Spekulatius

To find what? Rocket ship emoji’s? Bloomberg terminals have a built in chat function, why is that?

If I remember correctly, Porsche’s CEO stated that “a Complete takeover is not our intention”. First of all, Porsche never took VW completely over (they just acquired control ) and “intention” is a bit rubbery and subject to change. Fact is that Porsche’s board voted in March 2008 on the matter and gave the go ahead to acquire a controlling stake and a couple of month later, they just did that. At least to me, it seems that the hedgies didn’t really didn’t pay attention to details and got caught with their pants down.

+1 He covered a lot of companies and provided solid analysis. PCYO, MSGS (E), AYR just to name a few. And of course all those SPAC’s. He also runs a big mouth sometimes (hence the ban), but you got to take the good with the bad.

What legal theories are you referencing? I am only familiar with Rule 10b-5, which is here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/17/240.10b-5 A 10b-5 violation requires a material misstatement or omission of fact. Speculative statements of opinion ("This stock is going to the moon" or "Buy GME, can't go tits up") don't count. And there are more hurdles than this in the law. Importantly, the Supreme Court held in Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/425/185/) that there must be intent to deceive. On top of that, you actually have to show that the misstatements or omissions caused someone to buy or sell the stock in question, AND that they lost money. Are regulators really going to trawl through millions of posts from 20-year-old kids looking for deliberate factual misstatements to trace to individual buy/sell decisions? I doubt it. I would've thought it would've been more around the intentional manipulation, but looking back at Porsche/VW, the courts ruled in favor of Porsche. They ruled in favor of Porsche because what Porsche did (buying options on VW to gain control) was allowed in Germany at that time. Hedge funds who were in that trade wrongly assumed that it wouldn’t be allowed (in fact it would not be allowed in the US and many other countries) but they didn’t really know the rules. i don’t think you found more than a handful souls in Germany who felt sorry for the hapless guys. Right now, there is a lot of odd trading going on where shorted crap stocks go up and perhaps higher quality stocks go down. It seems to me that long /short traders and institutions are wetting their pants because they are afraid they get blown up in an infinity short squeeze, so they unwind their positions. This means that likely interesting opportunity may represent themselves. For example, I suspect that some folks are long Dell and short VMW. This makes sense perhaps, but now VMW is going up and Dell looks a bit sickly. I am long VMW and it think interesting things could happen in the short run with the relatively small float in VMW. I bought VMW for fundamental reasons so no big deal either way. I might buy some Dell too, if things get silly.

Gregmal banned? Timeout maybe, but the board is poorer without him. He needs to come back!

What crime? What crime is the average Joe committing? How can a participant in an idea with no central or governing body be committing a crime? I see it the same way. someone posts GME , another one says it’s going to $1000, another one says “Hold the line “ , what the crime here? Who, what why? In the meantime Ackman goes on TV and says “hell is coming” and pockets $2B in genius trade short trade! Give me a break.

MMAC and VNT. Also angling for more BERY, but limit order missed.

I don’t agree. If short sellers drive down PEP, it doesn’t matter, the company is self financing. In fact, the company could compound value and buy back tons of shares cheaply and the pensioners would benefit from this in the long run , even if they did nothing. More likely though. At least some folks would buy the discounted shares and benefit even more. the simple fact is that PEP share price doesn’t really matter for its operations. As for GME, everyone who has been and is involved in this from either side is just a greedy SOB, so why should be care if they make a ton of money or blow up. Personally, I think it is great that the little guys can form a Piranha swarm and gang up on the big fish, it usually is the other way around.

1) Starter in BERY. I sold this in the 40’s early this year and now at $50 and change it looks cheaper and less risky than when I sold it - strange how to works sometimes. 2) Small add to LMT. It seems that guidance spooked the market. Seemed fine to me, but what do I know. I had sold down GD a little a few days ago, so this is basically a swap.

LOl Melvin capital now got a bailout. You can’t make this up. https://www.wsj.com/articles/citadel-point72-to-invest-2-75-billion-into-melvin-capital-management-11611604340 This is “Occupy Wall Street” done right. Every short seller now has a target on his back. The inability to short because it has become way to risky could have some interesting ramifications for the market. This might be short term bullish but medium and long term not so much, as some institutions may just quit altogether until this blows over.

