DooDiligence

When the facts change, you change your mind, sir. The world is filled with hope on thin air. Vaccine news is either cheerleading by the administration, pharma co‘s pitching their businesses to shareholders, or pharma team‘s soliciting budget. Buffett said it - a crisis doesn‘t fold out over a couple of weeks. The wheel started turning, and there will be second and third order effects (and so on). Whoever talks about an „artificial“ recession (because it was caused my a „planned“ shutdown) is also the one who values businesses on the basis of „earnings as if Corona never happened“ Liquidity doesn‘t fix valuations... We just need to be patient... Ira Flatow's Science Friday was exceptionally good today. www.sciencefriday.com/person/ira-flatow/ They spent quite a bit of time debunking nonsense & discussing what we know, and more importantly, what we don't know about COVID.

To say that Liberty doen't think Taiwan should have liberty is an insult to intelligence. Typical neo-con retort.

www.pbs.org/newshour/science/biggest-u-s-solar-project-approved-in-nevada-despite-critics

I went home with a waitress the way I always do How was I to know she was with the Russians, too? I was gambling in havana, I took a little risk Send lawyers, guns, and money Dad, get me out of this, hiyah! An innocent bystander Somehow I got stuck between a rock and a hard place And I'm down on my luck Yes, I'm down on my luck Well, I'm down on my luck I'm hiding in honduras, I'm a desperate man Send lawyers, guns, and money The shit has hit the fan Send lawyers, guns, and money Send lawyers, guns, and money Send lawyers, guns, and money, hiyah! Send lawyers, guns, and money, ow!

I doubled my ABEV today. ;) You should send Spek a case of beer to help with the coming pain ;) I kid. ;D They've maintained double digit ROA's & ROE's for more than a decade & returned gobs of money to shareholders. That said, volumes are down double digits & looking worse for the coming months. People will eventually start boozing it up again & I think ABEV's clean balance sheet should hold them over. I made money on ABEV before with a cost basis that was slightly more than double what I own now. (historical performance is no guarantee of future returns but...) edit: We'll see if I can still defend the purchase in a year ???

I doubled my ABEV today. ;)

Is WFC fundamentally broken? For him to unload WFC and not BAC means it must be WFC specific. Yes WFC is like toxic waste right now in the banking world, but it is also like half of TBV and very well capitalized. He bought into BAC when not only was it toxic but also had tens of billions of legal liabilities. Is he saying it was possible to turn around BAC but not WFC? Did he like the odds of BAC in 2011 more than WFC today? BofA was not too much lower in total market cap then what WFC is today, and capital levels at all these banks are much better now. Or does he think it's an industry wide problem, interest rates, great depression? In that case he should be selling both off. He bought into airlines. Then sold out of airlines. Personally, I think he's lost it. We'll see.

I'd rather see both of them sprout massive tumors out of their ass cracks.

“...out from the door of the farmhouse came a long file of pigs, all walking on their hind legs...out came Napoleon himself, majestically upright, casting haughty glances from side to side, and with his dogs gambolling round him. He carried a whip in his trotter. There was a deadly silence. Amazed, terrified, huddling together, the animals watched the long line of pigs march slowly round the yard. It was as though the world had turned upside-down. Then there came a moment when the first shock had worn off and when, in spite of everything-in spite of their terror of the dogs, and of the habit, developed through long years, of never complaining, never criticising, no matter what happened-they might have uttered some word of protest. But just at that moment, as though at a signal, all the sheep burst out into a tremendous bleating of, "Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better!" It went on for five minutes without stopping. And by the time the sheep had quieted down, the chance to utter any protest had passed, for the pigs had marched back into the farmhouse. Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.”

Give Trump another 4 years & we'll all be banana farmers.

on a brighter note, and I guess this counts as an anecdote. I just submitted my final exams & projects for Music Theory 4 & Sight Singing & Ear Training 4. Pretty sure I rounded out the program with straight A's in all my major coursework & most of the academic classes. (the B+ in Math for Libtards still sticks in my craw.) Zoom classes worked just fine & I'd have no problem continuing with the same in the Fall.

Another brick in the wall of perception that he's doing a great job. The wall only exists in his mind & in the feeble minds of the sheeple he herds into pens.

