Spekulatius

@SharperDingaan it's important to note that ESG is a three letter word and stands for Environment, Social and governance. Sounds like 90% of the mindshare is in the E, but social means treating Employees, customers, suppliers and doing good at the societal level and governance means that management is transparent and foremost treats shareholders right. The EV company that produces shoddy vehicles and has unsafe work practices, gets there raw materials from conflict areas, pollutes the environment there and has overpaid management and dilutes shareholders to no end should have a low ESG rating just to put out a fictional example.

I think they don't have that much pricing power, even discounting LYFT (which will be around and can't be discounted). There is competition from public transport, driving yourself, taxis etc. In any case, any windfall is mostly going to drivers, at least so far.

Sold VMW in my IRA's. Worked out OK , thanks to the offer from $AVGO.

Even without US involvement , a military conflict with Taiwan would likely destroy TSM production facilities. I don’t think people who think that China can just grab an island nation like Taiwan and everything will be fine and keep going think this through.

May is distorted relative to 2021, because last year the tax deadline was moved from 4/15 to 5/17. I suspect that many took advantage of this extension by more than a month and paid taxes in May last year rather than April. So, I think the YTD figures are more meaningful. Note that payroll taxes this month are still running at $195.4B vs $182.6B.That’s still up 7- over last year. These are total deductions based on current paychecks so a very direct indication of employment, hours worked and wages. https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/tax-day-for-individuals-extended-to-may-17-treasury-irs-extend-filing-and-payment-deadline

Sorry, but that's nonsense . What has the crime surge in NY to do with this? If you had a baby right now would right now, would you give it formula produced in this facility? It has bacteria found all over the place. Moreover this facility was inspected before (there are regular inspections) and none of this was found. https://www.fda.gov/media/157073/download Whoever manages this facility has been criminally negligent.

This happened because the company owning this has been underinvesting and running the plant in substandard conditions: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/25/watch-live-house-grills-fda-commissioner-abbott-executive-on-baby-formula-shortage.html

YTD tax receipts are are running way above 2021 levels. Doesn’t look like a recession to me.

That’s why I believe Biden’s somewhat offhand comment that China messing with Taiwan will get a military response from the US was a very real wink with a 4x4 to China to not even try. I think they know already with the Ukraine unfolding that it’s a no win proposition for them.

Global foundries is way behind in tech, so they can’t replace TSMC. It is actually their business strategy to focus on trailing edge nodes/ processes since they couldn’t compete with TSMC on leading edge. Anyways, any attempt of China trying to take Taiwan would likely destroy the fabs, so they would be worthless at that point. US would retaliate by blockading Chinas sea routes with the Navy , so no ship would get into Chinese ports. US and rest of the world goes into really bad recession, but China would literally die on the vine with no access to oil, raw material or even do trade unless the US allows it. Really bad for the US, but suicidal for China. No way Xi takes a chance on this.

The US has no claim on Taiwan, but the people living in Taiwan should be able to decide for themselves. As for the case that Taiwan falls in Chinese hands, how would NVDA or AMD etc ge access to Samsungs capacity. Specifically, why would give Samsung NVDA for example capacity? I don’t think they have much to spare and what they have would go first towards their own needs and their current customers. Or another example, why would Intel give AMD capacity in their own fabs? It makes much more sense for Intel to ignore AMD request for capacity since they basically would be out of business without any manufacturing capacity and Intel could pick up the pieces. I think a lot of companies would go out of business and bought up for pennies on the $ in this case, because if you can’t producing anything for a couple of years you are . I think INTC would be a $150 stock on this case, they would make money hand over fist, gobble up AMD engineering assets and get a monopoly on CPU’s again. Likewise with NVDA. Perhaps Samsung would by them for a song. Any fabless semi company without LT contract with still producing fabs would be screwed.

The chart shown above has little to do with money printing. Fiscal deficits cause money printing, but putting assets or reserves on the Fed's balance sheet doesn't. The reason is simple - these transaction leading to above do not put a single dime in anyones pocket. The stimi checks did and that's why they matter. As @wabuffo stated many times before, watch what the treasury is doing rather than the Fed. of course the Fed matters too, but it's not because of money printing. The actions of the Fed makes it more expensive to borrow money, but mostly not because of what they did (raise interest rates a little), but because Mr Market is trying to front run what they may do in the future.

