Spekulatius

Apparently, Honda is going to launch a level 3 self driving car in March: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Back-seat-driver-How-Honda-stole-the-lead-in-autonomous-cars That would be the first commercially available, Tesla’s and competitors are Level 2. (Got this from Teddy Okuyama’s newsletter, free and highly recommended).

Defining just exactly what ‘inflation’ is is part of the challenge. One example is real estate in Vancouver. Single family home prices are expected to increase this year 20-30% (maybe as soon as this spring). Crazy. And prices were already at bubble levels. This looks like asset inflation to me. Ever rising prices :-) So i agree rates and ‘inflation’ often don’t move in the same way. Relative to foreigners Vancouver RE has gone down in prices because Canadian currency has devalued significantly. That’s not correct, the CAD has been strong relative to the USD and is close to a 5 year high. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CADUSD=X?p=CADUSD=X&.tsrc=fin-srch

The service sector will be interesting since essentially the min wage will be $15 (Walmart raised it to $15 after Target and Amazon did so). I assume that will set essentially the floor for wages going forward. I think this time, inflation will come from wages, not from energy and commodities like in the 70’s. That may not be that great for corporate profit margins, at least in some sectors.

I think the short squeeze could have been a lot worse had Robinhood didn't what i did. Looking back now, listening to some commentaries, it seemed that the wobbling in the S&P500 in January may have at least had some relation to the infinite squeeze that didnt but could happen. Like a vortex that what just slightly pulling the carpet (S&P500), due to the hedge fund leverage. Sure, this is a lot bigger than GameStop, but as El-Elrian said today at Bloomberg, market was smelling and was trying front run hedge fund who wanted to make a dash for liquidity. I'll try to find the stat of the out of wack the position where. I realize it is silly to think that such a irrelevant company (GameStop) could cause the almighty S&P500 to wobble. On DFV, i think due to the unneeded popularity that this caused (and because he is a nice person) he felt obligated toward his Brethren and not just dump his shares. Yes, the wobbling in the broader indices and in particular some hedge fund hotel stocks in January was definitely caused by the WSB crowd. I think the root cause was that long/short funds were getting obliterated by the many short squeezes and they had to reduce gross exposure which means selling longs and covering shorts. And those that weren’t getting obliterated were probably probably getting scared and reduced gross exposure anyways. You see these type of things happening when things get a bit crazy in the market and at times the movement of individual stocks seem to make no sense fundamentally,

So your average holding period is about 18 months? Is that right? So i guess your holding period seems 'forever' as it is more than double the average period now for the average crowd. i've started doing 'this' about 20 years ago and one of the most striking features has been the unrelentling rise in competition. Some days i wish i'd have started in 1957 or something but then again, now is probably one of the greatest times to be alive. I need someone to tell me what my top 1% of my ideas are, because I have no clue myself. The present is almost always the best time to be alive. Exceptions were probably the 14 century (epidemics) in Europe ir if you were born in Germany before 1618 or 1914 (very ugly wars).

Adding to VNT and bought some starter shares in VRTX

Reducing CBOE a bit more.

At this point, I suspect the hearing is about informing the house not trying to accuse Mr Gill of a crime, it would be a tragedy and diversion of they did. I also think the letter is very well written and it’s true. I watched his streams on YouTube and there are very clear disclaimers and I found them informative. I don’t know if he broke any regarding his employment, but that would be inconsequential anyway as regards to what happened with those short squeezes and GameStop. So I hope the house takes this as an opportunity to inform themselves rather than find a scapegoat. whatever happened and went wrong here, there are much bigger fish to fry here - the CEO‘s of Robinhood, Melvin Captital management, Citadel, the fellows running the clearinghouse etc. Anyways, I will watch his testimony offline I suppose and hope all goes well.

I found this fascinating paper in a Reddit link: https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=484029088111001006073096089006124072016089038039060053007117008027101109086070094109010114056102019017037122126017076092001119048032033082076106112103120089107007108007092010066127087083116113078084112013080121119068105018026076012080024093073071113085&EXT=pdf&INDEX=TRUE https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3776421

Roaring Kitty‘s (Gill‘s) letter to the US house: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/BA/BA00/20210218/111207/HHRG-117-BA00-Wstate-GillK-20210218.pdf Wishing him luck and really hope it goes well for him.

