Spekulatius

Well, first order principles would suggest that you need to replace all the gasoline used in California with the energy equivalent of electricity. It's probably a bit less because electric motors are more efficient than ICE, but then you have the electric energy conversion and transmission losses to deal with, so probably a wash. Charging is done mostly at night, if you charge at home and have a smart charger, so may not be that bad from a grid utilization POV.

Belated reply - but this is something I don't like about FFH. The Holdco seems to be constantly cash poor and there is considerable leverage at a Holdco level as well, both in terms of preferred stock (~$1.3B), as well as with debt, (the latter I am not sure about how much). In Q2, they had about $1B i n Holdco cash but this has been going down for several quarters. it was north of $1.5B last year.

Granite state vodka -$6.99 on sale. Best used mixing. You can create low cost "Desperado's" mixing this with Budweiser. Enough proof to use as a Molotov cocktail. Use to light your neighbors cat on fire or throw one on the roof on neighbors roof who pissed you off a long time ago. These random acts of vandalisms keep real estate prices and taxes low in your neighborhood and benefit everyone. This is how your beat inflation!

Starter in EXOR today. Also started / added to $COF.

I actually think that Grantham believes what he says. I also believe he has boxed himself in a certain corner of the market and couldn't get out, even if he wanted to. Those people that are known to occupy a certain niche are not really worth listening to, or at least just listen to their arguments and come to your own conclusion, if you do. That's why listening to Druckenmiller and others is much more valuable - they don't really have anything to sell and they do change their opinions, so they have an open mind, and hence they tend to speak freely.

I had no idea about Prince Edward isles, but now they are in my bucket list.

Been there a long time ago. Love the Normandie and the Bretagne, but my favorite is the northern part. The southern part / La Baule is way better for beach holidays though.

If Grantham would change his opinion all of a sudden and became bullish, he would lose 3/4 of his audience. Think about this for a while. He is in the financial doomsday business not in the investing business at this point.

At least you got the spicy buffalo sauce. Inflation saving tip for Popeye: If you order at Popeye and want sauces with it, ask for them after they completed the order. In 80% of the cases, they won't charge you for it. (they are too lazy to wring up the register again) If you ask for sauces when ordering, they will charge you 50c each. This is how you beat inflation.

I like the Zacks podcast and particular this episode about Anne Scheiber - one of the greatest investors you have never heard of ( $5000 to $22M in 50 years). https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/zacks-market-edge/id1052541481?i=1000577938421 https://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/1996/01/01/207651/index.htm Interesting factoid- the last stock she bought in 1985 was AAPL.

@Parsad He is true value investor recycling his capital. Beats buy and hold.

Ikea works too. Food is actually decent at their cafeteria, but I think you need to smuggle the booze in. Wednesday is best, they have free kids meals, so you got to eat the meals for your pretend kids too for free. Then take a nap at one of these couches while hopefully no one is watching. Thats how you beat inflation.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/nicaragua-travel-advisory.html

It's a summer house. It has oil heating and you just heat it with the bare minimum in winter to prevent damage. Relative to the US, there are incredible bargains to be had in Europe. I would pick France, Italy or perhaps Portugal.

After a performance like in 2020, they should have asked themselves a question:

These prices are crazy. I bet I could buy a great chalet in France for $1M, like this on in the Normandy: https://www.sothebysrealty-france.com/en/luxury-real-estate-france/ref-de2-401/sale-luxury-house-caen-12-rooms-4-bedrooms-14000/ You can find wonderful areas in the French countryside where you can buy a small Chalet for 600k Euro.

yes, some people quit and never looked back. I don't think this is quite over yet either. The labor participation rate has never really recovered after COVID-19. Besides that, we have lower and lower productive growth, which has been declining since the late 90's I think. The productivity numbers have been abysmal lately. Not sure what to make of this and it could be a result of supply chain disruptions. (edit - better chart)

Seems like for this fund (Saga partners) , the top is in. 56% loss in one quarter. Oof.

@Dinar maybe GS just needs to move these lower paying jobs away from Manhattan. Havn't‘t they done this anyways over the years? Perhaps this is just their way of getting rid of some people in the leaner times to come and move these jobs to cheaper locations where they can pay less.

Oof -Night live in Baghdad yesterday:

thanks for going through the exercise. The relation ship with inflation is the main factor driving the relative exchange rates, but not the only one. For example, the Euro and the USD have similar inflation rates (euro tends to be a little lower actually) , but at times, the USD/EUR exchange rate has shown large divergencies. I remember that from 1980 (Carter) to 1985 (Reagan) the USD almost doubled relative to the Deutsche Mark. When the Euro was born, the Euro/USD was close to parity and at some point the Euro was worth 1.46 USD and now we are back to parity basically. So, yes other forces are driving Exchange rate as well, but over the long run, I think relative buying power changes (which are driven by inflation) are the major driver.

Buffett is way less enthusiastic about China in general than Munger.

Buffett is already pushing up the price of OXY shares as is. If not for Buffet, Oxy shares would be much lower, Imo. I actually think that he wants 20% of Oxy, so he can show the proportional income from his Oxy stake on Berkshires income statement. He has used the concept of look through earnings quite a bit before.

Very significant talk from Olaf Scholz today: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-scholz-we-will-keep-up-support-ukraine-long-it-takes-2022-08-29/ Bullet points: Scholz vows to keep up economic, political, military support Wants expanded EU to include Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia Proposes majority EU voting on foreign, tax policy Wants Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria to join Schengen area

My simple mental model is that the cash flows from the stock market is discounted by roughly 8% (5% equity premium +3% risk free rate) right now. So if we go from 5% risk premium to 4% risk free rate, than the same cash flows are going to be discounted by 9%. 8%/9% = 0.89 or -11% which is the expected change in valuation due to a durable risk free rate movement. Now in reality future cash flows could sink (due to the economy growing less at higher rates) and also the equity risk premium tends to go up when the economy goes into a slow growth or a recession, but those numbers are a good framework how to think about the impact of interest rate rises on stock valuations. Aswath Damodaran talks about this and actually mentioned a higher rate for the stock market valuation adjustment - I think it watch 15-20% rather than 11%. I don't know why and he likely talks about his reasoning somewhere and I have missed it.