Spekulatius

Just chiming in here:

Rigs are getting more efficient, especially shale rigs . The progress in technology and the industrialization of shale are deflationary forces. The US has no Monopoly on shale either, there were many shale fields in the world, the best know ex US is actually in Argentina which are not just world champions in Soccer, but even more so shooting themselves in the foot. Maybe Mileu can change that and that would like make Argentina a net exporter of energy as well. We also have China massively moving toward alternative energy (solar etc) to become less dependent on hydrocarbons , I presume partly for national security reasons. The power of the OPEC for sure is dwindling.

The USA and many other countries do not recognize ICC but it is a sign that Israel is losing the war here in the views of many around the world and I think it does matter. Netanyahu has overplayed is cards and now is on the same list than Putin is (who still travels around freely by the way. I say this as someone who is sympathetic to Israel , but they are making a mistake in Gazah. On a related note, I am also curious why no Hamas leaders or Iranian leader is there.

Even if Europe doesn’t fix itself, some European companies will be fine.

That could hurt: https://www.shikokubank.co.jp/profile/seiyaku.html

No idea. German politics is strange and it is likely that left and right wing parties gain ground ( if you can really distinguish between left and right as they seem to have some common objectives) https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-superstar-sahra-wagenknecht-far-left-far-right/ We could end up with a Weimar Republic situation again (worst case). Best case is that the CDU gets a stronger mandate (still needs a minority partner to govern) and actually breaks away from Merkels and Scholz policies, because those for sure aren’t working.

We are pretty close to 1999/2000 sentiment with record high equity valuations - not just tech (see WMT, FICO etc), US exceptionalism, large cap vs small/mid cap outperformance. Then on the other side, lot of other country stock markets are very cheap, Europe, Latam maybe China or even in US markets, if you get off the beaten tracks. I don’t know if we are in 1998, 1999 or 2000 but ai think we are closer to the top then the bottom in sentiment here, that’s for sure (to paraphrase Howard Marks)

I have heard rumors about that, but no definite press release. Word is also that TPB nicotine pouches aren’t very good. Anyways, this was a stuck Investment from 2021. I bought it as a stealth weed stock and then it started to trade like all the other weed stock and went from ~$35 to $20 Bought a bit more and took some tax loss’s and rebought and now it went to $50 and even $60. IRR Ok, but not so great either but the stock looked really cheap at $20 so felt stupid to sell, even if it did seem to go nowhere. It was a couple percent position so no game changer.

Yes,of course. Al, ballistic missiles are hypersonic, , but generally hypersonic missile are those that are either powered or glide and can control the direction upon descend so they are harder to intercept. Patriots system have been quite capable of intercepting the powered hypersonic Khinzal missiles that Russia came up with earlier. You don’t hear much about those any more. The bigger issues are the many glide bombs that Russia uses en Masse and that are cheap to retrofit on existing dumb bombs apparently.

I guess they will escalate to unannounced inspection very quickly. Sort of like “Afraid of the ghost” . It’s probably a subtle hint of being afraid of ghouls from the government. Here is another story from China when we visited our Chinese subsidy: My boss wanted to make a little smalltalk and ask the other manager who spoke a little English: ”How is your wife?” Answer: “ She is ugly!” We quickly looked at each other than at the translator and changed the subject. We later talked with the translator when the other manager wasn’t around. The translator translated everything word for word for us but neither he nor the Chinese manager understood the intend (he was around when above happened ), but as it turns out “saying my wife is ugly or not pretty “ is just being modest in China. It would be impolite and bragging to say “ My wife is pretty”. He also misunderstood the question thinking it pertains to his wife looks, not as polite small talk or genuine interest.

Nothing about Adani’s bribery charges from the cheerleaders here as one would expect: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/billionaire-chairman-conglomerate-and-seven-other-senior-business-executives-indicted

This type of “investing” is what Graham calls speculation. It can be done in an intelligent way but it’s not investing. It’s not a new thing either and has been done pretty much since the stock market was invented. John Law and the Mississippi company is the first example I know, but he probably wasn’t the first one. Ponzi did not invent the Ponzi scheme either.

It takes you 3 minutes of google search to determine that the above stats from X are grossly incorrect as far as energy sources are concerned. First he mixes up total energy consumption with power consumptions which is RWE’s business. Germans power generation is more than 50% renewables. You can actually go straight to RWE website and look at sources https://www.rwe-production-data.com/en/map https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts

German Neo Punk from Weimar: Good stuff.

Seem more a problem for the US than Europe or Sweden. This was financed by US investors, entrepreneurs are from the US and they set up shop in Sweden because I assume tax incentives and because the market was supposed to be there: I interviewed for battery startup job in the US and was surprised to learn that they were working with another battery startup in Norway that seems to be financed entirely from US VC’s.

Rubble exchange rate tells us that the Russian economy is a black hole: This is despite the fact that the Russian central bank raises the interest rates and this is Tyvola of an economy that basically switched to a war economy where a large percentage of goods produced are going into the war effort rather than public consumption. Since Russia does not have that money , they print it with predicable results. My guess is that the final toon stats from the Russian central bank are understated and they ought to be entering hyperinflation by now. The biggest mistake the west could do is ease the sanctions. Even if there is a truce (there will never be peace with Putin) the sanctions should stay in place imo and everything that lowers crude prices helps too, as that’s about the only thing that Russia has to get hard currency. Long terms, they just become North Korea. Still dangerous but hopelessly behind on technology behind with no chance of ever catching up.

Federal land doesn’t have that much oil. Not even close to get 3M barrels. In addition, the investments in federal would just compete with other investments on non- federal land, so incremental barrels would probably not increase much. That saying drill baby drill won’t do much, but higher prices will.

WMT and NVDA PE are almost the same. I am not sure what’s going on here or where the bubble is:

Went to see Bruce Cockburn last weekend just because he is till around. Was just OK.

$CPNG is up 54% this year. The banks are all big winners, up 50% + and I sold them. I think they are richly valued, except banks that are not in any index like FMCB. I think my biggest winner percentage wise was TPB and I don’t know exactly why the stock went up that much. Foreign stocks were losers as group except Japan, which did just OK.

BNR (Brenntag), DHL, JST (Jost), perhaps JUN3 There are a few others that are nanocaps that I won’t mention, at least not before you buy them and perhaps never. All the above operate world wide pretty much.

A bit puzzling why it drifts down. I am going to add a little more as well but I think there is regulatory and country specific risk (Georgia).

The 4 the season was a low point, all the other ones are stellar.

I like 1881 much better than Yellowstone. I did watch 3 Seasons of Yellowstone but then had more than enough as it descended into a soap opera, set in Montana.

I rewatched Godfather l. Don’t realize how much Marlon Brando and Pacino carried the movie, the fist time I watched it. Going to watch the sequels too. Probably gives you a good idea how politics works now too.