Spekulatius

^ That’s a very good analysis. Thank you for taking the time to lay it out.

Ross812’s charts are interesting, but I think some of the narrowing gap is just the result of equity valuations tanking (in the 1920’s and in the 1970’s) not because the people at the bottom were doing better. That’s not exactly the kind of mean reversion we want. I think some government interventions like trying to make the education system better and create more equity there might help. The higher minimum wages have helped somewhat (those get decided at the state level) despite what some persist say - the higher unemployment due to higher labor cost just hadn’t happened. I don’t see more regulation helping in general though. I do green overall that social mobility is the bigger (and probably only real ) problem, not wealth inequality. Of course both are somewhat connected to each other, but it seems to me that social upwards mobility has been waning over the years in the US, but also in Europe.

How much does it matter, unless you own UK stocks? The Uk is a pretty inconsequential trade partner for the US and more important for the EU, but it’s not that important either. Boris Johnson is hard to read and seemingly unable to make decisions. Maybe his wavering is some sort of 3D chess or reflects his inability to make decisions which may become an even bigger deal with Cunningham (his advisor and maybe more) gone. I do agree some sort of emergency skinny deal is likely, if there is a hard Brexit. I don’t think it matters for most of us. I do think that London as a financial center will be much less important going forward than in the past.

Bosch is Great. Many seasons to watch. One I am currently enjoying mainly for the style is “The Liberator”. Its a hybrid/ graphic novel visual style and tells the story of a WW2 unit: Amazon has a series in a somewhat similar style “Undone” which I also like a lot (that one has great storytelling too).

Those that think communist countries have wealth equality have never been (or studied) a communist country. People there are about as equal than the animals in Orwell’s Animal farm.

Ironically got it at the Trump “victory” party. I guess this is badly needed “positive” news for the Trump team. Gesundheit!

Looks interesting with revenue growth, stable margins, and high ROIC. This thing deserves a thread of its own, IMO. Maybe this is similar to MU, cyclical, long-term trend is upwards, buy when others are looking the other way? SIMO’s memory controller business is a much better business than MU, imo, because there is less pricing fluctuation and it is fabless. Gross margins are fairly stable around 50%, so it’s not as good as a CPU or analog business, but much better than totally commoditized segments like memory. I can start a thread and write a few lines, but my thesis isn’t deep: it’s just an OK to good and somewhat lumpy business that is cheep.

SIMO - Greenblatt/ Magic formula type semiconductor stock.

Betting on widening credit spreads is probably a cheaper way to hedge than buying equity puts right now. Is there a way for retail investors to do this?

I would’ve careful with assumptions about industrial use of Silver, as in most cases a lot of progress is made to reduce the amount of material needed per unit over time, especially when the input is expensive. Also Al and Cu can replace Silver in most applications if things really get silly.

Weren't they just suggesting that asymptomatic covid carriers could continue to work in a hospital's covid hot-zone? The patients in the hot-zone all have covid anyway, so does it really matter if some of the staff also have covid? I guess there's the viral-load argument that the staff could contribute to the viral load in the air, but that seems to me like a pretty marginal effect. Now, if they were suggesting that a covid-positive doctor work in a hospital's cold-zone, there might be some serious ethical and legal considerations.... SJ No, not every patient in a CoVID-19 hotspot zone has CoVID-19 and not every employee or nurse or doctor has it, but with these lack of precautions they probably will. We are basically seeing a repeat of NYC in March in a rural setting with less people. I think mortality rates will be quite bad.

A few SAAS stocks that I am in: FROG - has pretty good metrics and a smallish market cap. Close to IPO price ($44), I would be interested. NCNO - bank operating system. Seems that management is very agile and Gespanns their offerings. Perhaps a long runaway, but it isn’t a hyper fast grower. SPLK - seems like they have a competitive moat. On premise to SAAS transition has stalled top line and earnings metrics but this should be over by 2021. I owned this for a while (bought in September) , but sold went it popped 20% on now news.

It all depends on the gold price and the discipline of the operators. It is similar to oils and gas except prices for their product are better. Personally, I would rather own a little gold etf and not worry about thee things. FWIW, I own a little IAU.

Interesting. Hospitals in ND full, asymptotic nurses can continue to work. https://www.grandforksherald.com/newsmd/coronavirus/6753876-With-North-Dakota-hospitals-at-100-capacity-Burgum-announces-COVID-positive-nurses-can-stay-at-work SD looks similar.

No, but I liked the price I got. Pure play Defense Play NOC and LMT have barely moved. The way I see it RTX is half defense and half commercial aerospace, so If I consider defense didn’t move (much) then commercial aerospace is worth 25% more than yesterday? I don’t think so.

Sold my RTX, PCYO and GRA.

Jokes aside, I added back $FAF today. There is always something in the doghouse.

Highly recommended. I bought one in October of 2019. It has been a godsend. My wife and I spent just about all our free time out on Lake Winnipesaukee this spring, summer, and fall. A boat is great for social distancing. Also in case Biden gets any crazy gun control passed I lost all of my guns in a tragic boating incident this past summer. CorpRaider and rkbabang, could you suggest a specific ticker . . . er, I mean model? $MCFT sunk today -6.8%. Obviously a WFH stock.

