Spekulatius

"Shadow and bone" is good too. I think "The Witcher" S2 is great and maybe a legit successor to GOT in spirit. I also enjoy "Wheel of Time". I wouldn't mind a bit more action but the characters are pretty good. lot's of fantasy stuff to watch nowadays.

Ouch - this seems pretty damning for the sponsor and maybe the entire business. Paraphrasing: "We have a time period of XX years so we finance out properties with this timeframe in mind. if the wheels come off after this (Due to higher interest rates) it's not my problem - it's the investors" Self appraising properties is also a nice deal for he sponsor, not the investor.

I enjoyed “Don’t look up !“ much more than the middling reviews indicate. “The power of the Dog” is more a drama than a western, but the cast, storytelling and setting are outstanding. Not enough bullets were spent in the “Matrix Resurrection” imo. Ok, but not great. TV series “Vienna Blood” (on Amazon Video until the end of the year), “The Expanse” (new season), “The Witcher” (ditto) and “Cowboy Bebop” are great. Edit, I am also enjoying the lighthearted “All creatures big and small” (Amazon video available until EOY), Brit TV at its finest.

Has any of these cannabis stocks paid any capital back to owners? EBITDA sounds great, but net income seems to be way less impressive and FCF of course is non- existent because of growth with acquisitions. Another thing that bothers me is why backwards integrate into growing at all? It require huge Capex and in the end, it’s an agricultural business. I don’t see any moat with growing, the moat lies with distribution (mostly) and perhaps in the future with branding. As with the illegal stuff or the dealers around the block, where is the “quality control” with those? Their weed could be contaminated with pesticides or worse fentanyl ? I don’t think they sell edibles either. I think the whole sector is basically momentum trade and probably best done with ETF’s. I think it is likely that if the legalization agin gets into front and center, people are going to buy in. This would be a classical buy the rumor, sell the news kind of case, imo, because I am not sure that federal legalization will be a positive for the operators. It will be a positive for society, I think.

This is actually a well written article on the demise of the USSR: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-did-the-evil-empire-collapse-11640185066?mod=hp_listc_pos3

To be fair, Masa Son is a visionary CEO.

Does any of the superusers have an opinion where the the moat lies - with the dispensary or the brand? I feel it’s more the dispensary than the brand. The brands often seem crude and archaic in terms of packaging. Although from limited experience some stuff “works” better than others even if both have the same nominal dose.

Look at the expected lifespan of a business vs a house on a decent location.

MSM looks a bit like a value trap to me. Gross profit has remained the same since 2016 and something starts to eat their relatively fat margins. I guess competition and transparency from online pricing is a problem for them and makes their business more competitive.

Yes, inflation and especially accelerating inflation is a really bad thing for insurers. It is even worse I’d interest rates remain suppressed and they can’t make up for more expensive (due to inflation) claims with higher investment income.

I think Cannabis is like a modern day gold rush - the characters involved aren’t the most knowledgeable or trustworthy, they are those who want to get it done, bend the rules a bit and be the first.

Easy to do in a screener. There are a lot of stocks just scraping above the lows: https://finviz.com/screener.ashx?v=111&f=idx_sp500,ta_highlow52w_a0to5h,ta_sma200_pb&ft=4 If you adjust this (0-5% off from 52 week lows ) to 0-20%, you get a lot of hits with this screen.

Thanks for your post. Glasshouse looked dubious to me when Aaron posted about. I have not looked at Verano closely and it’s obvious they don’t tout their Executive bios too much and they are indeed very unimpressive. Vernon’s CEO George Archos experience was basically just running a few Chicago area restaurants: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-archos-6a9455172 Maybe that’s par for the course in this place.

Loved Mr Nobody (on HBO). Great storyline, cast, soundtrack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Nobody_(film)

I have this issue also occasionally and only on one computer. It may well be a browser setting. Sometimes I get a message that a newer version is available. That also sometimes forces a new login. Other than this occasional nuisance, everything works great.

