Spekulatius

Pete, you can't hide your nationality! [ : - ) ] I’m not trying to. I’m just pointing out that the economic risk in the U.K. is not Brexit, it’s the very real possibility that our next Chancellor (finance minister) is a self described Marxist with Maoist sympathies. Possibly true. In any way, I will stay clear of U.K. stocks until this is cleared up. I own some Anglo US utility stocks PPL and NGG and I have heard this flares about nationalization, which from my perspective isn’t a problem, as long as shareholders are fairly compensated. I do recall the nationalization of French banks in the early 80’s, but shareholders then were fairly compensated in thet case, so from my perspective as an investor, it’s not a problem. As far as Brexit, I am sure in the long run, Britain will be fine, but it could be a tough 5 years after the Brexit occurs. I also think that London’s role as a financial center will be significantly diminished, but even that may be better for the UK in the long run.

I don’t think banks are going to crash in Europe, it’s more like a slow motion train wreck. The biggest problem are not bad assets, it’s lack of profits. A bank with a 2% or less NIM just doesn’t work very well, but they is what most banks have to content isn’t in Europe. it’s the same with some savings and loans, they can survive, but they can’t proper. the exception seems to be LLoyd (LYG) which has a NIM close to 3%. that extra 1% is a 50% higher margin than with a 2%NIm bank, which makes all the dollar difference in the world. Of course Britain is very likely going to see a hard Brexit and possibly a recession and after that, banking in London won’t be the same again, IMO. On rule I live by is they buying a bank stock is always a bet on the home region/ country economy. If the local economy/ country is not going to do well, the bank won’t do well either, even if it’s well managed. I think UBS is a differnt case, because it is 50% global asset manager, 25% Swiss bank and 25% investment bank, it should be less dependent on local macro than most other banks in Europe.

Good write up. Ubernsncertainly more than an app, it connects two pools,nahe driver pool and the rider pool, both of which benefit from scale and network effects. I certainly miswrote when I stated that it’s just an app, it’s more than that. I do think I am correct when stating thet autonomous vehicles are more of a threat to Uber and Lyft than they are a tailwind, because they negotiate the network effects from the driver pool, although this will take a long time. autonomous driving is probably 10 years out anyways.

Thanks for sharing above article, The scope of the fraud is true truly staggering and will be very expensive for the enables that are going to get caught. The EU has become much less forgiving to while collar fraud, tax evasion, and collaboration to stiff competition than in the past and the fines have become much much higher,

Also, Uber and Lyft have no advantage as it pertains to electric and/or autonomous vehicles. They have a user base and an app, that’s it. If a company comes out with an autonomous vehicle and they have capital and a user base like GOOG or Apple, they could put out Uber and Lyft out of business. There is no indication to me thet the benefit of lower cost from electric or autonous vehicles (if indeed there is one) will accrue to Uber or Lyft.

I somehow feel this thread has gone off track.

I think the ECB finally concluding their quantitative easing enables the FED to raise interest rates without the USD shooting up. The latter wouldn’t be good for the US industry. I think we are leaving the Goldilocks zone where we could have economic growth , no inflation and low interest rates at the same time. Now it’s one vs the other. We all know that interest rates are gravity for asset valuations , so higher interest rates will prevent bubbles from occurring. To better to deal with bubbles early on than to firefight the issue after a huge bubble has popped. I think Greenspan was wrong when he stated that he does not care about asset bubbles as long as inflation is low.

All I see is a lot of money vanishing without a trace. I think we soon have a new expression- getting “blockchained”.

Sounds great, where can you spend them? You can’t spent them, but you can fondle them on your touchscreen.

Pretty well thought out post. It certainly feels like there is a bubble in tech/ venture capital where it’s not even clear to me that the business model will allow profitability in thrnforrseeable future. Companies like Wework, Uber, Lyft, Tesla, Cannabis stocks, cloud and payment companies but also the self driving ventures come to my mind. most of this is equity, so a collapse should not lead to a debt crisis. I can see collateral damage in bubble area real estate (Bay area). Maybe just a other indication that we are late in the cycle.

Is this Cequence energy? https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CQE.TO/profile?p=CQE.TO I don’t see the 20 bagger here, but haven’t looked to hard.

Actually, i think market performance and GNP growth arnt necessarily correlated. We are starting to see increases in labor costs and going forward most likely inflationary pressures from the trade war, which in addition to interest rates aren’t necessarily good for the stock market. I believe we could see falling stock prices even if we don’t have a recession, simply due to multiple compression ( higher interest rates) and a reduction in profitability (due to inflationary pressures).

On the topic of this Thread, I bought some FDX and TOL today. I also added a bit of NXPI. TOL trades for 1.05x tangible book, If I see this correctly. I think that actually lower than during the financial crisis when they were making losses. I am also tempted buying some FCAU or EXOR Holding stock.

I think the HFT are the true customers of the exchanges. That may be all one needs to know.