Which one ?

the real news is not that we have a vaccine, it is the high efficacy (90% indicated). A vaccine that with only 50% efficacy is not a game changer, one with 90% is. I do agree it doesn't really change anything for the next few month, but it does indicate the light at the end of the tunnel. Now I would like to hear how the vaccine rollout is going to be handled, because handling the logistics well is crucial. An now it's even more important to contain the spread as well as possible so we don't have another 200k dead before this vaccine is available.

I looked at ELBIT Systems (ESLT) as it trades near its low ($113 vs $110 - 52 week low). I will don’t see it trading at a discount to US defense plays that I think are lower risk. It is a nice outfit they I owned before - I bought it around $30 in 2012 and sold it for more than a double in 2013 (looking back at my records) but it was very cheap back then and trading lower than US defense plays. Maybe people are worried about fallout from ELBIT selling 'suicide drones' to Azerbaijan given the conflict w/ Armenia? https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israels-elbit-systems-sells-azerbaijan-skystriker-suicide-drone-577053 Just a guess off the top of my head. Oh boy, these things are for pretending, not for actual use. The part with the live demonstration on an adversary driving a Jeep sounded bad too. These things are basically a mini version of the V1 invented in WW2 by the Nazi’s - carbon neutral due to their electrical engines. Unrelated to this, my holding Rheinmetall (RHM.DE) had pretty strong results in their defense sector. it’s an industrial conglomerate that used to be 1/2 defense and the rest automobile supplier, but not the mix is netter than 60/40 due to defense growing and the automobile part shrinking. With European defense spending surging, RHM has one of the best growth profiles in the defense sector, imo. I recently rebought some shares around 63€which I had sold around 80€- paying attention to the sometimes widely fluctuating shares can pay off. https://www.rheinmetall.com/en/rheinmetall_ag/press/news/latest_news/index_21696.php

I am not sure if Europe has peaked. France had 85k yesterday (per worldodometer) and that number has been rising. The Czech Republik, Belgium and France has reached their hospital capacity for ICU, so there is severe stress on the health care system a d other countries aren’t far behind (Netherlands , Switzerland etc). I watch hospital utilization and admissions more than anything and three US has seen a remarkable increase in admissions from below 40k to more than 55k and it is going steadily upwards. We have seen already the hospital system in Midwestern states starting to get into capacity issues (the the posts about South Dakota) but this will get much more severe once we cross 60k admission, which were the former peaks from Covid wave #1 in March and #2 in July. This time, wave number 3 is broad based and cases are rising everywhere, not just the epicenter in the Midwest. So, I think it is likely that we will exceed former perks in hospital utilization forcing local shutdowns if the health care system which is going to create widespread knock on effects to everything else. While it is true that tolerance is higher this time due to knowing much more about the disease and better clinical outcome it is also true that the increased complacency makes it harder to reverse trends in rising infection rates. Also, while we have invested a lot in equipment, we still have the same restraints in personal that we had in March, since it really isn’t possible to get more doctors and nurses in hospitals quickly. because of all the safety precautions (gowning up, segregating COVID-19 patients in COVID-19 floors) treating COVID-19 patients require more manpower than regular patients which is the reason why hospitals will be shutting down with an influx of COVID-19 patients before capacity is reached. All those quickly erected field hospitals are more or less useless, because there aren’t enough people around to operate them. Quite frankly, I think the administration should be activating army medical resources again, as they may be needed in due time, but it’s hard to predict where. In any case I watch hospital admission more than anything else, as I think this is the key indicator driving the decisions. MA (where I live) is on the cusp of its second wave and we have already a soft curfew from 10pm to 5AM and it is likely that those measures may be ratchet up more.

I think there is a difference between collectibles and assets or business that generate cash flow. I don’t think accumulating collectibles is really investing. For other things that generate cash flow, it is more about semantics. A business is harder to value than a real estate asset that is rented out and where you have a pretty good idea about future cash flow and comps. The problem with investing in hard assets like real estate assets is that we don’t have direct control of the asset (the cash flow and when it can be liquidated) and there is an layer of G&A expense that is never going away unless an entity is liquidated, which rarely happens. So those Reits etc. in my opinion should trade at a discount to NAV, the question is how much.

This is interesting too, but based on my observations true. https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/gov-baker-top-education-officials-to-provide-coronavirus-update/2225052/ This is especially true for smaller kids. Also , some parents are forced to mix kids with other households because there were no childcare options. That leads to higher transmission rates than if kids go to school in controlled conditions.

I looked at ELBIT Systems (ESLT) as it trades near its low ($113 vs $110 - 52 week low). I still don’t see it trading at a discount to US defense plays that I think are lower risk. It is a nice outfit that I owned before - I bought it around $30 in 2012 and sold it for more than a double in 2013 (looking back at my records) but it was very cheap back then and trading lower than US defense plays.