Spekulatius

I think there is a lot of selection bias here. People who are married have above average income to begin with and on average have a better education. Poor people tend to stay single. Combining too incomes also has financial synergies compared to staying single. Homebuying is easier with 2 incomes rather than one. Owning a home has a strong correlation with building wealth. On the WSJ articles one of the striking things is that young women now tend to do better than your men in terms of eduction which I think will soon enough lead to them earning more than men too. Hate to say it, but many young men are losers now, no professional perspectives, can’t buy a home ,no dates , no sex. I think this is one reason why they skew MAGA.

Just me: https://archive.ph/kQJ9y

i can’t believe this - the Trump administration considers VAT as tariffs? VAT is applied to any goods, foreign or domestic. It’s nondiscriminatory in term of origin. What sort of logic is this?

So you think China or Russia will stop their cyber ops and subversions because the US stops providing a way to get unmonitored internet access? Seems native. Believe it or not my Grandparents during WW2 were listening to the German language BBC broadcasts on long wave radio. It was forbidden to listen to, but some people like to listen to other sources than their own government propaganda. As you know the Internet in China is safeguarded by the Great Firewall of China.

I bought a little of ARE (Aecon)

He could run against Clinton. After all Bill Clinton is younger. But yes, Kings don’t have term limits. Or elections for that matter.

They won’t lose 20% of the bookings but foreign tourists are important for destinations like NYC, Las Vegas, Florida, California, Disneyland location etc. For example, Canadian are the largest foreign visitors nationality in Las Vegas. It an incremental negative . Domestic Travel so far has been really strong in the US but I think it’s weakening , so this is adding downward pressure to the tourism industry.

Europe may be uninvestible, but at least you can travel there without getting detained for a week. Happened to German citizens with valid Visa apparently. The UK has issues the same warning. I don’t think tourism in US will be that great in the near term.

I just realized they published results today, although they were pre- announced already. I agree they look very solid , but it’s an unloved sector (FTTH). They have done quite a few infrastructure projects that seem to be working out well. https://investors.unidata.it/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/151511_oneinfo.pdf

Looks about right:

Goes to show again that for Trump everything is personal. He just hates Trudeau. But he likes Putin and wrote love letters to Kim Yong Un. Go figure.

Tariffs in most cases lead to the protected industries becoming less competitive over time. Many countries have tried, but I don’t know a single example where tariffs alone created a competitive industry. I do think that tariffs against China are fair game because they clearly manipulate markets with their mercantilist policies and they indeed security risk if they run out communication infrastructure or all the cars on the road can become spy vehicles due to a host sensor attached a backdoor to Chinese army datacenters. I don’t think blanket tariffs are the right answer because they cost consumers and also create even less competitive industries that over time that will scream for more tariffs. There sure some things that any country will protect like food and I also think pharmaceuticals should be on that list. I think 90% of all drug ingredients now are coming from foreign sources. It’s not because it can’t be done here but because China and India are just cheaper and the prices for generics (which are 90% of the columns) are race tonite bottom.

Reciprocal tariffs don’t solve the trade deficit. The overall tariff rate in the EU for exampleis quite low - just a few % which is probably less than the US at this point. Sticking points are probably agricultural goods where the EU has profit in a just like pretty much any other country. I think there is going to be a while lotmof other stuff thrown in the trade arena.

One way to make America greet again is by belittling every other country, in Trumps thinking. Remember, with Trump, everything is personal.

Yes, that fund just showered a few banks with very low cost permanent funding . Total waste. I do think the onerous bank regulation are a bigger deal for smaller community community banks as they create fixed costs that quite significant for smaller banks.

I think consumer and business confidence drops faster than rates.

Didn’t the home builder stock go parabolic exactly mode the reasons cited above? I think the tariffs on lumber etc will add ~$20K to the cost of an average house but I think if you add furniture, appliances etc, it is likely more. If it easy to build it’s like drill baby drill and the profits for home builders will decline on higher volumes and stocks likely will go down. This will be different for supplier of home builder like Lumbers, fasteners, hardware, retail, which depend more on Volume than pricing. Choose your segment carefully, I would say.

I don’t see a connection to community banking in this order. I agree that reducing the compliance burden would be a large boost for smaller community banks.

Impeaching judges, right of the dictators handbook.

Bureaucrats were never elected anywhere since the Babylonians invented them to run their city states. They are bound by civil service rules. It worries me much more that an unelected technocrat Elon has been given the power to get access and meddle with all these institutions.

You can’t understand what Trump is don f without understanding his personally. Trump cares about himself and he wants the peace Nobel price. He think he can get it if he makes peace in Ukraine or at least s9e thing that seems like it as well as in Gaza/ Middle East. Thats his motivation. The motivation about annexing Greenland and to a lesser extend Canada is that he wants to get his bust on Mt Rushmore. He thinks he can get there by making Amerika not greater but literally larger. These things areI no joke to him and they are actually projects that he started during his first term but obviously remained unfinished. His second term term is about finishing these projects. Both Vexler and later Michael Clark predicted both above as they obviously have studied his personality. I thought that Mt Rushmore a joke but you can see below in his office apparently. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/barack-obama/japan-nominated-trump-nobel-peace-prize-after-white-house-asked-n972661 I think the key to dealing with Trump is tat you need to treat him like a King. Thats what he want to be, he doesn’t like to be a President, with his power do trains by now and time (term limit). he doesn’t believe in power given by means of the office, he think the power he has is granted to himself. I think Macron understood this very well and was prepared to deal with this on his recent visit. Zelenskyy has not clue about this and was unprepared on his visit to deal with Trump and that’s why it went sideways because he couldn’t feed Trump’s ego. Vexler sort of explained this and somewhat predicted it before it actually happened.

It’s not a check to the USA either. There is no bill from NATO. Defense spending is essentially a check that each country writes to itself. Now, I agree commitment should be kept , but it’s not what is driving the story of tariff warfare here.

Another GOOGL buyer here. I think the deal price isn’t really worth worrying that much about.

Vlad Vexler has some very good analysis on his channel. Very humble guy too and doesn’t claim to know it all. I follow his channel.