Dalal.Holdings

I keep things very simple. All I need to do is look at multi-decade stock charts of JOE, ALCO, etc to know that these are not worthy of my capital. Good luck w JOE.

I wouldn't own JOE or any land bank, but I'm fine owning this because its core assets are a high quality publicly traded business and cash. I don't believe in owning land banks and think they are a huge waste of opportunity. A business like UMG will grow a lot faster than plots of land over the long haul with much better returns too. Sure there is more risk of disruption by AI, etc, but I can take that. Just look at CKX...looks like shareholders will end up with far less than they expected (some were forecasting more than double the current share price). ALCO another. Waste of time. Massive opportunity down the drain. TPL worked only because of the shale black swan (luck).

I like the fact that there is downside protection and started a small position. I'm treating it like buying UMG at a steep discount. However, the questionable time to monetization bothers me. This is the kind of thing where if I get a quick 15% or so gain, I could easily exit. It seems like Odet public float is quite small now. What kind of minority shareholder protections exist for squeeze outs in France? What kind of premium for squeeze out to people expect with ODET.PA ? My guess is Bollore family will try to get as good a deal as they can, no ?

The point is something called opportunity cost. Something people who just buy stocks like this or land banks that do nothing for years and years don't really understand. Maybe there's closure in 12 years. Or maybe the younger Bollore just continues what his father does and there is no closure for much much longer. What is the impetus for them to resolve anything at the BOL.PA/ODET.PA level? What are the motivating factors for them to do this? I'd love to hear them

Spitballing: Some folks estimate BOL.PA trades at about 1/3 NAV. If we get appreciation to 1x NAV, that's a 200% return. Vincent Bolloré is 73 years young. Males at that age are expected to live another ~12 years (though I bet billionaires have a higher expectation). So maybe one should not expect closure until estate planning goes into effect (but might that even not yield closure?) The problem is the S&P has outdone that over a 12 year period. So even if you get 1x NAV in 12 years (~9.6% CAGR), you might still underperform. And are we 100% sure we'll get closure within 12 years? The other important question: at what rate can we expect NAV to grow at? For BOL.PA that seems to depend almost entirely on UMG and the cash pile as these two represent ~80% of NAV. If the cash is used to retire stock, NAV/share grows. If spent on bad acquisitions, maybe not. If UMG continues to dominate & reap from streaming, then yes. If UMG displaced by AI bots making music then no. Some stuff to ponder.

Cash pays over 4% in the USA now. Does BOL.PA do that? S&P delivered 256% over 10 years. BOL.PA basically nothing. You also have to pay a 0.4% tax to the French authorities whenever you trade it. I had a stake in VIV.PA not too long ago that I exited too early. Funny to see French regulatooors tighten the screws, but I bet it'll just be a protracted court fight and more waiting for VIV.PA holders. I have no idea how to handicap the European regulatory apparatus. I also have no idea what uber wealthy Europeans will do and whether I'll ever see value in reasonable time frame.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-08-14/luxury-brands-jump-on-bag-charm-craze-to-boost-flagging-sales Credit Crocs for the idea. Not sure how long lasting this will be and whether or not it will detract from the brands tho

He's the kind of guy who would probably make a killing running his own money (in fact he did). The problem is he took on other people's money, has a staff of analysts and other people who do the thinking now while he's become a sort of public persona who spends time tweeting, going on podcasts, discussing broad macro topics, etc. The size of the fund is also likely a detractor.

I had no idea people got e-mails/notifications as soon as a post goes up. I thought I would refrain from antagonizing the people who want to put their money with the likes of Bollore and deleted my post after I shortly put it up. But if you want to resurrect my post, so be it. And yes, I meant my point: the biggest problem with these (aside from being screwed as a minority holder) is Opportunity Cost. Just look at what the S&P and other indices have done over the 10 years that BOL.PA and ODET.PA have done virtually nothing I have the same problem with many SOTP investments like land banks, etc.

