sleepydragon

Bought back BGC and LQDA

i have done research in the past for US indices. The days of volume is a weak predictor for returns. The total $flow is going to dominate. But that’s for US index. The easiest way to get an estimate is to go to TSX’s index website, and looked at past additions of companies of similar mktcaps, and calculate the average returns between the day before announcement till effective date.

so the $flow demand is about $1B range. It’s really not much, imo. When a 100B mktcap company is added to SP500, there’s a demand of $10B, the shares will move between 5-10%. $1b demand likely just 2%-4% movement

it’s bad for china but good for xi

Crude down 3% , OXY up almost 1%… can someone explain why is that?

if he has to get regulatory approval to buy up to 50% of shares, would be he allowed to buy the whole company? Also, if he want to buy the whole company, won’t he be buying more now?

It seems all thesis is on the preferred. I am curious is the commons a good bet? I have both. Shall I sell my commons and put all eggs in the preferred?

there are data vendors that package TV data to quant funds who use AI/NLP to extract sentiments and trade quickly on these.

I guess the next catalyst will be who will be the next secretary of treasury? If it’s Paulson then this thing is going to explode. But I highly doubt it will be him. I met him a decade ago. He doesn’t talk much, doesn’t smile much. I ran into him walking on 5th Ave in NYC a few times instead of taking cabs or subways. I feel he’s a very resourceful and smart guy, but I don’t think he wants to be a politician.

this seems the best performing trump trade stock today (the betting market has better payoff but it’s not a stock)

Mexican trade war?

old man still capable of big swings— this time loading up on cash

Any comments? https://open.substack.com/pub/urbankaoboy/p/re-fanniefreddie-trump-trade-or-chump?r=ag2rx&utm_medium=ios

FT has a story about someone pumping the Trump odd on poly market. Here is another story from Yahoo: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mystery-trader-fredi9999-boosts-trumps-090850029.html “Experts” are trying to guess what’s the motive. Well, he’s ID is Freddie9999. That seems obvious…to us? Is he trying to pump FNMA/FNMAS? this sort of thing makes me nervous

Yeah, event based ideas are in sink hole this year. Too many leveraged money betting on these trades, imo. I have a small position

If Trump wins, it seems to me the preferred serves as a good hedge against the common. I think owning both at certain ratio is optimal

This is a very good point.

maybe or maybe not. It comes down to how the compensation is calculated, whether it motivates people and fair. I don’t think Brk underpays people

I used to do a lot of studies on these before. I remembered the highest prediction power variable that predicts the “pop” return is the dollar amount, not the days of $adv. also, TSX 60 is a small index. For SP500, such add is about 10% pop. For SP400, maybe 4%. You can look at historical what the “pop” is for past index adds to TSX. I suspect it’s not much.

Oxy

Another possibility: Ajain is going through a divorce, and wife wants cash instead of stocks. this explains why it’s roughly 50% of his holdings. Precedence is Jeff Bezo’s ex wife. Sold all Amazon stocks she got too

That’s why holding cash is one of the options I listed. But I am thinking maybe gold too. I am already neck deep in brk

Questions for folks here? what if China invades Taiwan ? Or to a less extent, China’s threats to invade Taiwan leads to sanctions or trade wars with US? in this scenario, how shall one hedge? long gold? Hold cash? long TLT? long oil companies (OXY?) long defense companies (which one?) long tobacco stocks? long intc? Or ASML?

It’s almost exactly $100m after tax. Is there a possiblity that Ajain is buying a huge house? The most expensive house in CT is around $50m, but there are a lot of big houses in Florida

if web is in the middle of negotiating to acquire Chubb, he won't be buying the stock. on the contrary, since he sold MRK, he is more likely at least had some discussion about acquiring Markel, impo