Spekulatius

I think we're gonna have a shit show this go around. No worries, the Fed prints a lot of toilet paper.

Russian dealers are so 20th century. Just buy it on Amazon FFS: https://smile.amazon.com/Images-SI-Uranium-Ore/dp/B000796XXM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2X6ULNHYIQ44Q&dchild=1&keywords=uranium+ore&qid=1595350695&sprefix=uranium%2Caps%2C157&sr=8-1 Good news! I was able to get in contact with a prince from Nigeria. Wired him money to buy call options on Uranium. He said he has both U-238, and U-235. He said he would US mail me a confirmation. I think we can find Uranium closer to home now - how about Ohio? It seems it’s not needed there any more. I wonder who the goto guy is now. Apparently “marketing” is done by politicians: https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/07/fbi-agents-deployed-to-ohio-house-speaker-larry-householders-farm-report.html

I wonder about the difference between U-238 and U-235. I know it looks and tastes the same. The Russian dealer I have been chatting with sells both.

I feel like Nacho Libre.

What precautions do you need to take to store/handle uranium? Uranium investments get interesting once you reach critical mass.

Thanks, couldn't get past the paywall but this SA page provided insights in the comments section. https://seekingalpha.com/news/3507213-brookfield-to-take-25-stake-in-dominions-cove-point-in-2b-deal I would love to be a fly on the wall in the meetings where Brookfield determines their fair value marks. Between this, the overpriced Railroad they bought, the GCP shopping malls, the Forest REIT projects etc. The mental gymnastics will sure make the flys head spin. It would probably kamikaze into cow poop to feel better afterwards. I started wondering today if any of these public private equity firms are good short/put option candidates. Some are levered at the parent level, and generate are likely coming from highly indebted investments. If investments start turning sour, fees could dry up. Without deeper insight I would tend to own the parent and short the stepchildren. The reason is simple - the debt is with the subs and BAM will dilute theit equity if they have to and even benefit at this point if they can.

Curious what interests you about MRTN? TL trucking is a pretty rough and tumble industry. Probably not as rough as owning shopping malls and NYC office space nowadays. FWIW, I added a bit $LEVI today.

LOL, that women “dancing” in front of the police car. FWIW, if I were to guess the demographic that is mit likely to skirt mask rules based on my limited observations, it would be a young black male in his twenties.

Fascinating, the COVID-19 lockdowns (or other factors related to COVID-19) may have reduce the number of very prematurely born baby’s. Nobody knows why: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/health/coronavirus-premature-birth.html

Or maybe strongly held beliefs (backed up in many case by previous large Fairfax projects) are being held on to even in the face of disconfirming evidence. “For some of our most important beliefs, we have no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs. Considering how little we know, the confidence we have in our beliefs is preposterous—and it is also essential.” —2002 Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman Moat beliefs aren't necessary to change, which is why people don't change them. However, if a management team begins to take shareholder unfriendly actions, it's usually best to assume those actions will continue and not change back. You can see that on this board on the Biglari thread. Many folks were defending how optically cheap that was long after it became obvious that ~100% of the value was going to Biglari and ~0% to outside shareholders. I don't think Fairfax is at that level, but there are enough examples of shareholder unfriendly actions that a management discount is absolutely appropriate. Maybe that hasn't always been true, but like Munger said: "We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side." Dismissing cogent arguments as paranoia is pretty obviously an ad hominem attack, imo. FFH is run like a Family business and outside shareholders have no recourse and are just along for the ride. This is fine and doesn’t matter much when they are performing but it does matter a lot when they don’t (as is the case here) and warrants a discount. FFH and Biglari are just different shades of grey here’s with BH being extreme and uninvestible. FFH is just a much milder form of nepotism. That’s the real danger with family run business. If they perform Mr Market Will not care much about the lack of influence for outside shareholder, but if not, Mr Market will discount a steeper and steeper discount to fair value based on perception of management capability (or lack thereof), much more so than with a truly public company, where an activist could jump in and shake things up.

It is good advice. But given that in most office buildings in North America you cannot open windows that's not really that applicable. Cover my ass here: I don't know what's the window situation in those low rise campuses in silicon valley. The company I work for has all person -person meetings cancelled indefinitely. Conference rooms have been closed since March. We do the meetings online now, but there are far less meetings now. I can’t say I miss any of this. Edit : Ouch - 5k posts. I clearly spent too much time here.

