Spekulatius

Seems like consumer confidence and sentiment in the stock market is correlated. Who would have thought? If anything , this looks very very bullish for stocks now.

There are more faulty assumptions in his video, like the fact WTI has decoupled from equity prices. While I think that equity prices will be correlated to WTI spot, it makes no sense that those curves should be identical. He is also neglecting that a stock in downturn can be zero and never recover while underlying commodity can recover most likely. So logically a commodity stock index will not fully recover even if the underlying commodity does in this case. Like most reports, it’s way to US centric. Why do we bother looking at US data like inventory levels so much when it’s only ~10% of the supply and demand? Makes no sense. Better check out the EIA reports which look at the world wide supply and demand situation. Those also indicate a tight supply/ demand situation, but at least it’s more balanced. https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-june-2022

There is no question (imo) that crypto is a Ponzi. I think the question is if we are early or late in this Ponzi.

Thanks, that’s a nice list. By definition, if you create a lot of wealth, you change the world. I think you forgot the money that went and will go to the Gates foundation and will do a whole lot of good there.

well, that's true for E&P's as well, as they need to replace their reserves. Drilling and exploration will get more expensive. Both tend to be expensive when oil is expensive and cheap when oil is cheap creating the Catch 22 that contributes to the boom bust cycles.

What exactly do you see falling apart? Stonks and crypto?, So if Real estate would go down to 2019 levels, would that warrant a "falling apart" call or can we call it normalization? I don't think many people thought that real estate was cheap in 2019. Maybe COVID-19 just screwed up everything and we go back to where things were before COVID-19 or thereabouts. Or take baseline appreciation rates from 2019 levels. That's a simplified mental model that I think warrants some merit.

Yes. probably switched my thought mid word while typing. Now that you point it out, I onkly like it.

He got enough to be more cheerful than he seems to be.

Just a reminder that an interest rate of less than 2% has never caused a recession by itself. Even a raise buy 2-4% onkly causes a recession ~35% of the time. So i think the Fed can raise a bit from here and likely won't cause a recession. Now that does not mean that a recession does not occur for other reasons. technically we could be in one - because the 1 st quarter inflation adjusted GDP was down already - but that was because Q1+Q2 2021 were monster quarters with >6% GDP growth. So I guess it's a tough comps recession that most people won't really notice.

Some of the small cap japanese companies in the semiconductor (or related business) look interesting. I wonder the thesis is on BMY. I had some shares that have done well and sold after it did what I thought it would do.

As for China, I think their construction industry is seeing a significant decline and hence energy consumption from this part of their economy should decline, most likely permanently. Construction means steel, concrete, trucks and heavy equipment etc all of which consumes significant amounts of coal, diesel etc. As China transitions from an infrastructure/ Capex led to a more consumer oriented economy and should need less energy. As for demand, I expect significant demand destruction from higher prices in emerging markets first. The rigzone link talks about oil inventories only, but not inventories from oil refining which are up. The refineries in the US have taken advantage of the huge spreads and probably refined what they could, hence the low crude inventory (in the US). If I had to make a short term bet it would be that crude prices likely go where they were before the Ukraine invasion into the $80-$90 range short term. I don’t think they go much lower than that.

@Crip1 and @ICUMD good point from both. I do think that business performance is not always correlated with stock price performance - in fact the very fact that value investment works implies that it is not always so. I do hate fund structures like FIH and think in 90% of the cases, it's just better to invest in the mothership ($ FFH). Brookfield ($BAM) is another example of this.

You could be correct. I do think it's huge strategic value to unblock Odessa harbor and there are various means to do so.

I don't own any, but really like Pirelli (PIRC.MI). They are in the premium tire segment and have some of the highest margins. I also follow Michelin loosely and owned it in the past. Tires are not that great of a business because it needs a lot of Capex and working capital, so you really want to be in the highest margin segment of the FCF to owners is going to be non-existent.

I agree. it's fairly hard to make sense of his holdings and since he trades in and out very quickly, it probably does not make sense to follow what he is doing at all.

