Spekulatius

Sold BMRN on disappointing trial results near the high of today. Made some money ,but has underperformed the market.

Cathie‘s research seems to lead to massive losses too, now that the AUM is large. This year, her funds are underperforming. For awhile, it seems that she was able to create her own tailwind due to rising AUM and probably other following her, but that seems to be over know and now she seems to daytrade positions and buy the dip on has been stocks like ZM, likes boomer. Well, technically speaking, she is a boomer.

Looks like stuff ( biotech etc) that you almost couldn’t give away a few weeks ago now went on roll and is up ~20-30% all of a sudden. I sold off most of my risk on stocks in my IRA’s today, which probably means they keep on moving. Go figure….

IDA made it to the Northeast and caused flash floods there. I think more people (44!) died in NY and NJ than in Louisiana: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-city-mayor-declares-state-emergency-after-record-breaking-rain-2021-09-02/ We had some heavy rain falls in my area but nothing out of the ordinary.

Reducing PROSUS / PROSY.

Buffet really should buy gold with some of his cash, as a store of value, but he doesn't like it either.

I think you can rely on SS, it is just a matter on if these payments are going to be curtailed in some way, but I am pretty sure that all of us will get SS payments upon retirement.

The results were mediocre as long as they disclosed. Several plant explosions. Goodwill writeoffs of several acquisitions. I think the change in leadership is long overdue. Lubrizol is at least a decent business and perhaps a great business if it well run. It should be generating a lot of cash. Look at ASH or Fuchs Petrolub.

So far no issues. My wife has ~90k miles on the car. Mileage is better than 30 mpg ( we drive a lot around town), better than my Hyundai Elantra (which is a few years older but has the same mileage).

Interest rates are a significant factor that prevent rerating. A second factor is Prem’s volatile performance (to put it kindly) track record, him exerting pretty much total control over FFH ( Running it like a Family business) and the increasing complexity. I think the last point (increasing complexity) isn’t much talked about, but it is an imortant factor, especially when overall performance is so so. FFH simply is an insurance an investment conglomerate where the sum of parts would be worth more than the whole entity.

Adding just a few more shares to my $ATVI tracker.

Besides, if anything, it seems that margin debt trend changes seems to be a trailing indicator of stock market performance.How useful is a trailing indicator?

Based on the used vehicle prices I have seen lately, one is better off buying new. Buying 2-3 year old cars with a bit of warranty remaining is typically a sweet spot, but not so much lately.

I can vouch for Subarus. My wife drives the Forester. totally reliable and drives like a train on tracks in bad weather. Very reliable too and well made. My next one will likely be a Subaru too. I don’t think you can go wrong with Toyota or Honda either. I would drive a bunch of them and see what you like best.

@glider3834 Thanks for the list of winners for FFH. it looks to me that if they can eliminate the drag from the losing micro bets, they should be able to do better. As for the Indian bets, one needs to account for the currency headwind for the rupee. But even with that, the performance looks good.

Did they have any home runs after their 2008/2009 that were Material? Perhaps the lack of any investment that really moved the needle for them in more than 10 years in great bull market is as much of an issue than the $2.5B lost in bad bets. Warren Buffet had plenty of mistakes as well: IBM, Precision Castparts, Wells Fargo, perhaps even Lubrizol. But then he led his compounders in his portfolio alone, bet big on BofA, BHE energy and the insurance ops worked well and took a big swing at Apple that worked out.

Brit really has been a dog since they bought it. Brit's combined ratio averaged since 2015 is well over 100% on a quick look. That said, why did they sell of a minority interest in this? Just to get some cash on the balance sheet of the holdco?

Balance down to $258B on 8/25. I think we have probably a month to go until this goes to $100B and I am sure they don't run this all the way to zero. After that, they need to issue treasuries again at the same rate than the deficit, which is a ~$250B monthly rate.

VRNO ( Verano ) is also worth a look. One thing I am struggling with is the regulation patchwork by state a good or bad thing for cannabis? Aaron thinks that it is a bad thing and the industry really takes off when this is regulated at a federal level and the sector has access to regular financing. But would this be a good thing for individual companies? The concern is that interstate commerce leads to much more competition and all these dinky inefficient operations (and lets face it, even operators like Verano are dinky mish mash's of dozens of small operators) might get absolutely killed by operators that come from adjacent industries and know how to operate efficiently at scale. I have learned one thing over the years - Manchester capitalism isn't necessarily good for returns, the best case scenario is actually benevolent (for the companies) regulation, which may be what we are having right now. All these constraints about access to capital, state regulations may be the best case scenario already in terms of profits, not necessarily market size. I really don't have an answer to this question.

https://www.siliconvalley.com/2021/08/23/cannabis-farmers-barely-breaking-even-as-price-per-pound-plummets-2/

A thread to consolidate cannabis investment related posts.

Thanks for mentioning it. I signed up for a free account and I like what they created here. It has very useful features that you don’t find elsewhere.

It was a hedge, but it was a separate hedge from the short book related to the stock market. Going through FFH’ss annual reports, the disclosure on their investments isn’t all that great actually. They typically explain the entry, but often enough it remains muddy what happens to it after several mergers and reorg. Part of the reason is the complexity of the FFH Holdco. Another thing I noticed (and others too here), they tend to realize wins early ( and boast about them) and losses late, often doubling down on losers. They basically pull the flowers and water the weeds.

The CPI linked contracts cost them ~$450M, I think. They were mentioned at least in the Y2012 annual report and I think they went to zero.