Spekulatius

The problem for Putin is that he could be losing his army and then it’s over for him. the coup didn’t go anywhere, but I think there will be lingering longer term consequences from this. His special military operation now has turned inside Russia for once. Everyone know with even a bit of deductive reasoning in Russia now know that things have turned shit, especially the army leadership. At some point the top dog becomes the target. I have little doubt that Putin survives this coup, but I also think he comes out of this greatly weakened.

Great news for the US and Russia. It’s much better to work with India and reduce dependency on China. India is far more likely to become a real superpower than China, due to demographics alone.

Mr Pringles is dead. He will fall out of a windows or die by another misfortune soon enough. Good riddance. This whole situation also has been developing for a while, because Pringles has run his mouth fairly large, and pulled most his Wagner back from the front after they took Bahkmut. I am not sure anyone thinks this is fabricated story. it may not go anywhere, because I don’t think Pringles/ Wagner has any support by the Russian populace or military but the clash was reported in alternative sources first (just like anything else) not MSM and the sources showed credible material including Wagner guys and tanks controlling Rostov. This is not fake news at. It does show what a shithole Russia and its army has become. It will be interessant what is going to happen at foreign Wagner bases in Syria, Sudan etc. Will they still be Russian or are they now privateers? Can we even tell.

Bought some shares in Reply last week. Consulting co listed in Italy with an impressive track record. It’s not super cheap, but not expensive either (<20x earnings) and looks like a mini Accenture. They growth through acquisitions and organic growth. annual report and recent press releases mention AI a lot and it does not just seem all hollow talk. https://www.reply.com/contents/REP23-Bilancio_ENG_2022-1.pdf I do think that Consulting cos like ACN and possibly Reply will benefit from AI, as many companies who want to use it need guidance and expertise.

Looks like the Wagner coup is happening around Rostov, which is where Wagner pulled back after Bahkmut. This is also where most of the Russian command for the war is located, as well as it plays a role as a logistics hub: I don’t think that this coup is going to work, but I think Wagner is probably not going to be a factor any more. According to some sources, this happened because Wagner was supposed to be run by the MOD rather than Prigozhin (or Mr Pringles as they call him in Reddit). The comparison with Röhm may be befitting, although Röhm actually never recalled putsched.

@cubsfan Sputnik news is hardly a creditable news source, it’s a Russian government disinformation channel. Interesting stuff happening with Prighozin (Wagner leader). I predicted that a year from noe, Prighozin is likely not alive any more and I think things may be unraveling quicker than I thought now https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/06/23/prigozhin-charged-with-inciting-armed-revolt-after-vowing-to-stop-evil-military-leadership-a81615 I do think than Ukraine is taking high losses during the counteroffensive and needs to re-evaluate. Russian are taking terrible losses too, but that’s nothing new.

Now we can add the mystique of the lost sub to the Titanic. Should attract even more visitors to the wrecks. On the positive note, we now know that the US Navy of listening to what’s happening underwater. I suspect they do this to track submarines.

Interesting interview with Dimitry Muratov. I like the comment on the price of V and Z themed T- Shirts in Russia. Sounds like young people in Russia are against the war, older people are for it and support Putin. Maybe more people should eat their own cooking.

Selling right in a way is harder than buying right. I like the concept of hysteresis that @Dynamic laid out nicely. This leads to selling later and in a way gives you a margin of safety against selling too early.

@kab60 The balance sheet is interesting. Their payables are larger than the inventory. Also, it seems that not only have leased the building but also the equipment. There is only 160M GBP of equity for a 1,100M GBP balance sheet of which ~690M is lease liability. I guess you could say it’s a pretty efficiently run business. I do think this amounts to considerable operational leverage. Some of the cash is probably not fungible or they would run a net negative working capital.

I love Blink-182 though. Recommended it in the music thread. It's pretty uplifting which both the son and the dad need. I frankly don't blame him. There is not much he can do. A public display of a sad face is not going to help anyone.

