Spekulatius

Found this one on Reddit. Some presentations from a Greek value investing conference. Looks like some interesting stuff there: https://greekvalueinvestingcentre.com/index.php/ben-graham-centres-2nd-european-value-investing-conference/

I have no idea. The outgoing CEO was definitely lousy but Adidas has structural problems and Yeezy business going away and there are no easy solutions for both.

@RedLion I think private equity will always adapt to higher interest rates, but it will not be a pleasant journey. In the 80‘s private equity deals worked because valuation were much lower. It is one thing to operate at higher interest rates which over time go lower, but another to go from higher valuation/ lower interest rate Regime to one where valuations are lower and interest rates are higher. So my view is that private equity will be more impacted than most other business, since they tend to be more leveraged by design. Just a high level view. I do have a small position in KKR

I don't know the US, but Germany needed real interest rates of 3% to get rid of inflation in the early 80's. Germany never got as bad as the US in terms of inflation and I think in 1982 Germany was running ~6% inflation and you could buy 9% 10 year bunds. I don't think it will get that far, but I think it's very difficult to kill inflation without having real interest rates after inflation.

My favorite oil tycoon was Armand Hammer (Oxy petroleum). stock trades like crap, but he had fun doing his thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Hammer If I recall correctly, one day the stock jumped and it turned out the news was that Armand had slipped and broke a leg or hip when trying to step out of his bathub. Wall Street can be a cruel place.

Sold $ADDYY on CEO change news. I was hoping for a go private when i saw shares jumping or something like similar.

It's an opinion. Consumer good companies like Hindustan lever seem to trade at nosebleed levels (50-60x earnings) and the big conglomerates trade at ~30x ballpark. that's very high given the interest rates being 6%. of course this is a superficial analysis but I think one has to be careful assuming that GDP growth will translate into stock market returns. It's probably a great environment for a private investor building something from the ground up, but the public market seems like it' s pretty rich. With India, there is also a fair amount of political instability adding some hard to quantify risk.

The Fed can pay 5% interest rates with a 7%+ inflation forever. In fact even with 5% inflation, they would pay zero. Their income from the tax base increases with inflation. Now real positive interest rates could be a problem, but just nominal interest rates are meaningless unless inflation is subtracted.

India looks more like a bubble than a market worth investing. no doubt that money invested in China will move there, but it seems like the market is too small to absorb that much funds. I am guessing that as a whole those allocating now to India will do poorly.

NKE looks incredible faddish to me at 30x earnings. It's not luxury either or bullet proof regarding economic pressures, just a well managed consumer good company. Significant exposure to China as well.

Yes, the ~5% loss in income was about 6 month ago. Now we see salaries catching up with rising inflation. That's exactly how an inflation spiral works unfortunately, unless the whole thing quickly peters out.

Today will be another interesting day. As for unemployment - there is no signal yet that higher interest rates have affected the labor market. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/02/adp-jobs-report-october-2022.html The 7.7% rise in wages points to higher core inflation.

I am fairly confident that higher interest rates hurt the private equity model, which is what the likes of BX, KKR, BAM etc are perusing. the private equity model needs high asset prices and cheap money to prosper. Sure they can benefit from credit crunches and take advantage of dislocations in equity prices if they are short term, but if they persist longer, which would be likely with higher interest rates, then I think these type if business models will suffer.

Adding a few more GOOGL shares here.

Actually our purchasing power remains the same.

10-20 years? Why not 59 years? Up and to the right:

@dealraker thank you for the background stories. I have heard about Cathay bancorp before and in my opinion, these minority focused banks can offer interesting investment opportunities, but the devil is always in the detail and most of the detail have to do how top management conducts the business. One of the things I am struggling with is and that prevents me often from holding LT is that when the "story changes". I recent example of this is FB/META of course where the things have deteriorated substantially at this point. ideally, you want to catch unfavorable development, before the crash the stock, but what is too early and what is too late to make a decision. For example, I recently sold CVS. I bought CVS in late 2020 based on the fact that it was cheap and they have some tailwinds in terms of vaccination (brings people in the store). I also liked how Karen Lynch has led Aetna (CVS health insurance business acquired a few years early). Post acquisition, CVS took a few years to "digest" Aetna and delever but pure math suggest that they could start buybacks in 1-2 years and raise the dividend, which generally is likely something shareholders appreciate with a stock that was in the doghouse for while. Long story short, this played out pretty much as expected, CVS executed well in the epidemic, health insurance kept growing and they raised the divdend and started buybacks. then all of a sudden they seemed on the hunt for new acquisitions of Signify health (which surprised me, but trusted management's judgement), but once they allegedly started to circle KANO health (a SPAC no less with a questionable business model), I started to question what is going on here. To keep this short, I sold my CVS but first the KANO purchase didn't occur (yet?) and I do wonder, if I don't give management not enough slack here. Then on the other hand one sees stuff like FB doing a Metaverse and regret a longer leash. This is probably too long of a diatribe here on a specific topic, but it's a real problem if you want to hold LT and there probably are a few differing perspectives out there. I have had a few LT holdings in my investment carrier but I think overall in 75% of the cases within 5 years something happens to most of my holdings that significantly changes my view on the business for the worse or in some lucky cases, the valuation far exceeds what I consider fair value, which leads me to sell. So my average holding period is probably only a few years (weighted by money invested) and even shorter based on average holding period for all positions (some are just trades).

There are likely multiple causes, but lousy productivity is a real drag on economy. Think about this, it means that less goods and services get produced per unit labor hour and more cost per unit labor hour. That's one reason for inflation right there. Fixing this would go a long way to reduce inflation.

I have been wounding about the lousy productivity number shown in FRED since 2021 as well. The fact that productivity is up in the manufacturing sector and down in the service sector suggest that WFH may be a culprit.

Exactly - the rare earth metals are actually quite abundant in the earth crust. I bet there are better deposits than the Chinese have - we just need to develop them. The Chinese were just the first to recognize the importance and put effort in developing those mines.

Not even close, because you could leave.

LOL, feels like twilight zone: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/shanghai-disney-shuts-over-covid-visitors-unable-to-leave.html

The book is an anti war classic written by Erich Maria Remarque written in 1928 about a somewhat stylized experience of a German conscript in WW1. It's one of those books that you read in school or later when you grow up in Germany. Neither the book nor the movie has a Band of Brother vibe.

The cinematography and acting in this adoption is great, but why did they complete change the storyline including the iconic ending of the novel? I don't get it. Worth watching, but could have been a masterpiece.

The energy industry is playing with fire here taunting Potus. It makes no sense from a business perspective. There is only downside from doing this. They should lay low and collect their cash or make some sensible proposals to solve the NG shortage in Europe etc. What do you think will happen when Republicans get into power and energy prices stay high, which you I think is quite likely outcome. Who then will be blamed? What will happen next?