Reduced CBOE after the stock jumped due to 8-k disclosure which indicated that management may be concerned about a takeover. While a takeover is a possibility, this stock had disappointed me too many times and the expense guidance for 2021 is atrocious.

Checking in on my lunch break and this thread is gold: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/lkvzj7/someone_help_please/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 I have nothing to add.

Banned? I just don't have enough Karma to post but I still have access. Yes only banned from posting, but I can still look. I should have posted something like this which got 2370 upvotes, despite being off the mark (PLTR down ~9% today):

I was just banned from WSB (been member since 2018 but rarely posted) for not having "enough karma" after making a semi intelligent post that didn't contain any rockets or other emojis. Be careful out there.

The US Treasury's Quarterly Refunding Statement is where people are getting this idea from: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0011 The Treasury General Account balance sits at ~$1.6t - so ending March at $800b is a big move with big repurcussions......except I don't believe Yellen! Why? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let's go to the previous Quarterly Refunding Statement from November. End of December TGA balance = $1.728 Trillion. How about the one before that from August? End of September TGA balance = $1.781 Trillion. wabuffo That was Powell's work, not Yellen's ;D

I am sure it is nothing, but this chart looks pretty bullish to me for interest rates: I am starting to wonder when we need to adjust our discount rates, especially for growthy stuff. I am not a chartist per say, but found that the 200 DMA is often a reasonable indicators of trend reversals.

I refinanced at 2 3/4% for my 30 year loan with a no/low cost refinance this year, so not sure what you are talking about. Only idiots believe they mortgages will get cheaper if FRE/FNM get privatized, imo. Other than that, I agree with your concerns regarding debt.

US stimulus vs Europe stimulus: https://twitter.com/lynaldencontact/status/1360618998975655944?s=21 Looks like we are a bit overstimulated. What happens when the drugs wear off?

He invested in GD before with a sizable position, but this was a good while ago. I would not be too surprised if he bought a basket of defense contractors, but I think not. GE is definitely a strong possibility. Another one is that he keeps adding to a basket of Pharma stocks (MRK, BMY were added last quarter if I remember correctly).

I remember him from his BOX pitch from a couple of years ago. He got this stock moving for a bit, but he possibly picked the worst performing SAAS Stock back then. That said, he has a knack for spotting trends and marketing.

I have worked at 3 different companies and got an inside look into a few more and R&D spent isn’t equally applied even within the same industry. In the industry I work in,a typical R&D spent is in the single digits, but I did work for a company that had R&D spent of almost 20%. However much of this R&D spent was mostly one off spent to get a certain product ready for a specific customer and in my opinion it really was sort of an Opex spent, because it didn’t really create a lasting benefit for anything but a specific use case that likely was a one off (custom). My take from this is that one should take reported R&D spent with a grain of salt and should be suspect of outliers and see if it created any visible moat in terms of sales growth or higher gross margins. If it doesn’t it either waste of just misclassified.

Mine are as follows. I have a few more in another account that are not listed (mostly foreign holdings). Largest one is LAACZ because I #neversell and need to make filling out the K-1 worth it. ABEV AMNF ANTM AZO BABA BAYRY BERY BMRN BMY BNTGY CBOE CMCSA CVS FAF FB GD GMED GOOG JNJ LAACZ LHX LMT MITK MMAC MNPP MO MRK NOC NUVR ORI PKE QUCT RNR SIMO SRE UELKY VIVHY VMW VNT

Jim Simons: I am sure the math checks out.

Added a bit of MRK. Stock has done nothing recently despite pretty decent results. Same with BMY (I own a little bought during the CELG merger selloff). Those are the two Pharma stocks I follow closely, and they are cheaper than they have been for years, despite decent top line growth. I probably add more BMY too.

This is like LOLZ wtfpwn stupid outside money dudes... ::) Maybe these outside money funds are just sacrificial lambs to feed the employee owned beast?