Spekulatius

Yup:

Got this one on my birthday and finally got through reading it. It contains a wealth of information and background about recent Ukraine history (all pre-war) and helps to understand the situation better. It sort of a bone dry read though. https://www.amazon.com/Ukraine-What-Everyone-Needs-Know®/dp/019753211X

I think AI bots will be a supplementary business for cloud providers basically. That means MSFT, AMZN, GOOGL maybe Alibaba in China. They already have the server and computing capacity.

@Cigarbutt I think in terms of MM flows, the current situation is similar to 2005-2007. At that time, we also had come Competition for deposits heating up because MM fund were yielding ~5% by the end of 2006. As I recall, we never saw a dramatic outflow in deposits into higher yielding vehicles. We will see if this time will be the same or different. As for cash levels at banks, we can get all this data from FRED. It’s weekly updated so the recent cash increase from the bank Panik shows already. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CASDCBW027SBOGAs As I mentioned before, banks used to sell securities when they wanted to lend and couldn’t increase deposits. This time, it’s not an option, they have to wait for them to mature, or take huge losses hitting regulatory capital.

My guess is that any AI model will have blind spots that somebody figures out how to brutally exploit and make a lot of money. It’s a dog eat dog world in finance, especially if it’s a zero sum game.

Tobacco / Nicotine is very capital light, but it doesn’t matter because the business is shrinking by volume - at least combustibles do. So there isn’t really any incremental dollar to invest. The alternatives like heated tobacco and vaping area different story and require significant capital and marketing dollars to win market share. This business is not capital light at all.

Einhorn claims in the last “Invest like the best” podcast that “Value investing doesn’t work any more”. I think it’s strong statement and sort of funny as if Mr Market has any obligation to agree with his view when he put in a 100 page slide presentation. Or reversely, I guess it’s a problem for him, if he present a short and the Markt yawns and the stock stays where it is or even goes up. For a while 10 years ago, he could move markets and just be right because a lot of people followed his coattails and stocks went his way after he present a thesis. Now he is just treated like everyone else and Mr Market yawns and now it’s like “Value investing does not work any more” because he can’t move market any more. I think there is a certain arrogance in this way of thinking.

Thee baguettes are so cheap - 1.3€ for a baguette. It would be 3x as much in the US. I guess they just have to raise prices.

Yes, that’s where deposits going, especially from larger and corporate accounts. I suspect that large banks deposits are more vulnerable to competition from treasuries and MM and that’s why they are losing more deposits than smaller banks. At least some smaller banks also have more competitive CD/MM account offerings than larger banks. I don’t think that banks are flush with deposits any more. Sure the loan/deposit ratio is still low, but in my opinion, you have to add the ~4T or so in mostly underwater securities (which are sterilized on the banks balance sheet because banks would show losses in regulatory capital if they sell) to the loans to get the liquidity. There are more and more banks drawing down the FHLB credit lines already, which are an expensive way for banks to get liquidity.

Here are the big banks deposits. After a little rebound lay week, they keep dropping. The narrative that deposits move from small banks to large banks may be false, Imo. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DPSLCBW027SBOG

He can’t get out of BAC, the position is too big.

I see this the same way, Deposits are very safe and the regulators seem to dance around the issue of quasi guarantee for all deposits, insured and uninsured. However, that does not extend to equity or even debt of the TBTF banks. I think if things go downhill, their equity would indeed get wiped out in a recapitalization and perhaps even the debt would get haircuts..

Glimpse into Russian cyber warfare: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/30/vulkan-files-leak-reveals-putins-global-and-domestic-cyberwarfare-tactics

They seem too good to be true. We discussed disruption of these 4-5 years ago, but I don’t see it. I am curious what @Sweet is seeing.

It does not look like the deposit flight from small banks to large banks continued last week, after a steep dip, it looks like they stabilized.

LOL, we are all going to be rich. This chatGPT is so bad in math, it’s really hard to believe. I also have seen it make errors all over the lace Apparently according to ChatGPT 100/1= 1000 and 1000^0.1= 1.07024 Its going to be a lot of fun when students use this for homework.

Backed by government just applies to the deposits though. CS was backed by the Swiss government and so was Citibank in 2008, but the equity was wiped out. If anything, backed by government means that equity get's wiped out faster, because the government/ regulator will act before things are run totally into the ground and it gets expensive for tax payers. FNM and FRE are also good examples what "backed by the government" means. Thats something to keep in mind if you are bullish on TBTF banks for example. TBTF doesn't man to big to get zero'd as a shareholder.

1) Insurance brokers $AJG, $BRO etc. 2) Health insurers $UNH, $ELV etc. (they need to hold some capital, but very little) 3) Distribution business ($WSO etc) - very little fixed assets, some working capital that is mostly balanced out by accounts payable None of these Fangs can match the capital light business model of the above. 4) I could even add the Title insurers. They need to hold some capital, but the claims are ridiculously low, so they can ramp up volume like crazy when refinance activity surges and make a lot of dough. This is cyclical though and I am not sure it meet criteria for "great", but in my opinion it's pretty good. $FNF, $FAF etc. 5) Exchanges. Zero capital requirement basically, except some cash $CME, $NDAQ, $ENX, Not that great iof a business than they used to be, due to fees going to zero. 6) $V, $MA -payment rails. I almost forgot about those because they are so obvious. Best business model of all time probably.

