Dalal.Holdings

If India lost any fighter jets, it’s hugely embarrassing for them because it’s likely that none of the fighter jets left Indian airspace to conduct the attack. The fact that a French official admitted as much makes it highly likely. I’d say that 1 Rafale is likely the real loss (not 5 and not 0).

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/india-pakistan-attack-kashmir-tourists-intl-hnk

A loss of fighter jets over India’s own territory is hugely embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as still flying Russian jets. I’m not sure the French jets are all that great either. Pakistan has F-16s. If Modi can get F-35 access, it would be a big game changer, but India has been very slow/reluctant to source American fighters for stupid reasons

https://kedm.com/archives/ I agree with Kuppy. Now is the time for caution. I'm not following Retail into buying every dip... Like Warren, never a bad idea to have cash on hand.

The German establishment has declared AfD and anyone in it persona non grata...same as in France for Marine Le Pen and her party, same for EU elites and Romanian elections, etc etc... Germany's intelligence community just branded AfD as "extremist" and is going to set up spying on them. Sounds like the court case against Marine Le Pen and cancelling of elections in Romania to me. Sounds pretty undemocratic. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-spy-agency-ranks-far-right-afd-extremist-2025-05-02/ The problem is that the more they try to undermine these groups, the stronger they become. In this way, European elites become more and more distanced from its people and eventually the people must get what they want. These elites instead need to start listening to their people. They've totally screwed up on the economy, migration, etc.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-06/merz-falls-short-of-majority-in-initial-german-parliament-vote?srnd=homepage-americas First time since WW2 that this has happened...it is now clear that the people who represent EU establishment--Ursula, the army of bureaucrats in Brussels--these people no longer represent the European citizen: Parties like the AfD are on the rise and almost certainly set to win the next set of elections. It's a judgement on people like Merkel, Ursula Von De Leyen, World Economic Forum types, etc. And there are anti-democratic steps being taken to try and stop this massive force: cancelling elections in Romania, convicting Marine Le Pen, German intelligence investigating AfD... If Merz wants to try to stop this, the only way is to massively focus his attention on what the people of Germany (especially in the former East Germany) want and how to make them more prosperous. Investigating and persecuting the AfD will only make them stronger...

Have the 3G guys been successful with anything lately ?

You’ll see tomorrow morning.

Salute to the GOAT... Up 5,502,284% over his term--and that's not including this year (his final year). He announced his retirement the right way...total secrecy (even from Greg which is amusing) until he revealed it to everyone all at once on a Saturday afternoon. No opportunity for insiders to trade around it.

https://www.ft.com/content/c2be45b8-cfad-4cbb-9a1a-bfd0626be372 Like it or not, this is a huge victory for Trump if it happens...and if India's supply chains and supplier networks in India deepen as a result over the long haul. If that happens, many manufacturers will follow Apple's lead into India. The U.S. should not rely on its geopolitical adversary for such imports. It's much better if those relationships are with more likeminded democracies than authoritarian rivals.

https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/03/13/britains-worklessness-disaster I hope that one day the elites in charge of Europe learn about incentives. Until then, they will continue to wonder why their economic productivity has stagnated for so long... If these geniuses at the "think-tanks" can't figure out why disability benefits have gone way up, who can??? So the UK will be okay with a significant chunk of its younger generation permanently out of the workforce?

Economists and similar elites never -- never -- talk about waste, inefficiencies, and corruption. All they do is wave their hand and say "well, we clearly just need to spend more on infrastructure". Then the leftist environmentalists and NIMBY guys take over and regulated it to death and extract money for "environmental studies" and "consultant fees" while the unions get their pensions, NGOs get their dues, etc. And meanwhile nothing gets built. Ezra Klein has gone into this lately--when the left is in charge of government, nothing gets done, but everybody gets paid. Biden administration, Canada (Trudeau), and much of Europe are the examples. That's why you got California high speed rail with no tracks laid. That's why you got Biden rural high speed with no homes connected. Ditto for Biden EV charging network. That's why you have NYC with huge taxes needing to implement "congestion tolls" to fund their subways.