Aaron Edelbert @aaronvalue on Twitter is worth a follow. I think he also started a fund in the cannabis space. I can’t say I am too impressed with his pics, (Glasshouse $GLASF anyone) but the whole sector is weak. He is also bullish on VRNOF which looks reasonable at a 10k foot level. My only exposure to this sector is via TPB. I think one issue with the bull argument for this sector based on federal legislation (decriminalization) is that the ensuing competition will just destroy the profit margin for all these players. So it’s not clear to me that having federal legislation is bullish at all for cannabis stocks. It will be great for customers though.

Adds to DISCK and a bit more PINS. CGO (Canadian/US cable co)

Yep that is very true. In an ideal world, communism might work but in a real world it never did and it want for the lack of trying. I was born in West Germany and have an anecdote to share about empty stores. When I was 18, we did a class trip to East Germany in the early 80's. I recall we were walking the show off shopping street in Leipzig. Lot's of stores there but not much to sell. All of a sudden, we saw a small line forming in front a store about 100 meters in front of us. Then people started to rush towards it. A women next to us yelled " A line, a line there must be something to sell!" before she took off as well. Except nobody could tell what was selling there, if anything at all. We later met some East German folks over some beers later and they told us this happens all the time and rushes set in where even the silliest items (soap bars etc) periodically sell out because people think they may get the last of it. Imagine living with toilet paper shortages etc like in March/April 2020 all your life.

The risk is the same it was in 1999/2000. Since the indices are market cap weighted fund and stuff like TSLA and now AAPL made it to high or even ridiculous valuations, index fund are not safe or conservative investments any more and will fall hard when those large cap monsters start to see multiple compression. In 1999 it was JDSU, Cisco, MSFT, INTC ORCL and SUN and many others that got into the SP500 and even more so the QQQ and when those stocks deflated, the index funds deflated with them. We now have similar things going on with AAPL, TSLA and others that dominate the QQQ and to a lesser but still significant extent the SPY. Seems like a great time for equal weighted index funds or just actively managed funds that avoid with excessive valuations for a while.

I believe if real interest rates ( net of inflation) turn positive and become significant- let's say 3% - then hard assets like real estate will fall. Right now, we have interest rates of 1.5% (10 year treasury) and inflation of ~7%, so the real interest rate is -5.5%. that's pretty much an ideal environment for real estate. If interest rates go to 10% while inflation is at 10%, to throw out an example, then I expect real estate to do fine.

There are a lot of value stocks today. The dispersion in valuation is probably not as large than in 1999/2000 but isn't to different either. TSLA is still worth $970B , probably more than the rest of the cart industry combined just to name one nonsensical example.

$180M is peanuts but I bet this number has gone up a lot since they became much more attractive in November after the interest rate reset. In the end, isavings are pretty niche (none of my other friends knew about them) and because of the 10k limitation / . individuals only it's going to be fairly limited in terms of total savings volume.

My guess is that if we indeed get 10% interest rates, we will have probably 15% inflation. In that scenario, real estate will be fine, especially if you have levered it with a mortgage. My wife was keen on paying back our mortgage (less than ~40% LTV) but not since we put some of her money into the 7.12% isavings bonds while we pay 2 3/4% on our mortgage. These type of disconnects shouldn't exist but they do.

For those interested in defense service cos. $SAIC is currently a decent value proposition. They do some critical works on advanced projects, like project management and system integration. I bought some shares today at $82.XX (starter position). There is some recent VIC writeup too. It’s a boring slow growing business, but generates a lot of cash. FCF yield should be close to 10%, It’s a great business in a way, because there is virtually no Capex required. While the business itself is low growth, the FCF allows for accretive acquisitions or share buybacks from time to time. They did the last one a couple of years ago and have now worked down the leverage to about 3.5x and restarted buybacks very recently. I like SAIC better than close peer LDOS, but that’s subjective somewhat.