Spekulatius

RDS is an oiled major that seems to become more like an utility over time. At least that’s the ghost I am getting from the management presentations. The bull case is probably that it is way cheaper than any utility one can buy, with a dividend yield of ~6%+ and improving financial performance, I can see the stock retreating over time.

The Japanese market is for trading not investing. I have had decent results doing just that. In all that dreariness, there seem to be blurbs of euphoria or momentum trading or whatever it is that can be used to exit. It’s just a matter of when usually.

I assume it’s split evenly. I negotiated this rate when I sold my last house in Long Island and it was pretty straightforward. I sold my former house for a 5% commission where we picked the realtor from a website (after interviewing 3 of them). These commissions are all negotiable, that much I do know. I bet you could get it as low s 4% but I didn’t try.

Whatever you do make sure your negotiate the commission. 5% is easy and I got great service for 4.5% last time. From my experience, the highest volume realtors aren’t always the best.

When Italy had its Lira, they had high inflation and high interest rates. yes, they will have problems either way, one thing they will happen is they there will be an immediate and substantial loss in buying power though currently devaluation, which will make Italian goods cheaper, important more expensive and for new debt the cost much higher. Then there is also the issue that on day one, Italy’s debt will still be denominated in Euro, which then will be even harder to pay back. The only option for Italy’s government is to pull an Argentina and immediately default and cause an exchange of the current debt into Lira notes. Of course any of the above doesn’t solve the demographically issues (low birth rate etc. ) either.

Government debt will never be repaid. If any government on earth needs to repay debt, and can’t roll it over, they will default. This applies to the US as well. We are running 5% deficit as a percent of GDP in one of the hottest economy ever 10 years plus into a recovery, how would we ever repay debt? Give it a recession and we run at 10% GDP deficit quickly. Government debt is never repaid, it is only rolled over.

I think this is a very good way/ mental model to look at this issue. Negative interest rates imply lack of growth or even shrinking GNP, which can’t be good for stocks.

My first thought when I see a lot of big names on the list of founders is “Who is going to do the work?”

CTL is indeed interesting. It belongs to the group of equity stubs ( where capitalization is mostly debt) that can become multibaggers, if the business performs well, debt is paid back and equity replaces is. The equity can become a multibaggers , even if the overall EV doesn’t change all that much. Examples I am watching are ETM, CTL, CCO, CX, TAST, AMC

CVET is a pretty levered bet. It can go up an down a lot. I think the last quarterly earnings report which wasn’t as bad as thought turned the stock around. Congrats to the win. I have kept it on my watchlist and will keep watching it.

Reduced FOX and BAESY a bit more.

Sal Daher's podcast on iOS Thanks, this “Angel Invest Boston” podcast is a great podcast series, especially since I live in the greater Boston area. Subscribed.

Interesting clinical candidate with an unmet need. It looks to me like they will need to raise cash with a secondary very soon though. It shouldn't be too difficult to raise money (they've already done some licensing deals - one with a Japanese major and they also got some funds from CF foundation). Their Ph 3 results for Lenabasum should most likely be great (their Ph2 data and recent hiring shows they are prepping for approval) - out in a few months. Stock is ripping. Up 60% since this above discussion. Funnily i discovered this stock from a podcast where a healthcare VC with a great track record was pounding the table on it like crazy. Yes, stock has rebounded substantially. Would you mind disclosing the podcast? I am constantly looking for new material.

Do you think anyone in a NYC apartment building talk to their neighbors or even say hello? I agree that probably should've been a first step. This is NYC, so in any case, the neighbor in question will tell you to GFY. Move somewhere, where you own all 4 walls of your place yourself. That solves this and many other problems.

Reduced GOOG and BAESY a bit.