That didn't take long. Snake Island becomes indefensible for the Russians with the delivery of some HIMARS rocket system. Snake island is about 60 km away from the Ukraine mainland and these rocket systems go for 70km (the longer range version goes 200km. game over for the Russians on Snake Island. Not a huge win right now, but is important to keep Odessa from staying blocked longer term potentially. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1108855805/russia-withdraws-snake-island-ukraine https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-long-range-rocket-systems-arrive-ukraine-minister-2022-06-23/ If we give the Ukraine rocket weapons systems that go somewhat further (~300km) then Russia can not safely move ships into Sebastopol harbor any more (distance from Sebastopol harbor to Ukraine mainland is ~280km). At that point, Crimea and Sebastopol would become more or less strategically worthless as a naval base during war times. Russia has been firing nilly willy with rocket bases from Crimea and with their Ships on the Ukraine mainland and that cannot be allowed forever.

There are batteries that don't use nickel (or very little of it). I think one of the types uses iron phosphate chemistry and they are used in some lower end batteries. The problem with these chemistry is lower energy density, so it reduces the EV's range, which is still a big issue. I suspect they also may be less durable (less charge cycles), but I can't state this for certain.

The loss of Geico happened a while ago and is priced in. IAA is still a duopoly with CPRT, so I think it will do OK. It's available at a reasonable price now after the recent decline (Actually COVID-19) lows. I think the activist (Ancora) will put pressure on management: https://seekingalpha.com/news/3813616-iaa-gains-as-activist-holder-calls-for-sale-of-company-or-ceo-to-be-replaced

Pretty good piece, imo. If Biden is smart he pivots to pushing NG as a clean transitional source for the next 30 years. Develop infrastructure to phase out oil heating in the US and help out European allies. It's positive from a carbon balance (replacing heating oil with NG) and helps Europe to wean of from Russian gas and it helps the US NG producers with stable end markets and more stable prices. Laying all those pipes to supply gas to home would be nice infrastructure program that would pay for itself, and wouldn't cost taxpayers much (perhaps some incentives for home owners in some cases).

Bought a starter in USB (dividend stock) and added / bought back IAA this AM.

I think investors regard FIH as a high cost / poorly performing and externally controlled CEF. Those ought to trade at a large discount to NAV. Don't shoot the messenger. I think FIH might be a trade at times, but as a long term investment, I think it's a lost cause.

The war in Ukraine shows yet again (just like the war in Lebanon decades ago) that whoever buys Russian weapons buys garbage. This is likely becoming a bigger problem with sanctions impeding high tech components in Russian weapon systems and likely the ability of Russians to supply spare parts. I expect Russian weapon exports to tumble as a consequence of the war with Ukraine.

EV's are the best thing that ever happened to tire companies. It's seriously bullish - all that torque from the electric or hybrid power trains makes for a lot of wheelies on the roads.

I think it's probably important to look back in the late 70's or early 80's. Buffett was involved in a lot of energy / Oils and gas names back them - like Amerada Hess. He traded those quite frequently and successfully, they were not LT holds as all. Later past 2000 his track record trading energy became much more murky, he dunked on Exxon and COP, but had a home run with Petrochina.

Russian are grinding it out mostly with overwhelming artillery, they are not slicing through anything. The slow progress is proof of this. The Russians tried the Blitzkrieg when trying to take Kiev, but instead it sort of evolved into a bum rush. For good analysis, try Michael Clarks analysis in Sky news (available on youtube): https://news.sky.com/video/ukraine-your-questions-answered-by-professor-michael-clarke-12629662 Give the Ukrainians enough artillery and the russians will get anhillated. Note that the artillery wars tipped in Russia's favor because the Ukrainians are running out of 152mm artillery shells. Even the NATO stockpiles that were supplied to the Ukraine ran out as those are only produced in Russia. So the Ukrainian native artillery is mostly not active any more since it ran out of ammo. The West has replaced some of this with qualitatively better one but it's not enough. This WW1 without artillery on one side. Even fortified positions will eventually been ground down under prolonged barrages. That's what the Russians are doing. The west needs to supply hundreds of artillery pieces to the Ukraine not dozens.