Well Kuppy is better than most in admitting something is wrong and “rebooting”. His tweets and appearances have been all about macro pontification which probably also explains the underperformance I also question folks diving into fundamentally garbage businesses like offshore drillers, etc outside of short term trades

https://www.ft.com/content/f793e403-904b-47e6-9749-9e20a4aa9173 Well, looks like the European oilcos are moving on from their ESG break and now back to finding more oil... The oil companies just keep finding more oil while prices are nothing special...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-03/opec-agrees-big-output-hike-to-finish-unwinding-round-of-cuts Another output hike from OPEC+

I guess he's still upset about this:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-28/germany-set-to-double-defense-spending-to-162-billion-by-2029 https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/german-cabinet-approves-2026-budget-tripling-borrowing-2025-07-30/ Large draft budget approved, defense spend to double by 2029 Merz knows this is the last chance to "save" Germany from the AfD. He needs to deliver

Gotta love The Doctor living like a King while his shareholders (peasants) have gone nowhere...

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gucci-owner-kering-posts-46-170236823.html Gucci has its own issues, but the entire sector not looking too hot

The German fear of debt and love of austerity has not produced good results. They need Keynesianism and stat

Europeans would do well to learn from U.S. history with regards to the EU: Of course, European nations want their own independent sovereignty while also joining together in a deliberative government/body. And that deliberative body has no accountability to its people. They want to have their cake and eat it too. Like the UN, the EU is largely ineffectual when it comes to important matters.

Complacency hasn't worked? How about suppressing a very real and rising political party in Germany and labeling it as "far Right" ??? When you suppress the will of the people, you end up with a much more radical uprising in the end as the will of the people eventually overwhelms and there is a lot of resentment built up by people who feel they were wronged by the establishment. Look at Trump in 2024 vs 2016. Biden administration attempted to arrest/suppress Trump from 2020-2024 and what was the result? He and his movement only grew stronger to the point that his second term will be much more impactful than his first. If Trump's second term was 2020-2024, he would not have accomplished nearly what he will this term. Trump/MAGA was anti-fragile and grew stronger from attempted suppression by the establishment. If Trump was a European politician in 2016, he would have been labeled "Far right", not allowed to run, possible imprisoned on some b.s. charges. Here in the U.S., he won election twice and now he'll be gone in a few years and the people will bear the consequences of his decisions: right or wrong. And after he leaves in Jan 2029, America will still be here very similar to the country it was before Trump. Only some Americans are constantly crying about it, but most will move on. If Trump is a truly bad leader of the people, the people will hold him and his party to account as they did when he lost in 2020. Europeans just try to bury the problem and censor these parties growing in popularity and so Europe suppresses its own democratic processes. That form of suppression leads to those forces gaining in strength (by being anti-fragile) and when they inevitably come into power, it's often in much stronger form as Trump's second term shows.

The thing about ALL of these points that makes Donald Trump different than Ursula Von De Leyen is that he has been elected by the people and is accountable to them. Despite all your points, the People reelected him. Ursula the aristocrat/long term political insider is accountable to no one really and that's the problem of the EU governance structure. She only achieved her EU Presidency by being a long time Euro bureaucratic insider. The People's will does not matter in such a process.

Meanwhile the professional class that runs the EU is panicking at surging popularity of what they call "Far Right" (really not that Far Right) among the people. The people who founded this country wisely concluded that it ought to have an "energetic executive" and the country can't just be run by a deliberative body like Congress. EU is even worse because the EU leaders are not even elected by the people. Like running a business by committee (instead of a CEO), bound to be ineffectual.

If Technical Analysis really worked, there would be no point in wasting time drawing lines on a chart anymore. There should be an AI bot by now that tells you when to buy/sell off the chart. It should print money if the TA people are correct. Let me know if you ever find one.

https://www.ft.com/content/85d57e0e-0c6f-4392-a68c-81866e1519c3 Well, even the FT isn't sugarcoating this... Yeah, that's what happens when you have no real executive running your continent. The EU is a rudderless body that only knows how to create regulation and stifle the continent. Its leaders are not even elected by the European people and largely represent the overeducated "elite" professional class

Does any citizen in Europe even care if Ursula does a bad job? The EU politicians are far removed from their constituents. I doubt most even know the daily goings-on of EU affairs or even consider Ursula their representative on the global stage. That this deal was so lopsided in favor of the U.S. shows how meek EU is. People like Trump and Putin can just run circles around them while overeducated collared shirts in Brussels dither and twiddle their thumbs.