Spekulatius

Yes, personal expenses are rising much faster than revenues it seems. Also, they had Zero incentive fees this year so far. To make the $1.5/ share earnings target, they need to generate some incentive fees. I think it’s a worthwhile but there are some question marks. An improving economic situation in Latam would not hurt either.

Thank you for sharing. Looks attractive to me after my very cursory review. I actually like LatAm here, the market is very depressed and valuations accordingly are low. I will look into this one more.

RIP, couldn’t keep the balance I guess: https://x.com/billbrowder/status/1858411231180124324?s=61&t=E8YgOMPn5yLNAJ40xrQKFQ

The real losers if RFK actually does go after food ingredients are the producers of such like IFF. The food cos will just change their ingredient like they do in other parts of the world already and perhaps raise prices a bit here or there. Consumers will have to get used to less artificial colors.

We have not talked about Tesla carbon credits yet. They are half of Tesla’s income and are subsidized by ICE car producers.

I eagerly await Melanie’s pics tending to the veggie garden in the White House.

Well, the labor crunch is probably permanent because the mortality rate of these recruits is very high.

Is this even a puzzle? The fly got one hour before the cyclist meet each other (20 miles apart and the relative speed is 10+10miles) and its speed is 15mph, so the fly flies 15mph in the hour it has. All the other info is irrelevant. It’s actually interesting how you can confuse people by giving them irrelevant information. It works especially well in finance and politics.

Nukes are the only way to deter a threat from other (Putin’s) nukes. I do agree leadership is a huge problem. Germany is going to have snap elections in February 23 and who knows what his brings. Best outcome is that the CDU gains ground and get as mandate to do things differently. I am not terribly optimistic about this outcome. These multiple party coalitions can’t get anything done, that’s for sure.

This decreasing bang for the buck does not bode well for future spending. OpenAI in particular has been spending like a drunken sailor with not much revenue to show for it. We will probably see layoffs on this sector within 12 months if this story turns out to true.

There are way less gated communities in MA than in the South. Come to think about it, I don’t know any and I lived there for quite some time. It’s quite a well run state, compared to NY and CA at least. I think they made a huge mistake with the progressive income tax. lots of rich people are not bothered by 5% taxes, which is the same than many southern states, but they won’t pay 10%. Also, almost no VAT on booze.

The shareholder letter fails to even mention the shareholders or shareholder value. There is (imo) no other take than that shareholders don’t count and it’s clear that they are screwed or sacrificed for the greater good, just the Hero in that hero movie.

They are clearly the best run of these government software project companies (SAIC is also down some) but the recent surge was “out of character” for CACI in terms of the usual valuation bands. Even now, it seems to be at the upper range ar 1.4x EV/revenues . I think it’s a buy at 1.2x EV. Of course this is a very simplistic analysis if we’re to even call it even that. I do agree this DOGE seems massively overrated as well as all the other Trump winner/loser trades.

Just saw this in my substack feed from John Hempton. This is what China‘s largest bank wrote in their shareholders letter. You really can’t make this up. : https://substack.com/home/post/p-151735409?source=queue For reasons I do not need to discuss I find myself reading the annual report of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China - the world’s biggest bank. Sure there are greater than 6 trillion of assets (in USD). I just thought you should see how it is managed. This is a direct quote from the Chairman’s letter: No further comment is required. John

I mentioned cigs before but this was a Trump trade too. Sold the rest of my shares today, probably too early.

I am adding to STNE. Also a tiny bit of CNC

Avoid Tesla too because EV credits will likely get cancelled. Diversify out of the US markets.

RFK is leading the FDA. The next Trump trade is cigs and booze.

I think the two are different sides of the same coin. They are conservative, cost conscious send they know their customers. They probably should be more aggressive. The bank is owned by individuals and the CEO owns quite a few shares , although he has reduced his position. I think most individuals whomped shares are descendants from the founding families. https://www.lodinews.com/news/article_5809c75a-cbdd-11e5-a619-bf990c8d57e8.html

@Vish_ram I never said that a fixed money supply would crash the economy. Instated that the total value of the money in circulation does not equal the amount of goods or the value of assets in the economy. Those too tend to be related but they are not equal. You could indeed run an economy without any money at all, but it would be harder to facilitate transactions.

Same here. Started a bit higher and added today. PE around 8x, almost ~5% buyback of outstanding and ~20% growth in BRL. Who said there were no bargains any more. STNE is cheaper (in relative terms) than it was last year when I bought it. These Brazilian stocks are very much driven by macro which typically is expressed in exchange rates changes.

You realize that the EU lost 67M people due to Brexit? US population is up more than 10% in that timeframe. The increase per capita of the US vs EU is way less impressive. Also, if the EU is to blame, why isn’t the UK doing better since Brexit? It’s the perfect natural experiment, imo. I do agree the EU has a problem, but a lot of these hot takes are deceiving, imo. Checking in, you get another 15-20% explained by exchange rate movement. In 2008, the Euro was at 1.5 USD at the beginning and 1.28 at the end. Not sure which one is right here, but if I take the average and compare to 1.08 at YE 2023, I can explain another ~20% of the difference. And no, inflation does not explain the change in exchange rate. The Euro was overvalued in 2008 and is undervalued now. If you don’t believe me, travel to Europe and compare prices.

Well, if that’s what is expected, better sell all your stocks because they are going to be cut in half too.

Very astute observation: https://x.com/qcapital2020/status/1856722078658924756?s=61&t=E8YgOMPn5yLNAJ40xrQKFQ

Yes. I think it’s multiple exceeds now 100x earnings.