Spekulatius

Turkey is a NATO ally, but what they are doing with Azerbaijan is not sanctioned by the NATO, its Erdogan going it alone because of Turkey's local interests. Same in Syria and the Kurdistan conflict. Armenia aligned themselves with Russia, perhaps because they felt they had no choice. That means that no help from NATO will be forthcoming however (imagine giving Armenia weapons and they end up being used by Russia in Ukraine?). So this is one of those regional conflicts (there are literally dozens in the world) that are getting fought on and off. According to Putin's thinking, Ukraine should have played out the same way but it did not turn out that way. I also agree with @Xerxes that Zeihan has the Russian Iran relationship wrong. I have paid a little more attention to his youtube videos and while he is pretty good at identifying trends (his specialty are interactions of demographics/ geography and history) he seems to often paint too broad of a brush and get's nuances wrong, imo.

it's interesting that the Azerbaijan - Armenia conflict has flared up again right along the Ukrainian offensive and I don't think it's coincidence. Armenia has been backed by Russia and Azerbaijan has been backed by Turkey. I think Azerbaijan smelled blood in the water and that's why they attacked Armenia when it became clear that the Ukraine had a huge success with their offensive. The underlying thinking is that Russia is busy and can't help Armenia. As with the Ukraine conflict - Azerbaijan used Turkey's Bayraktar drones to hit the Armenians. Just another case where seemingly unrelated conflicts have an interaction. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/15/azerbaijan-says-71-soldiers-killed-in-armenia-border-clashes Another notable fact is that Xi visited Kazakhstan before meeting Putin. I think this visit may have more than a symbolic value because Kazakhstan ahs been distancing themselves from Russia with this Ukraine conflict and Kazakhstan may try to improve the ties to Beijing as a backup so to speak. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-health-japan-china-72f848530e0b16d2cbd80d38e74fda03 I think these all are early indications that Putin's empire building (or rebuilding) ambitions are unravelling due to the attack on Ukraine turning out to be a failure.

Bought a starter in WRK. I think it's cheap and less cyclical than Mr Market thinks.

Thanks for your perspective. I am not convinced that MCY is a good value. The way I see it, they operate mostly at a combined ratio of 100% , so the result comes from the investment return. I think they operate around 2x premium /equity and their (mostly bond) investment are a bit higher than premiums so with this short duration portfolio, the returns on equity have been mostly below 10%. They did better than that in 2020, but that’s because accident frequency was way down due to less driving. I think for a stock that earns less than 10% on equity (and in fact barely 8% over the years) valuation at book value is about fair. So for me MCY doesn’t look all that cheap.

I suspect it’s that one: https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/4/14/23026076/state-approves-electricity-transmission-lines-power-climate-goals This one seems to be backed by politicians but I think the issue remains that local groups because of simple NIMBY can slow down or kill projects like this. That’s less of an ideological issue rather than the simple fact that most people don’t like these huge lines nearby. Not that it makes much difference.

Sources? I have not seen all that much hate against transmission lines, except the regular NIMBY syndrome.

So, they have been in real estate since 1337 (Duchy of Cornwall) and 1399 (Duchy of Lancaster) as well as a 25% share of Crown assets worth $20B. i guess they made the laws of compounding work for them.

This episode from masters in Business with bill Browder (Red Notice) is incredible: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2022-08-19/bill-browder-on-high-finance-murder-and-justice-podcast

This feel like a circularity or singularity has been reached. On a side note, when you asked google the question" Should I buy XX stock?", you get some interesting answers and links to look at. I actually started doing this as part of my research process. Same with $XX (XX= ticker symbol) in twitter.

Well, we know the answer - the economy tanked in 2001 and 2008 and the the stock market went down with it. I would say so that in both cases, the interest rates weren't the root cause of the decline as they were lowed when the economy was weakening. On the Zack's podcast, one economist stated that interest rates <5% have never really caused a recession by itself, which I found interesting.

