Spekulatius

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.

Interesting podcast espisode about Mexican stocks from Ian Bezel who ai think lives in SA. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chit-chat-stocks/id1437766060?i=10006652371 He is more optimistic about Sheinbaum than I am, based on his observation how she ruled as major of Mexico City. So there is a possibility that she is not as bad as feared or at least better Han the outgoing president (which seemed like an old fashioned 1980’s style socialist). She is not going to be in power until November so there is some time to think about this. For now, I think I am going to stay put with my Megacable but in a weird market selloff, I might add some shares to lower m cost bases after r$cent sales higher.

He may a not care about his Oligarch but perhaps they take care of him one day. A few decades like they and Russia is just like North a Korea . I’d guess they always be a bit better off because they have more resources. Imagine what Russia could be like, if they had the right kind of revolution like America had. They would be on par with the rest of Europe. Instead, they made a 70 year detour down the communist lane and now they go on the dead end Putin Neo-Zarist route for an other few decades.

I don’t think Kuppy is unethical and he is indeed hard working. The reason ai believe he will blow up (which is a bit of a definition thing) is that his fund seems to be a one man show. One man shows almost ways blow up. I actually think he is flexible with this investment - had one case where he made a macro call and was buying some stocks (or claiming) and I pointed a few things regarding one stock that he for sure had not looked at and known and quickly stated that he sold it. But this also tells me that he looks at some things he invests in not very deeply. Thats was a few years ago during COVID and maybe his organization has grown since then and he indeed has some people in his organization that will voice to him a differing viewpoint. In podcasts interviews he comes across as someone who is very very confident in this thesis which tend to be very macro related.

I doubt there will be any negotiations this year. It will certainly not before Putin has kicked out the Ukrainians out of Russian land or at least tried. But it will be costly for him no matter what and the cost will be permanent, because he cannot defend his borders just with conscripts.

Whether Ukraine pains a huge price for the incursion remains to be seen The Russian soon have to decide if they sent their best units against entrenched positions that Ukraine should be able to build in hits land. It’s not a surprise and Ukraine knows exactly where they attack. Right now Russia pays the piper into term of dislocating hundred of thousand of people, three entire oblasts becoming a war zone and move civilian resources to create new fortifications and they have to change all their war plans which isn’t exactly a strength of theirs. The war is getting more and more costly for Russia and it’s not just human lives, it’s their economy that is getting flushed down the toilet for really not much to show for.

The red lines drawn by Putin are all BS. Putin has crossed more red lines than anyone. The UK has given Ukraine a total of 14 Challenger tanks, more symbolic than anything. It is clear that the west has given Ukraine just enough to survive but not enough to succeed. The Kursk incursion is a tactical maneuver- instead of attacking against fortified lines like they tried last summer, they attacked the weak spot which is ironically the Russian homeland itself. Putin cannot led this stand, he has to fight back. So now Russia fights on Ukraines terms not their own. 1) Russia has to take the occupied land back. Losses won’t matter. 2) three oblasts of Russia have become a war zone, with evacuation, fighting and destruction. The economy in these three oblasts is totally shattered. Putin is advertising in Moscow and all over Russia for civil engineers to create Fortifications all long the frontline deep into the Russian homeland.mits is going to be hugely expensive. 3) Russia has to move many of their best units from the donetz into this area which will take a long time, so hugely disruptive 4) it’s a public humiliation for Putin. Longer term, I think Russia has to switch their entire economy to a war economy. The GDP growth may not be too bad but what it means is that Russian as a whole will see a decline in goods and services in favor of feeding the military.

Mark Cohodes is the best short seller I track. signature bank, Silvergate, Riley (currently ). He stated years ago that HELE has shoddy accounting and they blew up as well. There are many others. He has got the best Q ticker collection of anyone I know. I love his wig indicator.

Worth keeping track of Kuppy for original ideas, imo. I do think he is going to blow up again. Swinging big with other people’s money makes perfect sense as well, from his perspective.

So why don’t you buy NVDA when you wife asks you to do so, seriously? If my wife tells me she wants to buy something, I do it. Even better, I taught here how to use Fidelity so she can do it herself. i just tell her the ticker symbol, the pro and cons from my perspective and just say go for it!

This is not a commoditized low margin business. Yes, the service is some what commoditized but there are only 3 or for large players and there are differences in offering, local focus etc.. I still have not seen where any employer of mine that has changed their supplier for clean room suits in more than 20 years. Just not worth it since the pricing does not different all that much ( from what I have heard). I have not idea about account losses from VSTS but I think to get large account losses, they really have to screw up big time. I sold because the leverage is high and the growth seems to be lacking and going close to zero and it just seems one of those cases where the spinoff goes through teething issues which can take a while to iron out. I have seen this too many times. I think there was just too much pressure to make the numbers which lead to suboptimal decision making.

