Spekulatius

LOL:

Increasing/ eliminating the SALT cap while increasing the federal income tax rate to pay for it is a no brainer for the democrats, imo. NYC and other cities would be beneficiaries, Florida a relative loser. When housing cracks, we will see it in CA and perhaps FLA first. I do think it will take a couple of years to get there.

Einhorn was in easy mode with respect to shorting for a while, because he could short a stock in size, then present his thesis on a conference which would tank the stock due to all those ridealongs. this would allow him to cover his position almost for a guaranteed profit. This reputation is not there any more as he (and his coattail shortsellers even more so) have taken a bath on stocks like Green Mountain. Ever since then, he has been struggling and it hasn't helped that his longs weren't that great either. Just look at how GLRE has done. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/07/greenlights-david-einhorn-gets-roasted-on-keurig-green-mountain-deal.html

So the logic is - the opportunity exists because regulators do nothing, but that's going to change once I am short the stock. My own experience is that stocks don't care if I own or short them however.

The Rocky mountain states are all great in their own way and would be my favorites. I love CO, Northern AZ, OR and in Canada Lake Okonaga and I am sure WY and others are great in their own way. The beauty of those areas is unmatched. On the east coast, NC would be my favorite (Asheville area). NH is also underappreciated and I like where I live (MA , close to NH border). I don't know FLA well but it is probably my least favorite state of those I visited (Orlando area, Tampa). I am sure other areas are nice ,especially for boating, but the weather for 9 month is just too brutal, imo. I have lived in Germany, CA, NY (Long Island) and now MA for perspective. In terms of pricing, I think real estate in the US as whole is still undervalued. there may be pockets of exuberance in some areas, but for example in the East coast, houses in many areas still have to crack their 2007 peak values 13/14 years later. So it is hardly a bubble. If you want to see what a bubble looks like Canada, Australia and NZ are much better examples.

Sold FROG and KVSA (both for small gains).

Marmon was shopped around by Byron Trott from GS (back then) before it end up with Berkshire. Byron Trott is called WEB favorite banker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Trott

The news is good, because the expectations were for a flat budged and 1.8% growth is better than flat. The defense contractors don’t really need much growth to generate good returns for shareholders. When you look at historical data, the growth in the defense budget wasn’t all that great (less than GDP), yet through a combination of higher budget share, dividends and stock buybacks, double digit returns have been achieved for shareholders. From current levels I can see returns of about 10% for LHX, LMT and NOC going forward, which I think will be far higher than what can be expected from the SPY.

Thanks for posting. Just based on the numbers cited in this report, the Indian stock market looks like a very poor setup - PE of 23.4 (a 1.6 multiple to EM average) 12.3% ROE does not scream value on a macro level, especially considering the significant inflation. I think there are better deals out there in terms of EM’s. This does not mean that there are good individual Securities available but this is a macro report and on a macro report, I just don’t see India as attractive. One obvious question to ask is why is India ROE so poor (12.3%). 12.3% is a disaster if you have 5% inflation. Who cares how fast the GDP grows in this framework?

Potus defense proposal is out - calls for 1.8% increase. Seems bullish considering the low expectations: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/08/biden-pentagon-budget-480476

What I don’t like about sports teams is that there are basically zero owners earnings and the employees (players) can capture the majority of economic returns. They are basically a billionaires collectible. I guess gladiator teams (romans) and jostling teams (medieval) in the past served the same purpose , except the participants back then didn’t do too well.

Sold remainder of my SIMO

Interesting experiment. There is a lot of skepticism about Astra Zeneca's vaccine in Europe and back and forth on approvals, but when Wismar did an open "walk in" vaccination using the AZN vaccine for everyone above 60 year old, there was huge demand: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/AstraZeneca-Andrang-beim-Impfen-ohne-Termin-in-Wismar,coronavirus4838.html I guess people are voting with their feet.

The vaccine will stop the pandemic, but COVID will become endemic and will be around forever, I think. The protection against severe disease is much better than the protection a flu vaccine provides against flu and probably exceeds even the optimistic guesses early on what we could achieve, both in terms of efficacy and speed to market. With such good individual protection provided by the vaccine, I care much less if other people take it or not - if something happens due to getting COVID-19 to them it will be on them. It is undesirable to have the virus floating around in huge numbers because that also means that variants will pop up (evolution is a number game after all) but I think those can be solved with yearly vaccine updates/booster shots. We just need to provide everyone on earth access to the vaccine. The US will probably be fine within two month, but the rest of the world will take much longer.

The mRNA vaccines have proven themselves against the variants. Overall, they seem to work better than the traditional vaccines in terms of efficacy, at least compared to those on the market. I would like to see more data on the Novavax and the Sputnik V vaccine. Novavax showed some very good data. Sputnik V is a bit more of a question mark (who trust the russians?) but there have been some peer reviewed papers published that seem to indicate strong efficacy. they sell a lot of South America so soon we will get epidemiological data on how well it works. I think AstraZeneca < JnJ< Novavax in terms of the ranking with Sputnik having the potential to be equivalent to Novavax. I am recalling this from memory and several twitter threads post4ed by biotech cracks that seem to know what to look for. I think it bodes well to mRNA tech in general. There have been some articles posted that a malaria vaccination based on mRNA is in the works and seems possible. Malaria vaccination has been an elusive goal and what is out there doesn't seem to work all that well. Perhaps with mRNA vaccines, we can get the job done which would be huge for mankind.

Thanks for writing down your rationale. I have looked at EW only casually after you mentioned it. It seems too expensive to buy but I think you are correct in holding it. Along the same line, I bought a bit of GMED last year. It is not cheap either , but I qualitatively liked it after the MF’s recommended it, and the valuation seemed reasonable.

I do not know anyone who has gotten the JnJ shot yet, as this vaccine has been hard to get and until very recently only small amounts trickled to vaccine centers. Let us know how it goes. I know a few folks who would prefer to get the JnJ vaccine over the mRNA flavors.

Interesting crowd behavior. I don't think Munger would have anything to add that hasn't been discussed before as far as pro's and con's of BABA are concerned. Li Liu's opinion I think count's more.

You mentioned EW before - a stellar Long term performer, but how do you square the valuation? A 12x P/S is hard to swallow for a med tech. Even over a 15 year holding period, the starting valuation matters quite a bit, imo.

Yes, it seems the mRNA vaccines are pretty robust against all the variants so far. This makes them likely the weapon of choice against the epidemic. I think we will probably see a “booster” that enhances the profile against variants for those that have been vaccinated already by next year. The P1 strain is still a huge concern for countries that used mostly conventional vaccine or countries that are relying on natural herd immunity, which may not be achieved with the ongoing variants the virus is able to produce to overcome natural resistance.

MRK looks pretty solid to me. Low valuation and basically a Greenblatt stock. Organon spin-off could unlock some value. There are some warts in terms of Keytruda going off patent late this decade and the constant amortization expenses resulting from taken out smaller biotech to refresh their pipeline , but even considering all this, the stock sees like a good bet from current levels. LMT is another one that I think will do OK over the long run. AMZN is a growth stock that isn’t really overvalued and I think an expansion into health care which is slowly happening could create a lot of value.

I like some features of the new site like site stats and also the search appears to be better. I don’t like the site design as it wastes so much screen real estate compared to the old one.

Isn't that basically Reuters or AP news? From the big networks ABCNews is probably the most unbiased. For foreign news, I have plugged Aljazeera.com before - their curation is surprisingly good and they are fairly unbiased except issues pertaining Israel.

Just reminder that Virgin Galactic's "Spaceship" has not reached Space yet. Their revenue last year was $238k and their losses $273M. It remains to be seen, whether SPCE is a commercial success. The stock has done well, but then again GME trades at ~$190/share too as I type this.

What flavor are they getting?