Spekulatius

If any FIOS customer want to save some money here is a great deal: https://slickdeals.net/f/15417262-verizon-fios-black-friday-sale-200mbps-or-300mb-internet-w-12-months-of-disney-and-amc-for-39-99-mo-save-10-mo-on-unlimited-wireless?page=9#comments I have FIOS 400MB/$60 and changed it to 200MB/$40 month just calling in. I don’t get the Disney + etc that way though but it’s easier than cancelling and existing account and setting up a new one. From my experience , downgrading the speed from 400MB to 200MB makes no difference. I had upgraded from 100MB to 400MB a few month ago for a few bucks more and no one in Spek’s household even noticed (I didn’t tell them).

I like Henkel and owned it in the past. That said, results have stagnated (due to decreasing margins) since about 2017 and it seems correlated with management change. I believe assets are good (they are basically market leaders in adhesives) but they seem to struggle with execution. I believe the issues are fixable, the LT track record of Henkel is pretty good.

Bought at bit more SWMAY, HENKY, MXCT and a starter in ADSK. My wife and I also put 10k each into isavings bonds.

I got these issues too occasionally, so it is definitely not a local problem. The problem typically doesn’t last and is gone after a few minutes but before the change in the website design, this site was definitely more reliable. That said, the redesign has grown on me.

@LearningMachine I believe SHEN cost to connect a home to fiber is lower than cable because both are in different areas. their FTTH clusters target higher density areas than where their legacy cable networks are. I believe that’s why the costs are lower with Glo (FTTH). SHEN isn’t cheap and if you look at valuation metrics, make sure to account for the $400M in tax payment outflow in Q4 this year. This tax payment is related to their sale of tower asset that funded the large ~$18/share special dividend paid earlier this year. They do seem to be excellent operators (look at the LT stock chart) and their disclosure is excellent too and gives you some yardsticks how a good operator views the economics. Their 5G “Beam” broadband effort targets a very rural area in WV and they only have speeds up to 100MB. My sense is that they don’t feel they could compete with either cable much less fiber so they target areas that likely will have neither for the forseeable future. Even there, they seem to have trouble signing up customers, at least that’s my impression. The whole broadband space is becoming more interesting because now more technologies are competing with each other 5G, FTTH, cable, so it is interesting how it will shake out. I am watching closely FYBR,(small position), CNSL(ambitious FTTH buildout but weak financial profile ) T ( interesting because of corporate restructuring and surprisingly good FTTH signups) and TMUS (looks somewhat expensive but they have by far the best growth profile and spectrum assets to implement 5G at the lowest costs with a possible entry into broadband). So the whole space that has long been stagnant sees changing dynamics.

I think people switch from ADSL to FTTH in drives though. The fiber over builders I follow seem to concentrated on areas with little competition with mostly ADSL and at most one cable provider. If you do the math, a broadband connection is valued by the market at $6-7k per subscriber, to if you build at $1.5k per connection and manage to sign up 30% you are at $4.5k all in cost per customer which is less than $6-7k. If you target the right areas with reasonable density and only ADSL (which might be their own customers) they can sign up 30% in less than 3 years from what I have seen. Just look at $SHEN earnings report (they have excellent disclosure). I think even with one incumbent cable co, it might be doable to get decent economics. With 2, I think it’s a tough slog.

Looks like a new season of Westworld. Guest stars Howie Buffett and Kyle Rittenhouse play a father/ son team of iron willed farm boys taking back the park all by themselves.

Yep, Howie likes to play Sheriff. Will be great seeing how he guards the culture at Berkshire:

Just look at what happened with the Constitution DAO - they are getting killed with million $ on gas fees for what seems like a simple transaction. Using ETH as a transaction facilitating system does not seem ready by along shot, it is just too complex and expensive. Those that are saying look ETH price is going up missing the fact that gas fees tend to go up with the ETH price, making it even less useful. It's all by design:

I would hope so, but unfortunately that’s unlikely. What was a bit differently is that Sokol’s offense was directly related to his position at Berkshire while Howard’s is unrelated. Howard’s matter is more in line with Monish Pabrai’s Harvard MBA disaster.

