Spekulatius

Genocides isn’t a binary thing with an off on switch. There are shades of grey here and I think Israel operates more and more in shadowing areas of this realm. On Iran, we are at war with in Iran now. There is no telling where this is going to lead and it will take years to find out the result and consequences of this. Iran as the enemy has a say in the outcome. We don’t even know the result of the bombing for sure and from what i have seen in the past, military assessments will always tend to lead escalating involvement.

Yes, 6961 might be an addition to my Japan basked. Inhaber not decided yet. My main concern is sustainability of margins in their communication segment and the lazy balance sheet and seemingly shareholder unfriendliness. I put this on my watchlist for now. Surprisingly enough, the heat here in CLT is not worse than where I am moving from. My weather app says that the temperature in the town in MA was higher than at my house here, go figure. Humidity tends to be higher up there too, so I think the incremental suffering is nil.

Interesting fact- Israel fiscal deficit is 6.9% of GDP, about the same than ours and they are fighting a war. https://tradingeconomics.com/israel/government-budget

The Ayatollah is 86 years old. If he is taken out, a new Ayatollah is already chosen who looks exactly like the old one. i think taking out the Republican guard machinery and leadership has a larger effect.

Adding a bit more to Teiheiyo Cement 5233. 3rd Avenue Value find position. If they meet their goals for 2027 (10% ROE vs 6.4%), the stock should trade at book value then. Could be a double if the earnings continue to grow and they buy back more stock. I think it’s doable since the Japanese cement business is currently slightly below breakeven and they want to get it to a moderate 10% EBIT through rationalization.

Alizee- sounds pretty good and looks even better when she is dancing: She got some pretty good songs and records over the years but almost disappeared,

Elon disses the moon though, says it’s not worth it, SpaceX did sign contract though for the Artemis mission. The timeline seems to be getting tight though. https://www.flyingmag.com/spacex-stands-behind-its-ambitious-lunar-timeline/

Both miles driven and miles per disengagement are useful metrics. Time per fatal accident is also useful but hopefully the incident rate is so low that the stats will be very noisy around that one. On the topic of sensors it is quite funny that Elon rejects Lidar even though it is now used in robovacs (albeit less powerful ones with less range). I think he will change his mind on that one but by that time it will be clear that none of the vehicles sold so far with FSD without those will ever be truly self driving.

I would argue it will take years to find out. We have no idea if the bombs really destroyed the facility, if the Iranians were able to collect and salvage enough enriched Uranium and move it elsewhere , or what sort of asymmetrical warfare they can come up with over the next month or years, whether they get help from Russia , China or North Korea. Or may be it is all over because the regime collapses. The range of outcomes is very broad and not within our control.

So what’s the bet for the SPY opening on Monday? Down 1-2%? Lots of dip buyers nowadays.

I believe any aid from Russia will be tech transfer not supply of weapons. Thats mostly what Iran did to help Russia out with their drones. They helped them create a production lines for Shahed drones which are now destroying Ukraine. I expect the Russian to return that favor but of course deny everything . China will also supply weapons and components, as they have done before, but probably more so.

If you pay attention to the news from MAGA it was not such a big surprise - Tulsi in March: https://youtube.com/shorts/BW9015qzX3A?si=ugxHNNXYG1C1NKDQ Then the shift 12 hours ago: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056zqn6vvyo I think the truth is whatever fits the current narrative. My guess is that Iran really pursued a nuclear weapon but probably not in the timeframe discussed. In March the greatest dealmaker of all times throughout he could negotiate with Iran , so Tulsi did her testimony accordingly. When Israel decided to strike (against Trump wishes) and Trump changed his mind seeing an easy win since Israel did the hard part and wanted in on the action and threw studying under the buss (not that she doesn’t deserve it) and in an Orwellian move Iran is now a nuclear threat and here we are. One thing we know with with wars is that initial wins are the easy part, the hard part if getting any sort of end to it. Iran will learn from this to complete the nuclear program such that it becomes prohibitive to strike them. The are also allied with Russia which could well help them to complete the weapon and delivery package. We better hope for regime change and if that happens , this will be a great success but if not, this could be one of those forever wars.

