Spekulatius

Almost looks like an AI software created a pic of this Chinese fellow on the left converting to a Taliban on the right in two steps.

If you want to know how insurance in CA is going, just check out Mercury (MCY). Back when I lived in the state , I had insurance with them and paid ~$500 for a house worth $450k. It almost burned down in the 2017 wildfire - the fire stopped 2 blocks north of my house (sold it in 2015 after moving to the east coast). MCY also got terrible management , imo. My insurance agent was really good though.

I actually struggle with the FX aspect of Uk small cap stocks. The GBP is up almost 20% against the USD from the lows, so depending on when an Uk company reported and how much of their revenue are outside the UK, you need to make huge adjustments. These currency fluctuation are also quite damaging to the Uk economy, again similar to what happens in EM’s. They basically increase the cost of capital. Then you have the 8.7% inflation issue. I just run a Greenblatt /magic formula like screen for some counties in Europe and get many hits in the UK but also Italy. I have in the past done better in Italy in the the Uk, but there are quite a few small cap pot. gems in both countries.

I am not saying your tech doesn’t work, but seismic waves travel faster through solids then through voids. My guess is they detect reflections from density disturbances not the speed. To measure propagation speed(for indirect density measurements) you need an emitter and a sensor distant from each other.

So, he claims that every superpower including Portugal (back in the 15th century) dominated the Eurasian continent. I found this statement interring.I were interviewer here, I would have ask him to elaborate more. Same with Spain or even the British Empire. When you mix nonsense like this, as a history professor no less, then you lose all credibility. Then his talk about Afganistan, the strategic donut while. Claims is critical if you want to move oil and NG to Pakistan or India. More nonsense . nobody is going to lay pipelines in Afganistan because the territory is terrible and some of the warlords will probably destroy it. There are also much better way to move oil and NGL via ships, pipelines via Iran even, China. the list goes on and on. Afghanistan as a county is one of the most useless location on earth from a geostrategic POV. He is right that being a superpower really is about dominating trade. That’s what the Portuguese did, because they were at that point the best Navigators and seafarers. They never even tried to dominate the Eurasian continent with their puny population. Neither did the Spanish and arguably not even the Brits. They are dominates trade at the peak of their power. Again if you talk 50% nonsense with combine with 50% solid thinking, you still get mostly garbage as end result, Imo. There are other statements like the US put in $8T in Afghanistan that are obviously wrong. This would be more than half the US defense budget the last 20 years. The list goes on and on. Waste of time quite honestly to spent time on.

The Uk looks more and more like an emerging market to me: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/prepare-pain-britain-hurtling-towards-050000881.html Feels like Greece 2010. Inflation 8.7%….

@james22 As Long as they are attacking Iran, let them have at it. I am not even sure why they attack Iran. Seems idiotic. Unbelievable footage from trench warfare around Bakhmut:

This chart pertains to bank debt not bank assets. Having LT and fixed interest rate debt is an advantage now for a bank.

Interesting disconnect and nothing new. If you invest in small caps, you certainly know: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-stock-rally-leaves-small-caps-in-the-dust-2ffaa0ad?mod=hp_lead_pos5

I guess they are at the bury the corpses stage: https://www.ft.com/content/5f9e844a-771f-4c65-beb2-ed2964bee6c9

The idea that only the CCP has lifted the people in China out of poverty is laughable. We have a control experiment going on where the Chinese went capitalist and they are called Hongkong and Taiwan. Hongkong has not already been absorbed by the mothership. That is one reason why the CCP needed to take over Hongkong and now they set their aim at Taiwan. It screams to their people that there is better alternative out there where people live better with more freedom. The CCP doesn’t like that and my concern is that they would rather destroy it, even if it costs them dearly. I think not, but the risk is there in my opinion. Guy Spier is like label, but I don’t think he is actually a good thinker or investor. he seems to ape other people and get into large cap positions, even though his own fund is fairly small. His long period of inaction does not seem like a strength either, for a small fund, he should use his ability to make some bets, Imo. He was commiserating about the risk of a nuclear war due to Ukraine in recent podcast which seem to have prevented him to pull the trigger on some investment opportunities . I just don’t see the point, this thinking makes no sense to me as if it matter what stocks he buys when we do got a full blown nuclear war. If he really thinks that , he should just build a bunker in the Swiss alps for himself and his family. This type of thinking is self defying, he has no edge there, no way to influence outcomes. I just don’t see a point investing along side him.

No hugs and kisses to the cheeks though.

Being scared is better than being ignorant of a real threat. My thesis is that China has been in war with the west since at least Xi Jinping came to power, maybe even before that. The Chinese leaders before Xi Jinping may have been more careful or covert about their intentions but Xi Jinping is quite open about his intentions, you just have listen about what he says or read what he writes. I think the west just didn’t realize this until a few years ago. Maybe Trump actually was it who started to push back, even though not in smart way, Imo. In any case Biden/Trump, Democrat or Republican it doesn’t matter, in terms of China they are actually more or less on the same page - they have realized that China is an adversary and they need to do something about it. So now we are in phase, that we are in some sort of a war with China, not openly with military yet , but covertly. Call it a Cold War, because it mimics the war against the USSR since 1950 (Korea was the moment that everyone in the US realized that a Cold War era has started). This was 5 years after George Orwell coined the term I believe in 1945. he also called it peace which is no peace, which is rather fitting. We are now in 1950 in Cold War I terms. The Cold War is predominately not fought with military power, it’s more of an economic and technological race. That’s why semis are key here. The Chinese knew this a few years ago and now the US/ West knows it too. Now the west tries to kneecap the Chinese semi land grab as they should and the Chinese have no choice but do develop their own tech. There will be other battlefields in other tech areas as well as those with economic dimensions (rare earth metals anyone?). China’s belt and road is one way China tries to get control of trade and US does this via bilateral trade agreements. We will see which one works better, but I think belt and road has been a bust so far. In any case, the important thing is that the US and increasingly Europe as well has realized that we are in a new kind of Cold War with China and it’s a long term game, not some thing that is over in a few years - we are talking likely many decades here. It’s important to realize this because you can’t win a war unless you realize you actually in a war and you need to fight. We just got to that point recently. The winner will be the side who has is going to be most economically and technologically advanced and a military that can project lower around the globe. My guess is that the next 25-35 years won’t look like 1990-2025 but more like 1950-1985. Now most predictions of the future are wrong, but the good news is that you can update them as you go along.

