Spekulatius

I think OXY is one holding where Abel is going to crank up the heat. Vicky should be careful what she wishes for. WEB pretty much said he is not going to buy control of OXY (for implicit liability reasons we can presume) but if Abel did, she could be out of her job really quick…

I also added some UNH shares but still smallish for me. These health insurers are really hated but that’s how you get to buy into quality bargains - of left holding a bag.

Reduced HII. That one did really well from my buys. Earnings are on deck tomorrow.

I would be careful with ERIE. the total combined ratio business they wrote on the exchange is pretty bad. They shows this data only in the supplements This is probably not sustainable. ERIE either need to be more selective in underwriting or lowering ERIE‘s 25% fee or both. In any case, ERIE‘s results will suffer. ERIE is a great business as they are not directly underwrite the risk and just charging fees proportional to the volumes. It‘s similar to the GP/LP structure.

Small adds to UNH and REGN.

Korea said already no deal before their election. i think India has the most to gain and hence will try to close a deal first, because they want to replace China as a trading partner. They also have fairly high tariffs themselves.

Using daily probably refers to using the app or checking on a notification.

With the COVID-19 analogy, we are more at the January / February 2020 stage. The existence of virus was known, but it was in China only and no economic impact yet. Markets getting a little bit nervous… I don’t know how this one plays out, but the market and economic risks are substantial, imo.

How many Californians feel they should secede from the US? I think it’s more than 3/10. A lot of political will is needed to do a major change like that.

Only in America:

Congress has been sidelined with exec orders. Trump just need to fabricate another national emergency and its off the races. While I think inflation would be more straightforward that has been tried already and the populace is highly sensitized now to inflation, so that will make it politically harder to do without getting destroyed at elections. Also, I think everything that doesn’t involve some sort of deal just doesn’t work for Trump. Who knows what is going to happen, but the interesting thing for me is that an actual legal framework can be conferred that does not invoke a technical default. We also know that the think tank around Trump does want the Mar a Largo thing or some variation of it.

I wonder if Trumps Truth social and Trump coin counts? He sure is creating his own catalysts.

They have been in a low level war for decades. Sometime a bit more, sometimes a bit less. What we are seeing now is a bit more.

That’s how it will start, then other countries airlines (Asia, Afrika) will buy them, if they are good enough and cheaper. This is even more so true if Airbus/ Boeing can’t deliver. I think also that China will also figure how to make their own engines, but that will come later. 10 years from now, I am fairly certain that COMAC plains will compete with Airbus/ Boeing. if we have learned on thins is that the Chinese can figure out how to make things, if they put enough effort in it, Building their own airplanes ought to be one of the long term goal as it’s also a dual use tech (military & commercial). The Chinese have building blocks like high tech manufacturing in scale, electronics, material science in place to do this. It will take time but eventually they will get there, imo.

The end result is that consumer confidence is tanking which is what matters, not as much why, imo. The consumer confidence tanking sometimes precedes recession and sometimes not. It has not been a bulletproof indicator if such a thing exists.

BRO results are out today too and they seem a bit light. Same with ERIE last week. It seems that the insurance market is slowing down and that’s why we are seeing the misses here and there. https://investor.bbrown.com/news-releases/news-release-details/brown-brown-inc-announces-first-quarter-2025-results-including

Another unrelated to above tidbit - aircraft deliveries are far below 2018 and were so even before the 737 Max issues started to bite. true even for Airbus itself. Apparently, the aerospace supply chain never recovered from COVID-19 shock, it seems. Just my guess, but the Chinese SOE COMAC will be making a lot of planes 5-10 years from now, because apparently both Airbus and Boeing can’t.

Does it matter for the outcome? The negative wealth effect is also most likely triggering the falling equity markets anyways, so same root cause. The Doge impact is very small compared to tariffs.

Because it affects different constituents. The MAGA crowd does not exactly look like they hold a lot of bonds. Also look at his track record of defaulting himself. If nothing else, it could be used as a negotiation tactics which goes along the lines of Mar a Largo accord. What was news to me that a restructuring of bond maturities could possibly be done without triggering a default technically and without offering a higher coupon. Of course there would be lawsuits but he basically controls the Supreme Court as well.

He is a law professor who actually looked at the legal framework for sovereign debt and historical context. The US defaulted once on its obligations to pay its debt in Gold in 1935 for example (Gold clause ) . So there is some precedence. Time are always different. Trump is different and has a disdain for bond holders and talked about defaulting on treasuries before. https://constitutingamerica.org/gold-clause-cases-1935-guest-essayist-keith-e-whittington/

Thats the gist of it, Think Mar a Largo accord, We will extent maturity of your bond from 5 years to 100 years. Sue us! We have the Supreme Court covered. LOL. It might blow up the banking system though and create Japanese style zombie banks.

https://www.apolloacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/042625-ConsumerandFirms_v2.pdf

Watch his odd lots episode and think again before going too deep into treasuries: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/odd-lots/id1056200096?i=1000703968744

I second this. It is indeed dark though.

I think this is correct take. I think he will blink when he sees that he drives the economy against a wall for example. Maybe he even is slowly learning that Putin is the problem not so much Zelensky regarding Ukraine.