Spekulatius

Actually, he said that a victory soon (which he has defined in the next couple of weeks before ) would be unlikely. Nobody here believes that a complete victory is possible in weeks. The commentator from CNN actually has repeated this incorrectly. Kicking the Russians out of Ukraine will take month, maybe another year. I do not see a reason why it is not possible. I also think a political solution is possible. This is not exactly as earth shaking than the CNN reporter makes it sound, imo.

GLDM. PCYO

The issue in the 70's was that the Fed was easing too quickly. Inflation in the 70's was not consistently high all the time, it came in waves. For example in 1976 it almost looked like everything was OK. However, while inflation did come down, it never came down low enough and for an extended period of time. So the Fed saw all clear (or was pressured to see all clear) and started to ease and quickly thereafter, inflation started to rise again. Do this a few times over and the Fed lost all the credibility until Volker squashed it. The key learning from the 70's is that the Fed needs to keep the rates higher for longer to prevent flareups again.

On a high level, Malone complex companies tend to underperform in a higher interest rate/ tightening credit environment. The reason for this is that they generally operate at quite high leverage. That's my simpleton thinking. The fact that the media business has been challenging as of late does not help either.

The problem is that Ukraine's airspace is huge, so it's hard to cover it all. The likely solution is longer range missiles so Ukraine can destroy the drone and missile bases where these missiles and drones are coming from. The location of those is known and some come from Crimea and Russian ships. Same idea when Himars were delivered to counter the Russian artillery barrages in Summer with something more precise and with longer range. That artillery advantage went away quickly when those Himars went on the battle field. Same will happen when Ukraine gets a weapon to counter these rocket and drone barrages.

I remember all these charts in 2008 or 2012 that mimicked 1931. It’s amazing what you can do if you pick just the right starting point and scale with charts. I bet I could create a chart that looks just like the one we have know and predicts we are going to the .

Looks like the first LNG train will be operational in January 2023. Also, the NG storage is currently more than 100% full. I guess they can fill them at above nominal pressure. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-completes-construction-wilhelmshaven-floating-lng-terminal-2022-11-15/ Second LNG train in Brunsbuettel starts at around the same time. Both together are good for a bit more than 10% of the German NG consumption. Those go a long way towards replacing the 40-45% NG supply that is now missing from Russia.

The problem with PARA is that they assets are subPAR if you compare it with DIS or even WBD, imo. I think if they go it alone, they will destroy the value of their equity. Finding a merger partner that actually can come through regularity hurdles is going to be hard. If they wanted to sell out, they should not have merged CBS with Viacom.

You don't need to understand EUV tech to invest in TSM. You just need to understand how important this tech is and how hard it would be to duplicate what TSM has done. The financial statements talk for themselves. There is no issue there. the political risk is harder to quantify. I don't think WEB really has an edge there.

I think TSM is a WEB buy not T&T. I think he dumped USB and swapped it for TSM basically (seeling USB is still in progress I think). TSM is probably for WEB an "inevitable" company/business and he may have learned how important they are through Apple / Tim Cook. I hope he is right about buying TSM and wrong about selling USB , since I bought both recently.

Would love to be in one of these meetings. I am always good for a few beers or decent bottle of wine. I do think that emerging markets should really be called "Submerging markets". I also think EEM is a terrible vehicle to play emerging markets if so inclined.

This is correct, but Silver is also way more abundant than Gold, which tends to make Gold more valuable. The better comparison would be a platinum or Palladium which have many industrial uses and also tend to be about as rare in the earth crust than Gold.

Bought a few shares of $TSN this AM. Earnings seemed OK in the grand scheme of things.

So, these 10k people that Amazon lays off are going to be working construction in the future and don't need Word or Excel any more? Yay!

Al is not a collectible. It has value because you can do something with it, like build cars or airplanes for example. The utility of BTC is fairly limited at this point. The #1 application by far is gambling right now. It is a collectible right now, similar to a bored Ape NFT or a baseball card.

No dogma and you can definitely use the volatility to your advantage but you can do the same thing with many other things that actually have intrinsic value. I think the best take for most is to avoid the crypto thing and just let it play out as it may. On FTX specifically, the mindboggling thing is that the founder of FTX exchange also controlled a crypto hedge fund that was speculating on the same tokens and crypto than the edchange. Who thought that this was a good idea? Seems like a bit red flag even if you know nothing about this space or the founder.

Yes. from a business perspective, the insurer retains very little risk and what little they have has a short tail, since the contracts are renewed (and repriced anualy). that means very little capital needs to retained. Then, the large players have massive economies of scale and network effects (most providers on the network is desirable for the user). Benefits from health care inflation, demographics etc. At some point this lollapalooza will reverse but people have been saying this ever since I moved to the US about 25 years ago.

On sector that has shown tremendous performance over the years and gets very little attention is health Insurance. My guess is that this is because of perceived policy risk and because people generally hat the product. However, look at how UNH has performed since the GFC when it traded at 8x earnings for a while. I hold some ELV (bought it as ANTM during the pandemic) and it really has performed well as a business and as stock. From time to time, the sector sells off, but so far, the stocks always bounced back. From a business perspective, I think it’s important to realize that health insurers are more like service cos than insurers who actually carry risk. They are similar to title insurers that way.

The war ending and the sanctions ending are two different things. I believe when the war ends, most sanctions will remain in place. Maybe Europe will start buying some NG from Russia again, but it will be far less than before. I think the iron curtain that has been build between Western Europe and Russia/Belarusian will remain in place.

@Viking I think the big pact between Russia and China may be more show than a real functional alliance than NATO. China said OK, you do what you want inUkraine and let them go first to see what happens. I don’t think they like what they are seeing and the implication for their main target Taiwan. However, it is also telling that China has done almost nothing to help Russia - No weapon deliveries for most. Russia had to go to a Iran and a North Korea. They saw that Russia got an arrow through their torso with Ukraine and decided “maybe not..at least not yet”. As for the Saudi’s, they just look out for themselves. They buy cheap russian oil and replace what they consume themselves with that cheap oil , so they can export more of their own for full price. Sorry, but it’s just business for us.

@Xerxes I had no idea about this Bandera follow before I heard about it in this board, it’s also interesting that he was in West Germany in 1959 when the KGB do his hit job on him. Not a big loss for mankind, I think.

A quick look in Wikipedia marks Bandera as a controversial figure rather than a hero for Ukrainians. Anyways, the Genozide attribute is a slippery slope, but we do know that the state goal for the Russians is de-nazification of the Ukraine and then there is stuff like this as well as mass graves Bucha , Lyman etc. We have yet to see the carnage that has a occurred amongst civilians In Mariopol which I think will be quite shocking: Maybe it’s all fake news, but my bet is that it’s close to the truth. As for military objectives, Crimea will likely fall, when Ukraine can severe the land bridge. If the Russians can hold it, it will remain Russian.

The ads are targeted . Google is very good at finding out what you are interested in. I got a lot of ads from car dealers and car companies because I was researching cars about a month ago for example. I have yet to see an ad from any of those business you mentioned above.

I think it’s hard to make definite predictions. I agree recessions are bad, but how much is priced in and how will certain sectors perform? In my post, I laid out why all may not be doom and gloom. I try not to predict macro as it has been an exercise in futility over the years. Sometimes, you will be right, but the times you are wrong tend to cost you much more. I do agree that using volatility to your advantage. That is one thing that tends to work in volatile bear markets.

Incorrect, there will be winners and losers.