Spekulatius

Ouch! This ought to be the winner here.

On a long enough timeframe, every crook ends up being a philanthropist.

Adds: CMCSA, TPB new: LBRDA

I read this book a long time ago. It was quite a popular read in the 70's and I think I read it in the 80's. it struck a cord with many people who remember the Nazi's as there was a lot similarities. I think it does rhyme with George Orwell's work. All these books should be studied in schools more. One interesting thing I remember is that some randomness in punishment is a feature, not a bug in Stalinism. The reason was that this randomness did strike fear in everyone, because literally anyone was breaking some rules somewhere in the Soviet Union (as well as any totalitarian regime). That was one of ways Stalinism was keeping control. The other dictators after that were totalitarian too but never kept the same randomness and fear in the populace than Stalin did.

Spekulatius' tombstone engraving: People got rich buying the stocks he sold.

Why is Steinhardt so despised? Is it for being a modern day Indiana Jones acquiring with stolen antiques? Sexual harassment allegations?

Adding to VMW this AM around $113.

My one nightmare scenario is fat fingering a digit when I put in trades about high value (>$1000 OTC stocks). The second one is to hit the "Close all Position" button in IBKR. I thought about opening up a paper trading account just to determine what the next step is...

Sometimes, AI yields interesting results (from my IBKR news feed. I think this is freemium toggle):

Yeah, I like it just like it is. It prevent too much sewage from seeping over. I have not posted in the politics section since it moved as far as I remember. I occasionally take a look there but just reading the posts compels me to stay away. There is an occasional politic slant here every once in a while but they peter out quickly unlike before, and that’s how it should be.

Hilarious: https://fortune.com/2021/12/03/better-com-ceo-attacks-laid-off-employees-blind-message-board/ Garg posted a series of messages seen by Fortune on an anonymous professional network days after he laid off more than 900 employees from his online mortgage company. “You guys know that at least 250 of the people terminated were working an average of 2 hours a day while clocking in 8 hours+ a day in the payroll system? They were stealing from you and stealing from our customers who pay the bills that pay our bills. Get educated,” Garg wrote on Thursday under the username “uneducated” on professional network Blind.

Added a bit to various positions - SWMAY, VNT, PSMT, PINS.

No state or local taxes on isavings bonds. I think these bonds are a great way to park money for 12 month and depending on the situation and the interest at that point possibly longer. It’s simply part of my liquidity management framework.

16x EBIT is not cheap at all for Mexico imo. On top of that, I think the holdings of KOF and Heineken need to be discounted as it is deadwood in a sense. A 20% Holding discount at a minimum is appropriate for indirect stock holdings.

how do you think about FMX valuation? Optically it does not look cheap and part of it is due to holding structure (47% KOF and ~14.8% Heineken ownership). The owners see very little of these cash flows.

I know it's not the best idea, but has anyone looked at Mitsubishi Real Estate $8802.T ? They do own some of the best real estate in Japan (Marounochi district) and maybe in the world Their results are pretty decent actually (we are talking about net earnings here , not FFO) and yet the shares trade at 15x Earnings and 1.1x price/book. Decent operating numbers: https://www.mec.co.jp/e/investor/irlibrary/materials/pdf/2022/2/irpresentation2022_2.pdf And yes, they do own offices, but they are mostly A+ and Asians with their tiny apartments and culture can't work from home. I don't own this. it's not a get rich stock either, maybe a stay rich. if I were a pension fund manager and had to allocate RE as part of my portfolio, I would look into this. Maybe even a good inflation hedge. Pays only a ~2.2% dividend, but buying back some stock as well.

I think people make the 70's worse than they were. Sure, the 70's had two major crisis - 1974 and 1979 - both oil price shocks, but there was actually pretty healthy growth in between. For example I did a quick calculation of the geometrical GDP growth in the 70's and got ~2.52%, also this was extremely volatile. I also read (but can't confirm) that real wages did fairly well in the 70's until 1979 when the economy was throttled by the oil price shock and higher interest rates (this 15% inflation caused a significant loss in purchasing power because the wages did not adjust with inflation any more). I believe it is the oil price shocks and the miserable end of the 70's decade that stuck to the memories, not the fairly healthy growth in between. Anyways, this 2.52% growth rates is higher than what we have right now over the last decade:

Bought some DISCK in various accounts. Also a starter lot of PSMT.