It's an interesting point. I've thought about this in the past because it kinda works like that with HIV. I'm not sure how it will shake out. But I am sure sooner rather than later this issue will come before the courts. It’s a bigger issue for business than for individuals, imo. Imagine an outbreak in a large office building etc. FWIW, I wonder how these meat processor for example deal with this. They likely get sued already.

Yes a smaller military budget would br a headwind, but the composition matters. The thinking expressed before is that future spending will go more towards high tech and less towards boots on the ground. This is based on the the threats from China and Russia increasing and become ing more sophisticated. Our future military might become much smaller, but also more technologically advanced. This would be a very good news for defense contractors.

Here is what comes to my mind: Peter Ustinov was the as they say knowadays.

Thanks, couldn't get past the paywall but this SA page provided insights in the comments section. https://seekingalpha.com/news/3507213-brookfield-to-take-25-stake-in-dominions-cove-point-in-2b-deal I would love to be a fly on the wall in the meetings where Brookfield determines their fair value marks. Between this, the overpriced Railroad they bought, the GCP shopping malls, the Forest REIT projects etc. The mental gymnastics will sure make the flys head spin. It would probably kamikaze into cow poop to feel better afterwards.

Is there a reason why you prefer something like SDS over just shorting ES? I don’t see it, but I may be missing something. IRA accounts can’t use margins so shorting is not possible. That might be one use case for SDS. Puts are preferable imo, but are expensive right now due to high volatility (VIX~28 right now)

$SPAQ down a good amount. Beware Boredom! $SDS also has a dry cough. Sold the SPAQ warrants Monday at the open. Was just banking on the Fisker announcement confirmation, which happened. SDS sucks, but to me, especially if you consistently reposition it, it can be a cheaper hedging alternative. Dont at all recommend holding over night for more than a day or two tops, as the decay will kill you. Thx. I always wonder how folks deal with trades, especially losing ones. I had a small one going on with a “BLM“ Bank, but that was cheap stock that I wouldn’t have mind owning for a bit too. That trade made a little profit. Typically, I find these things just a distraction and rather stay away, but sometimes there is an urge to do something.

LOL. Reminds me of my grandparents (from Germany) stories during WW2 when news from the war would be in the radio mostly. Then all of a sudden no news about a certain war theatre/ battle any more. My grandma then had to switch to BBC to find out what happened ( they had a German language Channel on Longwave) which was illegal of course . Needless to say this isn’t what winning looks like typically.

Sold my MSGS on that vaccine spike yesterday. I like other stocks better.

Well, beware of November then, if that is what you think is holding this up. Personally, I think the markets have come to terms that March was a media hoax and that while the virus is real, it is much closer to the flu than some doomsday bug. To the extent that politicians dont shut the economy down, things will grind it out, with the weaker numbers more than offset by confirmation of long term ZIRP and the goldilocks scenario where mainstreet needs stimulus for a longer time than Wall St does. I am still quite bearish, but this seems to be my read on why the market is trading where it is. Further, as BG mentioned, we had extreme excess and exuberance in some social media and biotech maybe 5 years ago, tech and pot 3 or so years ago, etc, which shook itself out. There certainly isn't a case that there arent stocks you can buy for reasonable valuations right now. But as always, you have to pay up for quality. If you wanted firesale prices, you should have been buying in March. I wouldn't be opposed to a real bear market. I would actually welcome it. I'm just saying that we're not close to 1999 levels from a euphoria (or valuation) perspective in my opinion. The 1999 stock market was very bifurcated with a lot of cheap but also very expensive pensive stocks. The well known quality large cap stocks were very expensive as were fat growing tech stocks, many of which had questionable business model. Now, the bubble seems to be in stocks like TESLA (and it’s imitators), SHOP, SAAS companies as well as millennial stocks like LMND. This pretty much looks like 1999 to me, except they in 1999 interest rates were higher, but also the economy was in much better shape.

This is a deeply philosophical question that scholars have not nearly contemplated enough.

$SPAQ down a good amount. Beware Boredom! $SDS also has a dry cough.

CBOE and a bit more LHX were my recent buys.

Adds to CBOE and LHX

It’s likely that they only count positive cases. I think the bigger problem is that people have to wait many days in FLA to get results. DesSantis better goes to work to match his rhetoric from a few weeks ago.