There is a VIC writeup on Wickes, which appears to be losely a similar business than HD: https://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/Wickes_Group_plc/2454960235 I can make head or tails out of the metrics that the author is posting. He ignores leas liabilities (Ok) but even accounting for that, what he posts makes no sense. Wickes is a highly levered business and seems to be far less profitable than HD in any case. Has anyone looked into this? is is just me, but with some VIC writeups the metrics seem to be almost completely made up. https://www.wickesplc.co.uk/investors/investors-overview/results-reports-and-presentations/

These helicopters fire unguided missiles? They are unlikely to hit tanks so far out. I think they are basically used for crude artillery bombardment. 5 of them were shot down recently as well, allegedly.

Well, the CEO of Oceangate is eating his own cooking as we type away here.

This is a fantastic interview with Aswath Damodaran:

I very much liked Kaiser when I lived in California. its fully integrated so much easier to move across once you have an issue. Some people hate it (and that's why it took me a long time to join because of horror stories) but once I tried it out, myself and I my wife very much liked it. Unfortunately, it's not an option where we live.

Sturmtruppen 2023. If you have read Ernst Jungers book "In Stahlgewitter" it is exactly how he describes Sturmtruppen commandos into enemy trenches. Now we got the same thing going on more than 100 years later. Brutal. Make no mistake, with this sort of trench warfare, both sides will be taking heavy losses.

I am not sure where this belongs since it’s Macro , but when I was playing with the trueflation site, I noticed they have the UK inflation too: If this is real, the UK is effed. Worse than the 70’s actually…

I actually agree that Apple is a sell, and so is NVDA etc. Apple has the biggest problems because their entire supply chain is housed in China, it’s not just the chips from TSM in Taiwan. It will take them a decade to move it out of China to the extend that being cut of from China still allows them to supply the rest of the world with their products I am not so optimistic on Chinas economy and think they are close to peaking and who knows what self imposed factors are at play here when an autocrat can call the shots. Xi Jinping could be sick and feel he needs to do something while he can. Or one of their military maneuvers go wrong and rockets end up on Taiwan i stead of lying over or worse on an U.S. warship or an airplane gets shot down and things escalate from there. It is just a matter of time when you play it that close. Maybe nothing will happen for the next 10 years - I sincerely hope so. Even without direct exposure, the fallout from having to totally decouple from China would be severe.

@tnp20 I agree on most everything but I think XI Jinping timeline to gain control of Taiwan is shorter than 10 years. The increased aggression towards the US military presence around Taiwan is new and a strong indication of this and that is what led to to sell TSM. Even if 10 years is correct and China continues to escalate, the market will start to discount this more and more and multiples will suffer. There is no stock in China or Taiwan like PBR-A that pays me out 20% + annually so I get my money back quickly. If there was, I would consider it.

@dealraker Jimmy and Jack were right….for a while. I listened to a blinking summery of the book (Superforecasting) that stated that the best forecasters are those that continuously update their forecast based on current data and that are not afraid to change their mind. This does not work well in the media circus because media wants to story, so do they want to bearish story, they dial 1-800- CHANOS or 1-888- GRANT and if they want tech bull they sent an email to Crazy Cathie. None of this is likely to make you any money and in fact it’s not meant to, because for media it’s about the number of eyeballs, not the portfolio performance of their audience.

Sorry, I had no idea about the derogatory meaning. I literally learned this terminology at school, which was in the 70’s, but this was used way longer. Will use developing nations term henceforth. Sorry if I offended anyone.

In simple words, Putin is not so much afraid of NATO expansion, he is afraid of Democratic expansion in former Soviet Union states. Having a Democratic and prosperous Ukraine would be an incredible problem for Putin eventually l because Russian may question the current state of affairs. Same with China, HK and Taiwan actually. A free and prosperous Taiwan basically tells the Chinese people that we don’t need to CCP, we can do better. HK was taken care of, it’s just another Chinese city now. One country, one system.

Read up the article I posted above.

Isn’t it simple? The Cold War was over in 1990. NATO and Russia started to collaborate and this lasted until the early 2000 when Putin decided that Russia wanted to become an antagonistic superpower again. When Putin gained power in the 1999 election, he was perceived to be a strongman but not unfriendly against the west at all. This only become evident years later. I think he made up his mind after he gained power.