Grantham writes: Maybe he means that he made up his losses in the book of business. Since performance-wise, his sale was not great. If you look at SP500 (I'm eyeballing SPY prices), if he sold at the top of 1997, he sold at ~$97. If he rebought at the very bottom of 2002, he rebought at best at $82. I'd guess that he did not sell at $97 and he did not buy back at $82. So in essence, let's say he really called the dot com bubble. He still avoided at best ~15% drawdown to the bottom... (There's some divvies missing and perhaps he reinvested in bonds that did better than 0% cash). Not a great result if you ask me. Sure, maybe selling now is not like selling in 1997. Maybe it is like selling in late 1999. Maybe. But there's a lot of folks here who have been telling to sell since 2011 or 2014 or 2016 or 2018. Will the real top of the bubble please stand up? Yeah, maybe FAANMGs (which are a large chunk of the market) are ~20-30% overvalued (I'd argue that some of them are close to fairly valued). Yeah, if there's a crash they could overshoot down more than 20-30%. Yeah, good luck timing all that. I think you ingore the alternatives here though. He didn't sell and go to cash right? He sold and went to t-bills. So it's not that he avoided -15%, it's that he made a few % each year over the 5-year time frame his benchmark was -15%. That's a pretty big deal and the type of outperformance people pay hedge funds 2 and 20 to achieve. But what are the alternatives now? Long duration T-bills in my opinion have the potential for large losses too, just as stocks do. Gold? Cash or short term bonds yield nothing basically.

One mans experience is not the majority’s. This is a bit fear “mongerish” and covertly political. My uncle a 65 year old brick layer who has had two back surgeries, one knee replacement, a heart stent and Rheumatoid Arthritis for the past 10 years has covid last month. Kicked it in 6 days with no lasting effects (known to him). Lost his taste and smell and had a migraine most of the time. He was a checkbox for many co-morbidities but seemingly wasn’t phased. I guess the scariest part is there is no way to know how it will affect you personally. If you like anectodes, my wife’s friend in law family of 7 (multi generation Chinese) got Covid. All seven tested positive, the mother (in her 70‘s) is in ICU and daughter ( late 30‘s) was found dead in her bed in the morning. She was seemingly fine the day before and never showed any serious symptoms or was admitted to the hospital. She had no known risk factors. These things happen - not that frequently, but they do. It‘s a bit like Russian roulette - most of the time nothing happens, but when it does, it can kill you.

Again, yo use the 1999 narrative, I was employed by one of those “” companies (via acquisition) when people were gambling in their 401k with company stock. I saw one guy on his PC back then who had a $2M balance and was up 200k one day. He was a tech who had been with the company for a while and collected a lot of stock via profit sharing and then moved more in. My “Rulebreaker” company ended up losing 98% of its value when the telecom boom fell apart and that fellow went back to work as a cashier 2 years after “retiring” from his job. The higher up managers were mostly smarter and bought nice houses and vineyards etc from their gains.

I am sure it all gets figured out, but time is of essence. For example just glimpsing to the data, it seems like a there is a huge gap between the doses supplied to the states to those administered. the does supplied seem tos Cale with population (which makes sense), but doses administered / does supplied go from ~36% ( California) to almost 80% (the Dakotas). My own state (MA) is at the bottom to with ~43%. It seems to that the states at the bottom are messing around too much with complex rules and not enough to actually get the vaccine in the people. In my opinion, the overarching principle should be to “KEEP THE LINE MOVING”. So if one county, hospital or state can’t administer the doses they have on hand, then send it to the next county, hospital or state who can, to make sure no time is wasted.

I found this episode from the Angel podcast pretty good. The guest talks about how the early days at AMZN and FB felt like.

Relative valuation sucks. What you want is to see where you are vs your potential. Right now, "49% of the shots distributed to states have been administered", and more shots could probably have been available if the Feds had taken up Pfizer's offer last summer. Yes, relative valuation sucks, but it also provides perspective. FWIW, I looked at Canada and the vaccination rate is at ~2% on part with Germany and far behind the USA.hat is going on there? I know what is going on in Europe. 1) Europe has decided to do the vaccination purchase on an EU basis, but their ordered only 250M doses which is not enough for everyone in Europe obviously. 2) Europe has decided to give no emergency authorization for any vaccine. Which probably causes a 1-2 month delay. So far only BioNtech/Pfizer is approved , Moderna is due soon and Astra has 1-2 month more to go. The reason why the UK has higher vaccination is because they have more vaccines available (they approved 3 vaccines already) so they have more supplies. So everything considered Operation Warp speed actually has done a better job than many other countries, including Canada. I am sure it could be better and faster, but here we are. What I am hoping is that daily vaccination rates go up now after the administration change and that better focus helps to get this done as quickly as possible, because we need to get to herd immunity levels in summer or we are looking at another sucky winter.

