Spekulatius

Isn’t “cubsfan” crazy enough

Tariffs won’t threaten Russia, since we basically don’t trade with them any more. How is that supposed to hurt them? Ukraine needs more guns, lots of guns:

Inflation wasn’t the Feds fault, it’s on the treasury. I agree he did a good job.

Trump really has Canada in the crosshairs despite it being pretty inconsequential in term of drug traffic as well as illegal immigration’s. Mexico clearly is the big kahuna with both those issues.. My guess is that Trump wants to impact the election. Mexico had theirs so not much he can do there but with Canada, I think he can. That’s the only explanation that makes sense to me. Will be interesting to see for sure.

LOl:

Tariffs are just consumption taxes on foreign goods . This is not that complicated. There will be no checks from other governments. He might as well have the IRS manage the tariffs.

The inflation rate in Europe is lower again than in the USD. Purchase power matters. If you ever go to Europe , you will notice how inexpensive it is. Same for Japan.

I think European stocks will outperform US stocks this year. The Euro will outperform the USD. Reason: too cheap, chance of political change is not priced in.

There is a war of tits and tats going on various economic , cyber security as well as on diplomatic levels and of course the war in Ukraine, the issues with Taiwan etc. It is very much like the cold war and it is heating up.

A YouTube clip about the result about a fascinating social experiment where they dropped $10M in a fairly isolated region in Kenia in a controlled experiment and measured what happened. The result wasn’t inflation but that in this case, Keynes monetary theory proved more correct than Friedman. I can highly recommend subscribing to the Money and Macro channel, there is some very good content there Of course in a different setting and circumstances the outcome could and likely will be different.

It is not a public company.

What’s Bitcoin good for if you can buy fartcoin dogecoin or Trumpcoin? Soon there will be an X.coin or Marscoin. Seems sort of crypto inflationary , doesn’t it? Every influencer now can mint a new crypto coin and sell it for a quick gain, very low barriers to entry. You can start this even from a prison cell.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-imposes-its-most-stringent-critical-minerals-export-restrictions-yet-amidst#:~:text=China banned shipments of gallium,be subject to greater scrutiny. This is a bigger deal than people think and I ran into this at work. This not just restricts the elements Antimony and Germanium etc but also materials that contain those. Infrared specialty materials are affected by this and can’t be purchased in China any more. The only alternative source is a large German manufacturer who basically invented these materials in the first place. Without this stuff many high end infrared systems that go into satellites , drones, fighter jets, rockets can’t be build any more. The US has no domestic source for many of these materials.

This is what robbery in plain daylight looks like. Why Robb a bank, run and accounting scam like Enron or Maddoff, or take bribes when you can do this?

The spreadsheet is actually pretty good for a big picture view. No dog in this fight and just looking at this like any other Capex driven business with leading and trailing indicators , this looks to me like they had a huge bump in 2021/22 and momentum is now stalling or even reversing a bit. Revenue per homesite is flatish Contracted homes (future revenue - Leading indicator is dropping) Sold homes still rising but because of above, I would expect it to drop. Gross margins dropping Maybe I am missing something but this looks bearish to me.

Thx- yes I am aware of the option/RS expense. Those show up on the employee W2 and the employee pays them. I can see the rational for adding them to the company tax bill, since it’s real compensation. I am not sure about the deferred tax item. I think this is a carry forward from prior years where they actually paid no taxes per income statement at all.

It’s not t that simple because those are companies are multinationals . They can shift taxes to any country want to with loopholes like shifting their IP to Ireland which taxes those earnings at zero. As an average citizen you can’t do that. If you work on NY, you have to pay NY state taxes. If you are US a person, you have to pay the statutory tax, even if you live in a different country. But this does not apply to corporations why can make business in one jurisdiction and move their taxes to another. In other an other words, the US treats corporations better than its citizens. Thats why I think a minimum tax is a good idea.

I have both. The answer with employer based 401k or Roth 401k is indexing . most of my money is in tax deferred accounts. I recommend funding Roths foremost because there is a salary cap dot hose beyond which you can’t fund them any more.

I was mentioning taxes in the Apple thread and randomly pulled up NVDA income statement and had a laugh. This is a $3.4T market cap company that makes money hand over fist and barely pays any taxes at all. Pretty much anyone with $50k income has a higher tax rate than NVDA. Sometimes you can tell a scam just by the numbers, even if you don’t know how they do it. The US tax system is a scam, there is in my opinion no question about it . It’s one reason why the middle class is hollowed out, they pay more taxes than the rich which move they income to LT capital gains and elaborate deferred schemes like the private equity guys. I imagine the howling that would go on if an administration proposes a 15% minimum tax. 15% is less than what a family of two pays that makes 80k or so.

Custom indexing is not going to work for me. I have found some stocks randomly using screener , but most of those are in a Japan. I have a Japanese basket of 6 stocks which I regard as one position. When I find something like that and it’s cheap l I buy some shares plain and simple, especially if there is something unique about it (management, business, product). I like buying stocks more than selling. Come to think about it, I have more than 40 stocks, need to check as I have too many accounts. I regard my Japan basket as one position for example. Currently, the opportunities available in Europe are as good as in 2022. Brazil and Japan are also interesting. Canada also has some opportunities. I think the US market has the fewest value opportunities.

FSLR is the only domestic supplier of solar cells that can compete (more or less) with the Chinese.

@SharperDingaan Sound like Team Canada need to get build first, before you can deal with Trump. The above is a good summary of the infighting between the provinces as it relates to energy policy. A decade as lost going back and forth but nothing promotes unity more so than a common adversary.

I have got to say, some of Scott Galloway talks and podcasts are insightful. I think he is correct about many things :

Good eye. I bought the box behind it. I always check for broken eggs. I guess other folks do that too and that’s how this box ended up with 11. It is not a hedonistic inflation adjustment after all.

Isn’t the recent rise in crude prices due to the sanctions on the Russian shadow fleet? Biden was obsessed with the price of gas at the pump, that’s why he saved this measure until after he lost the election, I am sure. he should have done this a year or so ago when the workaround was getting traction with the Russians. No doubt the Russians will find another workaround but it will take time and it will be expensive for them, which is exactly what sanctions do. Also note that Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. Several refineries have been set ablaze and this is also fixable but costs time, there lost revenue. I think Russia may have troubleshooting keep their output up. https://www.newsweek.com/russia-putin-tankers-anchor-sanctions-2014585