Tiktok really is not a replacement for FB or Instagram. It’s not a social interaction platform. Most users just passively watch short form video there, which is different than interacting with other users or uploading your own fotos etc. In my opinion, Tiktok is more a competitor for YouTube than FB and IG. That said, they all compete for eyeballs and attention. With Zuck’s Metaverse Adventure, there is a real risk than Meta becomes a rapidly melting icecube. For that reason, I would be reluctant to average down to no end. When network effects start to unwind, the underlying value can become extremely squishy. I own some shares, but I am reluctant to add more. I need to see some tangible progress on the product development from Meta here to add more to this bet. I decided a while ago to switch ~80% of my Meta allocation to GOOGL. I would much rather add to GOOGL than to Meta at this point.

Another fall (from a boat this time), another dead Putin confidant: https://todaytimeslive.com/world/118596.html

Both residential and commercial RE in SF is prone to crashes. I have seen it in 2001 and 2009. This time is more self inflicted - the crime rate makes going to the city undesirable and most people hang now out in suburbs. We visited relatives and friends in the Bay Area and never even went to the city, but formerly dead places like South SF have now lively small downtown areas where people hang out. Just fixing the crime issue would go a long way to revive the city, because now daytime SF is now how Tenderloin used to be past midnight. I have no idea how Tenderloin is nowadays is past midnight and no desire to find out.

Mostly small adds: GOOGL , COF, VNT, TPB. Bought back some FAF in one account as well.

One of the shittiest insurance companies I am aware of (from a shareholders perspective). Hasn’t gone anywhere for 2 decades. I owned shares around 2001 or so and made out OK riding the shares up a bit, but they are pretty much back to the same levels. I liked them as a customer when I lived in CA, lowest rates for the combo of homeowners and car insurance by a country mile for me. What is your thesis?

You could get ~5% on MM accounts too in 2006, and ~6% in 2000.

Not a great inflation report. Core inflation is accelerating while Food and Energy got cheaper. (Gas prices have begun to rise again recently): https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm All items less food and energy The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.6 percent in August after increasing 0.3 percent in July. The index for all items less food and energy rose 6.3 percent over the past 12 months, a larger increase than the 5.9-percent increase for the 12 months ending in July.

Interesting to watch the mental gymnastics from Tucker Carlson and his goto expert McGregor: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/tucker-carlsons-ukraine-war-expert-totally-debunked-in-72-hours/ Foxnews would fit well into Russian media landscape.

Reality of the Russian Army. Seaman apprentice, assigned to a tank battalion, 1 week of training. "I am here because I am retarded."

A good one I use (for free so far) is docoh.com. Once you build a watchlist there, it does a great job on keeping you current with filings, earnings etc. https://docoh.com/user/dashboard

If Russia uses At this point very unlikely. First, Russia has not even declared this special operation a war yet, second Putin himself has downplayed the nuclear option just a short time month ago. https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-there-can-be-no-winners-nuclear-war-it-should-never-be-started-2022-08-01/ Also, to make it clear, in my opinion Russia has lost a huge battle but has not yet lost the war yet. It is clear now however, that victory as Putin sees it is far out of reach. If the Russians can stabilize the frontline, they could probably spin their own propaganda machine to still declare their “accomplishments” a victory. In my opinion, the west should really ramp up their military aid to give Ukraine the offensive weapons they need (tanks, capable infantry fighting vehicles, F16’s ) to get this quickly over with. The Ukrainians have proven to be capable so if they get the full nine yards of weapons, the Russians are out of Ukraine including Crimean early next year. A bit nuclear saber rattling from Putin is expected and should be ignored.

I use the paid version of tikr. Huge time saver and well worth it. It’s the only info source I pay for.

One thing that’s interesting is how fast inflation in China has slowed: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-09/china-s-inflation-slows-more-than-expected-with-covid-flare-ups

Lots of support for the war / special operation in Russia, even more are ignoring it: