Spekulatius

The European/japanese investment banks can’t seem to catch a break. $1 billion here, $1 billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money... ————————————- “ CFDs aren’t legal in the U.S. but their usage in other regions, particularly Europe, may be something that regulators weigh as they monitor this margin-call situation, Amy Lynch, a former SEC regulator and president of FrontLine Compliance, told MarketWatch in a Monday-afternoon interview. “Extremely risky,” is how she characterized CFDs. “[u]It’s kind of like being able to go into a naked position[/u],” she said, referring to naked bets where investors use derivatives to gain exposure to an investment without owning the underlying asset. to gain exposure to an investment without owning the underlying asset. It is really like buckets shops are legal again, just at a grander scale.

What does this have to do with taking the vaccine or not?

If the Domino’s are falling, they are not falling where I am not looking. In have extensive watchlist and other than VIAC and DISCK I don’t see much that is falling out of the now normal Momo tech rut. Even VIAC and DISCK are just going back where they were a couple of weeks ago. I guess that trade is close to unwound but I don’t see the great bargains here. I am not sure what I am missing.

Anyone planning on taking advantage of forced selling in the names? Do we know what Archegos owns? I think Tencent Music was mentioned. WhaleWisdom.com comes up empty handed. Maybe the bigger issue is that many other funds run similar L/S strategies with a high gross exposure?

This variant is of a concern because it can reinfect those that previously had COVID-19 apparently.The evidence from Manaus, which was supposed to have reached heard immunity but now sees another wave suggests so. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/health/covid-19-coronavirus-brazil-variant.html Evidence suggests that vaccines still protect against this variant too, but data is scarce.

This variant is of a concern because it can reinfect those that previously had COVID-19 apparently.The evidence from Manaus, which was supposed to have reached heard immunity but now sees another wave suggests so. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/health/covid-19-coronavirus-brazil-variant.html Evidence suggests that vaccines still protect against this variant too, but data is scarce.

Chances of death are very low but you can still get very sick and incur permanent damage to your lungs or organs. Even if you are healthy. Not just theoretical, I know someone 40ish and healthy and fit that had this happen. They have lung damage, it's permanent. They also went through complete hell for 2 weeks. Israel has vaccinated over half their population and haven't reported any issues. The pharma companies aren't based there so they have no reason to lie about the effectiveness. I feel at this point it's quite a remote chance the vaccine is more dangerous than covid. The exact same thing is true for the flu. Do you think everyone should get innocolated (yearly flu shot)? I can write a list of bacteria and viruses that can (emphasis can) have terrible terrible repercussions (much worse than a Corona virus). Why are you behaving so differently towards this one? Could it be the global fear mongering? And you are going to use the shit hole called Israel as a good example? What's next, North Korea? Eritrea? I actually think everyone should get vaccinated for flu as well. I do it, I had a flu a couple of times before that and while I apparently survived it, wasn’t much fur for ~7-10 days each time . A flu shot is much easier on me and since I got them, I never had the flu again. For COVID-19, the risk reward ratio for vaccination is much better because COVID is much more in inconvenient , if you get symptomatic and much more dangerous. Also, why is Israel a shithole country? I can think of a lot of other states that deserve this classification much more so.

Ma held 76% of Ant Financial until recently, and with the recent IPO - is now a multi-billionaire in China. Just exactly HOW does one pull off this trick in a communist country? SD The answer is simple - China is not a communist country. The communist party is just communist by name, for historical/legacy reasons. China’s current economic system is crony capitalism.

Actually Jack Ma is an interesting case where a founder created a cooperative culture from the get go. Alibaba created several billionaires while AMZN only created one (Jeff Bezos). There are some interesting articles pertaining to how Jack Ma ran Alibaba early on. He never was the all controlling operator , he was more like a leader why deputized most of the operations to a core group (who all become very rich) with him being the face until 2 years ago, https://hbr.org/2014/06/the-secret-to-alibabas-culture-is-jack-mas-apartment

I don’t really know the rent vs buy math in those specific areas but one thing I do know is that trying to buy a house when buyers are out there in force and panic buying basically everything is not a good proposition. This is not only because of the high price one needs to pay, but also because it is I likely to get the house you like as well. My experience is that those panic buying periods don’t last and eventually things are calming down, when though prices as indicated may not. In an more evenly balanced market, even if prices remain high, it is much easier to pick the house you like, negotiate contingencies with sellers etc and make home buying a much better experience. So my inclination would be rent first and wait it out little. That also has the advantage that you get to know the area you live in much better and sometimes, there are relative deals to be had just watching closely and you will find that certain pockets can be desirable for you because of traffic patterns for your commute etc.

It is clear that the vaccination has a dramatic impact on every metric - transmission, severe cases requiring ventilation, death. We can see this most clearly in Israel, because they are the furthest ahead. https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/945680#vp_2 It is true that the LT impact of the vaccines is unknown. It is however also true that the LT impact of having COVID-19 is unknown too. With vaccines we talking about a controlled immune system reaction, with COVID-19 we Talking about a Virus in the wild. We know for that for some people, the impact of having a COVID-19 infection is Long lasting (glass lungs, shot kidneys requiring life long dialysis etc). Each choice has some risk, but I think the of controlled immune system reaction is way lower than an acute infection a virus from a wild. I also think that over the Long run, the risk of getting infected by COVID-19 will be almost approaching one for most of us as this disease becomes endemic. People can make their own choice but I think for me, it is pretty clear what I am going to pick - well, I have already picked.

I looked at both S-1 and I can come to terms with CPNG but what is really OSCR bus8 es model, is it like LMND for health insurance. Their numbers look atrocious. Both GOOG health care IPO‘s AMWL and OSCR look underwhelming to me. I havent even come close to a deep dive, and yea, the approach is at best scattershot, but the impression I have gotten is that somewhat like LMND, theyre focusing on developing the brand. Its not very efficiently rolled out, but they have a little bit of everything...their own clinics, the tele health offering, pricing models that "appear' transparent and are generally received well by their customers. My guess is that they would be burning many times more money if they put all of this into motion in all their markets, all at once. All in all I think its probably burned through a good bit of money experimenting and will continue to do so. At the same time trying a lot of things in a scattershot way sort of lets you feel out the sensitivities of what works and what doesnt. Its in the right place at perhaps the right time....there does seem to be bipartisan support for fixing a lot of the issues in healthcare....so you'll need to cross a few bridges to get there, but there are bridges which lead this to being a bit of a disruptor. At the least its a small starter that will compel me to do a bit more work on it while the market is beating the shit out of companies like this...and if nothing else I'll probably be able to unload it later once things settle down. $32 was the original low point of the IPO range that ended up being revised upwards twice to $39. So I'll take my chances there. $OSCR down to ~$24; $AMWL down to below $17 <insert toilet flush gif here>

It sounds like Texas prefers to pay $5-10B every decade or so, while also sitting in the cold for a week or so, rather than investing $8B once and be done with it.

I like koyfin, but like tikr.com much more so. Tikr.com gets its data from Capital IQ. You also may be able to get access to capital IQ directly from your library. For example, the Boston Library gives access to Capital IQ remotely for the duration of the pandemic. I am not sure how long it last, but for the time being, I have used Capital IQ through my Boston library account remotely for a few times.

You should not generalize across Europe. In Lithuania anyone above 70 can get vaccine already and possibly even above 65. To be fair, Lithuania is still way behind US. There is a difference between “you can sign up to get the vaccine” and actually getting it. My dad is in the highest priority group due to age, yet can’t effectively get the vaccine at this point. The reasons are simple, lack of vaccine and lack of effective distribution. I probably could manage this for him if I were around, but from a distance across the ocean and not being intimately familiar with the process there, I can’t help him much. The mistake that the state bureaucracy does (imo) is not allow the primary physicians to give a vaccine shots. They could easily do it, but the bureaucracy has decided that a centralized distribution via mass vac sites is fairer, except for the fact that older people without internet and car effectively can’t get it done. The whole village were I grew up (1100 people, pretty rural) is full of old people and very few of them are vaccinated. Of course every country is different but that’s the situation on the ground in Germany pertaining to my dad.

Maybe we should avoid to politicize this thread and just stick to the topic of this poll and avoid an epidemic of sh1tposts. Just got back from my CVS appointment and all went well so far. Picking the second shot first to play their booking system caused a bit of an issue at registration but that was fixable and medically speaking the shots are the same. While my state has an elaborate prioritization for who gets the vaccine first, my casual observation of the demographics in the waiting line is that we are already in the "free for all phase", regardless of what the local state rules claim. Or perhaps my small sample size of ~15 people wasn't representative - I was by far the oldest in the line and ahead of my were a bunch of ~20 year old girls who seemed to know each other well (soccer team?).

For me, getting vaccinated for COVID-19 is a decision with a wide margin of safety: 1) risk of serious side effects after vaccination: few ppm (1/ millions) 2) chance of having serious side effects (ICU visit, death) after infection a few percent or ~10,000 ppm Now we need to put in the distributions for moderate side effects after vaccination or getting infected but i think those skew in favor of the vaccine too. Than, last there is a risk of getting infected, which i think over time is going to be very high, almost approaching one. Those are just the individual health benefits not the societal ones which are suppressing the infection to unvaccinated, easier travel etc. Anyways that's how I look at. Due to the nature of the disease (stealthy due to asymptomatic infection and time lag) as well as the high R0 rate it is unlikely that we eradicate COVID-19 ever. I think COVID will become endemic. I also believe we will get an vaccine update probably next year to enhance the profile against the troublesome mutant variants.

Interesting, my wife is a nurse too (frontline workers and deals a lot with COVID-19 patients) but that got my nothing. It is probably because she works at various hospitals as a contractor. The strange thing is that many nurses refuse to take the vaccine themselves (~30-40% in my wife's group).

I would be interested to know what makes all of your eligible to get the vaccine. I thought I am one of the older guys here being in my mid fifties. Are hedge fund managers and financial advisors now a preferred group? I haven't seen anything on that regard in my state. ;D I became eligible just a few days ago because I work in the medical supply chain (CO2 filters for respirators etc.). I booked an appointment for today and had to work the system at CVS because I was unable to simultaneously book a first and second appointment because there were no second ones available. So I signed up for my second shot in the system to get going. I think this was mentioned upstream as a workaround. Hopefully it works out. The system in MA here sucks, but what really sucks is Europe. My parents are 79 and 84 and no visibility on when to get the vaccine. That's one thing that Trump's Warp speed team did largely right, they bet on the right vaccines and ordered quite a bit of them. Maybe not quite enough and could have been done better but also could have been a whole lot worse. Compared to Europe, we are in great shape as far as vaccine's are concerned.

I think my holdings of $LMT and $NOC have a quicker solution, but the crew would have to leave the ship first.

Why get inoculated for polio or hepatitis? Because the cost/benefit ratio is extraordinary. This can get ugly fast so let's not make quick judgement. Hopefully he makes an informed decision and that's it. It still his decision. Valuearb, I think asking why never is not an option is totally fair. In my age range, there have been 5485 deaths over the past year (per CDC). Whats more is that a lot of the people who die from Covid either have pre-existing conditions such as obesity, high blood pressure etc which I don't have. The average vaccine takes years to pass between different stages of the approval process. This one got approved in less than a year. Furthermore, in the US you have no legal recourse if there are long term effects from the vaccine. If you are eager to get the vaccine that's your choice, if I choose not to that's mine. I agree choosing not to should be an option in a poll. The goal of a poll is to find out how people think, not to lead the outcome or to judge. We can do the latter in the commentary ;D

Ticker Symbol is RYSAS. Down 10% today. If the situation in Turkey continues and Pabrai doesn´t sell, I will start a position. My strategy is to clone Pabrai here because there are no annual reports or financial statements in English, is all in Turkish Language Is this the one that shipped painted rocks instead of copper to Asia last month? Down another 6% in Turkey today. In addition to the inherent volatility, you also have currency swings - the Turkish Lira alone has swung by almost 20% back and forth in a just a few month. Too bad the WSB crowd can’t trade this , I imagine it would be fun

Not a bad idea Imo. It’s a pretty cheap stock with decent growth potential going forward and pays a nice dividend as well. Ping An also should befit from higher interest rates - since the Yuan is coupled to the USD, I expect the Internet rated in China to go up as well.

Ticker Symbol is RYSAS. Down 10% today. If the situation in Turkey continues and Pabrai doesn´t sell, I will start a position. My strategy is to clone Pabrai here because there are no annual reports or financial statements in English, is all in Turkish Language This was $0.75 in 2016, $0.65 in May 2019, $12.75 in Jan 2020, and $6.75 today. Is this a cryptocurrency? I guess you are supposed to scream "Allahu Akbar" when you push the buy button for this security.

In principle, JPM and peers could turn down deposits? Now that would be interesting - we have enough money, we don’t want yours, take it somewhere else