nafregnum

Bought a 2% position in LQDA, and 0.3% more as $55 Jan'27 calls. Increased NTDOY stake to 3%.

Sold out of the last of my Obsidian Energy (OBE), with much gratitude to @SharperDingaan for pointing it out 5 years ago. Sold off another 10% of my Micron position.

Uh oh, I should've been more on the ball and bought them today. I actually clicked the button on the options but hadn't realized it was a few minutes past market close, so I'll probably be kicking myself tomorrow morning.

I'm just about to put some Micron profits in LQDA, trying to decide between $55 Jan'27 calls, $55 Jan'28 calls or just buying and holding.

I was working on selling off my OBE shares but after seeing this yesterday I'm tempted to hold a while (The YouTube video title is so clickbait stupid I hesitated to even post it here, sorry) I haven't heard this University of Chicago professor of Political Science before, but the commentary seemed intelligent. Of course we'll eventually find out how things in the Strait resolve ... The main claim I found interesting was that Iran is not about to give Trump a face-saving way out of this mess: that they see it in their interests to drag things out to November if possible ...

Unloading some Micron and Apple shares bought in 2016, and Obsidian Energy from 2021. Watched Micron play the roller coaster from 440 down to 330 recently and now that it's back up I'm just going to trim every day it's over 400. Same story with Obsidian basically, but had to wait a lot longer for the roller coaster to be riding high again. (It spiked over $10 when Putin invaded Ukraine and I didn't sell, then it sunk back down for a few years) Shoulda listened to @SharperDingaan about trading energy stocks and not owning them.

https://blog.gorozen.com/blog/is-the-iea-quietly-turning-bullish https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/americas-biggest-oil-field-is-turning-into-a-pressure-cooker-8a1bfe4e The first blog post says the Permian basin has "rolled over" (stopped growing in output) and that they had predicted it a few years back using some neural network thing -- I do remember they predicted it a while back. The second one is more info on the wastewater problem in the Permian. I think we've had a few YouTube videos on this thread discussing how certain old well heads pop and start spewing toxic water like geysers and take weeks or months to cap again...

25% -- BRKB (bought 2015) 20% -- MU (Micron, bought 2016) 18% -- GLASF (Glass House Brands, bought 2023) 16% -- AAPL (bought 2016) 11% -- OBE (Obsidian Energy, bought 2021) 5% -- COST (bought 2016) 2% -- NTDOY (bought 2023) 2% -- TGT (bought 2017) 1% -- BKNG (bought 2022) Biggest recent regrets: Not buying a lot more NTDOY in 2023, not selling out of OBE right after Russia invaded Ukraine, and buying only one share of TSM in January 2023 to "watch it" ... I should've just loaded up back then, as it hurts to look at that 1 share that is a 3-bagger now.

The perfect pairing to "Scam Inc" is a longtime favorite called "The Swindled Podcast" https://swindledpodcast.com/ The guy who does the podcast lives in TX somewhere, calling himself "A Concerned Citizen", and he does deep dives into the stories of greed motivated criminals -- some are about corporations (product safety coverups, pollution disasters, etc) and some are about individuals. There's insurance fraud such as faked accidents, faked deaths, faked car wrecks ... I think he was first to thoroughly research and release an episode about the man who rigged the McDonalds Monopoly prize jackpots. Listening to this podcast is a little bit like a class in defense against the dark arts.

The Economist put out 8 episodes about a Crypto Investing scam called "Pig Butchering" and it's excellent. https://www.economist.com/audio/podcasts/scam-inc Looks like the first three episodes of this series are available without a subscription to The Economist. I listened and enjoyed the whole 8 episodes, but just hearing the first 3 would be time well spent, and the rest of the details about this new "Pig Butchering" scam are likely to be online in other formats if you're not interested in subscribing.

https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/memo/on-bubble-watch The recent memo from Howard Marks was in a browser tab, probably from when @james22 originally posted it here 12 days ago, and I finally read it today. I really appreciate how Marks takes the time to put his thoughts out there, and recommend checking it out. He's not calling a top, or saying that the market won't keep going up, or that the Mag 7 are in bubble territory, but did a fine job of describing the traits that past bubbles have shared. He included this chart that a couple people had sent to him: Here's the relevant explanation of the chart: I'm asking myself what to do with this info? I'm not heavily invested in the Mag 7, so if the top 7 falter, my guess is that a lot of that money would flee into other areas of the S&P 500, but I won't gain much from that, since my largest positions are not in the S&P. I'm only at 1% cash right now. Buffett's cash position is at a record level above $320 Billion, so it can't be the worst time for me to trim back and raise more cash. I'm only commenting about how I feel about my own portfolio and not giving advice.

Dostoevky's best English translators are a married couple, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. They're fantastic, very much worth seeking out their versions over earlier translators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pevear_and_Larissa_Volokhonsky#Translations_credited_to_Pevear_and_Volokhonsky

Christopher Bloomstran doubling down on DG and DLTR which are both at 5y lows. I'm waiting a little longer to see if those get even cheaper after Trump starts the tariffs. https://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=SA

Thanks for this! Very interesting interview - I bought "The Prize" on Audible (it's abridged, so only 2.5 hrs) and am excited to listen to it. So, Oil was a main character in the 20th century world drama, alongside nuclear weaponry. Seems like we're looking at advanced computer chips as the current alpha resource, and maybe electrical energy like Yergin said around 55 minutes in when he said Bill Gates mentioned data centers used to be measured in CPUs "20,000 CPU data center" and now it's a "3 Megawatt data center" ...

Thanks for posting that video - I didn't know any of that about wastewater. I caught myself wondering what the dynamics are like up in Alberta's oilfields. I think the pressure of the injected water eases as the water is able to spread out into the geological formation until pressure is equalized. I imagine one cheapish solution might be to drill more re-injection wells and just pump slower into each one. Seems like that might reduce seismicity and also the risk of causing nearby zombie blowouts. Here's hoping they figure it out.