There is a lot of stuff under the hood of Porsche holding so to speak. If these guys get serious about value creation, there is a lot of upside, imo. The recent Porsche 911 IPO at least suggests they are trying.

100 baggers are nice - but can AMZN be an 100 bagger with a $1.1T market cap? That stock is up ~25% on no news basically and it doesn't really have earnings either. If you have a 100 bagger candidate let me know. FWIW - i did buy PAYC few days ago. I like it better than AMZN. Profitable and tech build in Omaha. One of the best run companies that I have come across for years, but also trading at a bit more than 10x sales., so not a 10 or 100 bagger candidate either.

Sometimes the thesis indeed doesn't matter and it's just liquidity driving the market up. Why not take advantage of it, as you see it? We are not talking about 8% moves either, but 25%+ moves on little news. A 25%+ move in a couple of month a great IRR. if you can do it in a tax deferred account there is no tax issue either. Maybe the prices come back again - and you get a second shot at it - you never know.

He wasn't always stoic - he had his wife Faustina killed. Netflix has a series about Rome and the first 2 episodes deal with the tail end of Aurelius reign.

I added a bit of $CASH.

Prosus minus Tencents looks below average to me.

My taxable portfolio looks as follows. My non taxable are a bit different with more foreign and dividend stocks (BTI, PM, CPT, ESS, MNPP, PBR-A etc) Symbol Description Portfolio Weight AAP ADVANCE AUTO PARTS INC 1.68% GOOGL ALPHABET INC CAP STK CL A 4.57% AMZN AMAZON.COM INC 1.57% ELV ELEVANCE HEALTH INC COM 3.33% BTI BRITISH AMERICAN TOBACCO LVL II ADR EACH REP 1 ORD GBP0.25 BNY 1.99% BRO BROWN & BROWN INC 1.08% CBBI CBB BANCORP INC COM 1.49% CVS CVS HEALTH CORPORATION COM USD0.01 1.89% CABO CABLE ONE INC COM 1.49% COF CAPITAL ONE FINANCIAL CORP COM USD0.01 1.62% CNC CENTENE CORP 2.55% CMCSA COMCAST CORP 3.59% CPNG COUPANG INC CL A 0.49% DDOG DATADOG INC CL A COM 0.77% DPSGY DEUTSCHE POST ADR 3.64% DFS DISCOVER FINANCIAL SERVICES 0.61% EACO EACO CORP 0.97% FRFHF FAIRFAX FINL HLDGS LTD SUB VTG ISIN #CA3039011026 SEDOL #2566351 0.86% SPAXX FIDELITY GOVERNMENT MONEY MARKET 13.23% FNF FIDELITY NATIONAL FINANCIAL FNF GROUP COM USD0.0001 0.83% FISV FISERV INC 4.5% GEF/B GREIF INC 4.81% JXN JACKSON FINANCIAL INC COM CL A 3.46% KKR KKR &CO INC COM 1.63% KRT KARAT PACKAGING INC COM 0.63% LEVI LEVI STRAUSS &CO NEW CL A COM STK 1.42% LSXMK LIBERTY MEDIA CORP DEL COM C SIRIUSXM 0.98% LIMAF LINAMAR CORP COM ISIN #CA53278L1076 SEDOL #2516022 1.46% MTB M &T BANK CORP COM USD0.50 0.58% MSGS MADISON SQUARE GRDN SPRT CORP CL A 2.49% MNPP MERCHANTS NATIONAL PROPERTIES INC 0.48% CASH PATHWARD FINANCIAL INC COM 1.0% NTDOY NINTENDO CO LTD UNSP ADS EACH REP 0.25 ORD SHS 3.76% ORI OLD REPUBLIC INTERNATIONAL CORP 4.34% ONEXF ONEX CORP SUB VTG ISIN #CA68272K1030 SEDOL #2659518 0.73% PAYC PAYCOM SOFTWARE INC COM USD0.01 0.88% PBR/A PETROLEO BRASILEIRO ADR REPSTG 2 PRF PFD 0.59% POAHY PORSCHE AUTOMOBIL HLDG SE UNSPONSORD ADR PFD 1.62% PSMT PRICESMART INC 1.36% PUBM PUBMATIC INC COM CL A 0.64% RBA RITCHIE BROS AUCTIONEERS COM ISIN #CA7677441056 SEDOL #2345390 1.18% LUV SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CO 1.73% TSM TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING SPON ADS EACH REP 5 ORD TWD10 2.2% TPB TURNING PT BRANDS INC COM 1.32% USB US BANCORP 4.31% V VISA INC 0.89% VNT VONTIER CORPORATION COM 2.3% ZS ZSCALER INC COM 0.45%