I am old enough to remember Anaconda copper trading on the NYSE. If I remember correctly it was bought up by an oil company ( One of the seven sisters ).

In terms of Vaccine rollout, the US doesn't look that bad actually. USA 5% vaccinated Germany ~2% UK ~8% France ~1% Israel: ~38% The reason why Europe is so far behind is lack of vaccines. they have only the BioNtech/Pfizer vaccine approved while the UK as Pfizer, Moderna and Astra Zeneca approved. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

I expect we muddle through with a bit more guidance from the top. Health is a state matter and I don’t think Biden is going to mess with this much. In my opinion, Biden‘s main job is now getting the vaccine in as many arms as quickly as possible and provide the state the resources to keep essential parts like schools open (testing access and funding is safety measures is essential) and hospitals running. In the US, there's not a great many valuable options at this stage. As of today, the US is up to 18 million vaccinated, and that is increasing by about 1 million per day. There are about 50 million Americans age 65 or higher, so by about February 21st, the overwhelming majority of them should have had the opportunity to get a vaccination if they want one. That group alone is about half of the hospitalizations and more than 80% of the deaths. The tone about covid will change significantly by some time in March when the deaths virtually stop and the hospitals begin to empty. The most valuable thing that the president could do at this time would be to try to convince the seniors to lock themselves down for a few weeks until their turn for a vaccination comes. SJ Seniors above 65 will not be vaccinated completely by late February , not even close. You are assuming that all the vaccines go to seniors for example, but that’s not the case. Health care workers come first and then several other groups (first responders etc, military, state & country workers). The order of vaccination again differs from state to state. At the current rate, I would guess that a 65 year old would get vaccinated perhaps in Summer. I personally like the rule to have health care workers on the front lines first, then people over 80, then 65 or etc. that’s what is basically happening in Germany I think, although there, the rollout is even slower than in the US. Complex rules ar likely counterproductive and some seem outright ridicolous. For example in my state, there is a discussion to add smoking as pre-existing condition which would prioritize them over non-smokers. Really? I guess I should start smoking a cigarette a day to become eligible quicker.

Yay to politics being gone and I look cautiously forward to what the new site has to offer.

I expect we muddle through with a bit more guidance from the top. Health is a state matter and I don’t think Biden is going to mess with this much. In my opinion, Biden‘s main job is now getting the vaccine in as many arms as quickly as possible and provide the state the resources to keep essential parts like schools open (testing access and funding is safety measures is essential) and hospitals running.

Just resold those FSLY shares for $103.10 and put more into BRKB and BAM. The volatility in stocks like FSLY is mind boggling. It is probably a good idea to move into safety like FSLY but I can understand if someone who bought this much lower just continues to hold.

I think it was Peter Thiel who wittily replied to the question about "Is it 1999 again?" if it refers the beginning of 1999 or the end? Smart reply, because the Nasdaq index went up ~85% in 1999. The problem with bubbles is timing, since nobody knows how big they can become and when they will pop.

I know quite a few people who’s retirement got destroyed in the 2001 crash and things did not come back. other were left with huge phantom gains on company stock that they never realized but still had to pay taxes on. One gal I knew who got rich for 6 month from Cisco stock lost her house this way. History’s almost never repeats itself , but it can rhyme. Besides the monetary there are things that can happen that nobody’s does foresee - like the epidemic this year. Well, we turned out to be fine, but could have been quite different. And true to that, it’s the truck that you don’t see coming that runs you over. Another thing to consider is that adjustment happen quicker than they used to. The trading is partly to blame although we did have a swift crash in 1987 before daydreaming became a thing as well. One thing that I try to do is look at everything I own through the eyes of reflexivity and path dependency. I want to own things that don’t depend on capital markets working well for example. Perhaps the Fed now has backstopped everything, but I don’t think it will last forever.