Yep: and he also said that "the U.S. needs to reduce domestic consumption" as percent of GDP to invest in infrastructure -- "good luck with that". Well, you know a good way to disincentivize consumption? Tariffs on cheap Chinese imports. Currency devaluation too. As I noted in the Kuppy thread, the U.S. is trying to decrease consumption as % of GDP which is extraordinarily high in the U.S. In the podcast, Wolf briefly acknowledges it as a problem, but waives off solving it as an impossibility...

https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/03/13/britains-worklessness-disaster https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/benefits-bill-surges-25pc-working-age-britons-disabled/ Much easier to collect disability checks in the mail for "anxiety" than become a computer programmer. British economists/politicians of course don't understand how basic incentives work if they put such a system in place and then go "Gee, I wonder why UK productivity isn't doing well" Instead of commentating on U.S. politics day in and day out, perhaps they should address glaring deficiencies in their own land.

My argument is that those who bear responsibility for why the UK & Europe have stagnated for over a decade and a half should only be listened to with a huge grain of salt. Many of these commentators cheered on and encouraged a lot of the policies/rules that have led Europe to where it is today. The Davos crowd especially. And now, when the continent needs a way out of its mess, what solutions do they propose? Have they been vocal about how welfare (especially disability payments to a quarter of working age people in the UK) needs massive reform? Have they pushed back against radical environmentalist agenda that destroyed the energy security of the continent? Have they pushed back against crazed regulations from the EU/etc ? Have they held China to account for brazen IP theft, massive subsidies of their industries, and destruction of the European auto sector ? Large migrant populations that don't really contribute but drain resources? What about pitiful funding of defense that leads them to the crisis they find themselves in today ? A lot of these economists/commentators just fall back on their Econ 101 "free trade is good" mindset without addressing these details that have destroyed productivity and the general geopolitical standing of the UK/Europe. And yeah, no kidding that European tech industry is garbage. But they never realize that all the above problems -- crazy regulatory apparatus, welfare, lack of military investment, crazy immigration policies, IP theft from China, energy security, educational institutions that teach b.s. fields -- have all contributed to your tech industry's woes.

Listened to this. It's amazing that European economic commentators like this are able to opine so freely about America's happenings, but when asked why Britain's (and Europe's) productivity growth has flatlined and they've hit economic stagnation for over a decade, the only answer is "we don't really know". Yeah, I'm not asking a European economic commentator or member of the elite for an analysis or prescription on what the U.S. should do given what they've done to their own continent. Or at least take it with a huge grain of salt.

Gold is also priced in USD and USD (as measured by the DXY) is down around 9.5% YTD. So dollar denominated commodities need to have risen by 10.5% YTD just to maintain their original dollar neutral value.

The drop in USD is like another layer of Tariffs that makes imports more expensive

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-17/us-rare-earth-miner-mp-materials-halts-exports-to-china Molycorp's successor (MP Materials) is making a lot of claims about bringing back rare earth processing/the rare earth supply chain to the U.S. It'll obviously take time and we'll see what happens

https://www.wsj.com/world/india/india-us-trade-china-tariff-war-602e5b83?st=ZmfPVg&reflink=article_copyURL_share This is the kind of thing that needs to happen. If China insists on being an authoritarian power that refuses to operate fairly, the U.S. needs to diversify its supply chains toward friendlier nations

This just justifies the U.S. decoupling from China even further. Free trade has its benefits, but free trade and massive trade deficits with your greatest geopolitical rival who gets stronger in critical industries in the process just makes no sense.

China’s halting of shipments of rare earths to rest of the world is temporary. If they continue the ban, the rest of the world will band together and create new sources and the Chinese sources will become irrelevant… I don’t think that happens. Instead, I think China will slowly reopen exports to certain countries and there will be ways to smuggle it to the U.S. until American capabilities ramp up

Just set up dummy corporations in countries that can get rare earths from China. Use those corps to buy from the firms that bought from China. China has very little control over where these things end up once they leave their shores. Like Deepseek getting access to Nvidia chips through 3rd party firms in Singapore. Lots of ways for the rare earths to end up in American hands once they leave China Im sure the U.S. intelligence establishment can figure out ways to secure supplies for defense too The smuggling/black market will thrive in trade wars

The problem for China is even if China restricts rare earth exports to the U.S., American firms can get them through other nations. Unless they want to stop shipping to the entire rest of the world, it’s going to be impossible to prevent Americans from sourcing through other nations

If the dollar loses value vs Euro, Yen, etc not only are exports boosted, but so are the dollar denominated earnings of all the multinational U.S. businesses.