That’s better than Mungers oil royalty buy in the 60’s that was raved about and probably on par with how the Russian Oligarch bought state owned assets in 1990 or thereabouts.

My bought some of TJ 85% Uganda chocolate that @rkbabangand it's indeed very good. I rate it 8-9/10, about even with Ghiradelli. The TJ chocolate is incredible smooth tasting for the 85% cocoa content while Ghiradelli is slightly bitter. Both are better than the Lindt 85% or 92% bars imo. Both are great Chocolates and the TJ for $2 is an absolute bargain. After all we are value investors here.

Imprisonment rates in the US are quite high. One chart alone can be misleading, but the incarceration rate in the US is shockingly high without doubt. it's a huge economic drag and indication of severe social issues. We can't claim the US is perfect. Noam Chomsky has some valid points in many matters, but is also blatantly wrong in others. On the topic of semiconductors, it is clear that China is going for domination here. This is a stated goal by the CCP and it is easy to see why - it enables a lot of other things (AI, military) and being independent also allows them to put more pressure on Taiwan. So in my opinion, the US/West is right to push back here, especially since China is not competing fairly.

I think China does quite little to support the war effect directly. There is no evidence of a significant flow of weapons or ammo from China to Russia for example. The tech that makes it to Russia from China seem to be mostly consumer tech. The fact that Russia went to North Korea For ammo tells you already how much the Chinese are helping. Chinese companies are afraid of getting blacklisted - the Russian market is so small compared ro t(r Western Market that it’s not worth taking a chance. I think Xi Jinping was informed about a special military operation during their meet at the Olympic Games but he did not expect this to escalate into a full blown war, so he is careful to keep a distance from this bloody mess, Imo.

Not in satisfactory quantity. How are they getting it to China? By train or truck through Siberia? Building pipelines will take a long time and likely wont suffice. Also how would Russia or China defend supply chain that is a few thousand miles long?

Well, i agree with everything you wrote but the majors are definitely not stopping to develop of new oil fields. I posted above the press release straight from Exxon website- they are in this big time and other majors are crawling around too (Total, Petrobas soon joining) in addition to some smaller players like Apache. You also know that Capex in E&P is going up this year not down. Pretty much any major or oil and gas of decent size will have increasing Capex this year. Exxon for example announced a 9% higher Capex budged, Chevron is even + 25%. BP is up 5% and only Shell is about flat.

I agree on taking a flyer on chinese stocks as a trading sardines. The shorter the trade the better. Any fighting in Taiwan would destroy the TSMC facilities anyways - they are complex systems and even just damaging some utilities or supplies makes them unusable. The secondary effects of an attack on Taiwan on the AUS economy will be terrible, but China will be destroyed by the subsequent blockade of all goods coming in or out of China. No crude, raw material , food will get into China unless the US allows it. China has no means to counter an US/western lead sea blockade. The Chinese Economy will basically turns to rubble and hunger breaks out. I guess they can try the nuke threat. No good other option left. Or maybe get rid of Xi and the CCP and try something else, if it comes to that.

The weak always get exploited, it doesn't take a Putin to do it. On Obama - I ask myself if Biden as vice president in 2014/15 agreed with Obama on Ukraine at that time. My guess only historians will find out after everyone involved is dead and the documents get declassified. Obama certainly was mistaken to accept Putin's arbitrarily drawn red lines and not to deal with the aggression right there. This situation was never rectified until it was almost too late.

The fields are definitely coming online and they are monsters. We are talking about Billion brl fields here. Suriname had big finds here as well and Petrobas believes there is black gold on the northern Brazilian coast as well. https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/locations/guyana I am not a geologist, but I can draw a line from offshore/onshore Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, French Guyana to Brazil and I think they might just find oil allover the place. Your post is quite frankly gibberish, it makes no sense to me whatsoever.

My cold war scenario does not have mushroom clouds, but LHX is a nice setup - got back to pre-invasion levels and I think earnings may be springloaded there. They have seen margin pressure supposedly from supply chain issues, but those should go away at some point. Book/Bill is 1.3 which tells you there is revenue potential.

Prediction are hard, but Prigozhin has become very outspoken to state it mildly and people in Putin's circle have fallen out of windows, slipped and broke their neck or became suddenly ill for far less. Everyone outlives their usefulness eventually.

I am liking LHX here again - added to my starter position around $180 here. the Aerodyne acquisition is a question mark (will it get approval) but fits into their space ambitions. this one has been a laggard due to lack of earning growth, but I think the valuation could be compelling if you believe that defense spending is going up on behalf of Chine/Russia. I think the reason for the weakness in this sector is fears round government shutdown / debt ceilings, which are likely abate at some point. I do regard the stocks in this sector as insurance against mushroom clouds.