It’s true that building in Texas is comparably easy, which holds housing prices down, but I think that may change for two reasons that are probably somewhat related: 1) demographics are changing and Texas become “bluer” and at some point attitudes towards zoning etc will become more like in California. 2j The expansion is space has its limit with the millennial generation that can exist any more if there isn’t a Chipotle and Starbucks within two blocks from the home. That will cause some housing to become much more desirable and limit the spread. I would think any of the above would show in a city like Austin first, DFW area second and Houston probably last. Anyways, I think it would be a multi decade trend and then there is some back wind from the Texas economy doing better than average too. I think any bet on the Texas economy in the long run may be a good one.

Corporate debt/ Pretax ratio would be a better measure since interest is paid from $. Since the tax rates are at a historic low, using post tax numbers does skew the ratio a bit. but overall, the point is valid.

Almost any recession is closely related or caused by a credit even. The 2001 recession was not just the aftermath of a dot Comrades move forward! Bubble, there were a lot of telecom and independent power producers going bankrupt (Global Crossing, Worldcom, Mirant, Enron, - El Paso and Williams almost went bankrupt) The GFC was centered around the financial system, but eventually the credit crunch hit the whole economy. I think it is reasonable to assume that the next recession will also be related or caused by a credit event.

Same here. Price action looks very weak. I think we will get mid fifty prices in a general stock market correction. I did notice some smaller insider sales (Breen etc) at the end of last year. Edit : also added a bit of LBTYK.

Don't forget pissing away money on Lyft, Maven, and probably Cruise. While Ive long liked Cruise, it is hard now not to view it through the tainted lens of Softbank being the main reason it's considered a home run... All the car companies except Tesla have been trading like junk for the last 12 month almost without exception. that includes Europe, and to a to a lesser degree Japan. They are like the c malls of the industrials. For sure, with regard to the sentiment, but 2019 was yet another record year for auto sales(in $ figures). The problem is they are terrible allocators. E&P companies are probably better peers than the malls. They make tons of money in good years but give none of it back to shareholders because dumb career industry folks run the companies based on out dated and inefficient theories for "what you're supposed to do". Then during the bad years... shit gets ugly. As my bearishness on the overall market has grown, GM has started to bother me more. If this is how they perform in a record market, I probably dont want to be around for when things stop going perfectly. How would you run GM better? Large buybacks may not be the best course of action because the stock really didn’t move. In a way it would be wasted. GM will bleed probably bleed $10B+ In cash during a recession because they would need to spent on new models and because the industry is in transition on electrification and self driving cars. There isn’t an easy way out, the business is a value trap. If I had to buy one stock, it would be FCAU. They are winning market share in trucks and the merger with Peugeot will fix their ailing European business hopefully.

Don't forget pissing away money on Lyft, Maven, and probably Cruise. While Ive long liked Cruise, it is hard now not to view it through the tainted lens of Softbank being the main reason it's considered a home run... All the car companies except Tesla have been trading like junk for the last 12 month almost without exception. that includes Europe, and to a to a lesser degree Japan. They are like the c malls of the industrials.

I noticed the same thing. It shows how people are starting think about it, even though it obviously has no value because it isn't printed on green paper with pictures of good (i.e. dead) politicians on it. It’s gold for millennials. It’s also a solution if you need to launder money, live in Country with Capital controls and a crappy currency (which typically go hand in hand) and want to transfer you wealth. It might have its limitations, but if you need to move money under the nose from a government, than its the way to go.

This is all true to some extend, but as I mentioned before , most Germans don’t own stock and the unemployment rate is 3.2%, which is full employment and then some. The unrest in the populace, which will eventually eventually Merkels removal (imo) is related to I immigration policy etc and not to economic issues.

I posted a comment on this article today: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4314926-atento-deserves-your-attention I think this week's selling is coming from RSU's issued 30 months ago that vested on Jan 2. Last year it was a similar story and the stock declined 14% in 5 days following the vesting of RSUs on a lot of volume and this year it's also down about 14% on significant volume in the 4 days since vesting. Last year ATTO bounced back 13% the following week. Not sure if we'll see a replay but it's a reasonable speculation. Thanks good comment. It does seem selling on no news and typically I don’t think that indiscriminate sellers are that well informed.

Bought some ATTO as a rebound play.