Spekulatius

I don’t think Thai people haggle about the price of street food. The reason you could feed 3 locals for the price of one farang alone is that they raised the prices for you.

I get a sinking feeling when I read about value in the shipping sector.

I think over time, Stelco is a zero, it’s just a matter of time. Blast steel mills in NA don’t work economically any more, as the mini mills over time eat their lunch, breakfast and dinner.

Can you comment at all on RYCEY? Even with the pullback it doesn't seem that terribly cheap to me but I admit I don't understand the financials. I look at RYCEY‘s valuation in terms of EV/ sales. It trades at around 1xEV/ sales, but once profitability is addressed, it should be able to get to 2x eventually. Now add done revenue growth to it, one can easily see more than a 2 bagger. Bases on Current results, you are correct , Rolls Royce isn’t cheap at all. I am optimistic though, because there is just such a strong moat around this business and there is really only one competitor ( and Pratt& Whittey to some extend). Likewise logic can be applied to GE, except I have more concerns about their accounting.

There is some an interesting implication for politics here, as there is a tendency for super rich to get involved more so in the US than anywhere else. Not all of them are A$$holes, but some of them are. We probably should caution the motives to “serve the country” a bit in general. It may just be another way to assert status and power in some cases.

I think these “perfect trades” are a well known staple in trading. It’s called picking up pennies in front of a steamroller.

It’s better to be a rich A-hole than a poor A-hole.

Oddlots –How financial repression in China helped cause the trade war https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/odd-lots/id1056200096?i=1000451738498 It’s pretty good to at explaining the underlying reasons for the trade imbalances (saving rates!) and what may happen next.

Have been doing something similar myself, bit it's based entirely on "when markets do well, Trump has enough flexibility to hang himself with it". As long as that dynamic holds, this trade will be profitable. But hard to know when he finally decides to let things ride OR isn't going to save the market by backing down. It’s basically a bet that Trump blows some kind of gasket, or that an generally overvalued market falls or that the continued weakness in many sectors leads to some economic trouble impacting the stock market. The amazing thing to me is not that any of the above frequently occurs, but that Mr Market returns to a state of piece and quite in between where puts become cheap again (with allow VIX). That said, the 3:0 is probably just luck. There is no free lunch and sooner or later Mr Market will score against that trade.

The US is one of the few countries without law governing how data of individuals are used. We are in good company in that respect - China and Russia don’t have any laws either. This was actually a discussion as early as the 80‘s in Germany, when basic rules were developed. The EU now has laws, although the effectiveness is another matter.

Or buy puts when VIX is<14 and SPY >300. I am 3:0 on this trade. I think I made about 70% on average each time, just closed my last round yesterday. It’s definitely a no brainer, especially when in addition to above Trump says that trade talks are going well. I am almost serious about this.

I ended up adding to FOX and GILD and bought back some RYCEY

Sold my SPY puts.

Besides just the fact that they keep investing in crap business, they don’t seem to dump the losing bets either or they can’t. The Stelco investment really got me to second guess. I think they are like 0:3 with their commodity investments. Why don’t they just put some money in Enbridge or something like this. It huge and liquid too and Canadian. They could just cash in the dividend checks yielding ~6.5% and wouldn’t really need to think. This would work even if the shares don’t go anywhere.

A coworker once told me, after we had some political discussion at work, that “Opinions are like A$$holes, everyone got one, and no one cares about any except their own.” I guess it’s basically true, especially when discussion politics. I have also decided to block out the board, I have enjoyed to sometimes post (or troll there), but I think it’s just a waste of time and energy.

ANTM doesn't look cheap at all. Could you share the thesis? It’s GARP. ~$19/ share in earnings and a growth rate > 10%. It’s not crazy cheap, but it trades at a historically large discount to market in terms of PE. This discount is due to political uncertainty (some Democratic candidates proposing single payer /Medicare for all).

I beg to differ somewhat. I don’t condone restricting investing in China, but I can understand to forbid the nefarious VIE structures via letterbox holding companies in tax havens for listed companies. The fact is that as an investor in BABA and all these listed companies, you do not own these companies directly, own a contractural right (anyone ever seen these contracts, because I haven’t ) via a multilayered hold8ng structure while in realty a Chinese person or entity really owns this. This was done to get around the problem that the Chinese government does not allow direct ownership of Chinese companies in many sectors to foreigner. It is also a structure that is ideally set up to scam foreign investor out their money without any recourse. so, I think a case can be made that the US should not allow this structure for US listed stocks and the Chinese have a choice either to change their ownership rules ( just like most other countries) and allow foreign ownership and essentially open their capital markets, or those companies delist and trade in the OTC markets.

I like FOX ( as a business, content is another matter), but don’t think that BRK want to be seen controlling a major media/news company. It‘s just too much headaches. I can see them buying a stake or a large position in DIS at the right price. I think there are a lot of business that BRK would be interested in, but the question is more of a seller parting a price that Warren is comfortable with. That intersection is very very small apparently.

I think this one could go from $35B in valuation to bankruptcy in record speed. Someone twittered that with equity market closed, the bonds now start to get into trouble. Then there will be a cascade down to owners of RE too. You have got to admire Neumann here. He made hundred of millions with a total unviable business that didn’t even make it to the IPO.

Napkin thesis came from a recent WFC report on the health care insurance group. ANTM trades at an almost 40% discount to market, which is close to a recent trough discount in 2013 (42%). Average discount to market is ~23%. ANTM is the largest insurer in the market it operates together with UNH. scale matters and health I surname is a pretty good business. Stock trades on political concerns (it fell to a recent low during the first democratic debate when Medicare for all become a big talking point), but those political trends tend to be overrated by Mr Market. If you look further back, then ANTM has traded at single digit PE vs 12x now, so there room to fall.

Bought a bit more FOX and a starter in ANTM.

Softbank / Son are the Hunt brothers of venture capital : https://www.foxbusiness.com/financials/softbank-buy-wework-shares-ipo https://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/09/silver-thursday-hunt-brothers.asp Even back then, Saudi‘s were involved as well.

If you liked this, check this out: https://josephnoelwalker.com/69-the-world-according-to-a-maverick-beach-biding-stock-picker-john-hempton/ It's like 3-hours of Hempton.. Almost through it and I agree it’s a great podcast. It’s interesting that he mentions a Chinese bromide manufacturer as a fraud, which I recall as GFRE and I looked at this in 2010/11 as it was a favorite on the message board I was frequenting ( and still do, Irs Mike Burry‘s old thread on SI) https://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=26825434

Sold GTS today for a quick small gain.

None of this would have mattered if the news hadn’t picked up on this and the IPO had gone through. The board of directors and Son would have nodded to everything Neumann would have proposed.