Here's one angle. https://twitter.com/LAForeverHall/status/1212416665591222272 --- another involving BK, also dug up by Liz https://www.kirkland.com/siteFiles/kirkexp/publications/2381/Document1/Friedland_Bankruptcy%20Issues%20for%20Landlords.pdf --- Let them eat CAKE https://lizardbrain.substack.com/p/corona-cheesecake-and-testing-the

This, and the entitled sheep will continue to piss & moan & ignore their prosperity.

Here it is. --- I was at the mailbox today & a neighbor was passing by. He stopped & asked me if I'd gotten a stimulus check yet & I waved the envelope at him. He started pissing & moaning about how Pelosi is holding up the checks. I said yes, it's a disgrace that she's held up the checks just so she could get Trumps name on them. He started to bristle & I asked him if he'd knew that Pelosi & Trump were having an affair & that she had to be mean to him in public for the sake of the democratic party but that her work getting his name on the checks proves that she really loves him. I think I had him believing it by the end of the conversation. We rarely talk because he's pretty much a dipshit. Hopefully we won't talk again any time soon.

I just got a stimulus check even though I didn't apply for it & sure enough, the douchenozzle in chiefs name is on it. Not his signature, just his name. What an ass clown. I'll cash it anyway.

Very unusual. My ex-wife was raised by politicians and from a young age she was coached by her father to "admit nothing, deny everything, and never put anything in writing". This raises a child who cannot take responsibility. I think it's common in a lot of these powerful families and nurtures narcissism and sociopathy. Meanwhile Trump is talking about how unfair this whole situation is to him and how badly he's being treated in front of the Lincoln monument... The sun king imagines a grander monument to his royal self. I predict that he will propose ramrod one during the last days of his presidency, and it won't be no stinkin' library either.

I agree. He's not afraid to admit mistakes, although it must hurt especially so with airlines given his historical opinion on them.

Chanos talks about the absurdity of bailing out PE firms & he also lays out the case against investing in China before & after COVID. www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2020-04-09/why-chanos-is-bemused-by-pe-push-for-help-and-still-shorting-tesla-video Re: Live Nation, if the business model didn't make sense before COVID, it definitely doesn't look good after. Ditto, restaurants in general, ride sharing, food delivery & most franchise models. I was trying to find out what new shorts he's put on since the pandemic, in order to have a good list of businesses to avoid, but I guess those are mostly obvious. As an aside, early on in the interview, Joe Weisenthal says he thinks poker players should be bailed out.

I believe the ability to continue capital spending, and attracting talent, when earnings & cash flow are constrained, could be advantageous. I'm thinking mainly about BHE, BNSF & the insurance operations. This, of course, includes the other businesses that they don't simply let die on the vine. You could argue that cheap credit will be available to those without a war chest but even if it's cheap, it's still a mill stone around your neck. The analogy of BHE reinvesting cash that used to be paid out as dividends & widening their moat, comes to mind. Could they get higher returns buying whole businesses or parts of businesses? Sure / maybe. Anyone remember "Acres of Diamonds" by Earl Nightingale? edit: www.nightingale.com/articles/acres-of-diamonds/ I know I'm just putting a positive spin on a subject with a ton of negative spin possibilities, but I'm definitely not putting lipstick on a pig.

Indeed it is, a good answer, & an about face from what we’ve been seeing. I wonder if Machiavelli was a sociopath?

Rudy is on Firing Line, right now, with Margaret Hoover. He's coming out of the box like a gigantic, pop-up, douchebag. --- edit: Whoa, now he's flip-flopping & sounding like a normal human being & a thoughtful leader. Who the F is this guy? --- Margaret: What do you think is most important in a leader during this pandemic? Rudy: Truthfulness & discretion. --- This is NOT the Rudy we've been seeing over the past months. --- He just said "trust your doctor, don't trust the president" hastily followed up by "don't trust me, trust your doctor". I predict an orange tinted Tweetstorm.

Pence was in a hospital where there is an explicit rule about everybody wearing masks (everybody else was following that rule), and he was visiting patients. He wasn't in a press conference room in a federal building where everybody gets screened constantly. See also: https://medium.com/@casanderson/mike-pence-and-the-bystander-effect-a698bbbe4d18 Pence, at a GM plant, clarifying exactly where the eyeballs are located in a human head.

If this talk becomes more prevalent and Trump picks it up we are going to see a couple of limit down days in a row. Treasuries will get absolutely destroyed with obvious consequences for the financial system. He's been playing for small stakes with all his previous bankruptcies. Now he wants to scale it up & show he's truly the master when it comes to running businesses into the ground.

P is for Pence ;D