A lot of people do complain about Malone’s companies. In fact I would rather go elsewhere typically. Most of his entities have been duds - LILA, LBTYA, DISCA, QRTEA. The only one that really worked was CHTR with Sirius/ LSXMK just doing OK. When his levered equity does work, it tends to works very very well.

Yes, there is a ton of growth names that are down 50-70% and they don't look remotely like a bargain to me. no valuation floor whatsoever. On another note but somewhat related, I had a talk with my brother yesterday (he lives in Germany) and he told me straight up, he only buys stocks "with a story". He is not interested in a stock based on valuation alone whatsoever. this is interesting because I don't think he is even a reckless investor (or speculator). He is now interested in hydrogen tech (which I told him is likely dead on arrival since batteries are better) and would never buy anything that has to do with hydrocarbons whatsoever. He did buy some nicotine/cig stocks after I recommended them to him to his credit. I also pitched SWMAY since it does have a story. I guess it is about:

I think you may be seeing the result of their order price improvement. I often get fills between half way between ask and spread with Fidelity.

More interesting may be to buy something like PYPL ~40% down. I would be more interested if it goes to 150 personally (6x revenue which is where it was trading for pre-COVID-19) Fintech has gotten hammered hard lately.

LOL, that's like a DMV experience. I guess they went from " we open accounts for you without knowing" towards " in order to open an account, you need to run through a no man's land with toxic gas from their IT system, mortar & artillery from compliance and targeted machine gun fire from tellers. Good luck and may have have god mercy with your soul".

I think we are looking at the golden age of automating services. Restaurants, retail, banks, insurance etc. will all need to be able to operate with much less employees.

LOL, I had a similar experience years back in 2018 with Wells. I had to do one large wire transfer to buy my house. Their branch is more than one hour away in CT (they closed the few branches in MA) so I made an appointment and yet when I arrived at the Hartford branch the fellow doing these wires wasn't there. Then finally the Branch manager was kind enough to do it for me. Took me more than 1 hour to get a job done that should take 5 minutes at most. I closed my accounts with them shortly thereafter. OK n=1 sample size but again they used to have excellent customer service when I banked with them in CA and it has been downhill for a decade at least back then.

I don't think the Metaverse will be outside FB core competency. it's hard to tell because nobody really knows what it is going to be or look like. if I had to explain it to a 7 year old, I would say "metaverse= Internet in 3D", if I would explain it to some average guy it would be Metaverse = immersive Internet. One thing is sure - it will have a very strong hardware component because you can't do any of this without creating some new hardware that creates the immersive environment. As someone working in optics, I am very exited about what people are going to come up with. On another note, I think it is unlikely and basically unconveivable that any company controls the Metaverse, so I think FB idea is just that's it's the next frontier and they want to own prime real estate in it, as well as allows others (less tech savy) to partake there.

I think it is likely that FB develops their own operating system for the Metaverse. It is unlikely that something geared towards gaming like Unity meets their requirements. After all, they intend to put $10B a year into this effort and that should be some development. Unity looks totally overvalued to me and a lot of this seems based on the Metaverse narrative. I think if FB buys something, it is going to be a few private companies that nobody of us heard of yet.

Headline could be: Boomer is locked in his closet and live streaming “Bitcoin is worthless”. His wife doesn’t care.

FRFHF for a quick gain.

Starter in V @$200

The thread predictably ended up in the gutter. I don't own bitcoin (probably never will) but if you don't like something or don't understand it, it is easier to ignore it and move on. It's not like you have to own or use it.

The only difference I can see is that the dollar is demanded by a large government who will hurt you if you don't pay them a part of everything you create in dollars I think you got this right. Piss off the US government bad enough and these guys are coming for you regardless where you are. BTC cannot compete with this:

BTC is easier to buy and sell, so it's better bet for speculation. Last time I checked the price for one BTC was a whole lot higher than the price for a Green Bay pack certificate so I am voting for BTC.