Spekulatius

Trade deal with Japan not settled apparently. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/japan-says-us-trade-deal-073022503.html No surprise as Trump keeps adding new tariffs (Pharma, semiconductors ) in addition to existing country based frameworks. Pharma is huge for Europe so there will be similar issues there.

Sound like you are in investment banking

We are playing offense now: FWIW, renaming every institution is straight from the dictators handbook.

We are playing offense now: FWIW, renaming every institution is straight from the dictators handbook.

I think the Gold standard was bound to fail due to it‘s inherent lack of flexibility. To increase money supply, the supply of gold needed to indessen and miners could only mine about 1-2& incremental gold (relative to the existing stock ) while a goring economy required far higher money supply at that point. Also with many nations on gold standard it meant that nations would compete for the Gold to increase their money supply which is another issue. On a high level, does it make sense to make money supply (which is a function of economic growth) based on the supply of a shiny element in the periodic table? I think it does not. Gold was useful as a universal currency like in the Roman Empire, but at some point I think the invention accounting (in Italy) and development of a modern banking system made this and outdated concept.

Added to $RBT and a starter in $ODET (I want to own a bit of both vehicles of the Bollore Galaxy ). Rebought a little $BAH.

I don’t think India is really part of the new Axis (Iran, Russia, China, North Korea). Modi just likes to keep his options open and does not to get bullied by Trump. I think he also knows that Xi Xinping is not the good guy. Russias world view is around destruction of the current world order while Xi Xinping goal is to create a new one under Chinese hegemony. I think the only thing they have in common is that they want to reduce the US and the Wests power.

Imagine being a billionaire and then sit on table and feel you have suck someone’s ass like those on this Oligarch table. The average person does not have suck up to their boss’s that badly, so what is all this money good for?

Horseshoe theory at display here. The far right and the far left have a lot in common They come to similar conclusions albeit with different rationale.

I didn’t say that, I said the issues are not solved. FWIW, we are now at war with Iran, which I think will be nuclear armed within a few years likely with help from Russia and/or North Korea. The meeting in Tianjin eye opening in terms of the Axis (Russia, Iran, North Korea etc) was on full display there. The foreign policy disaster with India aside. I think Trump was the catalyst for this meeting as none of the above like to be pushed around and China does try to play their cards as a predicable power in contrast to Trump.

I think the stalling revenue growth is due to a one off from Doge and growth will resume next year. I can live with 1 year of no growth when I can buy a great business for a very fair price. I think BAH is very well run, probably the best run government contractor , except CACI

Disrupter and new IPO $FIG down to $52 and change but still up from IPO price of $33. I think it’s quite possible for the stock to drop below the IPO price. Top price was ~$140. This is not an extremely fast grower either.

The Metaverse bet wasn’t small. He put tens of billions of $ in it and thousands of people were working on it. It was a Manhattan size project for a company like Meta.

This is not correct. there were a bunch of different search engines like Lycos, Yahoo and Altavista and the result were very differnt, more so than Bing and Google. Altavista was the Google at that time and far better than anything else until Google came around.

Rebought a starter in $BAH and bit more $BOL (Bollore)

The trade deficit was still ~$100B in July (the last number available). I don’t think Israel or Iran are solved yet either . On capitalism. I can argue Intel and the intent to take a stake in defense contractors is not exactly Manchester capitalism. How do you know the military is strengthened?

@thepupil & @gfp thank your perspective on crime in DC and the Project Nola. First time I hear about it. the surveillance thing is scary but then again if it works in a high crime area then I think it’s something to consider elsewhere. Crime is a huge tax on a city and should be reduced as much as possible. I also think that a capital should be held to a higher standard are than other cities.

Would be interesting how the locals Like @thepupil think about the National Guard presence. After all, they are the major stakeholder, the rest of us are just shouting from the sidelines. I think there are more folks here at CoBF that live in the greater DC area. Their input may mean more than all our opinion.

Added to $RBT and $BNR (Brenntag).

Reduced GOOGL at bit on AH news,

Sounds a lot like the Patriot act to me. It has been place since 2001 and was never rescinded.

Austria, Hungaria and Slovakia are most dependent on Russian gas. The latter two governments have strong affinity to Putin, so it’s not surprising.

I don’t think sanctions on Russian oil will have much impact on the crude supply situation. China, Saudi Arabia etc will continue to buy their oil. Same is likely true for India.

He just had a traffic accident in NH under dubious circumstances. Maybe similar to those:

Uk Gilts at 5.63%. Coming soon to the treasury market near you (imo) https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/30-year-bond-yield