Did the quick lesson lesson in nuclear science also include that it takes more than enriched Uranium to make a nuclear bomb ? - A nuclear bomb needs ignition device as well as a delivery mechanism. Both are not that simple. Having enough Uranium does not mean that they have the means to ignite it or it could just become a very dirty or inefficient bomb if it does not work properly. Iran has hypersonic rockets but it’s not clear thy habe the means to put a nuclear warhead on it, if they had one.

It has little to do with this meltdown but more to do with pure technical challenges. The last launch window to get to Mars before the next election is Q4 2006 and it isn’t a particular good one. There is no way Starship is ready for this by that time and many other parts are missing to complete a Mars mission anyways.

I read this report again and here were a few things I noticed (and overlooked last time): 1) the second hand market for luxury goods is outperforming the market. this makes sense, luxury goods should be durable and online transacting becomes easier, somewhat not. This is also fueled by the younger demographics (Millenials, Gen X etc) 2) The pool of luxury buyers actually has shrunk from ~400M to ~350M. This is surprising but seems to be a result of the premiumization . So the luxury industry depends more and more on whales. Thats not great. 3) Younger Generations seem less susceptible to luxury goods than older ones, This applies to Gen X, Z. One could say that they don’t the money, but they looked at engagement too. I think the biggest issue may have luxury cars beau e GenX,Z don’t care about cars at all. Not good. For Ferrari. My own thought is that the luxury goods should need to morph more and more and more from sole purchases into experiences. I think this is one thing Arnault has in his mind too. LVMH as a large enterprise could have a huge advantage there as they can assemble experiences (luxury travel ?) potentially like no other.

I don’t think it’s just up to him. SpaceX will make this work but the pipedream of a Mars mission during Trump presidency is now very unlikely to happen.

I don’t have much time in the morning, so there it is: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/earnings

Short and sweet summary about Trumps parade :

NYT has one of the best shareholder returns over the years - 15.5% CAGR over 10 years. Whatever they have done, it has increased shareholder value. WSJ went downhill when Murdoch bought it. It’s still a reasonable source, but avoid all editorials.

I know charts at not supposed to work, but what if MC.PA just want to work of the COVID-19 luxury bubble - then it would go back to ~400 Euro and change? There is a gap between 400-500 Euro which means little resistance to 400 Euro according to chart astrologists. Just putting this out there to get roasted. MC would trade at around 16x earnings there, so it’s not implausible either.

If the Starships keep exploding ( it is the 4 explosion in a row) it will slow down SpaceX for sure. The complexity with many rockets makes it more prone to failure. I don’t think a human will be on board this one until 2027 at earliest.

@hasilp89 I finally got around checking out Enplas 6961. Looks quite impressive and I agree it looks very cheap. Their business is producing high tolerances molded parts semiconductors, life science, electric motors (this one is the most commoditized and has low margins )and now communication (little plugs for optical connections). With the latter, they seem to have an extremely profitable niche that has ~60% EBIT margins. It may be the most profitable business I have ever seen, and it’s due to datacenters connectors as the number imply. I wonder how sustainable the margins are as I think eventually competition is going to make a dent here. I think it’s inevitable that margins will decline substantially because 60% EBIT margins for this stuff seems unsustainable.

Cool stuff, but that’s a smallish rocket engine as evident from the output. I guess they want to explore the control mechanism of those rocket engines. Honda has aspirations in aerospace: https://www.hondajet.com/en/Products/HondaJet-Echelon It’s one of the cool things with Japanese companies. They have these long term projects that they fund that result in excellent products in some cases. There are quite a few that went into the semiconductor industry with niche products and some generate awesome margins. For example Toto (known for toilets) makes wafer chucks and I recall the EBIT margins are ~40% for this business: https://jp.toto.com/en/products/ceramics/elewafer/

Sold my PLX (Pluxee) and EDEN today at a loss. I figured there are too many regulatory headwinds in Brazil, france , Italy trying to disrupt the business model.

Yes, the distorted views are more correlated with the rise of social media than anything else. Social media ownership is also more concentrated than media ever was.