Pelagic

Does anyone have a link to a good study or discussion, or happen to know, why Pelosi seems to favor ITM LEAPS vs. long equity? It seems like she usually ends up exercising the calls at some point as well. I get that the easy answer is insider info but a lot of her success comes in megacap tech, which has done extremely well over the last decade, but at what point did she (more likely her husband) decide that most of their allocations would be in the form of ITM LEAPS.

Less than ideal for all involved. I have to imagine there will be a fairly quick response in gas prices, particularly in the Midwest where most Canadian oil ends up. Maybe Canada gets serious about building more export capacity and it ends up being a net benefit to Canadian producers.

This has always been a major question mark for me as to how/why Russia was able to successfully evacuate Kherson given the circumstances at the time. Ukraine had been hitting the bridges across the Dnipro nightly with HIMARs and they were also in artillery range as Ukrainian forces pushed south to just north of the city before Russia finally decided to pull out. Ukraine also had real time intel from both drones and locals in Kherson on Russian troop movements so Russia's ability to evacuate across the Dnipro with relatively minimal losses seemed odd. Looks like there's finally an answer. Another questionable decision by the Biden admin.

Really enjoyed this, a glimpse at one of the second world war's forgotten theaters.

With the recent drone sightings in NJ and elsewhere in the US, which were most likely recreational drone users or cases of misidentifying aircraft, I think there's going to be massive demand from state and local law enforcement for drone detection systems. What form that takes will be interesting as there are real limitations to a lot of the available options and they're all fairly limited in range against small drones. That said, it seems pretty clear that some kind of drone identification whether solely as a detection system or bundled with a system designed to defeat drones will become commonplace in the inventory of most law enforcement agencies as none want to be seen as helpless, reliant on federal officials or the military to solve their problem. How effective any of these systems end up being would remain to be seen, it seems in Ukraine the best option is to just jam every potential frequency drones use (not practical in populated areas) which has resulted in an arms race to develop jamming resistant drones - some even using long spools of fiber optic cable. However, detecting drones is likely a capability that most departments will perceive as a need and look to source in the next few years. Has anyone come across a public company offering anything along these lines? This company seems fairly interesting (not public afaik) but offers an integrated system with radar, acoustic, and cameras to detect drones as well as jam them. https://www.robinradar.com/ Likewise for drone and operator detection https://aerodefense.tech/

Fascinating discussion to look back at, glad to see I was wrong and nuclear is having a bit of a renaissance moment these days. Although not in Europe quite yet.

Added to BLDR

Out of pure curiosity does anyone know why Exxon uses Moebd instead of the more common formatting of Mboed or mmboed? I figured it was a typo at first but it seems they use it in everything.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2024/09/22/the-kremlin-pulled-sailors-off-the-decrepit-aircraft-carrier-admiral-kuznetsov-and-sent-them-to-fight-and-die-in-ukraine/

There's a good discussion of BLDR here, there might be some Q&A about it at the end of the video as well although I think most of those focused on their TDW position.

Interesting, and I'm sure there's a trade organization of notaries doing everything in their power to preserve the status quo. I saw a further comment in the twitter thread regarding a new couple who needed a notary for some marriage documents and the notary took a percentage of their net worth as a fee which seems egregious considering most notaries in the states charge a flat fee.

Has anyone been to a notary reading session in Germany to confirm this actually happens? Feels like a law that was put into place 300 years ago and no one has thought to revisit since. https://x.com/nathanbenaich/status/1862208030596636770

Ukraine has been operating HIMARs for two and a half years, I think they've figured out how to plug in the coordinates of static sites like ammunition dumps you can clearly see on Google or Yandex maps by now. The idea that western troops are there at every second holding their hand is laughable when you look at the volume of GMLRS strikes since they were provided in 2022. And if you think there's some massive capability barrier between using the same system for GMLRS and ATACMS, they've been operating ATACMs for over a year against sites in Russian occupied Ukraine. They're perfectly capable of using the system themselves.

Article by the WSJ that gets into the details of how Russia recruits and pays contract soldiers, as well as compensates their families. The war has been an economic boon for some of Russia's poorest regions it would seem, which is also why popular opposition to it from those regions is limited. And a seemingly effective means for the Russian state to transfer wealth from wealthy districts to poorer ones. https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russia-ukraine-war-military-death-pay-6cfe936e Archive version - https://archive.ph/wtrq3

This would have worked in the first 6 months of the war and should have been done then but almost all soldiers fighting for Russia in Ukraine currently are contract soldiers who are *usually* from the lowest socioeconomic rung of Russian society, signing up to fight for a few thousand dollars a month. You're just creating an even larger incentive to sign up with a defection bonus. And an even larger incentive for Russian commanders to throw their men into attacks they're unlikely to survive. Ukraine does pay out defection bonuses for those surrendering equipment, however Russia has gone to extreme lengths to target those who defected in order to deter it (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68337794). Russia has for practical purposes an almost unlimited capacity to send people from its poorest regions to fight in Ukraine and take casualties at current rates. And somewhat counterintuitively as their economy worsens, higher interest rates, cost of living increases etc. that capacity increases because the pool of potential recruits who need that $4,000 a month or so grows. And it's not clear that people in the more prosperous regions of Russia have a strong view on the deaths of their countrymen, especially since they're "volunteering" for service in Ukraine unlike as was the case during their invasion of Afghanistan which utilized conscripts where casualties were a major reason for their withdrawal. It's a tough position for Ukraine currently, and their best option is still the one that the West has sought to avoid all along, hit Russia in their pocketbook by targeting crude exports. Who knows, it's been primarily Biden who's discouraged long range strikes into Russia, maybe if the UK and France take the lead on things, that changes the calculus as they've been in favor of allowing them.