I agree. Talk is cheaper than shorting.

There is very little appetite to do lockdowns anywhere, blue or red state. That said, in Europe and Germany, Hospitals running full forces hands. I know for fact that in some areas in Germany (Bavaria and Saxonia), hospital were running full and patients had to be airlifted to other parts in Germany with less case loads. Somewhat surprising given the higher vaccination rate there, but keep in mind that the Astra Zeneca vaccine was widely used and it has proven to have lower efficacy. My brother in Germany has a friend who ended up going to the hospital from COVID-19 even though he was double vaxxed with Astra Zeneca to add an anecdote. He is in his mid fifties. Note that this has nothing to do yet with the Omnicron variant, which i believe to be not yet a factor for In Europe, but will be. I do think we will see a surge in cases in the US too post Thanksgiving (cases should start going up in a week or so) and Xmas. However, it is hospital utilization that drives decisions (or should) not case load. Maybe the emergency authorization of the Pfizer antiviral helps out too. It's a good idea to get the booster shot, if you haven't already. I got mine last month. Back to the topic of this thread, I wonder if this gives the Fed an excuse to delay tapering. The Fed announced an end to tapering at the end of this year, but it seems to me that they are just looking for excuses to delay anything that could cause pain to the market.

My quick math on $SHEN is ~$77M in 2021 Capex creates about 38.5k in homes added (this was from Q3 2020 to Q3 2021 so a bit of a timing mismatch). Sp this translates into 77M/0.0385M = $2000 per connected home in Capex. this is a bit higher than the cost per homes added in their IR presentation ($1000-1400) but lower than the number from Tucsow which is about $2300) . I think this Capex number may contain some expenses for future home connections but I am not sure. Their ARPU for Glo fiber $74 9dropping from $79) , so they make $888 in revenue from each connection. If the $2000/connection is the true cost, this would not be a great return, if the $1000-14000 is given correct, it looks much better. Again this is a cost and landgrab game. if you need to compete against a cable co that charges $50 and offers a few hundred MB/sec in a community, I don't think a competing fiber offering that comes in at $75 will do that great. If the only choice is DSL for $30-40 then I think many will upgrade to fiber. I think the greenfield Fiber builders go for the latter mostly except in communities where they can make connections much cheaper. https://investor.shentel.com/static-files/0d64f171-f43b-41b1-8257-8b07e8d327af

Omicron $OMIC coin is a 4+ bagger in one day. This game isn’t that difficult, people.

People don’t give a damn about NAV discounts. If anything, those discounts have been going up over the years, not going down. Examples are Exor, SFTBY, PRSOY, Bollore. These discounts don’t go away by themselves. Only value realization, simplifications, buybacks or structural changes will do so.

It really depends. I did make an A-B test(FIOS and Charter Cable) in my former house in Long Island and FIOS was rock solid while Charter had issues (equipment was lousy, connection sometimes unreliable). I played an online game at this time and did a fair amount of investigation - ping measurement, ping tracing) and could identify infrequent issues that were even evident sometimes using regular internet or streaming, especially on high usage snow days. Speed is actually not the main factor - I had speeds from 100Mb to 1Gb from the two vendors and everything at 100MB and above feels pretty much the same. I have FIOS in my current house and still use the same Gateway router I bought in 2015 It’s rock solid with good wifi signal everywhere ( my house is quite large -3500 sqft). I do agree that speed (and price sells) but I don’t think it is the main factor determining a good broadband service.

I don’t know the answer to this question, but if you build FTTH at 1.5k a pop and manage to signup 30% of the connections, then I think you are doing OK. This is very achievable when competition is weak (only DSL). If there is already an incumbent or worse 2 on cable with decent speeds, the economics don’t work. The underlying assumption is that once you lay fiber a d have a decent market share in a semi rural market, who is going to come in and stir the pot? It does not make sense unless the challenge can put in fiber much cheaper per pop. The key to FTTH buildout is to have low costs , which means sufficient density and weak competition (ADSL). That way, you can gain market share quickly. Without these two, the FTTH buildout economics are challenging. The high density areas are mostly picked over as there are generally two competitors already. The smaller FTTH builder that I know pick the areas carefully. The larger ones like ATT and CNSL target areas where they have existing customers on DSL that they can switch over to FTTH once build out and hence future proof the customer relationship.