somewhat rational (unless they chop people to bits and behead people in parking lots) and that we can deal with. They sort of made piece with Israel at this point. Iran could easily do the same thing, but they stubbornly choose not to. It makes no sense unless you just think they need Israel as an enemy to hold their radical ideological carpet together. The enemy of your enemy is rarely your friend. Just use the school court analogy. If you don't like a guy and see this guy getting a his teeth kicked in from another guy in a fight, is this "other guy" your friend? I think this other guy is just a guy who kicks other peoples teeth in and I wouldn't assume he is my friend at all.

I am too old for excitement. I aim for 40 positions, but they are not equal weighted. I typically don't go above 5% much (based on funds invested), but I do go larger occasionally (LAACO was an example) when I think I understand the business very well and feel it's bullet proof. Few business are. BRK may is another one, but something like FFH is not (imo).

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. It’s seems like Iran likes to be enemies with everyone including it’s own people. I think it was a mistake that Trump cancelled the Iran nuclear deal because I think they followed the letters of the deal at that time (but I am not 100% sure about that). However thy did and continue everything to destabilize whatever they can -Lebanon, Syria, state sponsored terrorism against Israel, selling drones to Russia (Shahed suicide drones). They do whatever they can to destabilize and hurt Israel or the US and even other Arab nations. They have made themselves a pariah. If they had some smart leadership, they would make piece with Israel and the rest would follow. They don’t even have a border with Israel, so it just seems like they need an enemy for deflect from their own failures and make it easier to stay in power. It is such a shame for a country with such a rich history and a fairly educated populace (middle and upper class). The Khomeini regime is designed to perpetuate the same thing over and over and the mystery. People need to get rid of these and despite efforts (like currently), I think they have a lot of backing from the masses. Sort of like Russia.

Redirecting meth coal to thermal coal means selling for a fraction (1/3 ?) of the price. Yes, it can be done but economically, it makes no sense.

Sold most of my KNBE and SU during my lunch break.

Following the talking heads in TV with their well known biases is not the way to make money. Never has been. Right now, everyone seems to become a macro investor. That hasn’t been the way to make money either. It’s not that macro doesn’t matter, it is because it is so hard to predict.

The 1420 vblogger (highly recommend to follow/subscribe) interviews random Russians in a rural town. Ouch:

Q3 is done. The market is brutally oversold. Inflation fear driving the selloff and looks overdone. Might be a bear market rally, who knows.

Definitely true. There are a lot of very cheap stocks out there.

I think one development to watch for is what happens to the UK / BOE. The UK almost had a Lehman moment. It may have been the first case, where market participants told a central bank to back off from MMT. There is probably more to come on that trajectory. As for Turkey, I think that's a case where Wile E Coyote went already past the cliffs edge. Remember that Erdogan guaranteed the value of Turkish Lira deposits relative to hard currencies. I wonder how this is going to be paid out if depositors call in this insurance blanket policy...

Market is terribly oversold and ready to rip. One decent inflation report trending in the right direction and we are back at 4200for the SP500. Nobody gives a damn about CAPE ratios and all that stuff. From Spek's market forecast that is worth exactly what you are paying for it.

ZH has been garbage for many years. It's a rabbit hole that is not worth going down , imo. As for the war in Ukraine, you can stitch together a pretty good picture by following some bloggers and main stream media sources and occasionally look at reddit. Lot's of propaganda out there, but if you follow several sources a bit, you know what tends to be reliable and credible and what not. Using the Occam's razor approach helps as well cutting through the BS.

This not cost competitive. The USD strength has eliminated any advantage from lower cost energy and then some, except maybe some petrochemical products and similar basic materials that require a lot of energy inputs.

I agree on this. The Opec cutting production is obviously bullish for energy but I also think some bulls may be underestimate the demand destruction from third world countries and China. China may well have structurally lower demand for oil going forward.

Looks like the Ukraine also achieved a breakthrough in Kherson along the Dnipro river. We don't know how far, but there could be ~25K Russian troops and lots of material trapped in this pocket because it is hard if not impossible for the Russian to pull back (bridges over the Dnipro have been destroyed for the most part by HIMARS). Multiple breakthroughs on the frontline are an indication that the Russian army is disintegrating. Will be fun to watch the mental gymnastics here of the Russians. (the channel below is obviously pro Ukraine but they are not the only ones reporting this)

Nordstream is just a distraction. Looks like the Kesselschlacht in Lyman is over and the Russian took heavy losses and managed just a partial retreat. Another 5k strong army group that is out of the fight right now. It looks like the complete frontline along the Oskil River is now rolled back to a line around Svatove. I think there is a chance that they can roll the frontline quite a bit further. Once the Russian conscripts hit the frontline, I expect it will be an incredible target rich environment for HIMARS and long range artillery strikes. As I mentioned before, I expect about a 30% casualty rate there for whoever is one the frontlines.

I think longevity has a lot to do with living a healthy lifestyle and to live and work on your own terms. WEB tap dances to work, has the office environment arranged the way he wants and works with the people he wants to work. Be probably has way less stress through his life than the average CEO or money manager. That could be worth an extra 5-10 years of the lifespan.

You are right, MSGE‘s Fiscal year 2022 ended in June 30, 2022. I was thinking calendar year.

There is absolutely a lesson here. Longevity is one of the secrets to be a successful investor. Buffet, Munger, Walter Schloss all lasted a long time. Buffett elaborated this in his talks to students where he tells them that you have only one body and so you need to take care of it. He himself is a bit of a mixed example because of his terrible diet. Of course the other key thing is not to blow up financially.

@Dinar. LEVI is targeting 6-8% growth for the next few years. I am not sure how they think about adjusting for inflation. The latest IR presentation gives you a good idea how they think about their business evolving: https://s23.q4cdn.com/172692177/files/doc_presentations/2022/08/00709_08-22_LSCo_Abbreviated-investor-day-deck_ppt.pdf

This may be the case, but the claim was that yahoo finance numbers are wrong and they are not. FWIW, TiKr does operating earnings as well, based on S&P estimates and they are negative too. In my opinion, 2022 was already a post epidemic year, yet operating earnings for MSGE are still negative. We will see about next year, I think there are a lot of uncertainties how it will shake out.

@Viking I take that you like $LEVI as a vindication. Anyways it’s a small position for me and I traded it twice before with success. I followed the company since they IPO‘d. I know them ,one enough and remember when they went private decades ago. Anyways, I like what I heard so far. Demand collapsed during the epidemic as everyone was Zooming along in their underwear apparently, but hey never lost much monos, emphasized DTC and stayed cash flow positive. The stock hung out around $12 and a bit blow and I bought some shares and sold them at $17 in one of these bounces after the vaccine. Too early as it turned out. So, ingot interested again at $16 when the stock dropped despite much better fundamentals and even though their Q2 2022 result looked solid. They showed some rise in inventory, but nothing extremely out of line if you consider revenue growth. Now, I think they might get hit too by the consumer recession, but I can’t see this being as bad than the epidemic by a long shot. The stock is now at $14.5, go figure. Net debt is almost zero and what shows up is just LT lease liabilities, so balance sheet is not is not issue. I guess there are many other stocks like this, but LEVI is one I know and it‘s an easy business to understand. FWIW, I agree on BAC and JPM, but my bank of choice amongst the large caps is USB. I also own a bit of CASH and COF.