Apple, NVDA, AMD come to mind. NVDA and AMD might be close to zeros actually - where would they get their chips made? Apple would be more than 50% off, but might somehow manage it.

I know BASF well. The stock looks cheap and pays a nice dividend, but I think they have structural issues now as a huge consumer of natural gas and electricity. I think this business may have a permanent input cost issue, due to dependency from Russian NG.

I don’t think there is specific evidence, it’s more a reaction to the events in Ukraine and meant to remove ambiguity about the US reaction if China gets too enterprising towards Taiwan.

This gets criticized right now, but was absolutely the right statement to make, imo: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/23/biden-says-us-willing-to-use-force-to-defend-taiwan.html

So us old grumps who grew up on the 60’s and 70’s are immune while the millennials need to hold on for dear life. Will be fun to see the political theatre about immunizations etc on that one. Mortality is about 1% potentially, so higher than COVID-19 but might hit younger people more. They are also more likely to participate in sex Orgies and other activities facilitating transmission.

@Viking Actually the Fed hasn't done much. They just raised the interest rates a tiny bit. What has happened is that the market participants are front running the Fed . Who know what really ends up happening. As far as corrections are concerned, they seem to happen now much quicker and are more vicious in a sense. The fall 2018 correction was quick, the COVID-19 correction decline was super fast (faster than 2008 in fact) and the current correction is also a quick one. No grinding bear markets any more. The whole correction started with speculative stuff like SPAC's, then the ARKK stuff and then moved to the growth stock generals (FANGS etc) as well as banks, consumer stocks and others. The current correction is just 3-4 month old really, but started last year in Spring with the highly speculative stuff (which pretty much got obliterated by now). If anything, i think this correction could be over quicker than people think, based on prior experience.

Trading around helps. Bear markets have dislocations all the time - stocks goes up while similar stocks don't etc for example , because of technical reasons. Fierce bear market rallies (Sell the rip) etc. Just don't make it the primary focus, because it leads to underperformance once the bear market turns into a bull market.

I think he can get out - happens all the time with mergers. Can't find financing etc., employees against him whatever. He does need to pay $1B most likely. NASDAQ comps (SNAP etc) have fallen ~25% since deal was announced. On a break, I think this could be a high twenties stock.

The modern nation state evolved to wage war more efficiently. Conscription as well as waging a total war was not possible before. One may or may not like it, but a amalgation of tiny little fiefdoms would not have a chance against modern organized army. It's jungle out there and without a nation and institution to protect out. we would be in the middle of it. The Ukraine is an example of what happens with a state on it's own when the large neighboring state goes bonkers.

Sold BMY. Worked out well.

@crs223 the libertarian utopia does not exist. Any Government might do a lot of things wrong, but try to do without it. Even if you do manage without it, the neighbor government / country will just move their army in your utopia and that will be it. As for Ukraine winning, I think it is possible, but might take a long time, unless the Russian army collapses , which I don't think is likely. They can win, when Ukraine as well as the territorial forces and newer formed volunteer units get NATO weaponry and fully trained on those as well as getting seasoned. (the Ukraine regulars are seasoned and some territorial forces are, but many are not and neither are most volunteer units at this point and they are taking heavy losses on front lines). If Ukraine is fully armed with western/ NATO weapons, I don't think the Russians have a chance against them any more.

German Russians clash over war in Russia. Apparently Putin's propaganda reaches far beyond Russia:

I think it's possible but would require a long time. it is possible, if the Ukrainian army's weapons are completely replaced and they are trained by western weapons. the western weapons are so superior to what Russian have, it's almost laughable. Think about the precision amo alone. the Russians barely have any. NATO has precision artillery that can put a 155mm round on top of you car in a parking lot 50km away. NATO just needs to make it abundantly clear that they support Ukraine with all they need in term of weapons and the economy. So as long as Ukraine is willing to fight, there is just no way Russia can win. They can choose to run their army and eventually conscripts into a meatgrinder in Ukraine and loose 100k eventually 200K people for what exactly? That also sends a nice message to China regarding Taiwan. Sure all this is expensive, but it is cheaper to deal with Hitler reincarnations doing their biding down the road. Edit - found this clip regarding precision ammo tests with 65km reach: Would love some of these bad boys being put to use in Ukraine actually.