This is an area of significant current research. Here, for example, are recent thoughts from someone researching this question: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-singh-food-deserts-nutritional-disparities-20180207-story.html Lazy and stupid don't appear to be the reasons. Instead, the reasons appear to be deeper and, in my view, profoundly sad. At the end of the day, I think the poor are essentially the same as everyone else -- same hopes, same dreams, same love for their children, same fallibilities -- they just have a lot less money. If I was working two minimum wage jobs while taking care of a few kids, and the only respite I could find was a bit of nicotine, maybe I'd smoke too. A lot of the poorer people have very little time to prepare meals, because they work several jobs. I got aware of this because my wife worked and heard what the techs were doing at her facility. Most of them were working two jobs, some of them 3 jobs. There are other reasons and they were undoubtedly wasting money too, but they was one factor that was evident.

Recent buys are NXPI ( add ), EUK3.F (European ports) and TFSL (S&L).

Don’t worry about what Powell says at all, he is a cheerleader for the Fed / his employer. It’s his job. Watch what he does.

I agree that performance has nothing to do wether a pitch is selected or not. I suggest plentiful dropping of hedge fund key words like misunderstood, transformation, masked, free cash flow,, hidden, catalyst, investor base, capital allocation etc. to make it last the reviews, based on what I am reading. FWIW, I don’t think the quality of most pitches is very high in VIC, but I still like it as a resource to obtain ideas.

I am actually surprised that OP can get a hedge fund off the ground in the US even though he does not live in the US. It seems to me that his investors must already place a decent amount of trust into him, since he could well defraud them and perhaps never get caught ( depending on where he lived). In that case, I would just put the personal account into an index fund in his home country. A cynical person would say thet by doing so, he will likely outperform his clients ::).

I agree. I hold some OTC stocks and also get funny marks with Fidelity, IB and with Scottrade ( when I had them). It doesn’t concern me at all, but I can see this being a nuisance when you manage other people’s money and the funny mark gap owns to be at the end of the quarter. Of course, if you have a KT view, it shouldn’t matter. I've got to disagree...If TDA can't tally OTC correctly...what else are they F'king up? I'm not talking about small amounts or percentages either...this is major goofs. Even if you look at the spreads, and the likely trade price on the otc's, it still doesn't come close to the errors that TDA is making. Scottrade had NO problem at all doing this. I think at least with IB and possibly with Fidelity, they don’t get the bid ask correct. I have seen them sometimes value OTC stocks based on the last trade, or based in thr last bid. the problem is that at least IB often does not show the bid ask correctly, so I can see how they mark the stock incorrectly (I have seen some obscure stocks I own being valued at close to zero, even though the last trade (which may have been days ago) was for $1000 +/ share. Personally, I This does not bother me at all. The bigger problem is that I can’t rely on IB’s bid/ask spreads for trading, I need to log in Fidelity (which is usually correct, but ironically does not allow to buy this stock) to obtain the bid ask spread, before I put an order in IB.

Dairy farmers seem to have political influence, same in Europe, where there are a lot of subsidies for farmers and milk too. I think the problem is that there are lot of small farms which aren’t very productive and larger ones, which tend to be more productive. So if subsidies were canceled, you would see complained and stories in thr news about small farmers going bankrupt/closing shop.

Surely the infrastructure bottleneck is only an opportunity for ENB in as much as they are able deploy a relatively small (relative to the base) amount of additional capital? That’s hardly transformative to profitability. Whereas if additional pipe causes the gas price to (say) double, that is definitely transformative for an E&P. Would you mind sharing how you value ENB? I value ENB on both EV/EBITDA and more importantly on DCF/share (similar to owners earnings). ENB trades at a 10% DCF yield currently, which is way too cheap, given their ability to growth the dividend in the high single digits (goal is 10% for a couple of years). Their assets have a high moat for the most part and the future cash flows can be estimated with a very high predictability. I think even 8% DCF yield may be cheap given RNB asset quality and their current growth profile, which gives you a 50% return potential within 2-3 years. Note that ENB is more like a liquid play in Canada and most Ng transmission assets are in the US (from the SE/SEP merger), but the same logic applies.

Seems to me that Infrastructure is the bottleneck and one should go long Pipeline companies? I own a boatload if ENB, which is exceptionally cheap (imo) and pays you to wait. No need to overthink this and ness with E&P’s. That’s how I look at this. There might’ve good deals to be had in E&P stocks, but it’s hard to pick the winners, imo,

I agree. I hold some OTC stocks and also get funny marks with Fidelity, IB and with Scottrade ( when I had them). It doesn’t concern me at all, but I can see this being a nuisance when you manage other people’s money and the funny mark gap owns to be at the end of the quarter. Of course, if you have a KT view, it shouldn’t matter.

2 packs of Laughing cow cheese wedges at Amazon for $16.95 are the real ripoff: The Laughing Cow, Creamy White Cheddar Flavor, 6 Oz, 8 .75 Oz Wedges (2 Pack) (White Cheddar) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Y4K45CQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_CdcTBbJ1DH9H8