Well the drunken folks decide to blow the Nordstream pipeline that was already makes sense. why would Zelensky sign off on this? What would this accomplish versus the risk that the truth comes out (which apparently is happening now). There are also articles now about pot. Russian sabotage on German military bases. that makes not sense to me either although they are suspecting other extremism groups as well (free Palestine). None of these things really make too much sense unless you a re deep into drugs but then again a lot of people are. I do watch what happens with the Kursk incursion. Looks like huge victory by Ukraine in many dimensions. First, the Russians were caught napping and were run over and this is now the fist time enemy groups are in Russia since 1944. the economy in 3 large Oblasts is totally disrupted and there is chaos. Putin cannot let this stand and now he is moving his troops and best brigades from Donetz to this new focus point which due to poor Russian logistic takes forever. Its really quite something to watch.

If they run out of battery, they simply shut down but potentially could be waked up again if they can recharge with solar cells. That won’t work with humans, Robots need no life support system , living space, rest times. The Mars rover Curiosity has been operating on Mars since 2012 and is still going! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_(rover) Now the current robots are basically just remote controlled vehicle which due to the 3- 22min light travel time between earth and MArs means a lot of lag and slow movement. The robots needed would need to be semi autonomous that can do the lower or mid level task on their own with only high lvevl decision making required from Earth Mission Control. In any ways, it a tremendously more economic and safer way to explore Mars and that’s how I think it will be done. Until we get something like the Epstein drive, that is: https://expanse.fandom.com/wiki/Epstein_Drive

Aren’t we replay limited by engine tech. As long as we have only chemical engines, the journey to Mars takes 7-8 month each way To really make Mars feasible. We need engines that are much faster than that like those plasma drives that need to be nuclear powered to get hr energy density needed. This enabling technology does not exist. Until then, we probably should sent robots there.

I always think it’s “Live free and die” when I see the motorcyclists without helmet on NH roads. However NH is thinly populated and I don’t think their traffics mortality rates are bad and the insurance is lower than in most other places.

Government bonds are IOUs too, if you think about it.

The important thing about Norway is that they did not invest the trust fund in Norway, the assets are widely distributed over the investable universe worldwide. If they had invested predominantly in Norway , they would have created a super bubble.

There has been a lot of work done here on this thread already as well as from other sources and I think the issues that Intel are facing are much more severe and harder to fix than what your brother describes. I hope he does not put too much money into his thesis (which I think is very flimsy) because it is likely that his thesis is wrong and he could lose a lot of money if that’s the case. In tech, nobody gives a damn about the revenue or business you did 4 years ago, because the issues that INTC is facing have nothing to do with cyclicality, they are all due to secular shifts, their lack of execution and competition.

I think BBBY was fairly easy to call out as a loser. they somehow lost the plot in 2002 or so. the aores were not well run and they went overboard with buybacks and ruined the balance sheet which was actually pretty good then. I don’t think FIVE or ULTA are a the same point that BBBY was back then, although I think ULTA probably has a better moat than FIVE.

Some of these villages are basically in wasteland with nothing around it. My guess is that China needs people to pay somehow to live there, because there is nothing to do.

Pretty good take from Michael Clark on why Ukraine started this incursion:

Added a bit of ULTA and FIVE. Will be interesting to see how those tomorrow the next two years. Overall, I did not have much luck with retail related stocks looking back, so I am not going overboard with exposure here.

An example of a drone weapon system that is developed based on learnings from the Ukraine war. Based on below YouTube video this drone has a 10km range Has GPS but does not really on it (one of the key learnings from Ukraine war is that GPS is relatively easy to jam Visual range and IR camera (for night and heat detection) Up to 70mph burst speed Does lock in targets automatically, selected targets are automatically tracked ,controller can command an attack with parameters (angle of attack) several 1 pound payloads (sensor for observation only), tungsten ball shotgun explosive, armor penetrating explosive. 1 pound does not sound much, but we know from Ukraine how vulnerable even tanks are from attack from above mostly because armor on top is relatively thin. Tanks and armored carriers are armored to withstand attacks from the front and less so from the side, but much less so from the top (they would become much heavier and bulkier). So my guess is that 1 pound armor penetrating payload can probably disable a personal carrier but probably not a tank and it the tungsten ball payload certainly destroy vehicles, or troops even in trenches. I am guess that this will go to sniper teams first but I can see this becoming an arsenal for regular troops . You don’t really need to fly these drones either as they can be directed with macro commands apparently and are self stabilizing anyways, so much easier to operate than the switchblade drones that were all the rage earlier in the war. Now it will be interesting what countermeasures the US is developing because protection from these type of drones or the more consumer variants is clearly necessary for troops and even armored units. https://youtu.be/AEBC0I1-N2k?si=szGGb5z4w4HI85lq