Spekulatius

I don’t think there are a lot of Japanese financials that are thriving , they seem more like the zombies in Walking Dead that keep moving.

Seems like everyone who wants to start out investing on behalf of friends and family or even wants to start out with SMA as a business should read this thread as a cautionary tale. To me at least, it seems like doing these binary type bets in SMA looks like a ticking time bomb and lawsuits waiting to happen. If you keep doing these things, it is probably just a matter of time until it blows up and creates a nightmare of lawsuits. It is probably not just people being bad, but the human brain will remember failures and losses much more so than success. I could easily envision an investor making 4 equal sized bets with three of them being doubles and one being a wipeout and yet in the end this investor being disgruntled as the failure was “evident from the start” in retrospect of course. After the fact everyone knows better . It’s just how humans are wired, I think.

On thought that crossed my mind is that it could work out really bad for insurers if interest rates stay near zero while inflation picks up. The reason for this is that higher inflation means that cost to settle insurance claims will pick up. Since premiums are paid for future claims, it means that the underwriting ratio will develop unfavorably in this case, because there costs will outrun the premium increases for a couple of years possibly.

Maybe why GILD is near a 52-week low? I owned GILD and sold during a spike due to Remdesivir news and it turned out the right decision. Remdesivir was never central to the thesis though, but the pipeline disappointments and continued issues with their Hep C franchise are putting a lid on the stock.

I watched Greyhound too. This is also basically an alternative history movie where all the German U-Boot commander collectively loose their mind.

My wife just got the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine today. So far, so good. Some unrelated stuff: My wife talked with an ICU nurse at the hospital and she mentioned they that generally don’t administer Remdesivir for COVID-19 cases any more. Frontline treatment are steroids and often it is just that.

Same here. Only a tracking position, but up >70% in just a few weeks on no news?

An acquaintance of us bought an Airstream this summer. I have seen his wive walkthroughs of the interior and a lot of pictures but none where on the road. I wonder if they used it at all. I do think 2 years from now there will be a buyers market for used ones.

Well, good point really: the more power you give politicians in this Covid situation, the more they ignore the real problems of our country: https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/21/overdose-outnumber-coronavirus-deaths-in-san-francisco/ 621 people have died in San Francisco of drug overdoses – that equates to nearly four times as many as have been killed by COVID-19. The most recent data released on Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) indicates that approximately 81,230 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States in the 12-months ending in May 2020, a new record. “The increases in drug overdose deaths appear to have accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the CDC noted. 81k death is an increase of 12k over the 69k overdosing death in 2019. 12K<<326k incremental death due to COVID-19 so it is not “the real problem” by a wide margin. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/podcasts/20190911/20190911.htm

This will be resolved in a less than a year but the path there seems anything but pretty. In my opinion, BJ has not proven to be a good negotiator or even a good leader with his wavering and indecisiveness and I am evens sympathetic to his (very British) quirks.

Picasso, thank you for writing your side of the story. It puts thing into a different perspective and takes guts to do so.

It looks like all politicians get early access to the vaccine- even COVID-19 denier Marco Rubio got his shot already. I guess the idea is to increase public trust in the vaccine. I agree that neither Rubio nor AOC should be high on the priority list otherwise. Let’s just Invert this and assume Rubio and AOC would state that they wouldn't get the vaccine yet, would the optics be better or worse? I think they would be worse, so it’s probably better to get all the ruling class vaccinated. I personally find Deborah Birx’ behavior much more deplorable. The Uk and other nations have fired politicians on similar grounds.

Yes those two things (travel restrictions and trade) issues are unrelated, but that doesn’t mean their effects can’t compound. The failure of the trade talks very likely will cause some shortages for the Uk, as goods get either stuck at the borders or diverted to other markets as seems to be the case with lumber and likely either goods. I also think that London as a financial center will have a much diminished role in the future.

Aren’t you conflating two entirely different things? And why take a German view on how prepared Britain is, out of interest? Not that I have a particularly strong view... The BBC is not the German view. However, I am German and have relatives living there. I have been following this since Brexit 2016 using a variety of sources and it looks like a train wreck to me.

No idea how to get this, but in my opinion, the most rational explanation would be higher equity allocation for institutional and individual investors because bond yields have been dropping so an 60/40 portfolio becomes 70/30 etc.

I just had a talk with my brother (who lives in Germany) and it looks like the EU just nailed the door on the UK: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55385768 Another fact that I wasn’t aware of. He deals with lumber (trade on a large scale) and they so t deliver to the UK any more because it is simply not “worth the trouble”. Apparently no one really knows the conditions for imports anymore in this specific business to decided to to elsewhere as there is enough demand for lumber anyways. a the same is true for other commodities and fungible goods apparently. Looks like the Uk is on the brink of a disaster here as they seem totally unprepared after more than 4 years.

Some negative factors: 1) Trump tax cuts could be reversed. this would be a 10% hit to valuation theoretically (give or take) 2) Interest rates rising. (They have moved up already since May) 3) Inflation could go up quickly once economy opens up more which also correlates with 2). The Fed May not do much, but treasuries would move up nevertheless. 4) Biden is less fixated by stock market than Trump, which could transcedent down to Fed decisions. 5) External threads like the latest large scale cyberattack have been downplayed but can we ignore this. Tensions with China, Iran, North Korea also could come into play. Both Iran a d NK are probably close to having a nuclear bomb right now. 6) Brexit (probably doesn’t matter for the US too much but will for the UK and Europe). 7) As cardboard said, it is the bus you don’t see coming that is going to hit you.

I could well see a scenario where the economy will recover and the stocks will go down because of higher interest rates. Actually interest rates for treasuries have already been slowly rising - they are back to late February/ early March levels and may go up further. Or perhaps stocks go down just because people have other things to do than gambling the stock market.

Interesting enough, interest rates have been moving up. We are basically back to where we were late February/ early March.

Well, at least beer, wine and liquor sales are healthy recently:

A lot of timelines have been thrown around - the last date for conclusion discussed here was 12/9. I don’t know how you can get 100% confidence that something will happen between now and mid January. My own assessment of the probability would be less than 50% for sure. I also think that all those leaks ( sitting on his desk waiting to be signed ) are probably worthless.

Nailed it! I agree as well (probably a first in this board). It is quite possible they you can buy the preferred with a good risk reward after a deal is announced. That’s sort of why I am watching this somewhat. Right now, it’s just a crapshoot and time is running out. If nothing happens in the next 3 weeks, then it will likely take another 4 years to waiting. And why would it happen in the last 3 weeks when they couldn’t get anything done in the last 4 years?

Unless something happens in the next 3 weeks, it’s over, imo. I would argue it’s likely over already since nothing happened for 4 years, so why now?

Added a bit of 9988.HK (BABA) in HK overnight.

Interesting perspective, as always. (?) It's difficult to build on this from an analysis or investment point of view but there's the following question: who's going to pay for all this? The answer (which has been wrong so far) has been increased taxation but what the fukk do i know? MMT means we pay it forward.